Detailing the list of mining equipment for BTC, BCH, ETH, EOS & XMR
Why is cryptocurrency mining needed in the first place?
Cryptocurrency mining is one of the domains which has emerged as a result of the cryptocurrency boom after the inception of Bitcoin. We already know that Bitcoin mining has become highly exhaustive and nonprofitable. Therefore, the Altcoins have taken over the mining industry as mining operations are essential to maintaining stability and consensus among the community members of a blockchain project. In a nutshell, the mining operations are done basically, to avoid centralization of the power in the hands of few, regarding the developments in the blockchain.
For all those who are in a state of ambiguity, to choose the own mining equipment below is a list of the most recent mining equipment required for the several cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin
Bitmain Antminer S9 is the first and the foremost equipment which comes to mind when it comes to the Bitcoin mining. Developed by between it is the flagship mining equipment of the company with the price being around $3,500 with hashrate 13.5 TH/s. Some of the other popular Bitcoin mining rigs available in the market are Bitmain Antminer S7, Canaan AvalonMiner 741, Block C Avalon6, Gekkoscience 2-PAK USB Bitcoin Miner, etc. with the hash rates being 4.73 TH/s, 7.3 TH/s, 3.5 TH/s, 15 GH/s respectively. The last one is relatively tiny in size and also gives more output.
Ethereum
The Ethereum network, unlike Bitcoin, incorporates the Ethash algorithm for its consensus. The extensiveness is not that much when compared to Bitcoin, and the mining process is possible through the usage of Graphics Processor Units or GPU. AMD and Nvidia are 2 of the most prominent competitors in the industry, which provide the GPU for Ethereum mining. Some of them are AMD RX 470/570, AMD RX 480/580, AMD Radeon RX Vega series, etc. belonging to the AMD family and price ranging from $250 to $1200. The Nvidia GPU cards are GTX 1070, GTX 1080ti with price ranging from $550 to $1200.
Bitcoin Cash
Even Bitcoin Cash was easily affordable to mine through the usage of CPU and GPUs but, as the Mining industry has escalated due to competition, the ASIC miners have become inevitable very similar to the Bitcoin network. Also one of the most popular ones for Bitcoin cash mining is the Halong Mining DragonMint 16T with 16 TH/s of hash rate. Antminer S9 and S7 are the other two most prominent Bitcoin Cash mining equipment in the market. However, the DragonMint ASIC miner is the most powerful one when it comes to Bitcoin Cash mining, as its near competitor Antminer S9 entails only 14TH/s.
Monero
The privacy-focused cryptocurrency coin requires the mining operations too, as it uses the Cryptonote algorithm. The most famed equipment in the field is GPU Miner P 102-100, Canaan Avalon Miner 841, etc. It must also be noted that the cryptocurrency coin uses a relatively more comfortable algorithm and hence the users are enabled to undertake mining operations through their standard PCs as well. It must be noted that there are no dedicated ASIC miners developed for Monero mining, but the mining rigs used for Bitcoin or Ethereum is incorporated for Monero mining operations.
EOS
The most famous Ethereum competitor, EOS in the list but there are no mining equipment in this case, as the cryptocurrency project is designed in such a way that it requires no mining operations. The Delegated Proof of Stake consensus mechanism is applicable, only to the some of the dedicated block producers of the EOS blockchain platform. The block producers are also indirectly voted by the community members, who utilize their computational power to generate Blocks. They accordingly get rewarded with the EOS tokens.
The future consequences of the mining operations
The extensive mining operations are currently proving to be very hazardous to the environment, as they eat up Electrical energy equivalent to the amount of Electricity consumed by an entire nation. If a similar trend continues, then the reason for the development of Cryptocurrencies would be violated on a constitutional basis. One of the most significant technological innovation, which was assumed to be a savior from the Centralised banks, would turn into an unaffordable piece of technology.
