Ravencoin consistently tops the charts as one of the easiest and most profitable cryptos to mine on a home PC – but is this still the case?
Having recently upgraded my PC, I decided to test drive mining crypto at home to see if it was possible to recoup some of the cost of my hardware.
At first I considered mining Monero, the privacy coin which is also touted as a profitable crypto that you can still mine at home with a GPU, but the mining pools I looked at all had high payout thresholds.
As this isn’t something I’m planning to do long term, I decided on Ravencoin (RVN) as there is generally a much lower payout threshold for this coin and I wanted to see the process through from start to finish relatively quickly.
What is Ravencoin?
Ravencoin (RVN) was launched in 2018 as a fork of Bitcoin and is a proof of work (PoW), peer-to-peer blockchain designed to be used to issue tokens centered around the transfer of assets.
The type of assets that can be minted on Ravencoin include:
- Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
- Property
- Items on a supply chain
- Security tokens
It’s pitched as an alternative to Ethereum and is designed to be ASIC mining resistant. ASIC computers are powerful systems built specifically for crypto mining.
Making Ravencoin ASIC resistant means there’s a much fairer mining process as pretty much anyone can get involved in mining, not just those with the capital to set up a mining farm.
Although RVN uses PoW like Bitcoin, it uses a special hashing algorithm called KAWPOW which makes it possible to mine using a decent GPU (or even CPU) on a home set-up.
Home PC setup to mine Ravencoin
The hardware I used to mine Ravencoin is an i7 12700 with 16GB of ram alongside an 8GB GeForce GTX 3060 Ti GPU.
Having looked at various spec charts, this seemed a decent set-up to tackle Ravencoin mining.
Of course, if you’ve got deep pockets and some technical expertise, you’d still be better off building a dedicated mining rig with multiple GPUs.
But my setup seemed like a good place to start in order to experiment with crypto mining without breaking the bank.
Which pool is best to mine Ravencoin?
The easiest way to mine Ravencoin for the average user is to join a mining pool.
This is where thousands of computers are linked together to perform the complex calculations involved in finding blocks and securing the Ravencoin blockchain.
You can go it alone, but it’s much harder to secure blocks and rewards unless you have a very powerful mining rig.
After quite a bit of research I decided on F2Pool using NBMiner as the actual mining client.
There are easy-to-follow instructions on F2Pool on how to set up your miner depending on which coin you’re going to mine.
It’s as simple as editing a single line of code in the .bat file belonging to the coin you wish to mine, then running the app.
F2Pool talks you through the process making it easily accessible to the average users.
F2Pool also features a dashboard showing your current stats, including earnings for each coin you choose to mine.
You can also set your payout thresholds, monitor your hashrate and see which ‘workers’ are currently online. Workers are the CPUs and GPUs you’ve linked to the pool.
You can use multiple rigs simultaneously using your unique identifier all linked to F2Pool.
Remember to do your own research when choosing a pool/miner and choose one that suits your specific set-up and the coin you wish to mine.
Is mining Ravencoin on a PC profitable?
On my set-up it was taking approximately 2.5 hours to mine one RVN token which at the time of writing was valued at $0.026.
I don’t need to work out the cost/profit ratio exactly to know this wasn’t going to be profitable.
Given the cost of electricity it doesn’t take a maths wizard to see that mining Ravencoin is not going to be profitable with my current set-up.
The other issue is that the long-term outlook for Ravencoin as a mine and hold investment is modest. The coin is predicted to increase in value but only by a small amount each year.
It’s highly unlikely that it will ever see significant gains, especially as there’s a maximum supply of 21,000,000,000.
Some people have speculated that Ravencoin will reach $0.50 or even $1 but in my opinion this is virtually impossible and will never happen.
And, of course, you have to factor in the wear and tear on your computer hardware which will ultimately eat into the sale price of any coins you mine over the long term.
In addition to this, you have the pool fee to deduct as well, which for F2Pool is 2.5% from your rewards under its Pay Per Share (PPS) calculator. In my view, if you want to add Ravencoin to your portfolio and don’t have an expensive crypto mining rig to hand, you’d be much better off just buying it on a cryptocurrency exchange where it’s widely supported.
Is it worth mining Ravencoin?
Whether it’s worth mining Ravencoin or not depends on what you hope to achieve.
If you want to get rich, then this is not the way to do it. You’ll be able to earn tiny amounts of crypto per day on the average home setup, but the electricity and hardware costs will far outweigh anything you earn.
Based on my experience, it’s honestly not worth mining crypto on a home PC setup unless you’re a hobbyist who wants to experiment with the technology and learn more about crypto (or a blogger wanting to write a feature about it!).
The good thing is that you don’t have to invest to much time and effort to give it a try.
Setting up the mining software needed to mine Ravencoin, or any other crypto for that matter, is very easy making it accessible to almost anyone with a basic knowledge of file editing.
Ravencoin price prediction
Crypto price predictions are very much crystal ball estimates and no-one really knows what will happen to the price of Ravencoin or any crypto for that matter.
Looking at various respected websites that have put forward price predictions for Ravencoin, the consensus seems to be modest year-on-year increases for a few years, then a more significant rise after that.
The price of Ravencoin in 2023 could reach £0.04 according to several sites, and $0.06 by 2025.
The price prediction for 2030 suddenly leaps ahead to $0.45, with some believing that Ravencoin could go as high as $0.90 by 2033.
This would be a significant growth on its current price, but whether it ever gets this high or not is anyone’s guess as price predictions are notoriously unreliable.
So, take these future price estimates with a pinch of salt and don’t bet the house on Ravencoin, or any other crypto for that matter.
How much profit did I make mining Ravencoin?
At the end of my first week of mining (approximately 3 hours a day) I’d reached the minimum 10 RVN payout threshold offered by F2Pool.
The sum of 10.07 RVN was transferred to my Exodus crypto wallet where, at the time of writing, it was valued at $0.26.
With little prospect of any meaningful price increase, this again made it clear that it’s simply not worth mining crypto on an average home PC.
This will remain the case unless there’s a significant change in both electricity prices and the cost of computer hardware, or the value of the coins set against the time it takes to mine them increases significantly.
What coins can I mine on a home PC?
While mining the likes of Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) are no longer possible on a home PC, there are still a few coins that can be mined aside from Ravencoin.
Ethereum (ETH), which used to be a profitable coin to mine, moved to a Proof of Stake (PoS) model in 2022 which means you can no longer mine it using your GPU.
Here’s a selection of altcoins other than Ravencoin that are still possible to mine at home using GPU or CPU cards:
- Monero (XMR)
- Ethereum Classic (ETC)
- Kaspa (KAS)
- Zilliqa (ZIL)
- Conflux (CFX)
- Aleo
Incidentally, having run my specs through popular mining pool Nicehash’s returns calculator, my estimated daily profit using that platform was $0.33 using its smart profit switching algorithm.
This enables you to run multiple mining pools with the app selecting which coin/pool will generate the most profit at any given time.
I may try this in the future as an experiment, but based on the estimated returns it’s clear that this won’t be a profitable venture either.
Conclusion
My foray into crypto mining was fun and I learned a lot about the processes involved.
But it was also very clear that mining Ravencoin is not the way to make money, and other cryptos that you can still mine at home fall into the same category.
It’s my view that to profitably mine any crypto these days you need at least one ASCI machine, or preferably multiple units as your mining set-up.
