Now that you already know about the best Bitcoin mining hardware, we’re going to talk about Bitcoin mining software.
What is Bitcoin Mining Software?
Bitcoin mining hardware handles the actual Bitcoin mining process, but:
Bitcoin mining software is equally as important.
- If you are a solo miner: the mining software connects your Bitcoin miner to the blockchain.
- If you mine with a pool: the software will connect you to your mining pool.
- If you are cloud mining: you do not need mining software.
Importance of Bitcoin Mining Software
- What is Bitcoin Mining Software?
- Importance of Bitcoin Mining Software
- Bitcoin Wallets
- Bitcoin Mining Software for Windows
- Bitcoin Mining Software for Linux
- Bitcoin Mining Software for Mac OS X
- Cash Out your Coins
The main job of the software is to deliver the mining hardware’s work to the rest of the Bitcoin network and to receive the completed work from other miners on the network.
Bitcoin mining software monitors this input and output of your miner while also displaying statistics such as the speed of your miner, hashrate, fan speed and the temperature.
Bitcoin Wallets
One of the most important things you will need before using any kind of Bitcoin mining software is a wallet.
Why?
This is because all Bitcoin mining software will ask you for a Bitcoin address that will be used to send your mining rewards and payouts. Once you create or download a wallet you will be able to get a Bitcoin address from your wallet.
There are many Bitcoin wallets, but these are the ones we recommend if you are just starting out:
- Ledger Nano S – Secure Bitcoin hardware wallet for all platforms.
- Electrum – Simple Bitcoin wallet that works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
- Mycelium – The most popular Bitcoin wallet on Android.
- breadwallet – The most popular Bitcoin wallet for iOS.
If you expect to earn a lot of money through mining then it would be smart to purchase a more secure wallet: a hardware wallet.Now that we understand mining software and how it helps in the mining process, and you got your Bitcoin wallet and address, let’s look at different software on different operating systems.
Bitcoin Mining Software for Windows
Bitcoin Miner
You can use Bitcoin Miner on Windows 10 and Windows 8.1.
It has an easy to use interface, power saving mode, mining pool support and fast share submission.
One useful feature is the profit reports feature because this feature will help you know if your mining is profitable or not. The latest version of this software is Bitcoin Miner 1.27.0.
BTCMiner
BTCMiner is an Open Source Bitcoin Miner for ZTEX USB-FPGA modules 1.5.
BTCMiner comes with the following features:
- Dynamic frequency scaling in that BTCMiner automatically chooses the frequency with the highest rate of valid hashes
- Ready-to-use Bitstream i.e. no Xilinx software or license required.
It also comes with supported FPGA boards which contain a USB interface used for communication and programming.
CGMiner
CGMiner is arguably the most famous and commonly used among Bitcoin miners at the moment.
CGMiner is based on the original code of CPU Miner.
This software has many features but the main ones include:
- fan speed control
- remote interface capabilities
- self-detection of new blocks with a mini database
- multi GPU support
- CPU mining support
BFGMiner
BFGMiner is more or less the same as CGMiner.
The only major difference is that it doesn’t focus on GPUs like CGMiner but instead it is designed specifically for ASICs.
Some unique features of BFGMiner include: mining with free mesa/LLVM OpenCL, ADL device reordering by PCI bus ID, integrated overclocking and fan control.
EasyMiner
EasyMiner is GUI based and it acts as a convenient wrapper for CGMiner and BFGMiner software.
This software supports the getwork mining protocol as well as stratum mining protocol. It can also be used for both solo and pooled mining.
Among its main features is that it configures your miner and provides performance graphs for easy visualization of your mining activity.
Bitcoin Mining Software for Linux
CGMiner
CGMiner is arguably the most famous and commonly used among Bitcoin miners at the moment.
CGMiner is based on the original code of CPU Miner.
This software has many features but the main ones include: fan speed control, remote interface capabilities, self-detection of new blocks with a mini database, multi GPU support and CPU mining support.
BFGMiner
BFGMiner is more or less the same as CGMiner.
The only major difference is that it doesn’t focus on GPUs like CGMiner but instead it is designed specifically for ASICs.
Some unique features of BFGMiner include: mining with free mesa/LLVM OpenCL, ADL device reordering by PCI bus ID, integrated overclocking and fan control.
EasyMiner
EasyMiner is a GUI based software and it acts as a convenient wrapper for CGMiner and BFGMiner software.
This software supports the getwork mining protocol as well as stratum mining protocol. It can also be used for both solo and pooled mining.
Among its main features is that it configures your miner and provides performance graphs for easy visualization of your mining activity.
Bitcoin Mining Software for Mac OS X
RPC Miner
RPC Miner can be used on Mac OS 10.6 or higher and features integration with Mac OS APIs and systems.
More
All of the mining software above listed for Linux and Windows also works for Mac OS X. Scroll up to learn more!
Cash Out your Coins
Once you have this setup and are mining, you may need to cash out some of your coins in order to pay off your expenses such as electricity.
For this you can use Buy Bitcoin Worldwide to find a Bitcoin exchange in your country.
