The first client bitcoin version 0.1, available for public use, had built-in software for the cryptocurrency mining aside from a wallet for the storage of the coins. The process of generating new bitcoins is called mining.

On the same analogy the users of cryptocurrencies are sometimes called miners. The analogy is quite appropriate, as the mining bitcoin with a computer and the appropriate software is very similar to the gold production in the mine: you need to process a ton of useless ore to find the nuggets of the gold.

Software to produce cryptocurrency work just the same – most of the time it works for nothing, to recalculate large blocks of information until it finds the block to receive the reward.

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Software for mining on CPUs are often by historical reasons included in the distribution kit of the wallet programs. However, usage the CPU in tens and hundreds times inferior by performance to the earnings on video cards.

It is best to use a modern video cards to the computations on video cards. Cards from nVidia are well in games, but due to the peculiarities of the internal architecture are not well suited for working with the BTC and other cryptocurrencies. So it is better to use AMD.

There is special software, such as SGMINER to obtain the cryptocurrency on these cards. Such programs run in different operating systems (Windows or Linux), support many different algorithms and allow “on the fly” to switch between different cryptocurrencies depending on the current rate on the market, the complexity and the overall profitability.

An important feature of the mining sofrware is a choice of the working mode – search blocks in the solo mode or work on joint pools. The pools are needed in the case when the complexity of the producing of coins is too great to successfully find blocks on one computer. In this case, multiple users join their efforts and, when program of one of them successfully finds a block of the bitcoin, the reward is distributed between all pool members.

The time of the direct mining of bitcoins by normal users on their computers ended in 2013. Now ordinary computer is not suitable for this complex process. There are special devices for this purpose in which all the computation is made not programs but the specialized ASICs. And each device has not one chip but hundreds and thousands.

If you still wish to take part in BTC production, then Cloud services can help you with that! You don’t need to carry about hardware and electricity bills. Just make a proper investment and receive daily profit.

However, the mining at home is not dead. With the development of the cryptocurrency there are many clones of BTC, which are called forks or altcoins. Different forks use different algorithms and there are no specialized chips for many of these algorithms and the production is carried out with normal processors or graphics cards.

Gained coins of the forks can then be exchanged for bitcoins on exchanges of the cryptocurrency. Sometimes it is profitable to mine a fresh fork at the initial stage of its development, when the serving capacity of the network computers are low, and the coin has not been added to the list of trades on popular cryptocurrency exchanges yet. If then the fork will become a popular, you can increase your earnings in tens and hundreds of times after the start of trading.