Even though mining Bitcoin on a PC is no longer feasible, the reality is that you can still mine cryptocurrencies with a PC if you take it seriously and choose the right coin to target. If you’re worried about the volatility of investing directly but still want to take part in the crypto economy, building a small home mining setup could be your path. That said, forget about “cloud mining”—basically everything I’ve seen in that space is pure fraud.

The first thing you need to know is that Bitcoin became impossible to mine profitably at home when ASICs arrived. But there are still several alternatives that remain accessible. Dogecoin is still an interesting option—although it started as a meme, Elon Musk helped popularize it, and now it has a serious user base. Its market cap is 16.7 billion and its daily volume is around 33 million. To mine DOGE, you need a wallet (you can download the official one) and software like CPU miner if you’re using the processor, even though it’s slow. If you want speed, use AMD or Nvidia graphics cards with cgminer or cudaminer. The recommendation is to join a mining pool like MultiPool to take advantage of more computational power.

Ethereum Classic is another option that gained relevance when Ethereum moved to proof of stake. ETC has a market cap of 1.33 billion and a daily volume of 216,000. You can mine it with ASIC machines or even regular desktops. Monero is interesting because it was designed specifically to resist ASICs, so mining cryptocurrencies with a PC is still viable. Its market cap is 7.15 billion. You need the official GUI wallet and software like MultiMiner. Zcash also resists ASICs thanks to its Equihash algorithm, with a market cap of 6.24 billion and a current price of 373.67 dollars.

Ravencoin uses the KAWPOW algorithm, which is also resistant to ASICs, making it perfect for consumer GPUs. Bitcoin Gold is a Bitcoin fork that maintains decent volumes. Horizen, launched in 2017, is mineable with GPU and has a market cap of 92 million. Bytecoin is a smaller but accessible option for CPU or GPU mining. Beam is an implementation of MimbleWimble that supports GPU mining. Vertcoin has a super simple one-click process to get started. Grin is interesting because it performs hard forks every six months to minimize the advantages of specific ASICs.

Now, how much can you earn? Mining cryptocurrencies with a PC using a CPU is possible, but it’s slow, and the cost of electricity will probably outweigh your gains. If you’re serious, you need a GPU. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 and 3080 cards are popular, with prices ranging from 600 to 2000 dollars. The key factor is hashrate—basically how many calculations per second your card can perform. It’s measured in millions of hashes per second (MH/s).

To calculate profitability, use WhatToMine, which gives estimates based on your specific hashrate. What really matters is the current price of the coin you’re mining, because if it goes up, you earn more. The other major factor is the cost of electricity in your area. In the United States, the average is 16.11 cents per kilowatt-hour, but it varies enormously—Idaho is the cheapest at 7.99 cents, and Hawaii is the most expensive at 43.18 cents.

A professional miner I know runs 13 desktops with Windows 10 using motherboards that support 8 GPUs or more, typically with Z390 chipsets. CPU speed doesn’t matter because everything depends on the GPU—some use Celeron and others i9 with no difference. What matters is using 120 mm fans to dissipate heat. During a bull market, with 13 machines, he generated 17 thousand dollars per month, though during a bear market it was barely 500 dollars. Electricity cost is your biggest limiting factor during downturns, but not during upswings.

For those just getting started, I recommend choosing an ASIC-resistant coin, getting a decent GPU, joining a mining pool for more consistent profits, and calculating carefully whether your electricity cost makes the operation profitable. Home mining is still viable, but you need to be realistic with the numbers.