Conjuring money or gold out of thin air was the Holy Grail of alchemists throughout the Middle Ages and, while that particular magic trick has since fallen to the scrutiny of science, it still holds an allure hundreds of years later – we’d all like money for nothing.
Bitcoin, a type of internet “cryptocurrency” with no physical coins or notes, is about as close as the world will ever get to that ideal. But it still has to be earned.
Satoshi Nakamoto
Born from an essay in a cryptography mailing list and earning a place in the world through the online casino niche, Bitcoin has grown from a hobby project to economic powerhouse in just under a decade. It currently stands at an all-time high for value and is gaining a reputation as a “hedge” against inflation in times of economic strife. But how did people come to rely on a currency they couldn’t see or touch? After all, consumers are generally careful of who or what they trust when money is involved.
Bitcoin isn’t just a novelty. In the casino industry, the benefits of working in the cryptocurrency are in evidence on Bitcoin-only websites like Bit Casino; next to the ability to demonstrate provably fair odds on its live gaming experiences and 260+ slot machines, the brand also allows fast deposits and withdrawals, and relative anonymity. The fact that Bitcoin can be bought and spent in any country around the world is a particularly unique trait in a currency.
The Halvening
One of the more interesting aspects of Bitcoin’s structure is that the spendable currency is created through a process called “mining”, a term analogous to the real-life rock-chipping process. Mining is how the database system at the heart of Bitcoin – “blockchain” – records and protects each transaction, chiefly by having lots of computers solve math problems. Bitcoin is simply the reward stashed at the end of those equations.
Source: Joshua Zerlan on Wikimedia Commons.
Getting involved in mining used to be a straightforward process – it was possible to dig for Bitcoin using a computer’s CPU or GPU – but the blockchain keeps changing. For example, events called “The Halvening”, two of which have occurred since 2012, reduced the Bitcoin rewards available from mining by 50% on each occasion. Consequently, miners rely on expensive and powerful ASIC miners today, often organized into vast “farms”.
Mobile Mining
The above already says a lot about the feasibility of mobile mining – it’s a possibility but something of a futile one, designed to collect handfuls of “satoshis” (amounts of Bitcoin equal to 0.00000001 BTC) rather than life-changing sums. The number of individual Android devices required to collect a single Bitcoin in a day was almost 15 million back in 2014, and that was two years before the most recent Halvening event of summer 2016.
On mobile, it’s significantly easier to earn “altcoins” like Litecoin, Dogecoin, Dash, and Ripple than Bitcoin; the fact is that many ASIC miners aren’t compatible with the algorithms rival cryptocoins use anyway. However, it still isn’t worth it – with some Dogecoin mining apps, it’d take several months to break even on the $1.99 purchase fee. Altcoin miners can at least use off-the-shelf PC components to earn cryptocurrency.
Source: Pixabay.
Mining Pool
So where do all the stories of Bitcoin millionaires come from? With Bitcoin’s value climbing past the $1,000 mark, anybody who bought or mined (and saved) the cryptocurrency in its early years will be a lot richer today (the 10,000 BTC spent to buy two pizzas back in 2010 is worth $12m in 2017) but the concept of a mining “pool” is central to lucrative mining in the era of Bitcoin’s maturity. A pool is simply a group of miners working together.
Using software like Gui Miner, a graphical interface for controlling miners and joining pools, interested parties can earn more consistent rewards by joining forces. To put the advantages into perspective: there’s an element of luck involved in solo mining, which means that claiming the reward for solving equations can take years, while in a pool, that element of randomness is reduced and the Bitcoin earned is shared between everyone involved.
So, in summary, mobile mining is a useful introduction to the concept of Bitcoin mining but it’s not going to replace anybody’s day job.
