Cryptocurrency mining is often seen by the casual enthusiast or investor as one of the less accessible and more daunting areas of the crypto industry.
With talk of rising difficulty levels, hash power, GPU rigs as well as the problems facing a user trying to obtain the best hardware, it is unsurprising that many don’t even bother to investigate how they could get involved in or make money from crypto mining.
Now though, some new players in the space are hoping to change the way mining is viewed and utilised by a broader audience.
WinMiner are one such company. With the mission of opening up “the complicated world of cryptocurrency mining to the masses,” the new platform aims to address the increasing centralisation of mining and prevent the once-idealistic world of cryptocurrency from losing “the democratic, open and fair system” it was designed to foster.
Boasting over 160,000 registered users, the platform allows miners to mine cryptocurrencies and be rewarded financially in a variety of ways – from bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), to Amazon vouchers and cash.
Founded by Ariel Yarnitsky, a former exec at ICQ – one of the pioneering instant messaging apps – and Idan Feigenbaum, founder of Download Accelerator Plus – a download client with over 400 million installs, the platform aims to offer a more accessible way for users to generate revenue from crypto.
To find out more about their platform and their views on making the space more accessible, I asked the team a few questions:
What makes WinMiner unique?
WinMiner is extremely simple to use. For us this was the most important thing to keep in mind when creating the platform.
When we started this company we had a vision of turning the complex world of crypto into something easily accessible by even the most tech-averse, making WinMiner available to even more ‘mainstream’ audiences.
We quickly realized that making something as complex as crypto coin mining happen with a single click was a great challenge. A user would still need to know how to “operate” crypto, despite the simplicity of the system. They would need to know how to get a wallet, how to transfer and receive coins, and how to keep them safe. The user would need to understand and absorb the new paradigm of virtual money.
Overcoming these challenges resulted in our one-click solution for optimized mining, a US dollar account balance (as opposed to crypto which may shrink with falling crypto prices), and withdrawals in US dollars including Amazon gift cards.
How does it differ from platforms like HoneyMiner?
Mining is critical for blockchain network stability and safety, so additional platforms supporting mining is good news for the industry.
WinMiner’s simplicity sets it apart from other platforms. For example, users don’t need digital wallets and they don’t need to know how to deal with cryptocurrencies, yet they are still able to fully enjoy the benefits of crypto, in real dollars and in payout methods that they are familiar with.
We also cater to advanced users. We support the mining of over 40 coins and while we automatically optimize which coins to mine, advanced users are also able to choose which coins they want to mine, which mining software to use and configure their preferred mining software.
With bitcoin and other top crypto prices not keeping pace with rising mining difficulty – how do you ensure your users remain profitable?
WinMiner displays the power consumption of the mining components so that users can easily make smart decisions in order to boost their profitability. They are able to avoid the mining of coins which require higher power consumption and are able to customize their machines in a manner that reduces power consumption.
Future versions of WinMiner will further optimize mining by taking into account individual user power cost and the different power consumption per coin type. These versions will also be able to ensure that mining only happens when it is profitable enough by every user’s own standards.
It is also worth noting that long term profitability could sometimes make the short term meaningless. Not very long ago, our farm was mining Ethereum at $7 per coin and now it is at around $300, even after the major drops in the crypto markets.
Lastly WinMiner’s vision goes beyond mining and into the realms of commoditizing computing power for additional uses. We would like to see a computer, just like real estate property (only on a much smaller scale), become a source of passive income for people, and at the same time, part of a gigantic cloud computer that can be instrumental in achieving extremely large scale computing projects.
Do you see the light at the end of the tunnel in this current bear market?
The digital data era we are living in is perhaps the most dramatic in terms of its rapid change and evolution. Human behavior, on the other hand, is evolutionary and makes incremental changes over much longer periods.
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore deals with the life cycle of new technologies. He refers to the “chasm”, the challenging period after the early adopters have made their move while the majority is still on the sidelines, much like we see in today’s crypto world.
Where crypto is today, is really no different than where most new technologies were before they became widely adopted. Crossing the chasm for mass adoption together with a non-inflated hype will signal that crypto is on the path to a bright future.
