If you’re looking to immediately profit by mining crypto on mac, stop here. don’t waste your time close this article and buy yourself a decent mining rig/gaming laptop or buy crypto with your credit card.
bitcoin(btc) is the most dominant cryptocurrency. its dominance exceeds 51% of the market. 1 btc = $6581. do you want to mine bitcoins with a mac and cash out that satoshi? forget it. With the increasing difficulty of bitcoin mining, you need specialized mining hardware (ASIC). without it, you can use a very fast graphics card, but unless you have free electricity, it won’t even pay for itself. and furthermore gpu mining is not supported on most macs with most mining software. cpu-only mining doesn’t make sense.
Reading: Mine bitcoin on mac
First of all, what is mining in the world?
so where does all this mining take place and where do cryptocurrencies like bitcoin come from? well, your computer is solving mathematical problems to make sure that no one makes transactions on the blockchain network that are not true. if your computer manages to solve the problem, you will be rewarded. mining is also used to release new currency onto the blockchain. and that’s basically mining. everyone has the opportunity to help solve these problems and claim rewards. so, in short, mining is nothing more than the validation of a transaction.
(you can skip the next part about asic mining).
the controversy surrounding asic mining:
At the time bitcoin was launched, the only way to mine was by using the central processing unit (cpu) in the computer and the central bitcoin wallet. when bitcoin was released you could only mine 100 coins a day using one cpu. cpu was designed to switch between different tasks. hash requires proof of work in mathematical computation and the cpu has less arithmetic logical units, so when it comes to performance in large computation, the cpu is relatively slow.
but at the moment it is impossible to mine bitcoin using cpu due to asic miners. The introduction of asic mining rigs has always generated controversy in the cryptocurrency communities. asic mining rigs bring a lot of benefits and drawbacks to the ecosystem of a cryptocurrency. For example, they bring economies of scale to operations because they are relatively inexpensive and more efficient (compared to GPU platforms) at processing hash functions. in turn, this translates into higher profit margins for miners. but mining efficiency comes at the cost of decentralization.
the reason many cryptocurrency purists have a problem with asics is that people like you and me, who use comparatively slow pc’s or even more powerful graphics cards, can’t compete with the ruthless efficiency with which asics asic mining farms carry out the test. proof of work consensus and earn bitcoin rewards. if the little one cannot participate, they argue, the result is a recentralization. there’s a security argument, eg all that expensive and efficient hashing power makes the spending barrier more formidable for a potential “51 percent attacker” to overcome.
so what cryptocurrencies should i mine on a mac?
alternative currencies! anything but bitcoin. The popularity of bitcoin makes the bitcoin market extremely competitive and it is difficult and expensive for beginners to get started. Most altcoins, on the other hand, are much less popular, much less competitive, much less expensive, and can be mined even by beginners with CPUs. There are even some cpu-only coins! therefore, altcoins are the best cryptocurrency to mine for people who want to experience mining for fun or are looking to earn a few extra bucks every month.
what are the possible altcoins to mine on a mac?
but let’s see the most popular/advanced/practical coins to mine on a mac. All test mining results shown below were run on a 15″ MacBook Pro Mid 2017 (a1701).
monero (xmr) :
monero stands out among other cryptocurrencies as it is widely considered to be the most advanced anonymous digital currency. monero is based on a proof of work algorithm known as cryptonight, which is designed with certain specifications that make it difficult for monero mining with asics to work well. Also, it’s actually relatively easy to mine monero on your pc/mac.
This means that people all over the world will leave the mining software running on their home or work PCs. those who do this will earn monero in exchange for running the software that processes and verifies other monero transactions. Therefore, if someone else is paying the electricity bill (for example, an employer or a university), there will be a financial incentive for people to mine monero using the available capacity of computers they already have access to. Far more people will be willing to casually use existing computers for this task than if they needed to purchase and install specially designed ASIC mining hardware. Because no special mining equipment is required, it means that it would be easy for anyone downloading a monero wallet to simply click a single button to start mining on their computer.
so that ordinary people who are interested in monero can earn their first bit of monero by participating in the mining process. This is a huge marketing win as it distributes Monero to as many participants as possible to fuel their enthusiasm. monero is currently the 10th largest cryptocurrency. 1xmr = $96.7. monero supports mining with cpu/gpu or both.
I calculated earnings based on the average hashrate I was getting on an a1701 mbp over a 24 hour period on minergate.
so if you have a more powerful mac and if you plug in a compatible gpu you could make a lot of money in the future, if not right away.
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ethereum/classic ethereum (eth/etc):
ethereum was developed to augment and improve bitcoin, expanding its capabilities. and more importantly, it was developed to highlight “smart contracts” – decentralized, self-executing agreements encoded on the blockchain itself so that no third-party authentication is required.
ethereum is the second most valuable cryptocurrency (market cap). ethereum classic is a fork of ethereum. 1eth = $302. ethereum rewards its miners based on the proof-of-work algorithm called ethash, which actually encourages decentralized mining by individuals and does not support asics mining. you can mine ethereum with cpu/gpu mining or both. but recently asic mining became possible on the ethereum blockchain.
I calculated earnings based on the average hashrate I was getting on an a1701 mbp over a 24 hour period on minergate.
litecoin (ltc):
litecoin is a fork of the main bitcoin client, with a few minor differences. had a block generation time reduced to two and a half minutes; it had significantly more coins or tokens and a different hash algorithm using scrypt, instead of sha-256. 1 litecoin costs around $56.90. it has the seventh highest market capitalization as of 2018.
I calculated earnings based on the average hashrate I was getting on an a1701 mbp over a 24 hour period.
so leaving your mac running the mining program 24/7 would almost definitely cost you more electricity than you would earn in litecoin, so I don’t recommend trying this! ever! again, if you’re serious about mining, buy a mining rig! but anyway, here is a link to a guide where you can set it up on a mac.
bytecoin (bcn):
Bytecoin was the first alternative currency based on cryptocurrency technology. bytecoin is advertised as a fully anonymous altcoin and the first enterprise-ready altcoin. Instant international payments free of charge: the bytecoin network works as fast as the internet. Your payments will take a while to process as payments require cryptographic confirmation. bytecoin claim transactions are processed in about 2 minutes. the creators of bytecoin claim that hacking the currency “would require an immense amount of expensive electricity and computational power from a supercomputer.”
Bytecoin is the 27th largest cryptocurrency in the world. 1 bcn = $ 0.001816!
I calculated earnings based on the average hashrate I was getting on an a1701 mbp over a 24 hour period on minergate.
the only reason you would want to mine bytecoin is for hodling. 1 bytecoin is worth micro cents now, maybe worth hundreds one day. and that’s a big maybe. enormous. huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu so keep calm on hodl!
but this is what a smart person would do instead of mining bytecoin:
The easiest way to mine crypto on a mac is to use mining software called minergate.
you can download the gui (graphical user interface) version here.
gui version is simple and recommended.
The user interface couldn’t be simpler.
register.exit the application. log in using extended mode. go to the miner tab at the top. choose the cryptocurrency of your choice. press start mining button. select no. of cores you want to allocate for the mining process (the higher the number of cores, the higher the hashrate).
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that’s it. you have started mining a cryptocurrency! it also has a built-in wallet to store the cryptocurrencies you mine. using the waller address you can send and receive various cryptocurrencies. although after mining I recommend that you transfer it to another wallet for security reasons.
I use the lumi wallet to store my cryptocurrencies. They have a web app, an ios app, and an android app. and use the mnemonic phrase method to secure the wallet.
You can use coinmarketcap to keep track of current exchange rates. They also have mobile apps.
one more thing.
When you’re mining for long periods of time, your mac can’t handle the heat produced. it can even be turned off to prevent damage to internal components. To avoid this, use software called smcfancontrol. It allows you to control the speed of the fan and cool your Mac to an optimal temperature (50-55° C). the default fan setting for a 15-inch is 2155 rpm. you can increase it up to 5927 rpm. the fans will be loud when you turn it up to full. so the ideal is to set it to 4000 rpm so that the noise of the fan is more bearable. this way your mac will run better as there will be no thermal throttling. And the coins will keep coming!
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and that’s all from me. goodbye miner!references:
At the time this article was published, these are the exchange rates of the cryptocurrencies we are talking about:
1 btc = $6581
1xmr = $96.7
1 eth = $302.00
1 etc = $15.14
1 litecoin = $56.90
1 bcn = $0.001816
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