The easy guide to mining Dogecoin

Did you know that Dogecoin (DOGE) was intended as a joke? The creators made DOGE as a mechanism to enable users to tip each other for fun social media content. Despite the fact that DOGE set off on a whimsical foot, it’s become one of the most popular cryptocurrencies out there.

When it comes to mining DOGE, the fastest and most profitable way to do so is using ASIC-driven hardware, a rig that uses application specific integrated circuits or ASICs. You also need to be a member of a DOGE mining pool. In short, you need three basic things in order to start mining Dogecoins:

  1. A mining rig, you are better off choosing ASIC hardware
  2. Your choice of Dogecoin mining pool – we will list some below
  3. The right software configuration

Mining Dogecoin can be profitable

There are a couple of reasons why mining Dogecoin instead of another coin is a good idea. First, transactions on the Dogecoin blockchain happen quickly so it means that DOGE mining pools tend to make payouts every 24 hours.

Over and above quick payouts, you can also rely on consistent revenue from Dogecoin. As a result, mining Dogecoin is efficient and profitable – and a good prospect. There are also plenty of markets where you can sell your Dogecoin which means that it is worth considering Dogecoin mining to generate a daily income for yourself.

How to mine Dogecoin

DOGE is based on the Scrypt hashing algorithm and for that reason the best way to mine it is using something like the Antminer L3++ as this device makes use of ASICs. Furthermore, you should seriously consider joining a mining pool when mining DOGE coins because it is simply the best way to maximise profits.

What does it mean to join a mining pool? It’s simple really: you add your mining power to a group of other people’s mining capabilities so that collectively you can achieve a higher hash rate – which means that it becomes quicker to solve the problems that lead to a crypto block award. In contrast, mining a single block on your own can take months or even years which means you will wait a very long time for any kind of reward, and you will have costs to cover in the meantime.

What’s required for mining DOGE

There’s a couple of things you need in place to mine Dogecoins. Your internet connection is the first, and we’ll suggest that you have uncapped usage on your connection, but make sure you have at least 0.5GB per day available. Next, you need a wallet to store your DOGE, you will also use this wallet to cash out your Dogecoins. DOGE has a free wallet which you can try, but many wallets support DOGE. So, the four things you need are:

  1. An ASIC miner as your mining rig
  2. Internet that’s 24/7, always-on
  3. An estimate of how much power you will consume with your rig
  4. A trustworthy crypto wallet which can receive your Dogecoins

Other important things you should think about

Mining Dogecoins effectively and risk-free involve a couple of other complexities. Keep in mind that your mining rig will use a lot of power, so make sure your home or facility’s electrical power grid can support the power consumption of your mining rigs, particularly if you have several units.

Because your rigs will work around the clock you should also account for heat build-up because these hardware units can generate a lot of heat. You need to cool your rigs so that you can make sure they keep on working 24/7 and to make sure mining performance stays at its maximum. Overheated machines can also be noisy.

The planning guide to follow will explain what you need to do to deal with the potential power, heat and noise issues generated by ASIC mining rigs. One other thing: the lower your latency is on your internet connection, the better your mining rigs will perform – you’ll be able to notify the blockchain of a solved block faster, so a competing miner won’t accidentally beat you to claiming a solved block.

The best mining rig to buy

Recently, ASIC mining hardware was released which is able to mine coins using the Scrypt algorithm, that includes Dogecoin. Amongst your current options we think Bitmain Antminer L3++ is really your best option because it offers a good balance between electricity consumption and hashing power – and of course, price. In comparison the BW L21 has a low hash rate and also uses less power but the price is far higher for this ASIC rig.

Configuring your ASIC hardware and software

Because you are mining DOGE with an ASIC rig you don’t need to worry about tricky software downloads and configuration anymore. ASICs come with pre-configured software pre-installed which means you are ready to get going by doing some basic configuration. Here are the steps:

  1. Connect your ASIC rig to the internet and supply electricity

    Connect your ASIC to your power supply of choice. It’s easy to do this but do make sure you plug in every connector, you also need to plug your power supply into your power grid, of course. Don’t forget to plug the LAN cable in too.

  2. Choose the Dogecoin mining pool that suits you best

    You should have a look at the popular DOGE mining pools and weigh up how these pay out rewards, what the fees are for mining and also make sure the payment method suits you. Some of the best pools include Aikapool, BlockMasters and Multipool. Once you’ve picked a pool you can go to the mining pool webpage and create workers, if the pool requires it.

  3. Determine the IP

    One way to find the IP address for your mining rig is to access your router – look in the DHCP list and find the associated host which might be Antminer, for example. Note the associated IP address.

    Alternatively, download the rig’s IP reporter tool to your computer, this should show you a window where you can trigger a search – in turn, the tool will report what the IP address of your mining rig is. Of course, this method will only work if your mining rig is on your local network.

  4. Access your mining rig via it’s web interface

    To access your mining rig, simply enter its IP address into your web browser. You should get a dialog box which allows you to log in, usually the credentials are simply root/root. But, you can check the manual shipping with the rig for the default credentials.

  5. Supply your mining pool’s details

    When you’ve accessed your rig you can open the settings menu so that you can add the mining pools you want to contribute to. Make sure you supply complete details so that you can ensure your mining is never halted.

    You need to enter:

    The URL – for example, stratum+tcp://aikapool.com:3433

    Worker – MyDOGEWalletAddress

    Password – -p c=DOGEPASS,mc=DOGEPASS

    If you don’t set out the payout coin you risk a payment getting sent via the incorrect cryptocurrency.

  6. Save your configuration

    Make sure to click save + apply to fix your configuration. It is also worth checking into the status of your miner after a while, see if you can find a hashrate – this indicates that your ASIC is performing and actively mining.

Mining DOGE in the cloud

Like other cryptocurrency, you can mine DOGE using a cloud platform, which could be attractive to you if you don’t want to faff with anything technical, prefer not to make an initial investment or simply don’t want to risk the electricity bills. When you use cloud mining you are basically asking a third party to do all the work, in exchange for a payment. So, always check the fees involved with cloud mining and compare it to your mining profits.

You might find some cloud mining vendors offer a couple of months of free mining. However always make sure you are completely aware of all terms and conditions. IQMining can be a good option here.

Calculating Dogecoin profits

You always need to check your potential earnings before you start to mine, but you can use our simple calculator. All you need to do is to fill out the power consumption of your ASIC rig, the rate at which it hashes, electricity prices in your region – and the fee charged by your mining pool. Tap calculate to see your results.

Alternatively, to just see the pure sum of money you can make, only complete the pool fee and the hash rate. Note that, if you choose to use cloud mining, there will be a fee involved that is a part of your cloud mining contract so you need to make sure that the income you generate from mining will cover the price you pay for your cloud mining contract.

Keep in mind that the results below will vary depending on a range of factors which will change all the time – from block reward, to the value of DOGE and of course the overall network difficulty. We can show you an estimate for today, but the results for tomorrow would be very different.

Common questions about Dogecoin

How long will it take me to mine one DOGE?

It depends on your mining hardware, but by example the BW L21 can hash at 550 megahashes per second, which means you can mine one DOGE in less than an hour.

What’s the maximum I can mine in a day?

Use our calculator above to work out the value of the coins you can mine in a day, it will provide you with an approximation.

Should I mine DOGE?

Well, work out if the money that you get from selling the DOGE you earn will cover the costs of mining it – if so, you should consider mining Dogecoin.

Is there a fixed supply of DOGE?

Unlike some other cryptocurrencies, there is no limit to the supply of Dogecoins – as such you can’t estimate when the very last DOGE will be mined.

Is DOGE mining legal?

For the most part, yes – many countries ranging from Canada and the US through to Russia are completely open to cryptocurrency but some countries including Morocco, Algeria, Bolivia and Nepal will have limits on both mining and trading of cryptocurrencies.

More about Dogecoin

Billy Markus (from Portland in Oregon) created a coin which he hoped will be fun and easy to access. Since then, Dogecoin (DOGE) has achieved a big market cap. Around the same time someone called Jackson Palmer was asked by student on Twitter to make the idea popular. Jackson used to work for Adobe Systems in Australia, but as a side project decided to buy the domain dogecoin.com, adding some basic website elements.

Markus heard about it and the two decided to push Dogecoin, which was derived from Luckycoin – on its own a version of something called Litecoin. Dogecoin is based on the Scrypt algorithm and DOGE was released on the 6th of December in 2013, quickly becoming a sensation.

Dogecoin is a fun project – from the whimsical plans behind the coin through to its mascot, a Shiba Inu. It’s no wonder it has become a sensation on the internet – and it also brings solid opportunities to make profits by mining it.

The team behind DOGE

Jackson Palmer and Billy Marcus worked together to launch Dogecoin, but the credit for creating DOGE is given to Billy Marcus. Over time the DOGE team is trying to make Dogecoins even more accessible and even more fun – the idea is to make it more widespread than Bitcoin.

It is a close community and you can easily get your questions answered by getting in touch with the DOGE team. Dogecoin’s team is also know for raising funds for good causes, including the Dogecoin Foundation – it’s intended to get people to use Dogecoin for charity causes.

The DOGE hashing algorithm

Litecoin and Dogecoin uses the same algorithm for hashing – it is called Scrypt, a result of the SHA-256 hard fork of BTC. Appearances are the Scrypt is in fact both more efficient and also works more quickly than the BTC hashing algorithm.

The mining block time for DOGE is just about one minute, while the network difficulty is much less than it is for Litecoin – which is 2.5 minutes block time – and of course 10 minutes in the case of Bitcoin.

Interestingly, when you mine DOGE you can do it at the same time as mining Litecoin. Litecoin is arguably more stable and has a bigger role in the cryptocurrency market than DOGE, so you hedge your bets, in effect. Mining DOGE and LTC simultaneously can maximise your mining income.

DOGE forks

It is likely that DOGE will incur a hard fork sometime soon. A new project on Ethereum called Rinkeby will be using DOGE as a test asset – it’s cause a lot of chatter in the cryptocurrency sphere. The expectations is that something called Dogethereum (DOGX) is going to separate from DOGE’s original chain at some point.

There has never been a hard fork of DOGE, this will be the first one and the plan is to make an alternative cryptocurrency which will be even faster than DOGE for processing transactions, while also making use of smart contracts which runs on Ethereum’s blockchain. Users of DOGE and investors in DOGE are rethinking the value of DOGE as a result.