Crypto mining without GPUs
The Crypto world has become one of the best ways to make side money. It has been my main side business for a few years now.
The great fact is that there are tons of ways for making money with crypto, not only trading.
Crypto mining is one of the best ways to earn money. If you’re not familiar with crypto mining the idea is very simple. You contribute to protecting the blockchain and ensuring fair transactions, and you are rewarded with tokens.
To mine ETH, for example, to ensure the safety of the blockchain we need a lot of computational capacity, which needs to have GPUs. By giving access to your GPUs, you are rewarded as soon as you helped to achieve a transaction. This system is called proof of work.
What’s the problem with ETH mining?
There are several issues with ETH mining.
First of all, you’ll need to pay the bill for your electricity consumption. It can be very high! Be sure to check that you can mine more ETH than your electricity consumption 😅
Moreover, I learned it when I mined my first tokens, ETH’s gas fees are very, very (VERY!) high. So don’t transfer your mined tokens until you’re sure that your earnings cover the electricity consumption AND the f***ing ETH gas fees…
Last but not least, ETH mining is one of the worst things for the environment. All these GPUs and this electricity consumption have a huge environmental impact.
Proof of coverage might be a good alternative
One of the solutions that I’ve found, is to replace ETH mining with another type of mining, which is Helium mining.
Helium token is based on another type of proof, which is proof of coverage (PoC). The idea behind proof of coverage is to transfer the data from one miner to another through hotspots. The more radio waves are transited through your hotspot the more HNT (Helium’s token) you will receive as a reward.
How much can I earn with HNT mining?
You just need to put your hotspot(s) in strategic locations. You can check the map to see how your neighbors are performing to have an idea of what you could earn.
Where I live, in the suburbs of Paris, I can make 20 HNTs/month, which is around 500$/month.
How to start mining HNT?
To mine HNT you will just need to bit patient. The waiting list for having a hotspot is long. It will take around 5–6 months for you to receive your hotspot.
Technically the hotspot is just a raspberry pi, but the company locked the system so you can only buy the hotspot from one of their partners. With a raspberry pi you can contribute to the safety of the blockchain but you won’t be rewarded for it, which is our main goal…
