A Never Ending Battle For Mining Supremacy

Since Bitcoin's inception in 2009, cryptocurrency mining has been popular both for average enthusiasts and hardcore fanatics.

Mining was first done with regular Central Processing Units, which meant PC enthusiasts with the best hardware had a head start mining Bitcoin.

According to an article by University of Washington Professor Michael Bedford Taylor, a little over a year later in 2010, people around the world were given the code to begin mining Bitcoin with Graphics Processing Units, which sparked the beginning of many a nerd's love affair with mining the preeminent cryptocurrency.

Mining is the process in which transactions are recorded and immutably stored on the Bitcoin Blockchain.

Mining started out with CPUs validating the blockchain, which moved on to GPUs before the creation of ASIC chips changed the game altogether.

Luckily, the emergence of altcoins like Ethereum reinvigorated the GPU mining sector, with an algorithm that favoured GPU chips.

While it's hard to believe that AMD and Nvidia resisted the urge to turn their focus to building GPUs for mining purposes, both have maintained that their priority is building graphics cards for gaming.

While Nvidia have designed boards dedicated to mining in 2017, most of their chips have been built for the conventional purpose of GPUs - that is rendering graphics.

As reported in February by CNBC, Chinese mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain posted bigger profits than both Nvidia and AMD in 2017.

In a competitive, corporate world, the emergence of ASIC miners was always going to make it hard for amateur enthusiasts to get ahead. Nevertheless, profitable mining is still achievable with GPUs, but investors with big cheque books can get their hands on the most powerful hardware on the market - whether or not the community likes it.