Is Mining High-Cap Cryptocurrencies Profitable for Individuals?

When Bitcoin was first launched in 2009, the mining reward for a single block was 50 Bitcoins. At the time of writing, the reward for mining a block is 12.5 Bitcoins. Initially, mining was driven by miners’ belief in the potential of cryptocurrencies, and as prices continued to rise, mining difficulty and the price of the required equipment went up.

Certainly, mining was profitable a decade ago and its profitability in 2019 depends on the cost of electricity and the cryptocurrency of choice being mined. Though mining is not as cheap and profitable as it used to be in 2009, there is a legitimate way of mining high cap cryptocurrencies and earning crypto as passive income. In 2019, miners are picking cryptocurrencies that employ less computing power and reduced electricity consumption.

In this article, we will enlist the most profitable high-cap cryptocurrencies to mine in 2019.

It is a widely popular notion that the more expensive a cryptocurrency is, the more profitable it is to mine it. However, this is true only for short term investments and miners mine promising coins and wait for the price to grow. Mining has become less profitable of late due to the halvings scheduled for 2019 and 2020. Litecoin block reward halving caused its price to plummet below critical support. Bitcoin halving is scheduled for 2020 and that would make mining difficult as it increases the operational costs of mining and decreases the rewards. This doesn’t mean that mining is no longer relevant, but that miners need to adopt a smarter approach.

Here’s a list of high-cap cryptocurrencies that can be profitably mined in 2019.

Monero (XMR)

Monero has been in the crypto market for 5 years now and has proven to be reliable and easy to mine. Since 2017, its price hit an uptrend. Monero has high transaction fees but adoption has continued to rise due to the anonymity offered by the coin. It can be mined using a GPU or CPU as it is being altered to prevent the possibility of ASIC mining. This makes it profitable for individual miners. It leverages CryptoNightV8 proof of work algorithm and generates 3.41 XMRs as block reward every two minutes.

Algorithm: Proof-of-Work
Rank based on Market Capitalization: 10
ROI since launch: 3,055.33%
Curr. Price: $78.05
Block Mining Reward: 3.41 XMR

Ethereum (ETH)

In 2019, Ethereum’s price is expected to grow after reduction of reward from 3 to 2 ETH.
Ethereum is currently in transition to Casper and this means its consensus will change from PoW to PoS. This technological upgrade coupled with an increase in adoption creates a positive environment for the asset’s price to go up in 2020. It is a lucrative high-cap altcoin for miners.

Algorithm: Proof-of-Work (In transition to PoS)
Rank based on Market Capitalization: 2
ROI since launch: 6,519.44%
Curr. Price: $187.44
Block Mining Reward: 3 ETH

Dogecoin (DOGE)

Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that was created as a practical joke. However, it became popular in the crypto community and now ranks 29 based on market capitalization. It has a market cap of $314 Million. Like LTC, DOGE uses Scrypt Protocol and can be mined using cheap hardware. A CPU/GPU can be employed to mine DOGE steadily.

Algorithm: Proof-of-Work
Rank based on Market Capitalization: 29
ROI since launch: 365.24%
Curr. Price: $0.0026
Block Mining Reward: 10,000 DOGE

Ethereum Classic (ETC)

A hardfork of Ethereum, Ethereum Classic can be mined with a couple of GPUs. It has a higher block reward compared to other cryptocurrencies, and even though ETC has higher inflation and scarcity, it’s a profitable cryptocurrency. An individual miner would need a few AMD or NVidia cards to get started with ETC mining.

Algorithm: Proof-of-Work
Rank based on Market Capitalization: 29
ROI since launch: 815.86%
Curr. Price: $6.89
Block Mining Reward: 4 ETC

Crypto mining is worth the effort and cost if individual miners calculate their investments and earnings before getting started with it. There are several high-cap cryptocurrencies other than ETC, DOGE, ETH and XMR that can be mined profitably by individual miners and we recommend thorough research and finding an estimate of the cost involved.