How to Mine Bitcoin at Home?

TL;DR Gone are times when you could run a profitable mining operation from your laptop. The bitcoin mining industry has become hyper-competitive, mainly resulting from technological advancements in mining difficulty and hardware requirements.

Here is what you need to mine bitcoin at home (competitively):

Mining rigs A mining rig is a computer custom-built to mine Bitcoin. A rig consists of multiple components and chips. Different types of mining rigs are categorized according to the type of chips they use.

CPU (Central Processing Unit) The chip that powers your laptop. Although it is technically possible to attempt mining bitcoins with your PC, CPU chips are not optimized to serve as bitcoin mining gear. Mining bitcoins with your PC may not be profitable.

GPU (Graphics Processing Units) A GPU mining rig is the upgrade to the CPU rig. It can be a regular computer that is loaded with several GPU chips.

Although GPU rigs increased mining efficiency significantly compared to CPU rigs, they are not explicitly created for Bitcoin mining. GPU chips are designed for gaming and video rendering.

FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) FPGAs are integrated circuits that are best known for their programmability. Users can reconfigure the hardware to mine a specific coin based on the Bitcoin’s network’s cryptographic hash algorithm.

ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) ASIC mining rigs are the top-performing bitcoin mining hardware in the market today. These rigs are customized and built only to mine Bitcoins. Therefore, they outperform other chips in performance and energy efficiency.

Software Today, most ASIC mining rigs come with pre-installed mining software. If a miner wants to use different mining software, they can download them online.

A Few Other Required Resources Energy source Internet connection Cooling infrastructure A computer to monitor operations, join mining pools, analyze the market.