Cryptocurrencies have become one of the hottest topics of the moment thanks to their impressive price changes. Many guides focus on how to buy them, or store them safely, but today we're going to explore the mining process itself, and our chosen cryptocurrency is Monero. The best tools available don't have a user interface, and their configuration can be intimidating at first, but with this guide you'll be ready in minutes.
Studying the current quotes of the main cryptocurrencies closely, we can say they're not having a good week. Losses range from 9 to 27 percent depending on the case, which makes us think of a "dump" phase, with users visiting exchanges either to transfer their funds to another coin or to obtain fiat (if possible). To be honest, this is nothing new. If there's one property that defines cryptocurrencies, it's their volatility, but most participants don't hesitate to stay strong. Bitcoin has given rise to a new series of "neomillionaires" for exactly that reason: they held on to their coins and waited. Needless to say, mining Bitcoin is crazy (unless you're the mastermind behind a farm and read this text for pure fun), but the situation is much friendlier for other cryptocurrencies. One of them is Monero.
All you need to start mining Monero is a graphics card or a couple of CPU threads. This "simplicity" is what made the background miners that many websites incorporated to replace (or not) traditional advertising explode. But before hitting Monero's digital vein with our pickaxe, we need a wallet.
Creating a wallet is very easy: we go to the official Monero page, download the official software with a graphical interface (GUI) for our preferred operating system (it includes Spanish support), and follow the indicated steps, paying special attention to everything involving wallet security (I recommend using an offline password manager like KeePass to store passwords, keys, and other data).
Choose a Mining Pool
Once we have the wallet generated, we need to find a mining pool. Basically, in a pool all users combine their processing power to find new blocks, and each receives a proportional payment based on their contribution. Pools also have a minimum payout, and of course they take a commission. Some have additional restrictions, such as preventing botnet participation. A fairly up-to-date list of pools can be found at Moneropools.com. Nanopool, MineXMR, XMRPool and SupportXMR are frequently named. For the rest of this guide, we'll focus on SupportXMR.
Get the XMR-Stak Miner
Finally, we arrive at the miner. The most recommended by the vast majority of pools is XMR-Stak, whose latest version combines CPU and GPU mining. XMR-Stak is open source, and it sends a 2 percent contribution of our hashrate to the developer (which only deactivates if we compile from source, but we won't do that today). We download the latest build from GitHub and extract the contents to a folder. Now, a warning: antivirus software detests XMR-Stak and other miners (unfortunately, they have good reason). My suggestion is to add the executable and the folder containing it to the exclusion list.
Configure XMR-Stak
Configuring XMR-Stak is less complicated than it seems. The first step asks if we want to mine Monero or Aeon, and we enter "monero". Then it asks for the pool address. In the case of SupportXMR, the address is pool.supportxmr.com:5555. Next, it asks for the "username", which is actually the pool login or our wallet address (here we use the address from Monero GUI). From this point on, the parameters depend more on the pool. In SupportXMR, the password can be just "x", or a user with the format "minerName:email@address". Finally, XMR-Stak asks if we want to use SSL (we choose no for now), if we enable Nicehash (no), and if we want to activate multiple pools, to which we also decline.
Enable CPU Mining
If everything goes well, XMR-Stak will start mining with the graphics card it detected, and SupportXMR will register the initial activity. However, there's a detail: XMR-Stak disables CPU mining by default. To authorize the use of one or more processor threads, you need to go to the folder where the miner is located and edit the "cpu.txt" file. You'll most likely find something like this:
All the text with asterisks (which essentially act as comments) teaches us to configure the bottom part of the file, that is, the "cpu_threads_conf" section. What we need to do is add an entry between the brackets for each CPU thread we want to use. Like this:
That tells XMR-Stak that it's authorized to use threads 0 and 2 of a quad-core processor (counting from 0), leaving threads 1 and 3 free. Why do we talk about threads instead of cores? Because of technologies like Hyper-Threading. The user has the ability to precisely assign the level of pressure they want to put on the CPU while mining, and this is achieved by configuring one thread at a time. Save the changes and restart XMR-Stak.
Tune Your GPU
If for some reason the miner hangs, maybe the parameters XMR-Stak detected for your graphics card aren't the best (that happened to me while writing this text). To fix it, edit the "nvidia.txt" or "amd.txt" file and start experimenting with some of the values:
No, it's not the most intuitive thing in the world. The basic information to understand this internal configuration is split between the Tuning Guide section of XMR-Stak and the comments inside the file itself. From my own experience with Nvidia cards, I can share the following: reducing the number of "threads", increasing "bfactor" and "bsleep" often help a lot when XMR-Stak throws an error or the computer freezes too much while mining. On AMD hardware, the values are named "intensity" (try a lower value if it doesn't work well) and "worksize".
The Waiting Game
That's all for now. Our first fractions of Monero will appear once the blocks have matured (the average wait is about two hours), and to transfer that money to our wallet, we first need to reach the minimum set by each pool. How long should you mine? That's determined by your firepower and your specific goals. Personally, I see Monero as a hobby, and I don't plan to solve my financial life with the cryptocurrency, but I am interested in the technical aspect of mining, and that's what this guide is about. Good luck!
