Mining bitcoin is expensive? know 'cheaper' alternatives in the cloud

Minerar  Bitcoin  at home with the home PC ended up becoming unfeasible from the moment that new computers, specific for this task, appeared. The so-called ASICs, with powerful processors focused solely on Bitcoin Miner, have made this form of mining of digital coins extremely difficult for ordinary users, since they have raised the difficulty of generating / finding the currency and distorted the process in favor of whom can invest heavily in technology.

What is Bitcoin Miner?

But that does not mean that your home computer is unable to mine bitcoins (know how much a Bitcoin is worth). Due to the presence of a large number of ASICs in operation, the chance that you will generate the currency alone on your PC is very small: it is possible to go through a whole year running the mining application all the time without finding a measly bitcoin .

Specific machines to find bitcoins have made mining on PCs unfeasible (Photo: Divulga / Bitmain)

If you feel that you have to leave your computer running for months running the mining function that usually requires processing - and consequently raises power consumption - it is easy to understand why the practice is not sustainable, at least from a personal investment point of view.

What if I want to use an ASIC?

In that case, you will have to choose the best machine possible, according to your pocket. There are several models, the difference between them being specifications: more expensive and powerful, consume large amounts of electricity, but are able to mine more bitcoins. The simpler and cheaper consume less energy, but return a smaller amount of coins.

Machines for mining bitcoin can be expensive (Photo: Press Release / Butterfly Labs)

In Brazil, independent sellers market a series of models. One of the most famous and efficient, the Antminer S7, costs around $ 7,500. Now you need to define what you want.

If your intention is to invest heavily in bitcoins, it may be more interesting to start buying the digital currency to market in the market, seeking profit from price fluctuations. That way, you learn the bitcoin world from the use of currency and not from mining.

Why invest in Bitcoins?  See what users are talking about in the TechTudo Forum.

On the other hand, if your intention is to generate the currency yourself, there is no escaping the purchase of an ASIC. However, at the tip of the pencil, considering the energy and import costs of the machine, or the $ 7,500 to buy one in Brazil, you can take about a year to pay the investment. An S7 Antminer is expected to deliver around 0.44 bitcoins a month, which at the current quotation (March 2016) is nearly around $ 667, converted to Reals. Remember: more efficient miners appear and the difficulty factor always increases, which can knock your profits down.

ALTERNATIVE 1: Generate bitcoin in the cloud

The suspensory nature of the ASIC created new extraction models, developed to meet individual investors and who was caught in the contrapé, when this type of technology appeared in 2013.

One such method is via the cloud. It is possible to subscribe online services that charge monthly fees, which start at $ 15 and promise to send bitcoins to the user daily. Note the advantage: the cost drops and you are sure to generate bitcoins at a daily pace. Even so, the amounts may fluctuate and, on average, the payment of the investment may take a few months.

That is, instead of investing in a machine to mine bitcoins, you "rent" and pay for other networks to do this for you, keeping the network running from the value of the signatures.

Cloud mining services may be more efficient for small investors (Photo: Reproduction / Filipe Garrett)

ALTERNATIVE 2: Via pool

Pools are network investor groups that pool efforts and hardware to mine. The advantage is that, depending on the size of the group and the type of hardware, there is a good prospect of return.

Pool meets group of investors to increase chances of finding currencies (Photo: Reproduction / FISL)

The interesting thing about this "POOL" model is that it allows investors who have acquired specific hardware to invest in the bitcoins market to be able to effectively generate the digital currency, counting on the help and dividing profits. Getting into pools is easy. Many of them organize themselves on the Internet and it is possible to choose very large groups, which involve people from all over the world.