There are various ways in which someone can get started in bitcoin mining. We’re going to talk specifically about pooled mining in this article.

Pooled Mining

Because of the complex nature of trying to mine bitcoins on your own these days, almost everyone joins a mining pool. What this means is that a group of miners will work together to solve the next block in a bitcoin chain.

What happens when you join one of these pools is that an operations/mining manager will provide you with a small piece of work (called a share), and your job is to solve this share. When a group successfully claims a clock in the chain, the rewards are divided among those who helped solve it. The amount you receive will depend on how many of these shares you complete. Generally speaking, the rewards are equally divided, but this can depend on the specific mining group etc.

If you’d like to get started pretty quickly, and not have to worry about installing any software on your laptop/computer, then you can just use your browser and visit bitcoinplus.com. This website will let you mine bitcoins but the payouts will be very small since you’re not using the full resources of your computer.

This can be a great way to get started in bitcoin mining and you’ll get a feel for what’s involved. However, if you really want to get involved, then you’ll need to install some software and select a mining pool to join.

Miner Software

If you wish to mine “solo” then you must download the official Bitcoin Client. However, is not recommended to mine solo because you will need a huge hashrate power and it will take longer until you’le get a reward. Is better to join mining pools and earn a shar of the Bitcoin earnings.

How to Select a Pool to Join?

Before you go rushing to join the first mining pool you come across, you should do some research. Keep a close eye on what the payout structure for the pool you’ve got in mind. Are there transaction fees associated? What sort of fee does the pool charge? How big/small is the pool? A bigger mining pool will solve more blocks, and therefore will generate more payouts, but these rewards are split up a lot more. The opposite is true for smaller pools.

You can use various websites that will give you an overview of the major bitcoin mining pools that currently exist. Here are the one of first positions.

AntPool

This is the biggest mining pool in terms of the processing power and number of blocks that it generates.

SlushPool (BitcoinCZ)

This was the world’s first bitcoin mining pool and is probably the second biggest out there. It has a very low fee associated with it – at about 2%.

There are many other mining pools of course out there for you to do your homework on. These two are just some main players presented as examples.

If you want to get started in bitcoin mining, then hopefully this article will be of some help to you as you dabble in the virtual currency world.