I am a beginner in the blossoming culture of crypto-currency, and unfortunately, it's beginning to feel as if 2015 is too late of a year for a laptop-user such as I to be able to start mining. I'm running an Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU, and an Intel Core i5-3230M CPU at 2.6 GHz. No, I do not have an ASIC, but I figured I'd at least be able to scratch out a few cents per month with what I have, not taking into account electricity or what not.

Immediately upon beginning to mine Bitcoin (BTC) using Slush's pool, which when I tried to mine was actually the newly updated stratum server 'bitcoin.cz'. I only got a hash rate of about 2-12 Mh/s, and the pool did not even recognize that the worker I had registered was mining. I have heard of people with relatively similar specs getting a rate of even 100 Mh/s, but I figured that this was just an issue of Bitcoin's colossal difficulty at this point of its lifetime.

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So, I then looked into Litecoin (LTC). This time, my GPU was not even recognized by any mining software that I would try. I looked into updating the drivers and SDK's, and still I had no luck. Finally, I decided that perhaps I could get away with mining some unique Altcoins, and due to the over 300,000% increase in profitability over Bitcoin at the time of writing, I chose to try to mine Diamond (DMD) and then try to exchange my profits for a fraction of a bitcoin. At this point I was not even mining for profit, but for the satisfaction that something was working.

What Is Litecoin? The operation of litecoin is similar to that of other. Which favors systems that have the largest processing power during mining. Find out what your expected return is depending on your hash rate and electricity cost. Find out if it's profitable to mine Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, DASH or Monero.

I configured my miner, and of course, my hash rate displayed at about 2 Kh/s on my GPU. Again, the mining pool (Danbi's pool) I had chosen to use did not even register that I was mining, and even after hours I made absolutely no profit.

So, after giving you all of this information, I ask of you this: Is it too late to mine any crypto-currency without spending huge amounts of money in mid-2015? At this point I do not even need to make profit, I'd just like to see that I have a fraction of a coin in a wallet somewhere (I did set up wallets for each and every coin I tried, mind you). Does anyone have suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong? I understand that what I'm doing is not profitable, but is it to the point that whenever I mine I really can only make 0.0000000 BTC/month (I'm not joking, that's the stat I keep getting)? I would pay you for your help in Bitcoin, Litecoin, or some other currency.but due to the suddenly centralized nature of mining, I can't. Sincerely, A very discouraged Bitcoin enthusiast. Don't lose hope.

If your computer is up to date (A good Desktop at least a i3) you can mine bytecoin which can only be mined using CPU or GPU. At 100-220 H/s and that is not fast or even fast enough to be slow by Bitcoin standards.In two days I mined well over 3,000 coins.

That gave me 0.00092425 btc= $0.22 cents. Mine Bitcore BTX In Browser. More than you will get from a bitcoin faucet in that time frame. So, 400 Bytecoin = 1 cent when traded for Bitcoin. Also I am on my computer surfing as I mine but, need to stop mining if I play a game. Here is the link to get the software and start mining ASAP, (CPU and GPU miner app) and Wallet (which as a built in CPU only miner as well) at Also checkout takes longer to mine but 1 bytecent =$.05 cents in btc. I mine Bitcoin as well with a 620 GHash/s miner I got at a decent price that included both controller(Raspberry Pi w/software cgminer) and 1000W PSU for under $160.

Making about $1.12+ a day. There are deals out there but, you must do your research on the miner you're interested in and know it's specs and if it will earn $$$.

Update: I just bought a used but well taken care of Bitman Antminer S3 441 GHash/s miner for $99.00 from ebay FYI Seller has 4 left. 1 THash/s is best to start with but, new they are still $800-$1500 and will only earn you about $2.25+ a day mining. That is why I also Rent my Hashing power out.

Just look on ebay to see what people are paying for and what they are getting for that price. I hope this put that spark back into your interest in crypto mining.

It is a fun hobby/possible side gig. Laptop mining worked well in 2009. It is no longer 2009.

Your integrated Intel GPU has the speed of a CPU, not a fast gaming GPU. Even in 2011 when CPU mining was dying and people mined on GPUs your GPU would be too slow. Yes, 'even' people with 100 MH/s can't mine anymore. That's because 1000x that speed (100 GH/s) is slow at this point. 1 TH/s (1 000 000 MH/s) is OK for a small mining-at-home operation.

If you go way beyond laptops with Intel graphics integrated in the CPU, to small USB sticks with ASICs, even those are useless now. Some people pay $5 or $10 for a 1 or 2 GH/s USB stick (much much faster than your laptop). Not only is this incredibly slow, but it will never break even because the price per GH/s is extremely high. What you need is a 1 TH/s ASIC machine, or faster, and electricity at a good price. You need to get this machine at a good price per GH/s or it will not break even. Make sure you take the price of a power supply into account as well if it is not included.

Mining with asics, unless you have a very good deal, which usually it is not the case, you won't make any profit, the only people that makes money with asics are the ones that build them. Right now, Q4 2015, only altcoins are profitable, using high end GPU, but forget about your tiny little processor, you need 500 to 1000 USD GPU card to do something, and work a LOT on power efficiency, power efficiency is the difference between making money or spending more money on power bill than making with altcoins. I tried everything (had several asics, several gpu's,etc) the only thing that worked today is maxwell gpus, GTX 970 are excellent, you need at the very minimum three of those to do some money, GTX 750Ti's are more efficient, but you need three times more cards. I have 26 of those right now, 5 per rig. Of course all that requires specialized cabling, big hyper efficient power supply, and a lot of other things, it is not easy, but it is a LOT OF FUN! So go now to the forums and read all you can:).

One of the world’s largest bitcoin mines is located in the SanShangLiang industrial park on the outskirts of the city of Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region that’s part of China. It’s 400 miles from China’s capital, Beijing, and 35 miles from the the city of Baotou. The mine is just off the highway, near the intersection of Latitutde 3rd Road and Longitude 3rd Road. It sits amidst abandoned, half-built factories—victims of an earlier coal mining boom that fizzled out, leaving Ordos and its outlying areas littered with the shells of unfinished buildings. The mine belongs to Bitmain, a Beijing-based company that also makes mining machines that perform billions of calculations per second to try and crack the cryptographic puzzle that yields new bitcoins.

Fifty Bitmain staff, many of them local to Ordos, watch over eight buildings crammed with 25,000 machines that are cranking through calculations 24 hours a day. One of the buildings is devoted to mining litecoin, an ascendant cryptocurrency. The staff live on-site in a building with a dormitory, offices, a canteen, and a repair center. For recreation, they play basketball on an unfinished cement court. Bitcoin mining consumes enormous amounts of electricity, which is why miners seek out locations that offer cheap energy. The Ordos mine was set up in 2014, making it China’s oldest large-scale bitcoin mining facility. Bitmain acquired it in 2015.

It’s powered by electricity mostly from coal-fired power plants. Its daily electricity bill amounts to $39,000.

Bitmain also operates other mines in China’s remote areas, like the mountainous Yunnan province in the south and the autonomous region of Xinjiang in the west. Despite the costs, bitcoin mining remains a lucrative industry. At the current bitcoin price of about $4,000 per bitcoin, miners compete for over $7 million in new bitcoins a day. The more processing power a mining operation controls, the higher its chances of winning a chunk of those millions. The Ordos mine accounts for over 4% of the processing power on the bitcoin network—a huge amount for a single facility.

Quartz visited the mine in Ordos on Aug. The Bitmain mine in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, has eight buildings containing mining machines. One of them is dedicated to litecoin and seven mine bitcoins. An additional building is inactive. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) Racks of litecoin-mining machines in the Bitmain unit dedicated to litecoin.

(Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) Power cords and their fuse box inside a bitcoin mining unit. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) Racks of bitcoin-mining machines inside a mining facility. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) Leftover tubing and cables lying on the ground between two mining units. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) A bitcoin mining machine with its battery on a shelf.

(Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) A worker monitors operating status of bitcoin-mining machines. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) Workers clean the shelves of bitcoin-mining machines. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) Industrial suction blower fans can be found all along the side of the mining units. They’re used to increase the airflow inside the building and lower the temperature.

(Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) The administrative office of the main building. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) Packing materials from mining devices fill up a warehouse on site. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) A worker fixes a component on a mining machine. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) Workers prepare to bring fixed machines back to the mines.

(Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) The exterior of one of the mining units. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) A worker monitors operating status of a machine. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) The massive switch to one of the many power transformers on the mine. These are hosted in buildings separate from the mining machines. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) A set of keys used to get access to the transformers on site. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) A local citizen of nearby Ordos, recent college graduate Hou Jie, 24, is a maintenance worker at the mine. He shares this dorm room with seven other employees.

(Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) A cook prepares dinner in the kitchen of the main building. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) Workers enjoy their dinner in the dining hall. (Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) View of one of the buildings in the compound.

(Aurelien Foucault for Quartz) Correction (Aug. 21): Xinjiang is in the west of China.

A previous version of this story incorrectly said it was in the east. Read next: Read next.