My experience with Crypto Currency!

After spending a few days experimenting with Bitcoin mining on my Desktop, I can confirm and clarify a few things:

Having a gaming PC doesn’t equal a “mining rig”
Different software allows to tap into different portions of the mining process
it is NOT a user friendly experience
it is NOT for the computer illiterate
there ARE Significant learning curves
do NOT mine on your laptop, you will kill it (i spent literally 30 seconds running software and my fan was working over time)
The “going” Hash rate is TH/s — Terra Hashes. This literally means 1 trillion Hashes per second. My 780 ti graphics card peaks at 451MH/s. Twin SLI I’m sure would put me well into the GH/s which is still a factor of 1,000 less than ideal.
Not all software computes hashes the same
not all coins are being traded although you CAN mine them
User feedback on “buying” rigs has also been disheartening as many of them are of poor quality, and the sellers seem scammy by not honoring returns or repairs
Mining rigs have hardware specifically designed for “mining”. Specifically my laptop destroys the ASICS rigs in “specs” but does significantly less Hashes per second
Mining rigs are interesting in that their slower processor speed and smaller GPU would lead you to believe it would be an inferior hardware solution to hashing, but again the circuitry is designed for Hashing.
For now it is advisable to invest money into the coins rather than the mining, however Chase Bank has yet to confirm my $100 purchase a week ago…
Investing is by far easier and more cost effective, however it requires having disposable income, I am fully aware not everyone has that luxury
Bitcoin mining games or apps, can also kill your phone and cause you to waste time and lose money because of it. However with a much better (not my POS LG5) phone you should be fine.
Profitability of mining is set to change drastically with the onset of GPU mining, and the development of those rigs, ASICS currently dominate.

Overall I am not disappointed with my findings, although I am disappointed that my gaming PC is really only going to be useful for gaming and moderate video rendering haha. The naysayers are correct in that your at home desktop will be a wasted effort if you are trying to “get rich off of mining”. I would recommend mining lower tier coins such as those not currently traded, or those that require significantly less computational power.

Even the rigs that you can buy for $500+ mine 0.15 bitcoin a MONTH, which means you recoup your cost immediately but its a static income of approximately $2k, if you can afford the initial $500 investment, which in itself isn’t a bad ROI. There are quite a few websites, and resources available on the internet if you know where to look or you have fantastic people helping you find them!

Overall this should be considered an enthusiast hobby at most, and the only monetary gain to be made would be from mining “unknown” coins in the hopes they become valuable eventually!

I have used the following links to glean all of this information, set up the mining software, and tutorials on how to get your hardware to function. All of these links will not guarantee any success in mining, because I have had significant trouble getting most of the CGMiner, CUDA, cURL, and other “developer” level software to work properly or communicate as intended. I saved every link that helped me get through one step or the other of the process!

Informational Websites for Crypto Currency Mining, Wallets, Hardware, and Investment :

http://www.bitcoinminer.com/software/ https://cryptonote.org/coins https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/software/ https://www.weusecoins.com/en/find-the-best-bitcoin-wallet/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014OGCP6W/ref=as_li_ss_tl?tag=weusecoins-20&ie=UTF8&me=&linkCode=sl1&linkId=d2a69f1fabdd718f0952ca43c4497cb8 https://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-780-ti/specifications http://coinat.com/tutorials/how-to-mine-litecoins-with-cgminer-on-windows/ http://cryptomining-blog.com/tag/intel-opencl-mining/ http://www.confusedbycode.com/curl/ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.0 https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Software#Mining_apps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL https://futurism.com/mining-bitcoin-costs-more-energy-159-countries-consume-year/ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14430944/i-cant-find-my-mingw-shell-after-installing-with-gui-installer https://toughnickel.com/personal-finance/How-to-Mine-Bitcoins-With-a-GPU-Using-CGMiner https://www.bitcoinmining.com/bitcoin-mining-pools/ https://www.bitcoinmining.com/bitcoin-mining-software/ https://www.bitcoinmining.com/getting-started/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-30/cryptocurrencies-are-new-barbarians-at-the-gate-of-central-banks https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency?recoOrder=5&utm_medium=email&utm_source=recommendations&utm_campaign=b_DqUN6hEee9DROzsKfq3w https://www.investopedia.com/news/what-happens-bitcoin-after-all-21-million-are-mined/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/bitcoin-miner/9wzdncrdhxb6