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Is Mobile Mining the Way to a Bitcoin Fortune?

19 Mar 2017 Developer News
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While Bitcoin has something of a following on mobile, largely due to the popularity of digital wallets, "mining", a way to create cryptocurrency with a home machine, rarely gets a mention in the same sentence as Android. But is that omission due to a lack of possibilities or some deeper concern with the mobile ecosystem?

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Blockchain

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First, what is Bitcoin mining? In brief, the landmark tech behind Bitcoin – “blockchain”, a type of super-secure database – organizes transactions in chronological order and then lumps them into interconnected “blocks”. The effort of hundreds or thousands of computers solving equations helps approve each new record and prevent fraudulent entries appearing; Bitcoins are simply the reward earned for the solution of those math problems.

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To put that figuratively, imagine that Bitcoin mining is identical to its real-life namesake. If those complex equations are the rocks workers need to chip away, then the Bitcoin is the diamond beneath. Mining in cryptocurrency differs from real extraction processes in that it gradually gets harder over time and with improving tools. For example, the output of the first specialist hardware or “ASIC” miner is almost 1,500% lower today than it was in 2013.

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Bitcoin Faucets

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Given those difficulties, some people prefer to get their Bitcoin from a standard currency exchange or by working at a “faucet”, a type of website that gives out small amounts of Bitcoin for the completion of easy tasks, usually the solution of Captcha prompts. While the rewards can be small (a few “satoshi” or 0.0000001BTC every ten minutes or so), they can serve as a useful introduction to digital wallets and Bitcoin in general.

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Source: Pixabay

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Faucets are sometimes hosted by brands that work in cryptocurrency exclusively, such as Vegas Casino, a provider of blackjack, roulette, slot machines, and similar games. Vegas Casino is built on blockchain technology; to that end, even its welcome bonuses are paid out in Bitcoin - go now to collect 1000mBTC. The site can also offer fair odds as a consequence of its blockchain framework.

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Android Devices

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There’s a contradiction inherent in mining apps on mobile phones. While it’s definitely possible, as the presence of tools like DroidMiner on the App Store can attest, the enormous time and power requirements are prohibitive for most enthusiasts. An experiment mentioned by British publication PC Mag in 2014 estimated that mining a single Bitcoin in 24 hours would require 14.3m Android devices, a sum of 0.00000007 BTC per device.

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It’s worth noting that even though the above research used Samsung Galaxy S3 phones, a device that was two years old in 2014, the increased difficulty of Bitcoin mining in 2017 more than compensates for recent advances in mobile processing power in terms of feasibility; put another way, even a workhorse like the Galaxy S7 isn’t going to have much luck earning Bitcoins unless it’s part of a “pool” of miners.

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Miners

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That’s where something like software URL guiminer comes in. While it’s explicitly a Windows application, the software can help prospective miners find pools to contribute their machines to. Going solo means that there’s a certain amount of luck involved in grabbing our hypothetical Bitcoin diamond when a block’s equations are solved; it might also take years to get there. In a group, the rewards are shared between everybody involved but they arrive much faster.

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Finally, to answer the question in the title – no, mobile mining is not the way to a Bitcoin fortune. Phones simply lack the hardware for mining. However, it’s not necessarily a slight on Android; Bitcoin mining is becoming more of an exclusive hobby as time passes, with even gaming desktops requiring $100 to $3,000 components to eke out satoshis at the virtual coalface. It’s no surprise that some of the more profitable miners operate “farms” of 3,000 or more ASIC machines.

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