Golem releases laptop app to mine Ethereum… but turning a profit is tricky
Read the full article by: Martin Young
Mining Crypto has been on the rise for most of the last decade, but it has blown up in the past two years, evident by the challenge of getting a new RTX-30anything. If you are not a PC enthusiast, you may not understand the reference, let me explain. Mining crypto consists of solving complex mathematical problems, solving these problems uses a lot of computing power, the more power the more crypto you can mine, and once mining enthusiasts caught on they began to buy graphics cards in bulk. In response, the price of these cards, which are priced at $800 MSRP, have risen to prices 3x that, not only angering games just trying to upgrade their rigs but making it almost impossible for small-time players to begin to mine.
This is where Golem Network comes in, the company has released the Thorg app that enables users to mine Ether. “The app runs in the background and harnesses unused computing power to process the calculations required for proof-of-working mining. Users are rewarded in Golem’s native GLM token, however, and not ETH.” While disappointing that one isn’t reward in Ethereum, the GLM token can be converted into other assets. The barrier to entry may not be as open as Golem advertise’s due to the requirement of 6-gigabyte graphics cards, and as I mentioned at the beginning of the article, these aren’t the easiest to find.
But if you are one of the lucky few to have acquired one of these cards, you can expect a modest hash rate of around 26 megahash per second. “taking this and average desktop PC power consumption of around 600 watts into consideration for a hypothetical example, profits from mining Ether on a PC could yield around $0.06 per day, or take more than a fortnight to make $1, according to mining calculators”. If these numbers don’t seem too lucrative to you, you’re not alone. With the need for a new generation card and how low the yield is, I can agree that Golem’s quest is noble, but in my opinion, you’re better off diving deep and buying a dedicated mining machine, instead of taking this shortcut.