I have been dabbling in various forms of crypto mining since way back when you could still use a tiny little USB miner to stack up actual Satoshis into genuine BTC on a laptop at the office, while working all day prior to 2010/2011ish days. I once threw away a computer that had about sixty cents worth of BTC on it. At a time when it was worth something like ten cents per BTC.
Today's value as of Jan 2021, around or about $180,000 USD for those 6 BTC.
Yep.
So anyway - these days I do some CPU mining for Monero on a couple older machines and they churn a long at a combined $6 USD per month profit after electric and all. I run a few web based cloud miners on one of them too, which generate litecoin, and I turn in another 5 or 6 bucks a month from those. So those two old computers make about $10-12 usd per month after expenses in profit from that, and wait, there's more passive profit ahead! Read on, dear and gentle friends.
Woot. Free Passive Profit!
All just from two dusty old office machines with moderately small typical power supplies and rural coop power costs.
When Lambo?
I need to resurrect the When Lambo?(tm) prediction calculator for Hive now, huh? Anybody remember my little toy calculator from the "old days"? What do we call the "old days" around here now, or do we never ever speak of the days before, at all?
So I CPU mine Monero with dedicated CPU mining apps on two computers, but pay it out in Bitcoin to my wallet (I can chose from a few different major payout coin choices with this service like BTC or ETH or Monero or Ravencoin)
I cloud mine litecoin on three different free cloudmining trial accounts that are free forever - basically constantly running faucets, that when combined, eventually become useful, in a few browser windows I generally ignore. It does slow my machine down some but your mileage may vary. This is just an i5 dell office machine, nothing special. With only like 8 gigs of ram. Anyway I digress.
Speaking of browsers, I am running Brave for both privacy and rewards for allowing ads to pop up in my mostly ignored second monitor from the Windows notification thing on your taskbar by your clock. Meh. I am getting about 2 bucks USD a month in Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) from that, and to be honest, I wasn't even sure where the "ads" were till I finally noticed one pop up and disappear on my off-side second monitor, a week after I began using it and earning BAT for doing so.
Litecoin, Monero, Basic Attention Tokens, Bitcoin, and probably Hive, since I used to do the thing in the "old days" and kinda miss parts of it, and parts of me have changed and want to try some new and different things around here maybe, or maybe just more of the same old things. Maybe I should campaign another witness again around here, now that the management has changed?
Yah? nah? Hrm. I am about to have a nice place to live and some time on my hands. May have to mull that one over.
In the meantime tell me about what you mine, or masternode for, or dabble in, with respect to such things?
My plug: If you are interested in some of the cloud stuff I do without any extra equipment and just using my daily computer and a laptop, I can show you, and I have some affiliate links to get you there that would help a brotha' out a lil'bit if you chose to use them. I am not a financial adviser, but these are fun websites to play with, and Id send you the link on request in the comments below.
You should try it.
I don't do mining, but I do participate in staking on Cardano and Tezos. Stellar used to have staking, but they got rid of it, but I still accumulate it.
I am interested in Cardano. I will observe the Hive for a while before renting a server round here though. It's not impossible though.
As a good start toward crypto on the web, here is a link to my favorite free Lite coin (LTC) faucet page, which has gambling games as well where you can win for free or lose for free. It's a fun way to spend a few minutes a day, usually ending in nothing, but sometimes wielding a win worth withdrawing! Just for funsies. Again, your mileage may vary, and I do not deposit here, only play on the generous hourly free drip and simple games.
http://tiny.cc/sircork
This link is safe. I made it on a tiny url thing, so as not to put my permanent link in the blockchain, but rather one I can update offchain later if it changes.
I've never tried any kind of crypto mining except just my posting, formerly on steem and now here on hive.
I don't know enough about the technology to have any idea about running nodes or things like that...
Some of it is as easy as just opening a webpage and letting it use some of your computer power in the background - sort of like the SETI screensaver from back in the wee 2000's that helped read radio telescope data looking for signs of extraterrestrial life.
Will that work on a slower computer?
Not very well. I mean, in theory yes, but it does use the CPU, which is what defines a computer as "slow or fast" more or less. I doubt you could do much else with that computer at the same time. And it wouldn't "hash" very fast, so your rewards would be very low, possibly just pennies per month, not even offsetting the electricity cost it would use.