The Bitcoin and Litecoin craze is slowing down. Now is a good time to take a look at alternative virtual currencies such as Megacoin, Opensourcecoin or similar coins. In this guide, I will take a look at how you can mine Megacoin without a pool.
First Things First
The thing with the coins out there is that you need to hold them long enough. Try not to lose interest too early like so many before. Sure, all coins out there are a gamble, that’s why it’s good to have convictions, but you also need to be smart about timing. Let’s do a quick recap:
The main coins adopted by thousands of businesses:
- Bitcoin: Rose from $50 in summer 2013 to over $1000 in November 2013
- Litecoin: Rose from $4 in summer 2013 to over $40 in November 2013
The alt coins:
NMC, PPC and similar coins also quadrupled! However, no businesses use those coins and they have no real value other than speculative value, which is fine for now, but in the long run they may get dumped or will be replaced, that’s why many miners cash out every week to avoid the high volatility, this depends on YOUR strategy (longterm vs short-term)
China, China, China ..
As of this week, things are slowing down. China is the main driver (no, it’s not the US who’s pushing prices that high. After careful observing the prices for some time, it’s very obvious that China is dictating prices – who would’ve thought? Check out Mt.Gox and OkCoin regularly for your own observations)
Alright, now it’s very obvious there is demand out there, but there’s also some downside now. People are beginning to cash out. We saw LTC drop from a $50 high to $26 in a matter of hours only to go back to $40. This can happen any time with any coin. Sure, over the long run you may benefit (especially being invested in BTC and LTC), but you may want to consider realizing some profits after a 400% gain (stock investors would be happy with 50%!). It’s real money after all, you will only regret the loss once it’s gone. Be as pessimistic as possible at all times, it will help you to avoid optimism and euphoria which will lead to big losses. Yes, in the long run we all see prices going up, but there will be peaks and lows, don’t buy high and sell low.
Let’s Get Ready To Rumble: 7970 / USB Mining
To do some serious damage, you need a good video card – you could get two cheap 7970 for starters or if you want to go hardcore do some research on ASICs. There are also a bunch of cool USB miner for very little money. Get some on eBay, you can get some really amazing hash rates for VERY little money (like 40 bucks! very good profitability) but the key is to experiment with different setups and do a lot of research on profitability first. Also ask your local geeks for advice if you’re not sure what equipment is good. I will not share more advice on this matter to avoid giving bad advice. Also, if you can find a place at work or school to get free electricity or if you can deduct your electricity from your taxes (consider starting a company) you may want to do that too.
Pre-Reqisites: Megacoin, Minerd
1. Step Download Megacoin
2. Step Download Minerd / CPUMiner
Install both. Do NOT install on a SSD and make backups to avoid nasty surprises – shit happens, I’ve been there, it can get ugly very quickly.
Megacoin.Conf
1. Step Open the Windows explorer
2. Step Go to C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Megacoin
3. Step Right-click => New Text File
4. Step Enter megacoin.conf and ht Enter
5. Step Copy and paste this, replace username123 with a name OF YOUR choice and a random password. Yes, enter anything you like here, Megacoin will use those setting to start your local Megacoin mining server
server=1
rpcuser=username123
rpcpassword=password123
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
rpcport=7950
daemon=1
listen=1
gen=0
The Mining Batch File
6. Step Alrighty, now let the fun begin. We are going to create another text file and save it as a .bat file (IMPORTANT: When you save the file, make sure to select “All Files” from the dropdown or it will save the file as a text file and not a bat file)
Call the file – mining.bat (if you saved it correctly you WILL see a gear icon (batch icon)
7. Step Right-click on the minin.bat and open it with notepad or notepad++ (my choice)
Enter this:
cd F:\Downloads\pooler-cpuminer-2.3.2-win64
F:
minerd -a scrypt -r 1 -t 4 -s 6 -o http://127.0.0.1:7950 -O username:password
(You only need to add the second line if you saved the file on another drive than C:)
8. Step Replace the path on the first line to the actual location of your cpuminer folder
9. Step Replace username:password with the data you entered into the megacoin.conf!
Start The Mining Batch
Double-click the mining batch files and you’re set
If you followed the steps correctly and did not forget to restart Megacoin after saving the conf file you will now see something like this:
404 Error
If you see a 404 error, it’s very likely you forgot to restart Megacoin after saving the megacoin.conf OR you entered invalid username:password data – verify that you use the correct data twice
Let’s Talk
Found my guide inspiring and want to do some networking? Let’s connect. You can ask me questions any time, just don’t expect immediate answers, please allow 72 hours and more for a proper answer
Pro-Tip: Megacoin has a built-in miner. For some reason if you start minerd and the Megacoin miner you can get higher hash rates than using a single mining tool. This obviously depends on your configuration, do some research on tweaking minerd and you may get higher rates
Pro-Tip 2: If you don’t want to invest into ASIC’s (very expensive, high risk) you may want to consider simply buying some coins from a trading platform such as cryptsy and be done with it. However, the profitability on mining some alt coins if frigging amazing right now. Surprisingly, there’s still time to make money with this. Things are getting more difficult every day, but there are golden opportunities – we certainly live in interesting times – at least for geeks, that is! Good to be a geek, more power to you!
Feel free to ask me any questions, I’m happy to help new Coin enthusiasts.
There’s still time to make some money with this, so let’s work together and share some strategies. If you are interested in starting a group for this, drop me a quick message on G+ and I will get back to you
I heard that mining as a single user (apposed to a mining pool) will not be profitable enough with the cost of electricity, is this true? Also will a weaker GTX 560 SE be able to mine efficiently? Any risk of the video card overheating or malfunctioning due to mining?
Yes, there is a higher risk that your card will have a shorter lifespan because its constantly working. Also, if you incorrectly configure cgminer or other tools then it’s possible your card will die quickly .. but you will notice black pixels on your screen before that happens, a lot of them. The risk is also higher if you overclock your card
It’s also true that a pool is usually the best choice, however there are only a few guides on solo mining, so I wanted to write a guide for those who are considering it. In general you need an ASIC for profitable solo mining and if you don’t have one it’s better to use a pool and pay a small fee
A GTX560 SE will only be able to mine for fun, same goes for the 7970 cards, unless you have multiple cards you will not do any serious damage. The hash rates will be 500-700 Mhash/s with these cards. A cheap ASIC can do 8-9 GH/s. The more expensive can do 50 and the new Monarch ASIC from Butterfly can even do 300-600 GH/s which are supposed to ship in December or January. However, in my opinion a better investment is to buy coins right away.
People who spent 22k on an ASIC must be sad right now that they simply didn’t buy BTC’s back then .. just saying. Don’t invest 22k into an ASIC, only those who produce them will get rich
Buying a few coins you believe will appreciate is the better strategy here, but you can mine coins for fun and do some trades
For beginners, you better download GUIMiner right away
Also look up the difference between SHA and Scrypt-based coins .. you can’t mine Scrypt coins with ASIC’s. Only some new ASIC’s will supposedly be able to mine Scrypt (Litecoin, Megacoin, etc)
wwww