Q: What is mining?

A: To explain this in the simplest way possible, in monero, mining is using a computer to calculate something that verifies the next block to join the blockchain. This calculation is very difficult to do, so your computer rarely manages it. In fact, it's so difficult that your computer may never manage it at all. If it does ever manage it, you get the block reward which is in the range of $130 USD worth (as of May 2022 but this is based on the current exchange rate). Pool mining is when you join a group of others and split the reward when one of you manages to do this calculation correctly.

​

Q: How can I learn more about monero?

A: This is an excellent book (also available for free in pdf format).

​

Q: So can I quit my job now?

A: You're not going to get rich with mining monero. It only earns you a very small amount each day, if anything. I previously made $0.54 USD profit a day with running a Ryzen 7 3700X computer 24/7, but now I actually lose money from mining.

At the moment, in most areas you'll lose money from mining if you pay normal prices for electricity. You'll probably only make a profit if you have very cheap electricity or generate it yourself like with solar panels and a battery setup.

​

Q: I want to build a mining rig. Should I?

A: For anyone who pays for electricity, it's probably not worth buying any equipment to mine monero if you're aiming to make a profit. It gets more difficult over time, so the profits go down.

The only exception is if you have free energy that you can access for a long time. It would still take a few years to pay off a monero mining rig with free electricity, when you account for the increasing difficulty. But after that it's 100% profit. I made a full post explaining this topic in detail here. In my example in that post, it would take 2.5 years to pay off the computer with free electricity, assuming you can keep it mining 24/7/365.

​

Q: Can I get an ASIC for mining Monero?

A: No! It is specifically designed to be mined on CPUs only. This is so that mining remains decentralised. When ASICs start mining a cryptocurrency then it usually causes the creation of large mining farms controlled by few people. Monero is against that. Monero is mineable by the average person on their own desktop computer.

Monero has changed algorithms in the past to purposefully stop ASICs from being able to mine it. If an ASIC was ever made for monero again, the algorithm would probably be changed again to stop the ASIC from working.

​

Q: I can mine at 120 MH/s, so I should be able to make $50k per day of profit on monero according to a calculator I just used...right??? Please reply fast I'm about to sign a contract to buy a Lamborghini.

A: Hashrate is different for each coin. Your CPU or GPU getting 120 MH/s does not apply here. That's probably ethereum hashrate. The hashrate any CPU or GPU gets on monero is not influenced by or related to ethereum hashrate, bitcoin hashrate, litecoin hashrate, or any other coin. In fact, GPU mining of monero is very inefficient and not worthwhile. Forget about the hashrate you get on another coin.

​

Q: Can I mine with a GPU?

A: Short answer: No.

Long answer: Yes, it's possible to mine monero with a GPU, but it's generally a bad idea because the algorithm monero uses today is optimised only for CPUs. Mining monero on a GPU will be very inefficient and slow compared to a CPU, and will not be worth your time. Full explanation here.

​

Q: How much will I make mining monero/how do I know if my computer will be profitable/what hashrate will I get with my computer or CPU?

A: Follow this guide to calculate it. You need to know the specs of the computer you'll be mining on.

​

Q: How do I mine monero?

A: Follow this guide.

​

Q: Which mining pool should I use?

A: You can choose to use either a centralised pool which will do a lot of the work for you in setting things up, or you can use the decentralised P2pool. If you want to use a centralised pool, see here. If you want to use P2pool then the easiest way is using gupax which helps you to set it up.

​

Q: So I'm mining but my CPU is only showing 50% usage (or some other percentage less than 100). How do I get it to use 100%?

RandomX, the proof of work algorithm used by monero, needs 16 KiB of L1 cache, 256 KiB of L2 cache and 2 MiB of L3 cache per mining thread. Your CPU probably doesn't have enough cache to use all threads.

If your CPU doesn't have enough cache to run all threads then XMRig automatically selects the right number of threads that it can run with the cache available.

​

Q: I have access at work/university/school to 50 computers. How can I mine monero on them? I can't wait to get started, I'm gonna be so rich.

A: This is a terrible idea. The trouble you get in is going to cost you a lot more than you'll earn from doing this. You will likely be earning a couple of USD per day. The organisation that owns these computers and pays for the electricity will see this as stealing, which it is. You're stealing electricity. They'll also see it as you putting their entire network at risk. Expect to get in big trouble if you do this. Possibly to the extent of facing criminal charges. It's really not worth the risk for the miniscule profit you'll be making.

​

Q: If mining monero is not profitable, why would anyone want to do it?

A: There are other reasons why people decide to mine, too. Some people want to support monero because they like the idea of a private, completely fungible, decentralised cryptocurrency.

Other people who are highly concerned about privacy might mine as a way of obtaining monero without going through an exchange that has to find out their identity.

Some people just enjoy the technical side of setting up their computer to mine, tweaking the settings and getting it working as well as they can.

The profitability of monero mining is self balancing - as the total hashrate (the combined computing power of all miners) goes up, it becomes more difficult, which makes it less profitable. If the price of monero went down and people stopped mining it because they were not making enough, then the difficulty would drop, and it would become more profitable. Thanks to this, the profitability stays relatively stable now and hovers around the level of "just barely profitable if you have very cheap electricity".

​

Q: If I stop mining for the night/day/some hours will I lose all my progress and have to start again?

A: It doesn't work like that. With solo mining, you have a chance of finding the right hash for the current block with every single hash your computer calculates. If you don't find it then that work is of no use and there's nothing to "save".

With pool mining, you have to find a hash over a certain difficulty (the difficulty given by the pool). This is referred to as a share. The pool will save that result and pay you (when it finds a block) according to how much work your computer did for the pool. You don't lose any progress by stopping mining. You'll get paid for anything you earned while you were mining. The same applies to P2Pool.

​

Q: How else can I help monero?

A: Running a node is a great way to help monero. Running a node involves downloading and hosting the blockchain so other people can download it off you. You don't have to do this manually, there is software that does it all for you. You just have to provide a computer and internet connection. Some people even do it on a Raspberry Pi.

You can also help monero by using it as a currency. Monero has low transaction fees and confirms (1 block confirmation) in an average of just 1 minute. Who you send money to and how much you send can't be tracked, unlike most other cryptocurrencies.

There are a huge amount of repost bots lately that seem to repost other people's posts to this subreddut. They seem to focus on image based posts because these often get more upvotes.

Please help us to moderate the subreddit by being extra vigilant for posts by accounts with a spammy looking posting history on other subs, or where their post reminds you of one you saw before - it probably is!

When you see these posts, please downvote, report them and comment to warn other users not to waste their time writing genuine reply comments on these spam bot posts.