Pi Network Mining: The Doubtful Thing You Need to Know
In the early stages of bitcoin, many people argued that bitcoin will touch the sky soon. The same happened and those who had bitcoins got immense value. While those who did not care, are regretting it now. Another similar case has emerged. In the past few years, a project called Pi Network is being discussed all over the internet. It is said that Pi Network will come out as another bitcoin. Most people are advising others not to let this opportunity slip off their hands. But are the founders of Pi Network honest in what they promise?
Of course, this is the question that many Pi Network users are seeking answers to. Some things need to be cleared. Such big projects cannot leave their customers in dark. The Pi Network mining mechanism is not similar to that of other cryptocurrencies. This what I am going to talk about in this article.
What is crypto mining?
According to Pi Network, users can now mine this new crypto using their phones. As we all know, mining crypto nowadays has become more competitive. Not every person can mine crypto as it involves higher risks of capital loss. Pi Network also argues that mining Pi on your phone is safe that it will not even drain your phone’s battery. But is it 100% true?
Before getting to the main point, you must know about crypto mining. Cryptocurrencies unlike fiat currencies are not issued by the central banks. Rather cryptocurrencies are virtual currencies, decentralized and created through computers. Crypto mining is the solution to complex cryptographic equations using computers. A small amount of crypto is given as a reward to the miner who used the computing power of his computer to do this job. This process of mining verifies and validates data blocks and transaction records to the ledger called the blockchain.
This way anyone with a computer can start to generate any of the cryptocurrencies but the speed of crypto creation or crypto mining depends on the computing power of computers. Nowadays mining crypto is more competitive. You must have the latest powerful computing hardware to start mining but still, it is hard to say that you will make profits. Sometimes people lose their invested principles.
Types of crypto mining
There are different ways to mine cryptocurrencies. Following are the four well-known mining methods:
1. CPU Mining
Crypto can be mined using your CPU processing power. But it is not the recommended way of mining. This method is slow and inefficient. Though it gives the ability of mining crypto to everyone who owns a desktop or laptop or even a smartphone. But it generates only pennies even if you keep mining for months. There is also the risk of damaging your hardware. Mining crypto is a heavy task and it makes CPUs hot and is quite harmful and that is why it is the least recommended method of crypto mining.
2. GPU Mining
Crypto can also be mined using your GPU processing power and this one is the most widely used mining method. It is safer and more cost-efficient than CPU mining. Professional miners invest large amounts of their money to build their own GPU mining rigs. GPU mining proves to be more profitable than CPU mining as it gives more mining speed and a low risk of hardware damage.
3. The ASIC Mining Machine
ASIC stands for application-specific integrated circuits. These machines are devices specially designed for mining purposes only. They are more powerful but expensive yet more profitable than CPU and GPU mining rigs. They have special hardware chips inside them which makes them powerful and gives blazing fast mining performance.
4. Cloud Mining
Cloud mining is another well-known and widely used mining method. When a large corporation owns all the mining equipment and rents out their mining power individuals, it becomes cloud mining. These corporations have a large number of powerful mining rigs installed, organized, and managed by crypto expert teams. This is obviously, the most hassle-free mining process for the customers. It does not require you to manage your hardware nor will you bear the risk of hardware damage. All you need to do is to buy a mining plan from them and sit back and add up your crypto balance. Different cloud mining corporations offer different mining plans from cheap to expensive and from short to long or lifetime periods. The mining power lenders only take the rent and electricity and maintenance costs from the buyers. The rest amount goes to customers’ crypto-wallets.
The Pi Network mining
The Pi Network argues that we have invented such an innovative cryptocurrency that it can be mined using smartphones without any burden on phones’ hardware. I was curious to know about the mining technology they have implemented in Pi. Even their website domain name is minepi.com. I installed the Pi app to check whether it uses my phone’s resources to mine Pi. After registering my account, I opened the app and pressed the mine button. I then closed the app but my mined balance was increasing at a constant speed of 0.12 Pi per hour and the app was not even running in the background.
Mining uses resources but Pi does not. Mining Pi using their app is like cloud mining. Because it does not use your phone’s hardware but if that’s the case why haven’t they given any details about this. If it is not cloud mining nor hardware mining, what type of mining is it then?
Conclusion
The conclusion is so strange for me. I searched for but did not find any details about how the Pi crypto is generated or mined. Of course, this is something Pi Network must disclose publicly. Are they giving us free crypto in exchange for doing nothing or monetizing us or do they collect some type of data from us? This is a huge question mark.