How Do You Mine Litecoin?

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 How Do You Mine Litecoin?


First things first. If you're only interested in owning litecoin, you should probably just buy it from an exchange such as Coinbase. If, on the other hand, you want to try your hand at mining litecoin – because you think you have the time and resources necessary to make a profit, because you want to help keep the litecoin network decentralized, or out of a sense of curiosity – this guide will give you a sense of the concepts, an introduction to the vocabulary, and suggestions for further research.

Because the nitty-gritty of litecoin mining depends so much on your hardware, software, operating system and pool, this is not a step-by-step tutorial. If you've gotten those variables figured out, there are good guides available online and helpful forums for when search engines fail you. Depending on your level of expertise, you may want to pass over certain sections of this guide. Use the links in the table below to skip to a section.

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1. What Is Mining?

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In proof-of-work cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and litecoin, mining is the process by which the blockchain – a distributed ledger of all transactions ever made on the network – is maintained. Miners receive transaction data broadcast by the various participants in the network since the last block was found, they assemble those transactions into structures called Merkle trees, and they work to find an acceptable hash. (See also, How Does Bitcoin Mining Work?)

A hash is the result of running a one-way cryptographic algorithm on a chunk of data: a given dataset will only ever return one hash, but the hash cannot be used to recreate the data. Instead it serves the purpose of efficiently ensuring that the data has not been tampered with. Change even one number in an arbitrarily long string of transactions, and the hash will come out unrecognizably different. Since every block contains the previous block's hash, the network can know instantly if someone has tried to insert a bogus transaction anywhere into the ledger, without having to comb through it in its entirety every 2.5 minutes.

The mining process illustrated. This image comes from our bitcoin infographic, but litecoin miners follow the same process.

Why must miners run these hash functions over and over again, if doing it once – a near-instantaneous process for a modern computer – would do the trick? The reason is that, by harnessing a lot of hash power, an attacker could spend some coins, then pile a huge number of spam transactions on top of it – ones that do not reference the attacker's original spend. In this way they could spend their coins and have them too; this is known as a double-spend attack. By requiring the network to plug through millions or billions of hash functions, the blockchain generates so much "work" that undoing it or overwhelming it would be too expensive. (Since a given set of data only generates one hash output, miners must append meaningless numbers known as nonces to the end and run the function again.)

Mining is competitive. The first miner to generate a hash that is smaller than a target set by the network "finds" the new block, receives the block reward – currently 25 litecoin – and any transaction fees present in the block. Since there is no way to know what nonce wil generate a below-target hash, miners' results are subject to two factors: luck, which is outside of their control; and computing power, which can be bought (or stolen).

To maximize their computing power, miners have developed specialized gear to plow through hash functions as fast as possible. They have assembled enormous collections of these machines, pooled their resources, and concentrated in places where electricity is cheap, so as to maximize profits. These trends have led to the increasing centralization and professionalization of mining.

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2. Why Mine Litecoin?

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In October 2011 Charlie Lee, then a software engineer at Google, announced the creation of litecoin, a clone of bitcoin with modifications intended to help it scale more effectively. A little over seven years later, the cryptocurrency has demonstrated the kind of staying power other early bitcoin alternatives couldn't. (Remember SolidCoin?)

Litecoin's price at the time of writing is just under $180, down precipitously from a high of $420 in December, but orders of magnitude above the sub-$4 levels it traded at 12 months ago. According to BitInfoCharts, average transaction fees in dollar terms are much lower ($0.25) than those for bitcoin ($11.30). With a new block mined every 2.5 minutes – four times faster than bitcoin – litecoin transactions require much less time to gain confirmations. Litecoin can hardly claim to have scaled the way that centralized payment systems like Visa have, but Lee's claim to have created the "silver to Bitcoin's gold" has some merit to it. (See also, Bitcoin vs. Litecoin: What's the Difference?)

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3. Mining Hardware

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One of Lee's initial claims has not held up, however: the ability to mine litecoin using a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Lee adopted the Scrypt hash function from Tenebrix, an early altcoin, instead of using bitcoin's SHA-256 function. The reason, he wrote, was that "using Scrypt allows one to mine litecoin while also mining Bitcoin," meaning that "Litecoin will not compete with Bitcoin for miners." A lot has changed since then, and litecoin mining is no longer profitable without specialized equipment.

In the early days, even bitcoin could be mined using a CPU. By 2011, competition had ramped up, and the only way to mine bitcoin profitably was using a graphics processing unit (GPU). By choosing Scrypt, Lee allowed litecoin to be mined on CPUs, but that didn't last long either. Soon GPUs were being used to mine litecoin as well. Then application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) were developed to run SHA-256, and bitcoin miners moved away from GPUs.

Lee said in March 2017 that this transition partly explains his creation's success: litecoin "got lucky where, when bitcoin mining went from GPUs to ASIC, all the bitcoin GPUs were looking for a coin to mine, and litecoin just happened to have transitioned from CPU to GPU at that time." Soon enough, however, ASICs were developed for Scrypt, and today it would be difficult if not impossible to turn a profit using anything but ASICs. One popular ASIC for Scrypt mining is Bitmain's Antminer L3+, but batches tend to sell out almost immediately, meaning you have to watch Twitter like a hawk; the company only accepts bitcoin cash and USD wire transfers (for some batches it only takes the the former). Innosilicon is accepting pre-orders for a competitor, the A4+ LTCMaster. Other options are available, but the newest ASICs tend to run at least $2,000 and sell out quickly. Older ASICs may not be competitive, making it hard to turn a profit.

Note that Scrypt ASICs can also be used to mine other coins based on the same algorithm; you can choose the most profitable coin to mine based on relative price and difficulty (a parameter the network sets to make sure a new block is mined every 2.5 minutes on average, whatever the total hash power).

As long as you're aware that you won't make money, you might have your reasons for mining with a CPU or GPU. It's a way to get exposure to the process, to familiarize yourself with the vocabulary and concepts, and to avoid dropping thousands of dollars on a pursuit you find out doesn't interested you.

And if you're an altruist, offering your tiny sliver of hashpower to the network is a way to reduce its centralization. "Centralized mining is pretty bad for bitcoin and litecoin," Lee says, "because mining is supposed to be anonymous, where you don't know who the miners are, and they're all individually acting selfishly to make the money, which indirectly makes the coin secure." On the other hand, a laptop's worth of hash power won't make a dent in the big miners' market share, and you're likely to inflict wear and tear on your equipment.

[jbc081475]

How Do You Mine Litecoin?


First things first. If you're only interested in owning litecoin, you should probably just buy it from an exchange such as Coinbase. If, on the other hand, you want to try your hand at mining litecoin – because you think you have the time and resources necessary to make a profit, because you want to help keep the litecoin network decentralized, or out of a sense of curiosity – this guide will give you a sense of the concepts, an introduction to the vocabulary, and suggestions for further research.

Because the nitty-gritty of litecoin mining depends so much on your hardware, software, operating system and pool, this is not a step-by-step tutorial. If you've gotten those variables figured out, there are good guides available online and helpful forums for when search engines fail you. Depending on your level of expertise, you may want to pass over certain sections of this guide. Use the links in the table below to skip to a section.

Yes.It is so true.

[blabalball]

I wonder why you didn’t include info about cloud mining as it’s also an option to get some Litecoins. Many newcomers can’t afford expensive equipment for traditional mining, so cloud may be an interesting alternative. Just as example, large cloud services offer various bonuses regularly (like this http://hashflarecode.com/ [nofollow]). It would be better to write a few sentences about cloud sites, so visitors will be able to compare different options.

[Ahmedalab]

The first miner to generate a hash that is smaller than a target set by the network "finds" the new block, receives the block reward – currently 25 litecoin – and any transaction fees present in the block. Since there is no way to know what nonce wil generate a below-target hash, miners' results are subject to two factors: luck, which is outside of their control; and computing power, which can be bought (or stolen).

[fredrick4u]

It is very profitable for all miners, it should be encouraged for all miners to read more on the mining of litecoin so they become well informed to maximize profits.

[Rex]

Nowadays mining is not profit anymore because coin price has decreased when the power cost still remain the same

[bitpation]

Nowadays mining is not profit anymore because coin price has decreased when the power cost still remain the same

I agree with you brother. Mining for crypto coins seem not worth again nowadays. It takes a lot of money but just result in a little amount of money. I think not only mining Litecoin, mining ETH and BTC are also not profitable.

[alfatih99]

it's true and usually many people who want to have litecoin will buy it in exchange, but some people also use mining to get litecoin.

[Kenyot]

I also have never used the method you gave me, if I get litecoin by investing in bitcoin and I use it to trade altcoins, so I will also get litecoin

[mimikri]

Several years ago I used to mine litecoin, and it did not bring me as much money as I got from trading. Yes, it is a very time-taking business and the activity that needs some deep knowledge but it is cool.

[damsix]

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True!

Very inefficient mining of energy that is used for electricity.
There are also many obstacles if mining equipment experiences chaos and it will require quite expensive costs.

[Word]

if i am
it is also difficult to mine to get litecoin, for me to get my litecoin by trading, for me trading is also good, and it's good to get a lot of benefits