Disclaimer: I am not giving advice, especially not financial advice. I personally don’t invest with money, just using existing hardware that I have (so far).
My strategy is to “mine” coins while they are easy to mine, then hodl (hold) them until the value goes up. For example, I did some Bitcoin (BTC) mining a long time ago, just using my computer and now the value of that is around $1,000 (as of August 2020).
What is Mining?
Lets take a step back and answer some common questions:
- What is cryptocurrency?
- What is cryptocurrency mining?
- It says free, but nothing is free, right?
- Where are my coins stored? What is a wallet?
How do I decide what to mine and how to mine?
I like to find systems/coins that are free to mine reasonably with my existing hardware. I am not going to upgrade my computer or buy additional hardware for this. I do not want to take that expense or risk. Coin value can drop quickly, and I can have nothing to show for it. If I invest no money, the only risk is the time that I invested. If I am enjoying it, the investment is practically free.
I do not like to mine in brand new systems (though many people do) because many of these fail before the currency has any value.
How do I determine how much time to invest?
This topic is not discussed very often, but I think is very important. We have limited time on earth and spending it on something that I don’t enjoy is not worth it. When looking at new systems, if I cannot understand the system within two minutes, I will move on. I work in the IT industry and have worked in the IT industry for half my life. If I cannot grasp it or it does not grab my attention in two minutes, its not worth it.
I don’t dedicate blocks of time, rather when I find some free time, and I want to invest it in crypto mining, I will do it. This will keep my attention and make sure it is a hobby.