Miners who were previously mining BTC & ETH are looking to mine every other altcoin that they find on Coin Market Cap. There are few miners who recently asked us how to mine ADA, MATIC, Polkadot, Link and other tokens that which are not mineable.
Understand that there are over 10,000 cryptocurrencies on the market with a net valuation of over a Trillion $. Now not all of these can be mined. Just because you can mine a specific coin using your GPU you cannot mine all the Proof of Work coins using the same hardware. Also we suggest you to go through this topic on why GPU mining is no longer profitable.
Currently within the top 10 market capitalization only 4 cryptocurrencies are mineable namely Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH moved to PoS and is no longer mineable), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Litecoin (LTC). Out of these 4 only Ethereum was GPU mineable. Rest all are ASIC coins which can only be mined using ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) machine.
Other than these 4 the remaining cryptos such as XRP, Binance Coin (BNB), Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT), Uniswap (UNI) are non mineable. Some of these coins have been already minted and distributed through Initial coin offerings (ICO). Few of it uses Proof-of-Stake consensus (PoS) mechanism. Then there are tokens that run on top of another blockchain.
To understand all of this we suggest you to go through these two articles:
Know the difference between a coin and a token. Also know what mineable and non-mineable coins are in cryptocurrency.
For beginners to avoid confusion here we’ll be listing top Proof of Work cryptocurrencies by marketcap along with their hashing algorithm. Before we see the top mineable coins table let’s first quickly understand what PoW means.
What are Proof-of-Work coins?
PoW means Proof-of-Work, is a mechanism that is used in blockchain networks to achieve trustless and distributed consensus.
The most popular Proof of Work cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. Followed by Ethereum, Litecoin and there are many other coins. All of these cryptocurrency networks are secured through mining. To ensure that transactions are valid and to confirm transactions on the network miners need to solve a transaction block.
To solve the block miners deploy their computer hardware hashing power to solve computationally intensive mathematical problems. These cryptographic calculations require a large amount of computing power to solve the block effectively.
Thousands of miners compete with each other either solo or in a group to solve the problem. The solution to the problem is known as hash and whoever finds the solution to the problem first will receive a compensation for their work done.
To know more about this read about Bitcoin block rewards.
Proof of Work algorithm requires miners to work in order to get the rewards. The rewards they receive depends on the network where they are working on. For example Bitcoin miners validate Bitcoin transactions on the Bitcoin network, hence they will receive their reward in Bitcoin (BTC). Likewise Ethereum miners earn ETH, Litecoin miners get reward in LTC and DOGE miners receive DOGE .
Once the miner solves the problem the transaction block is added to the network and every nodes (Miners) on the network is notified about it as well. This not only helps miners proceed to work on the next mining block but it also ensures there are no double spending occurred on the network.
This is how every mineable coin works.
Mineable cryptocurrencies
In 2021 according to Coin Market Cap there are close to 10000 cryptocurrencies. Out of all there are only 500 cryptocurrencies that uses Proof of Work algorithm. Only these coins can be mined.
Among them most of the largest and well known PoW crypto currencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Zcash, DigiByte, BSV, ETC can only be mined using ASIC mining equipment and not all of them uses same hashing algorithm. To mine each of these coins you need a specific ASIC that is capable of mining that particular algorithm.
On the other hand coins like ETH, XMR, RVN, Bitcoin Gold are GPU mineable. Anyone can mine them at home using standard graphic cards. But remember that not all of them are profitable. Do your homework, evaluate the electricity costs in your region and use mining calculators to understand which PoW cryptocurrency you can mine profitably.
To avoid confusion between which ones are Proof of Work coins and which ones are not mineable we’ve made a list of coins. The table below shows the top 20 coins along with the hashing algorithm that they use. All these are are mineable and it shows which ones are GPU mineable and which ones are ASIC coins.
Top best PoW cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin is the first coin to introduce PoW to the cryptocurrency world. Till now it is the number 1 Proof of Work cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, network effect, user base and popularity.
Other virtual currencies like Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, follows the list.
All mineable coins uses Proof of Work consensus algorithm to produce new blocks on the blockchain. However not all of them uses same hashing algorithm. Use the table below for reference to find out the algorithms used by the top Proof of work cryptocurrencies.
Proof-of-Work coins by market cap and volume
The most valuable cryptocurrency on the market Bitcoin alone capture more than 70% of the Proof of Work market cap.
The following table ranks the Proof of Work cryptocurrencies in order and it only includes the top 40 currencies. Ignore Ethereum from the list as it it no longer relies on Proof of Work.
Note: There are more than 500+ PoW cryptocurrencies in existence as of Sep 2023. Other than the above list all other coins have little to no trading volume. They do not have any actual use case. So before you mine any coins do proper research and mine / hold it at your own risk.
What do you think about the top Proof of Work mineable coins? Are you still mining them? Do let us know in the comments below.
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