The ultimate guide to Mining Chia (XCH): Earn crypto from storage drives
Chia (XCH) is a popular cryptocurrency launched in March of 2018. It was founded by Bram Cohen, who owns the peer-to-peer file sharing platform BitTorrent.
Now, what makes Chia (XCH) so successful is its focus on creating energy-efficient crypto. Popular crypto coins like Bitcoin or Ethereum are mined using power-hungry GPUs (Graphical processing units), which require significant energy. Chia (XCH), on the other hand, leverages the power of storage drives to farm crypto instead of using expensive GPUs. This makes Chia (XCH) a perfect fit for miners and creates a steady source of passive income.
In this guide, we will discuss in detail everything you need to know to start mining Chia (XCH) and make earnings from it. We will also estimate how much you may need to invest in making a sustainable passive income.
What do I need to mine Chia?
To mine Chia, you will need free storage. The more storage you have, the faster you can earn from Chia. In addition to storage, you will also need some processing power to make the required calculations for Chia Blockchains to work.
The Minimum requirements and an estimated price to start mining Chia are given below.
Equipment
Price
A computer with minimum Quad-core 1.5GHz CPU
$400 (approx)
Python 3.7 or above
Free
Storage
$10 — $80,000
You can start mining Chia for a couple of hundred dollars, but to create a sustainable income, you may have to invest more.
Step-by-step process of mining Chia (XCH)
So once you have a working computer for making plots and a High-capacity SSD (for temporary storage) or HDDs (for storing plots), follow the steps below to start mining Chia.
Step 1: Download the Chia Blockchain application and install it on your computer.
Step 2: Now click on the “Create a new private key”; if you already have a chia wallet before, you can also connect that.
Note: You will have 24 unique words; take a picture or copy and store them in a safe place. Remember you will need these codes later.
Step 3: Click on next, and if you are prompted with any security alert, press “Allow Access”
Step 4: From the dashboard, you will see several options to continue; press on “Plots”
Note: Plots are allocated space that you can own for harvesting. The more plots you own, the greater rewards you will get.
Step 5: Choose your plot size (K=32 is recommended), and add plot counts ( depending on your storage, you can start with 1).
Step 6: Next, in the Temporary directory, choose a drive you want to store your plot temporarily; if you have an SSD on your computer, it can be a good place to store it.
Step 7: Now, select the final directory; you can choose low-cost physical HDDs for storing plots permanently. And press the “Create Plot” button.
Step 8: Once the plots are created, they will start harvesting and earning you rewards.
How much can I earn farming Chia (XCH)?
Farming Chia (XCH) is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You have to invest your resources to get a reward out of it. So, how much can you make farming Chia? Here is a high-level estimate of your investments and rewards.
First, investing in a decent computer will cost around $400 to $600, and you want to invest in 5000 plots which will require roughly 500 TiB of space. According to the current market price, it will cost you around $14,000 in total.
You can expect to make around 6 Chia (XCH) per month, yielding you more than $250/ month (June 2022). It will take around three years of mining to break even with your initial investment, after which any earnings you get will be your profit.
Note: The estimates were made according to July 2022 prices using the Chiacalculator website.
Bottomline
With energy demands skyrocketing in the last few months, the popularity of energy-efficient crypto coins is likely to increase. Chia (XCH) has a massive advantage over other coins, and it is extremely easy to mine given the low requirements and affordable upfront cost. So, if you ever wanted to venture into the world of mining crypto, Chia (XCH) can be a perfect place to start.
