Litecoin mining. Beginner’s Guide

Learn everything that you need to know about Litecoin mining

What Litecoin mining is…

As well as mining Bitcoins, Litecoins are mined with the help of special equipment such as specialized computers. Litecoin follows two main purposes. The first one is protecting the network and checking transactions. The second purpose is when new litecoins are paid for mine-workers as a reward.

Equipment for mining Litecoins

Of course, Bitcoin business is more developed than the one we discuss in this article. However, to mine litecoins, it is also possible to use ASIC equipment which was initially created for mining bitcoins. To buy equipment for litecoins is a bit more difficult to buy than if you needed it for mining bitcoins. They say that Bitcoin hardware was not created for searching and earning litecoins.

Unfortunately, you will not find any equipment for mining litecoins online. Even if you search on Amazon or eBay, you will unlikely find any hardware for digging litecoins. The best equipment for searching for litecoins is graphic cards. However, they are not profitable. However, there is another way how to make litecoins. It is smarter to earn bitcoins and then turn them into litecoins using the mine-worker AntMiner S7. We also have done a review for this equipment that you can find and find our all necessary things about it.

You also should know that to mine litecoins, it is necessary to use scrypt. However, a lot of people think that it is needed to use SHA256 to mine litecoins. To start mining litecoins, you can purchase 70 KHs mining equipment which will cost you about $100 or 30 Mhs litecoin mining equipment for about $285. It is possible to buy Litecoin with different currencies almost any currency in the world. You can find more detailed information at the official Litecoin website. If you buy and exchange currency into cryptocurrency, then it will be incredibly easy to diversify and sell other forms of cryptocurrency.

You can also find relevant tips, guides, and even videos with instructions or mining from Mac or Windows.

How is mining litecoins managed?

So, how can litecoins mining protect the network? Litecoins uses the same feature that Bitcoin and it is called proof-of-work. The feature makes the whole process of mining expensive. It requires a lot of time and energy.

To send litecoins, all payments should be included in the block. After, Litecoin mine-workers check those transactions with the help of proof-of-work function. Mine-workers check all income transactions against all previous payments in the block chain. If double payments are not spotted, then mine-workers create a block with new payments and add it to the existed block chain.

Every new block is then sent to the network’s nodes. These nodes use mine-workers’ work for continuous checking and sending transactions all around the network. As we have already mentioned above, mining litecoins requires a lot of time and electricity expenses. A reward for a block is paid to mine-workers for every mined block. This allows mine-workers to add their hashing power.

Litecoin difficulty

One of the main advantages of cryptocurrency is that currency supply can be programmed and spread through the certain periods of time. This is not the same as gold. Silver and other products that are mined with a faster speed if the price rises.

Litecoin mining difficulty is one of the main aspects of improving Litecoin. This is the algorithm that gets updated due to a full power of network hashing. It guarantees that litecoin blocks get generated every 2,5 minutes.

If the price for the gold rise from $1200 to $2000 that such difference will make gold diggers increase the whole manufacturing process and even create new companies that will mine gold. The difference in $800 can create really a lot of new ideas, however, the price may fall down because of such big demand.

It is impossible that the increase of prices can lead to increase of speed that is responsible for litecoin mining. The unexpected price rise of Litecoin will likely lead to mine-workers mentioning hash power in the network. However, Litecoin difficulty guarantees that a new hash power will be well-balanced with the increase of difficulty of the proof-of-work algorithm compared with gold. This difficulty gets adjusted every 2016 block. The process takes almost 4 days.

Profits from mining Litecoins

You can use one of many available calculators for mining to define a possible number of profit. Using the calculator will also allow you to find out how profitable a certain equipment and whether it is profitable to use your hardware or buy a newer version.

A reward for Litecoin Block

The founder of Litecoin Charlie Lee decided to simply copy Bitcoin, however, he changed a few details. He decided to speed up confirmations, therefore, he established a target time of Litecoin block that came to 2,5 minutes instead of 10 bitcoins. The creator also invented a reward for a block to make it reduce 840,000 blocks. Initially, every new block released 50 litecoins. A reward for block eventually become so small that can exist only 84 million litecoins. There are a lot of websites that watch and estimate reward halving.

What is Litecoin mining in general?

We talk about quite serious stuff here but if you are a beginner, it may all sound too weird. So, let us explain what Litecoin mining is using simple words. Litecoin same as Bitcoin is a virtual currency, a digital currency that becomes very popular in the whole world. After Bitcoin, Litecoin takes the second place and is called the second most popular cryptocurrency.

Litecoin allows to instantly send and receive information from one person to another with incredible encryption properties. Safeness and a high speed of payments attract so many people all over the planet. Especially, people use Litecoin electronic money for exchanging money and value.

There are several differences between Bitcoins and Litecoins. For example, the first difference is that the number of all coins that can be created within a frame of a protocol with an open source. This way, using Bitcoin network, it is possible to create 21 million of bitcoins. However, with Litecoin it is possible to create 84 million of coins. The second difference is the amount of time that is required for creating new coins. The Bitcoin network produces 25 coins every 10 minutes. Litecoins offers new 50 coins every 2,5 minutes.

Now you probably know more about Litecoins and understand more why it exists and how to use it. You can find a big number of videos that will visually explain to you how the system works. Anyway, after learning about the system, you will probably want to try it. You will have to create a Litecoin wallet, set it up to receive and send coins.

To understand how it all works, you will have to download and set your software for mining Litecoins, so you can use a graphics processors to search for coins. So, let’s start. The first step is to download the wallet. There is no better and more trustful place to download a wallet from than Litecoin.org. You can download the wallet for using it on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Once you download the wallet you will have an icon on your desktop. Click it and you must see a splash.

You will have to wait a couple of minutes. The program will connect to Litecoin network and then sync. Usually, all the process of installing the program does not take long. The next step is to click “receive”. You will have to create a new address, therefore, click “new address” and give the address a name. Click “Ok” to save it. There is nothing you have to do with the address now, however, you will need it a bit later. It is important to minimize your wallet. The next thing that you should do is to run software that is called to GUIMiner scrypt. If you remember well, we have already mentioned above that to mine litecoins, you will have to use scrypt instead of such equipment as SHA256. Visit guiminer.org to download software directly.

When you download the software for Windows, you may get a message “This file is malicious, and Chrome has blocked it.” However, the file has no harm for your device,s o you can feel confident when downloading it. Maybe you will have to change setting to be able to download the file. If you still cannot download it, follow the given link and visit the page Bitcointalk. Once the file is on your computer, double click EXE file to minimize it. It has to appear after downloading the program.

Now you have to find the host. For this, you need to join a pool. You can check on Litecoinpool.org/pools page to see a chart of all main pools and their market share in the Litecoin network. You also can review the page Litecoin.info/Mining_pool_comparison and see a comparison of all pools that are used for digging litecoins. Review WeMineLTC – this is the biggest pool for mining. You will find out in details about the pool, especially about its profits that you will be able to take advantage of a bit later. There are different pools not worse than the one we are going to talk about, however, we would recommend you to create your account in this very mining pool.

So, you need to create your account. Click “Add account” and then change your automatic payout. Initially, it is zero but you should change it to one. You should do it necessarily so every time you earn one litecoin, it will be sent to your wallet straight away.

Create a 4 digit pin, so once you save updated setting, the system will remember to send you every single litecoin. Also, you should change the address for payments. Go back to your wallet and click “receive”. The address that you have already created is here. Right click on it, copy it and add it into a text field. Type your 4 digit pin again to save the changes. Send a code to your email address and once you receive it, type your pin and add a code. This will change your payment address. It means that every time you mine one litecoin, the system will instantly send it to your address.

Once your account is done and all settings are correct, you need to create a worker. Click ‘my workers” in your account and create a worker. Add a new worker, create the name, and create a password. Once you created a worker, you will see the servers. You will see that there are several servers in the USA and Asia. Sometimes, when you try to connect to one server, it may not be possible because that server can have problems. Try a few until you connect to one.

Let’s come back to your GUIMiner. The first thing that you need is the host. You will see the address of the host or the address of hose without http. Copy everything that is written after slashes and paste the first host. Then return to the mine-worker and paste it there. Make sure that the port is three three three four. If so, then the name of the user that you have just created will be active.

After all those above-mentioned steps, your device will become a graphics card. You will be able to see your processor. However, your new graphics processor will be so much faster than your old one. If the processor does not work for some reason, try to update drivers. You can simply update drivers for your graphics card and install them. Now you can start mining. However, there is one more thing that you should install. Set the threat concurrency.

GPU Thread, the initial number was one. Work size, an initial number was two fifty-six. You should put intensity 15. this is a good number. Click “yes” on stratum. After you will see the speed of mining. If it does not work, just change number is the window and the system should start working even faster. If you increase the threat concurrency, you will notice that the speed become higher as well. You can improve the intensity up to twenty.

If you are going to increase the intensity, even more, be careful because this process can slow down your computer’s work. It can also have a negative effect on your graphics processors. It can lead to their overheating. However, it is necessary to keep the numbers high to understand the speed of mining. Let it run for the whole night. Then you will be able to check the statistic in your WeMineLTC profile.

This is the easiest way to mine litecoins. We would recommend you to review videos Litecoin for Beginners where you will be able to watch how to do all the processes we have discussed here with visual instructions. Now it is time to find out how to exchange money into litecoins.

How to mine litecoins when using Mac?

Here in this part of the article, we are going to talk about how to mine litecoins if your device is Mac computer. Use CoinHunter pool to start mining. This is one of the most popular and trustful mining pools at the moment for mining litecoins. You can find so many pools on the internet but for now, this is the best option. Create our account, there will be a lot of passwords that you will have to create and type in to register. Go to the account for workers that is located on the side panel. Create a new worker.

Remember your name and the name of your worker. You also have to remember your password and the name of the host of the pool. You can find it if you open help page. You will see some of them for your location. Choose one and copy it and use it. You will need it a bit later. The next step that you should follow is to download the actual software for mining litecoins from your Mac computer. The name of the software is CPU Miner and you can find it at SourceForge. Click it and it will start downloading automatically. While waiting go to the finder. Check the folder download, find zip file and expand it.

Double click it and expand it. Find the file that is called minerd that is the program that you have to run. Use the app Terminal to start the program. So, once you run it, you need to dot, slash, minerd. You need dash O, then out the name of the host. Then you need dash U and this will be your name. You have to put the name of your mining pool dot the name of your worker. Use dash P which will be your worker’s password. Click “enter” and you will finally see that the program is run. It means that you have already mining litecoins.

Check the speed. It will tell you the rate of your mining. Check your worker and see how it generates hashes.

Now you know why you had to remember all those names. Write them down to remember them for sure and not look for them long when you want to run the program and finally start mining.

How to mine litecoins when using Windows?

There are two ways to mine litecoins using Windows device. The first one is a mini-processor that is using the processor of your computer. The second way is to use graphics processor that is using the graphics card of your computer. However, you should know that you will have to choose only one way because using two at the same time is impossible. It is impossible to take advantage of both to maximize the profit.

The majority of people mine through mining pools. This is a reliable and promising way to earn litecoins. To start mining download the application for Litecoin wallet. Visit Litecoin.org to get the wallet. Choose the version for Windows and install the wallet. Create a new address. Here you will have a sync panel. It will take a few hours to sync. After creating a new mining pool for digging coins.

Go to your account and create another account at Poolside Burnside website. Click “Registration”, add your data. The good thing is you do not have to check your email and confirm registration, so you can log into a system. Go to settings of your account and type your payment address. Copy the address that you created in your wallet and save it. Remember your pin to change settings at any time.

The next step that should be followed is to create your workers. As you see the process is similar to when you set things up for Mac. Create one worker and add a password to it. Once it is done, you can install the software for mining litecoins. Visit bitcointalk.org to install CPU miner for your Windows. Choose one that suits your 32 or 64-bit version for Windows. Put it in Litecoin folder. You can also create one more folder and call it mine-workers. Here you can add CPU and GPU.

Then you should make the BAT file to have an access to Kattare – to Burnside’s Litecoin mining pool. Change the male of the file and write minerd_32 (or 64). Add minerd.exe which is the name of the port, then space O. Add the user’s name that you have created for the website, after dot worker’s suffix. Go to help page and there you should see different threads. Their number indicates the number of your processors.

Download Cudaminer for your Windows version. Put it into your download folder and copy it here. Rename it. It will have a different address, so you have to do the same process as before and create a new file that should be called cudaminer_32.bit or cudaminer_64.bit. Cudaminer is based on CPU mine-worker. Run the program and get to see your device mining litecoins.

So, it may all sound too weird if you have never heard how to mine cryptocurrency. However, if you read the article carefully again and follow our instructions, you will successfully install the necessary programs and will be able to mine from your house or office.

With modern technologies, it is really easy to mine from where you are and make litecoins. We wish you luck and hope that you will be happy about the upcoming results!