What to GPU Mine? GPU mining in 2022. A list of GPU mineable coins

Are you a GPU miner currently mining ETH and wondering what happens to mining after ETH 2.0? Are you a newbie who is looking to get in to crypto mining scene, but not sure if it is still worth it? The following post is for you. Here we’ll answer some of the most common questions related to GPU mining.

Is GPU mining profitable? Is it worth buying GPUs now to build a mining rig and starting mining? Will I cover the return on my mining investment? How to choose the best coin to mine in 2022? What is the most profitable coin to mine with GPU? We’ll list of some of the best PoW cryptocurrencies that you can profitability mine with GPU. If GPU mining is your key interest then you are at the right place. Here we’ll talk about GPU mining in 2022.

First of all is mining cryptocurrencies profitable or is GPU mining dead in 2022? The profitability of GPU mining greatly depends on the coin you mine. GPU mining is very much alive and profitable for now. If you already own a mining hardware, then there should be no reason for you to not start mining.

ETH is currently the most profitable coin that you can mine using your GPU. GPU mining will not be dead at least until Eth 2.0 that is when ETH PoW ends. But the question is what will happen to GPU mining after ETH switches over to Proof of Stake?

ETH Merge – GPU mining after ETH 2.0?

If you were following ETH then you probably know about the merge which will mark the end of Proof-of-Work for Ethereum and the full transition to Proof-of-Stake.

Developers are rigorously testing PoS on Ethereum.

We're very close to a historical event. We're testing PoS on #Ethereum. Today will be the first mainnet shadow fork ever. We're roughly 690 blocks (~2 h) away from TTD. Follow here: https://t.co/T20ZMgApYw or https://t.co/Uod8WBsqtw
Huge props to @parithosh_j! #TestingTheMerge pic.twitter.com/M8ZcHnKqaL

— MariusVanDerWijden (@vdWijden) April 11, 2022

For GPU miners the major turning point will be Ethereum’s move to Proof-of-Stake. It will mark the end of GPU mining for Ethereum. But this is not going to happen tomorrow.

First of all nobody not even the ETH developers know exactly when the PoW phase is going to end. If more than 80% of the feature is complete then they will pull the trigger in a couple of months. But developers themselves said on Twitter that the merge will not happen in June as expected. Maybe it’ll happen by September. From the looks of it the merge is not going to happen this year because of the many open issues still on the client side. So most probably it should take place by 2023. But still not sure.

You can follow Ethereum’s website for more updates on the Merge: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/

If you are a GPU miner currently mining ETH then continue mining ETH until the end of PoW. Then you can think of pointing your mining rigs to something else.

There will be other coins available for mining after ETH 2.0 which you can mine it with your GPU and trade for ETH or BTC. But expect their difficulty to increase as everyone who owns a GPU mining rig will jump onto them.

GPU profitability after ETH goes PoS

One question most ETH miners have now is what will happen to GPU mining profitability for alt coins after ETH goes to proof of stake? There will always be Proof-of-Work coins that allow for GPU mining. So mining will go on but we can’t tell if it’ll be as highly profitable as mining Ethereum currently is.

Its hard to predict and for this reason there are many GPU miners who started selling out their GPU farms which they’ve been running it for years. Be careful if bear market emerges then GPU PoW coins will take a hit especially post the Ethereum merge. Because millions of GPU miners who are mining ETH will be looking for alternatives and they’ll be chasing Ethereum sized profits.

If you are currently a miner then there are two options post the Ethereum merge. 1. Look for other alternative coins to mine. For sure there will be profitable coins to mine with GPU or 2. Sell off your GPUs.

Ethereum has proven to be the most profitable crypto. So for now keep mining ETH until it goes full POS. Hope it gets delayed.

However if you are planning to buy GPUs and build a mining rig for Ethereum then it is not advisable. We do not recommend getting in to Ethereum mining or GPU mining at this point as it is very risky. Note that there is also a difficulty bomb planned for Ethereum in near future which will further discourage mining.

Is is worth starting mining in 2022?

Is it still profitable to mine cryptocurrency with a GPU in 2022? Yes, it is. But only if you’re into GPU mining and already got your ROI back. If you have to buy a GPU now to get into mining then you may be out of luck. Mainly because Ethereum will soon go Proof of Stake and that is the only coin worthwhile to mine right now.

After Eth PoW ends mining will not be profitable. You should expect a large amount of second hand GPUs flooding the market. Once GPU prices crash you can acquire it and there may be some profitable coins like for example you can mine Ravencoin, Flux, Bitcoin Gold, Eth classic and so on. But it may not be as profitable as it is now.

For instance Ravencoin had its halving but its price hasn’t showed any improvement. Not just Raven but there use to be many ETH alternative GPU mineable coins. Just like how the crypto market now is flooded with DeFi & NFT projects back then it use to be GPU Proof-of-Work coins.

While Bitcoin cannot be mined using GPU there were many other options that you can mine from your home PC.

ASIC resistant coins

Even top currencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Doge were once GPU mineable. But the rise of ASICs had made the leading cryptocurrencies centralized. Now their mining is largely controlled by ASIC mining farms and pools. In order to allow anyone to mine and as a response to the growing influence of ASICs; coin developers created and used algorithms that are immune to ASICs. So that it can be well-suited for mining with a home computer and allow coins to be more fairly distributed.

Each coins were competing the space and using an unique hashing algorithm in order to resist ASICs and allow GPU mining. Here are some of such popular algorithms and coins that are designed to be ASIC resistant.

Anonymous privacy centric cryptocurrencies like Zcash (ZEC), ZClassic (ZCL) using Equihash algorithm. Monero (XMR) using CryptoNight which later switched to the RandomX protocol and is now optimized for CPU mining. Haven Protocol which is a Monero-based private coin using CryptoNight Heavy algorithm. AEON – a fork of Monero using the CryptoNight Lite algorithm. Bytecoin (BCN) – Another anonymous cryptocurrency.

A MimbleWimble implementation, Beam (BEAM) using Hashii algorithm to support GPU mining. GRIN – Another MimbleWimble coin using Cuckaroo PoW to support GPU mining. Vertcoin (VTC) Lyra2RE algo, Peer coin, Komodo (KMD), Feather coin (FTC) with NeoScrypt algorithm are some of the GPU friendly currency that favors GPU mining and were ones popular among small miners.

Metaverse (ETP), Dash Darkcoin, DigiByte (DGB), VeChain (VET), Horizen Zen cash, Quark chain (QKC), and some meme coins like Garlicoin (GRLC), Monacoin are all categorized under coins that can be mined using GPU.

Some of these coins are only GPU mineable and some simultaneously supported both GPU and CPU mining. Due to ASIC resistance these coins were ones a popular alternative for home miners.

Now all these coins there were once GPU mineable are no longer GPU mineable. Mainly because their mining process has been replaced by ASIC miners or the coin is no longer profitable to mine with GPU.

GPU mining in 2022?

1. The rise of Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) mining hardware that are designed specifically to mine a particular coin / algo, 2. The growing mining difficulty and 3. Drop in coin prices. These three factors have made impossible for at home miners to profitably mine a coin using GPUs.

Back then one would cover their GPU costs in just a couple of months. But in current scenario GPU would not be able to create such high profits. If you are not doing proper research and are mining the wrong coin then your GPUs would barely break even. Maybe in future once the alt season starts the profits might increase and the mining will become profitable again.

But in current trend mining cryptocurrencies using GPU is not as profitable as it use to be before. Anyways even though most coins are dominated by ASICs there are still some coins that are better suited for GPU mining. So GPU mining still makes sense. Because unlike ASICs, graphic cards could mine any algorithm. This allows you to switch between coins anytime without having to buy a new machine.

In general GPU mining in 2022 is still a good option. You can make some decent amount of cash from your GPU rigs and you can even manage to recover the price of the rig. At least there is hope until ETH moves to PoS.

Here are the list of coins that you can profitably mine with GPUs in 2022.

Top cryptocurrencies to GPU mine in 2022

If you are wondering which cryptocurrencies can be mined profitably with GPU in 2022; then here we’ve listed out the top 10 coins that you can mine with your GPU. The following list of coins are highly trusted, safe and most profitable at the moment. However they may change in future and we’ll update the list accordingly.

Here are some of the less known coins which you can also GPU mine with less profits. They still yield good amount of coins and they also hold decent amount of trading volume.

Less profitable GPU coins:

• BitcoinZ (BTCZ) – Zhash algorithm
• Equilibria (XEQ) – CryptoNightGPU
• Zano (ZANO) – ProgPowZ
• Beam (BEAM) – BeamHashIII
• QuarkChain (QKC) – Ethash
• Conflux (CFX) – Octopus
• Conceal (CCX) – CryptoNightGPU
• Sinovate (SIN) – X25X

What to GPU mine?

1. Ethereum (ETH) – Among the top 10 profitable coins to mine with GPU Ethereum is the most valuable coin and it is the most profitable at the moment due to its price. Being the second largest cryptocurrency next to Bitcoin you should mine ETH. Focus on acquiring ETH until the PoW phase ends. Because after that you’ll not be able to mine ETH. Mining ETH is a relatively simple process and you can mine ETH with both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.

2. Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is a fork of Bitcoin and is another popular coin that you can be mine using GPUs. It was created with the goal of making Bitcoin mining more democratic. Its algorithm resists ASICs and benefits GPU miners. Bitcoin Gold holds a decent trading volume on exchanges so you can easily exchange your mined coins for BTC / ETH or USD.

3. Ravencoin (RVN) – Ravencoin is another fork of Bitcoin. The Raven blockchain network is optimized for transfer of tokenized assets from one holder to another. RVN uses KAWPOW algorithm which is designed to be ASIC resistant and anyone can mine effectively at home using their GPUs. After ETH switches to PoS Raven is expected to become the most favorite currency among the GPU miners.

4. Ethereum Classic – Ethereum Classic is a fork of Ethereum that aims to maintain the original Ethereum blockchain. It is one of the oldest GPU mineable coin from the list. Similar to ETH network ETC network also supports DApps and smart contracts.

Ethereum Classic uses a modified version of Ethash mining algorithm called ETC-Hash which provides more access to GPU miners. Miners with even 3GB and 4GB GPUs can mine ETC.

Nanopool.org, Ethermine, f2pool, 2Miners and P2pool are just some of the popular ETH mining pools that also supports mining of ETC. Mining ETC is relatively easy and is similar to mining ETH. Check out the list of popular ETH miners which also supports ETC Hash. Ethereum Classics excellent performance over the years and its massive trade volume makes it an excellent option for mining.

5. Aeternity (AE), Flux (FLUX), Ergo (ERGO), FIRO, AION and SERO are few other cryptocurrencies that you can profitably mine with your GPU currently. These are not as profitable as mining ETH is.

As we said everyone mines ETH these days because of its profitability. Once ETH switches to PoS you can hop on to these other coins. These are next best coins that you can mine with GPU.

Mining most of these coins require a similar setup. Buying and configuring a GPU, setting up a wallet, installing GPU mining software, and connecting to a mining pool.

Check out the mining guide links on the table above to know how to setup and start mining these coins.

Note: While solo mining as an individual is doable, it is not advisable. Solo mining process is slow and may not get you much revenue. To enhance your earnings we suggest you to join a mining pool. With pools you can take advantage of larger processing power and speeds which in turn generates higher mining returns.

There are also services similar to mining pools that allow you to contribute the hash rate to mine other crypto and get rewarded in Bitcoin or Ether. An example is Nicehash.

In addition to the coins listed here we also suggest you to check this guide that explains how you can mine any non-mineable altcoins and tokens.

How to choose the best coin to mine?

Before picking and mining any coin it is important to check the profitability. Use calculators like WhatToMine and other mining calculators to find out whether the coin you are interested in mining is profitable or not.

Then ensure its reliability and legitimacy. To ensure this take a look at the number of exchanges that supports that particular coin. Make sure you can withdraw your mining rewards to fiat or exchange for other currencies like BTC or ETH.

If the coin is only available on less popular exchanges then check out its trading volume. Even though mining seems profitable you should first examine the coins trade volume. You should only mine if the coins trading volume is decent enough. Or else you’ll not able to liquidate or withdraw your mining rewards to cash.

How to profitably GPU mine these days?

Mining can be very profitable if you do your research. The profitability of mining mainly depends on these two factors. 1. Your GPU (device) hashrate and 2. Electricity cost.

If you are looking to invest in a new mining equipment (which we do not advice at the moment) then take these into consideration:

1. Hashrate (The speed at which your GPU can mine). 2. Price (The GPU that you buy should be reasonably priced to see the ROI) and 3. Power Draw (To save on electricity costs).

You need to carefully check out the potential earnings of your GPU or mining rig and examine if it is really worth starting mining. For this you need to make sure to perform precise profitability calculations, evaluate mining hardware costs, electricity costs, and the pool/maintenance fees.

If you want to mine crypto profitability then the most important factor to consider is the price you pay for electricity per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in your region and the GPUs power draw. If your GPU or the mining rig consumes more electricity then it’ll become costly to operate which can ruin your mining profits. Then the electricity price you pay in your area also matters. The lower the electricity price, the better the mining profits. The cost of electricity should not be more than the value of the coins you mine. If it is so then stop mining.

Do a little research around on all these and you’ll determine whether mining is the right option for you or not.

Alright! Let’s wrap up.

Is GPU mining dying?

It isn’t dying. There will always be ASIC-resistant coins for you to mine. Okay, but Is it profitable? It depends. Profitability is primarily determined by the price of the altcoin you mine and cost of electricity in your area. The price of the coin changes from day to day. Use mining calculators like whattomine.com to see electricity expenditures and to find out which cryptocurrency is the most profitable to mine with your GPU.

What you need to note is that amount of mining profit in terms of dollar value will go up during bull market. However in bear market the dollar value will go down but your mining yield might go up. When you are mining if the dollar profitability goes down then make sure to keep your power costs as low as possible and the coin yield as high as possible. This can be achieved only through an efficient mining operation.

If you can’t run an efficient mining operation then it’ll become hard to pay off even your mining equipment cost. There are many new miners who are barely breaking even on their cards because of poor research. You need to find the best mining efficiency for your GPU that uses least amount of electricity for the hashrate they produce. Just ensure that your mining costs are less than the value of the mined currency and you’ll remain profitable.

Bear market is the time that’ll yield you the most amount of coins which you can sell it for 2x the profit if the price raises in future. But you must be very careful. All these coins are speculative assets and not all of them goes up in value.

As we said GPU mining is still profitable that is if you already have a GPU. But we do not recommend investing in a GPU mining farm at the moment for the following reasons. 1. The end of ETH mining coming near. 2. Bear market and 3. With inflation there are also rising energy costs at some places which will not yield profitable results to cover your ROI.

This space is rapidly moving. In order to improve your coin mining results you must constantly research and learn the mining technology.