During the 2017 Q3 Crypto-boom, I finally decided to look into cryptomining. I understood it at a very high level, but had never gone past understanding it conceptually. As with any good project, I first started with research. I wanted to know things such as:
- Is it worth it?
- What kind of hardware do I ideally need?
- What hardware can I get away with to get my feet wet?
- What coins can be mined, which cannot?
- What is a mining pool exactly?
- Who is trustworthy?
- How/where do you securely store coins that you've earned in your mining efforts?
- What are the tax implications?
And this was just scratching the surface. I quickly found the more I read about cryptocurrency mining, 1.) I wanted to know more, and 2.) it seemed like a bottomless pit of information and some conflicting opinions. As with any online reviews and public opinions, it took a while to understand the reasons some people were complaining so much about this group being thieves or this site being crooked. While there ARE certainly bad players in the space, I found a lot of the loudest complainers hadn't taken the time to research, learn and understand what they were doing or getting themselves into. To that end, I'd like to share some knowledge nuggets that I've picked up in the last four months.
Absolutely NONE of which follows should be considered financial or business advice. Cryptocurrency is still in a wild west kind of space with limited regulations. I've come to find that there currently is no "investing in coins", this is 99% speculation and a rollercoaster to boot. In