Crypto mining is becoming increasingly difficult, but there are still cryptocurrencies that can be mined.
To answer the question of which crypto is worth mining nowadays, it is necessary to make a clear distinction.
In fact, what applies to professional miners does not apply to amateur home miners, and vice versa.
Professional mining
With the transition of Ethereum to Proof-of-Stake three years ago, only one major minable cryptocurrency remains: Bitcoin.
For those who do mining professionally, Bitcoin is certainly not only the first choice, but often also the only one, because the earnings obtained are collected in a solid currency, namely the same BTC.
As challenging, costly, and demanding as it may be to mine at a professional level, it is not advisable to focus on minor crypto whose market value fluctuates greatly, or perhaps even tends to decrease over time.
However, cashing in BTC can be particularly useful, especially if the bull trend of its market value in the long term continues to last.
It should be noted, however, that professional mining is an activity that is not only difficult, demanding, and expensive, but indeed requires being done as a work activity, and not in one’s free time.
Furthermore, it should be added that it requires large installations, with dozens or hundreds of machines that need to be managed, monitored, maintained, and occasionally replaced.
Home mining
Precisely for these last reasons, mining Bitcoin in a non-professional way is not worthwhile.
Or, better, only if you have large amounts of electricity at very low cost available, it might be worth trying, but even in this case a minimum of investment and commitment remain necessary.
Moreover, one must be very careful with the numerous “cloud mining” proposals that promise to mine on behalf of clients in exchange for a monetary “investment,” because often they are actually outright scams.
For those who do not want to commit to mining seriously, that is, by purchasing and managing the necessary machinery to do so, it is not advisable to risk being scammed by cloud mining. Instead, it is advisable to limit oneself to investing their money by directly buying BTC on the exchange.
Having said that, generally home crypto mining is no longer done on Bitcoin, but on other minor crypto.
The minable altcoins
For those who do not engage in professional mining, the extreme difficulty of mining Bitcoin makes it much more convenient to identify minable altcoins to try home mining.
In theory, the first ones that come to mind are the forks of Bitcoin itself, among which Bitcoin Cash (BCH) stands out.
Bitcoin Cash is neither the first nor the only fork of Bitcoin, but it is certainly the most important.
Born in August 2017, the cryptocurrency BCH over time has lost much of its appeal, so much so that it might not be the best choice for those who want to do home mining. Also because it is not exactly easy and economical to mine, although in theory anyone can do it.
Always in theory, the most important minable altcoin has always been Litecoin.
Born even in 2011, two years after Bitcoin, LTC is very similar to Bitcoin, but it is easier to mine.
Just like for BCH, however, it is not particularly easy to mine, and its market value over time has somewhat decreased.
All this means that in reality the two main minable cryptocurrencies, besides Bitcoin, are not particularly convenient to mine.
Dogecoin
In reality, as of today, the most important minable cryptocurrency is Dogecoin.
Although it is a memecoin, over the years it has shown quite good resilience in the crypto market, especially starting from 2021, which is when it began to be promoted by Elon Musk.
To tell the truth, even Dogecoin is not easy to mine, perhaps even less so than BCH and LTC. However, for those who mine not only to earn but also to accumulate and hold cryptocurrencies, it could be an interesting alternative to Bitcoin, at a household level.
It should be noted, however, that BCH, LTC, and DOGE still require investments in specific machinery to be mined successfully, so it is advisable to think carefully before embarking on similar projects.
Ethereum
Ethereum was created in 2015 as a minable cryptocurrency, but since September 2022 it is no longer.
However, there are at least two forks of Ethereum that have remained minable.
The first is the historical one, Ethereum Classic, which moreover is the true original Ethereum protocol, from which today’s Ethereum forked in 2016.
Ethereum Classic (ETC) is probably one of the most interesting altcoins to mine, even though it suffers from the same issue as BCH and LTC: its market value over time has not held up particularly well.
Note that after the end of Ethereum mining, many miners have moved to TC, so it might not be easy to mine due to high competition.
When Ethereum transitioned to Proof-of-Stake, other forks of Ethereum were born, still always based on Proof-of-Work, and thus mineable, but none have been successful. For those who need to invest money to mine, it is not advisable to bet on these high-risk altitudes with lower returns.
The minor altcoins
Among the minor mineable altcoins, the most mined is probably Monero.
Monero is one of the very few minable cryptos that does not require large investments in machinery for mining.
However, it has two flaws.
The first is the same as BCH, LTC, and ETC, that is, a market value that over time has not performed particularly well.
The second, on the other hand, is closely linked to its greatest advantage, namely the non-traceability of transactions.
Monero is used precisely as a blockchain to record untraceable crypto transactions, and for this reason, it has been delisted by many exchanges. Cashing in XMR, therefore, can then be inconvenient when you want to exchange them for fiat currency.
Two other crypto that can be mined and are in some ways similar are Zcash, which is very similar to Monero, and Dash, which is a sort of middle ground between Monero and Litecoin.
Kaspa and Ravencoin
There are many other altcoins based on Proof-of-Work, and therefore mineable, but it is worth mentioning two in particular.
The first is Kaspa.
KAS was born only in 2022, and over the following years, it has shown a certain vitality in the crypto markets.
Although it is still a very recent project, it might be worthwhile to mine Kaspa nowadays, because it is not too demanding, and because it could also provide good satisfaction in the crypto market.
The second is Ravencoin.
In fact, RVN is also minable with not very expensive equipment (like Monero), but without the issue of non-traceability of transactions.
It has existed since 2018 and unfortunately suffers from the same issue as BCH, LTC, and ETC.
