Miner Overview and Selection
Mining for cryptocurrency can be a fun and lucrutive investment. These machines “mine” or create new crypto currency by running specific computer software for a particular crypto coin. Crypto mining machines come in all shapes and sizes. Primarily there are two main types asic miners and gpu miners.
Asic Miners
Asic stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit. Application specific basically means that these asic miners are computers are programmed and designed for one specific purpose and that is to mine one specific algorithm of cryptocurrency. They are programmed specific for one coin which could be bitcoin, ethereum, kadena, litecoin, etc. The chips in the asic can only mine that single specific algorithm and cannot switch to others.
GPU Miners
Video cards can also be used for mining certain crypto currency. Currently they are mainly used to mine ethereum. Unlike asics however, video cards are not appliation specific and so you can change the algorithms that your video cards can mine. Video cards cannnot effectively mine bitcoin but several other coins can be profitably mined using video cards including ergo, ethereum classic, and raven coin.
