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The Monero Mining Lottery... Do you play?

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@scrooger
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2 min read

Do you even mine, bro?

Mining is still a very profitable method of getting some crypto, especially now that we are seeing a nice little crypto boom. For some it is a hobby, for others, it is a real means of passive income. For me, it is a little bit of both and everything in between.

As many of you know, the average miner will most likely be using their graphics cards to mine Ethereum. I have my own little setup that is earning me a few hundred dollars every month, but that is for another post. The other hardware that pretty much everyone with a computer can mine with is their CPU. Is it profitable though? Well, not really, even with a very powerful CPU you will earn a few dollars a month if you mine with a pool. Not really something to be super excited about. Mining in a pool gives you definite payouts each day but solo mining could give you a much bigger payday if you are lucky. What if there was a way to "WIN" some Monero by mining? I am saying "WIN" here because this is a highly unlikely scenario but still not impossible.


The Monero Mining Lottery

Let's say you do use your CPU for some solo mining then there is the possibility that you will earn all the rewards if a block is found. That is around $250 with today's prices. Not too bad, but in all honesty, your changes are slim. By using a Monero Mining Calculator we much we can earn by mining with a pool vs how long it might take us to mine one block on our own. I am going to use my CPU's hashrate (mining power) as an example. I can easily achieve around 5000h/s with my Ryzen 5 3600 CPU.

Mining with a pool:

As you can see here, the monthly revenue is very low, and after we look at the electricity costs it is not looking like a good way to mine at all.

Solo Mining:

If I were to mine on my own it would take me roughly 1.61 years to earn one block worth around $250. That number does look way better than the $12 a month right? But mining in a pool would have given almost the same rewards if I mined for 1.6 years.

This is where luck comes in. As you can see, we have a 0.17% daily chance of mining a block on our own. That is extremely low, but it is not impossible.

Solo Mining, Multiple Computers

If you had a few computers mining together your luck might drastically increase. I have 3 PC's that mine when they are not being used for other CPU-intensive tasks, which brings my total hashrate to around 8000h/s. In theory, I should eventually mine one block in about a year.

This is by no means a very smart way of mining and I am simply doing it for fun. Waiting and hoping that I receive an email confirming a deposit to my Monero wallet. Fingers crossed I will one day Mine me that solo block!

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta