Everything you need to know about mining crypto on a smartphone
Of CNBCTV18.com IST (published)
Mini
you have two ways you can go about smartphone crypto mining. First is solo mining, where you are on your own, battling other miners with the computing power of your smartphone. The other is pool mining. Here you pool your computing resources with others, increasing your odds of rewards and receiving a percentage of those rewards based on the amount of computing power you’ve added to the pool.
If we zoom out and look at the progress we’ve made in terms of computing power, chips and circuits, we’re sure to be in awe. From a CPU that took up a large hall in the 60s to 10 times the data capacity that now exists on simple calculators, we have come a long way.
This also applies to the smartphones in our pockets. These devices are becoming more sophisticated by the minute, and their utility has expanded beyond the telecommunications realm. Today, smartphones are used for banking, surfing the internet, playing games and, more recently, crypto mining.
In this article we discuss crypto mining on smartphones, what it is, how it works, profitability and more. Let’s get started!
What is Crypto Mining?
When a cryptocurrency works on a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, you need computing power to add new blocks to the blockchain. Miners use their computing power to solve mathematical equations. The miner who solves these equations first gets to add a new block and is rewarded with newly minted crypto for all his efforts.
When it comes to cryptomining, computing power is a resource that is calculated by hash rate, i.e. the number of mathematical equations solved per second. Naturally, more powerful systems have an advantage over the others. Bitcoin could initially be mined with just a regular PC, but that changed as more and more miners joined the race and the network difficulty increased. Today mining works on an industrial scale where you have buildings full of Application Specific Integrated Chips (ASICs) just for mining.
What is mobile mining?
Can you use your mobile to mine Bitcoin or other cryptos? Yes. But can it be profitable enough as a livelihood? Not really. This is because, as more miners entered the fray, the mining difficulties increased exponentially, and the mining rewards also decrease periodically, every four years in the case of Bitcoin.
Smartphones today have data capacity beyond all their size. They use 5nm chips that are as power efficient as any other chip and can be used to mine cryptocurrency. However, there are two main drawbacks regarding smartphones and crypto mining. The first is their computing power. A smartphone’s hash rate can vary from 4 t/s to 50 t/s. In comparison, a Bitcoin ASIC mining rig can have a hash rate of 950 TH/s (billion hashes per second).
Therefore, it is clear that mining BTC using only mobile phones is a difficult task, especially when you are up against giant mining companies with thousands of ASICs. All these rigs are trying to mine the same block you are trying to mine using your smartphone. The other disadvantage is that smartphones are used more than any other gadget in our daily lives. If something uses computing power non-stop, the battery drain will be fast and inconvenient. In addition, the smartphone has to run at full capacity almost all day, which drastically reduces its durability.
How to mine crypto with a smartphone?
Despite the drawbacks, if you want to get started with crypto mining for smartphones, you have two ways to go about it. First is solo mining, where you are on your own, battling other miners with the computing power of your smartphone. For mobile solo crypto mining, you need to download one of the following apps to get started.
MinerGate Mobile Miner
It is a reasonably easy to use app that can help you mine not only Bitcoin but also some other listed altcoins. It comes with the wallet setup where you can store your mined crypto to transfer elsewhere later.
Bitcoin Miner
Bitcoin Miner is another crowd favorite when it comes to mobile crypto mining. It’s called Bitcoin Miner, but also allows other altcoins, with new coins added frequently.
Youtuber TechWizTime tried to estimate the profitability of mining cryptocurrency on Android phones. For his experiment, he attempted to mine Monero (XMR) using a combination of three OnePlus 5Ts, 1 Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus, 1 Bluboo S8 Plus, 1 Lenovo Tab4 Plus and 1 Umidigi S2 mobile phone.
These seven units gave him a combined mining hashrate of 110 H/s and allowed him to earn $0.78 a week. When you factor in the cost of the devices and the power supply to keep them running 24×7, this is highly unlikely to be a profitable investment. Also, the phones would not be usable after prolonged mining, nor would they have any resale value, as their parts would have been heavily overworked.
Therefore, the other, slightly more viable option is pool mining. Here you pool your computing resources with others, increasing your odds of rewards and receiving a percentage of those rewards based on the amount of computing power you’ve added to the pool. For mining pools activated via a smartphone, you can download the F2Pool mobile app or the ViaBTC pooling app to get started.
Conclusion
The profitability of Bitcoin mining or altcoin mining on mobile phones depends on many factors such as the network difficulty of the coin, the computing capacity of your smartphone, the price of the coin in the markets and more. You should evaluate the profitability of mining by considering all these factors before committing your mobile device to crypto mining.
