New mining software promises to let almost anyone earn small amounts of bitcoin with a Windows laptop, giving users a taste of the cryptocurrency's early days.
Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, the New Jersey-based crypto mining startup Honeyminer quietly launched a free beta in June and has already garnered 10,000 downloads across the globe. Honeyminer
allows users to participate in a dynamic mining pool by running the app when the computer's graphics processing unit (GPU) isn't in use processing images or videos.
The pool focuses on mining cryptos like ethereum, ethereum classic, zcash, monero and other GPU-friendly currencies. Then, at the end of the session, Honeyminer sends the participant's earnings, converted into bitcoin, directly to the user's wallet.
"The miner doesn't have to do the math or manage all the configurations and settings, or manually check the prices," Honeyminer advisor Noah Jessop, a venture capitalist at Founder Collective in San Francisco, told CoinDesk.
He added:
"We make it so that any surplus compute, so any laptop you aren't using all the way up to a rig that you run is automatically doing the most profitable computation."
This type of service offers new opportunities for people who want to acquire bitcoin but have little money to invest or limited access to cryptocurrency exchanges. It could also broaden the range of participants in cryptocurrency mining, which over the years has had its barriers to entry rise as expensive, specialized hardware gave large, professional operations an edge over hobbyists.
Honeyminer's algorithm automatically switches between cryptocurrencies every 10 minutes or so, depending on block size, if there's a sudden change in the currency's mining profitability.
"We are pooling people together to find those block rewards faster. Together, we have a larger hashrate," Honeyminer co-founder Larry Kom told CoinDesk. "Not only do we connect you to the blockchain and anonymize you through us, but you also are contributing to what is, in essence, a pool."
To be sure,
this isn't the most profitable way to mine cryptocurrency, given broader market volatility compared to bitcoin and Honeyminer's cut, ranging from 2.5 percent to 8 percent depending on the quality of the user's hardware.
Someone with a few high-end GPUs could expect to earn bitcoin worth a dollar or two from running the software almost all day.
However, it may be one of the easiest methods to date. Although the company declined to specify how many users are in nations where cryptocurrency access is restricted, such as Jordan or Venezuela, it said more than 18 percent of users hail from developing nations.
"If you hear about crypto and you want to learn, you can either go out and pay real cash money," Jessop said. "Or you can download a program in 30 seconds and start earning your own crypto, for free."
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Originally Posted by TheCount
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