Cryptocurrencies have become more and more popular, their use has greatly democratized in recent years. However, it remains complicated to explain in detail what they are, how to generate them, or even what they are really used for.

This is why the comparison is often made with mining Bitcoin that everyone visualizes and assimilates. In essence, to exploit an oil field or a gold vein is to make a profit. The questioning is, therefore, what is the gain compared to the activity and especially to the investment? In the case of cryptocurrencies, it’s more or less the same problem.

Expenses, expenses and more expenses

Roughly speaking, we can determine the initial investment by adding the cost of the Bitcoin miner machine, the energy consumed and the maintenance of the extraction system. But time (which is money, let’s remember) should also be counted. However, its invaluable and objective nature does not allow to know a precise and accounting value. In any case, with or without the time parameter, the equation is applicable when it comes to extracting oil or generating cryptocurrencies.

The difference is in the modus operandi, in fact, to extract oil in large volumes, it will be necessary to dig in the sea or the land and build large structures requiring a large amount of energy to operate. Clearly, to mine cryptocurrencies, the investment is much less important. However, you have to keep in mind that to get a good hash rate, you will need to have a computer with a good number of graphics cards and running 24/7.

The investment is not. harmless, it is still necessary to have at least 8 graphics cards and to count on insane energy consumption which will impact your electricity bill for sure.

The advantage of renting a dedicated server

The basic investment required is often the cause of failure for artisanal mining platforms. When you realize you need to increase contract power or invest in GPUs, the accounts can start to get out of balance. Again, the comparison with the extractive sector can apply Equipment rental and outsourcing of tasks to reduce investments, optimize expenses and increase profit. This can be done easily with Bitamp

If you make the decision to rent GPU servers, you will significantly reduce the expenses associated with the hardware, in terms of purchase but especially maintenance (hardware and software). This option will above all prevent any loss of control over resources or a drop in performance.

The rental of dedicated GPU servers greatly facilitates the work of “miners” new to mining. But the biggest advantage remains the control of the budget, in particular in terms of electricity consumption. All costs being fixed, it becomes much easier to budget and avoid unpleasant surprises at the end of the month.

The Xeon GPU dedicated server

At IKOULA, we know how difficult it is to optimize investments to increase profits in the cryptocurrency sector, which is why we offer a dedicated server equipped with a GeForce GTX 1070 that displays a performance report interesting price.

More specifically, we are talking about a power of 6.5 TFLOP, 8 GB of DDR5 RAM and a speed of 1506 MHz. Features which, associated with the Pascal GPU architecture and its reduced size, allow good results to be obtained. Add to that an Intel Xeon E3 1230v5 processor with 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of hard drive.

These performances are more than sufficient. However, if the extraction starts to bear fruit and you want to add capacity, you can always double the graphics card, without worrying about the installation which will be done by our experts.

A few words about Bitcoin

We talked about the expenses, it’s time to talk about the benefits. First, which cryptocurrency should you mine? In principle, we recommend that you focus on the cryptocurrencies that best respond to GPU mining and offer the best profitability. Due to its popularity, Bitcoin is often the number 1 option for new miners, sometimes without considering its drawbacks.

The first disadvantage is its volatility in the markets. We can no longer count the peaks and sharp drops in its value which have caused some distrust of investors.

Fortunately, BitCoin is not the only option, many other currencies have entered the market. This is for example the case of Monero, which exploded thanks to Microsoft and its inclusion in a Blockchain As A Service project.

The appeal of mining pools

The best way to mine cryptocurrency is to join a pool, it is nothing more than a network of miners who cooperate with each other, sharing the benefits of blocks. The advantage of contributing to a pool is to increase profits, which are calculated according to the contribution of each miner.

A pool is a form of association comparable to cooperatives. The self-employed, entrepreneurs or liberal workers have used it for a long time to minimize the risks of going alone. For those new to cryptocurrency mining, it is more than recommended to join a pool. Indeed, it is very complicated for a single miner to make profitable his installation the first year.

Unlike a miner pool which has a sufficient hash rate to resolve a minimum number of blocks and therefore profit from it. Even if these are shared, they have the merit of being predictable and therefore of projecting you over the long term. There are a large number of pools, if the one you’re new to doesn’t suit you, you are perfectly free to switch to try and increase your profits.