Getting started with Litecoin Mining and setting up your Litecoin Miner
If you think you are too late to join the Bitcoin bandwagon and get mining and reap herculean profits out of it, maybe you could look at alternatives and learn and decide to mine Litecoins. So if you have made your research and done your understanding and are looking to mine coins without having to invest in heavy ASIC machinery, Litecoins is actually your best choice right now.
That being said, it is important for you to follow the steps mentioned here closely and check off all the requirements so as to successfully mine Litecoins.
Step 1 : Do your research
When it comes to your money and making investments using your money, always remember to never go into something like this without doing your research and properly educating yourself. Go through numerous articles and tutorials available online to learn about the entire Litecoin platform and how it works.
Step 2 : Obtain a wallet
Obviously, you would need a place to securely hold your hard earned Litecoins once you’ve mined them. This is a step that would be required later after the mining but we are already making sure we have our hands on it. A Litecoin wallet serves just this purpose. The Litecoin Core wallet is a kind of the ‘official’ digital wallet for Litecoins. There are a wide variety of options available in this matter from mobile apps to web based platforms. Airbitz, Blockchain, Freewallet, My Celium Wallet are a few of the most popular and reliable mobile apps to create your digital wallets on. The Ledger Nano, Jaxx, Exodus, Coinomi, LoafWallet, and LiteAddress wallets are several other options available to users.
For those people who want to go for something different and try a web based platform, Coinbase, Circle, Blockchain, Strongcoin, Xapo are a few of your best options. Enable two factor authentication on your wallets since your wallet is now your most prized possession. Always prepare a backup for your wallet which no one can reach or access. Do not share your private key with anyone no matter what.
Step 3 : Researching about miners
Once your wallet is set, you need to go ahead and turn the Internet upside down to look into several options available and then choose a Litecoin miner hardware that best serves your purpose and need. Read about what all you already have, like graphic cards etc and what all you would need to purchase additionally. Make a list of all these requirements and then set forth to buying them.
Step 4 : Get your hands on some cool graphic cards
For effective mining process to undergo, try and get your hands on some awesome graphic cards that would make your life much much much easier. The Nvidia GTX 1070 is a great graphic card to be used for mining hardwares too. With a high hash rate of 30mh/s, it offers a Core Clock of 1,506MHz, a memory of 8GB GDDR5, a memory clock of 8Gbps and a power draw of 150W. This is a great option for people considering mining as a long term investment plan.
The AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 is another very popular option when one is looking for a high performance graphic card offering high hashing rates. It has a core clock of about 1,156MHz and an even impressive memory of 8GB HBM2, memory clock of 800MHz and power draw of 210W, it is cheaper to boot but runs a little hot.
Step 5 : Choose your Litecoin miner
One of the most powerful and maybe the best choice to go for with respect to your Litecoin miner is the ANTMINER L3+. The L3+ Scrypt miner enables mining of not just Bitcoins but Litecoins too. It has a hash rate of ~504 MH/s and does not eat up a lot of electricity which gives you some relief from that point of consideration. Weighing just 6.5 kgs it is very lightweight and also very cost effective even in terms of shipping.
Step 6 : Join a mining pool
Do you have any idea how much more easier your life would get if you join a mining pool? You might want to feel a little adventurous and want to do it all on your own but get yourself involved in a mining pool, seriously. Mining alone can be quite a tedious process and you would have to wait long hours to get a block of transactions confirmed. The most popular and much used sites for this purpose are the Bitminter, Kano Pool, Eligius, Slushpool. You can easily pool together your computing power with other miners and help out everyone while making your life easier too.
Step 7 : Check mining profitability
Would it not be great to already predict the outcome of something and make sure that every step you take would only help you make profits? That might take the thrill out of the entire thing but what use is thrill when you are constantly losing a huge amount of money and just making yourself more and more broke? That being said, learn how to use a Litecoin mining profitability calculator and keep track of all their profits and realise that if they are not making a profit, they should change their investment schemes.
Step 8 : Get a power supply
Of course you know mining is an energy consuming process and so it is important for you to get a power supply which is not just cost effective but also compatible with you miner.
Step 9 : Start mining
Finally, fire up your miner by connecting it to the power supply. There would be a user manual that came with your miner. Just give it a thorough reading and it would help you set it up. Integrate your miner and your mining software. Find your IP address on the admin page of your network router. Type this IP address in the your web browser. Look at the ‘connected devices’ on the admin page, find the name of your miner (mining hardware), and select it. This action should display the IP address of your miner. Copy and paste this address into your web browser. This opens the admin page of your miner, log into it using your credentials which are generally printed in the users manual of the miner. Immediately click on ‘Miner Configuration’ and type the URL address, username and password of the mining pool you selected for yourself earlier. Click ‘Save/Apply’. And you are done.
Step 10 : Two factor authentication
In addition to securing a wallet, one must learn to secure them furthermore. There is never something as too much security and more and more layers of security for your wallet would only keep you safe and secure so as to not get conned and lose all your hard earned Litecoins. The one step to take in this direction is to enable two factor authentication. This was, in addition to entering your credentials to access you account, you would also be required to enter and additional code which is sent that very moment to your mobile number. This is similar to the when one enters an OTP to make online credit and debit transactions.
