Start Mining Today!
Managed Mining
Remote Hands
Mining Services
Case Studies
MiningStore
Contact Us
(877) 467-7780
Menu
ZCash Mining in 2019
ZCash Mining is a dynamic industry with consistent updates to the hardware, software, pools, price, difficulty and profitability, making it harder to always make money mining with an ASIC miner.
Mining can be a great investment, especially if you have a cheap power source., but aside from Bitcoin, what is profitable to mine in 2019? You’ll definitely want to check out ZCash mining for an alternative mining option to diversify your portfolio.
What Is ZCash?
When talking about ZCash, it is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that offers users greater control over transactions. It would be feasible to say that that Z-Cash is a public Blockchain containing private transactions.
The CEO of ZCash came up with this idea when he saw the fundamental flaws of privacy in Blockchain of popular Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin or Litecoin. The coin was originally released in late 2016 and has a fixed supply of 21 million units. But instead of the Sha-256 algorithm, it uses the Equihash algorithm to secure its Blockchain.
Upon its inception, the coin quickly gained popularity among Crypto enthusiastic and traders. This was mainly because of the fact that it enabled many traders to have a bigger hold on their privacy
ZCash Bull Run
During the Crypto Bull Run in late 2017, the price of ZCash peak around $850, pushing it among the top 10 Cryptocurrencies at that time. Although, the price retraced, ZCash still remains a favored medium of exchange for several payments.
With popularity comes interest and the same happened with ZCash. The insane price increase for ZCash surged the demand for ZCash mining, in turn, pushing mining hardware companies, such as Bitmain, for production of ASIC hardware running Equihash algorithm.
ZCash is a great option as of late to mine profitably if you have reasonable power costs. As the bear market is stabilizing at the current level, saving some Z-Cash to sell in the future would be the perfect strategy moving forward.
ZCash Mining
When it comes to ZCash mining, we only have a few ASIC miners around. Let’s take a brief look and see whether it would be worth using them in the current market situation.
Bitmain Antminer Z9
This was one of the best ZCash mining equipment upon its release. Manufactured by renowned company Bitmain, the Equihash miner can easily provide a maximum hash rate of 42Ksol/s while consuming 950W of electricity.
This mining equipment was released in September, 2018 and still remains one of the efficient ZCash mining equipment in the market. In addition, you can easily get it for under $1,000 and fire it up using ZCash mining software.
Let’s look at the profits a hobby miner can fetch using this machine. For this, and all our next examples let’s take our average power cost at $0.12KWh for the ease of calculations, while also fixing the pool fee at 0.5%.
From the ZCash mining calculator available at Cryptocompare, we can make a rough estimate of our profits. Using the above machine, one can easily make a profit of $71 per month, provided the hash rate and mining difficulty remains the same.
But that’s not all; we have some other ZCash mining equipment available, particularly from Innosilicon, such as A9 ZMaster.
Innosilicon A9 ZMaster
This ZCash mining hardware was released in June 2018 and boasts a Hashrate of 50 K/Sols. The machine only uses 620W of power. This means it is more efficient than the latter and can highly impact your Return on Investment (ROI).
The cost of this new ASIC hardware is around $2,000. If you are thinking about buying a used unit, there might hardly be any available in the market since the equipment is not even a year old. In addition, miners are also making a decent profit with this machine, so why would they sell it, unless they are making some unbearable loss.
Using the ZCash mining calculator, we can come to the idea of profitability using the A9 Zmaster. Any guess? Well, yes it is better in profitability in comparison to the Bitmain Antminer Z9 and can result in an average monthly profit of $130.
This is some whopping side income a hobby miner can generate. Besides, if you are living in a country where average electricity cost is $0.10, such as China, the odds are more in your favor.
Bitmain Antminer Z9 Mini
Antminer Z9 Mini was among the first ZCash ASIC miners to flood the market. This was particularly made by Bitmain to counter the growing demand of ZCash ASIC miners. The word “mini” is an apt title. Providing a hash rate of mere 10 K/Sols with 300W, you can use this machine easily in your house.
Additionally, the machine doesn’t make much noise if compared to the previous one. But is it profitable? Well, yes! ZCash is potentially the most profitable currency to mine right now. Perhaps, this may be because large investors have not shifted their focus to this currency and the mining difficulty still remains favorable.
The price of this machine is around $380, which is not too much for a hobby miner. Using a Bitmain Z9 Mini machine, one can fetch a monthly profit of $10.5 while relaxing at home. Although ROI might take a year to materialize, with current market consolidation and uptrend price movements, you can significantly overcome this flaw.
The Bonus
Many ZCash mining machines above might already catch your attention. But there is still one mega Equihash miner in production, Innosilicon, which can give you a second thought.
Bitmain and Innosilicon are both rival companies and are putting hard efforts to dominate and maintain the market share of the mining industry. Both are going to launch new Z-Cash mining hardware in the coming weeks that would surpass the current ones in efficiency.
Bitmain is set to release its Bitmain Antminer Z11 at the end of April 2019. This machine is likely to provide a massive hash rate of 135 K/Sols while consuming 1420W of Power. But this is not still what would make it list in the Bonus category.
In contrast, Innosilicon would be releasing their A9++ ZMaster around May 2019. This ASIC hardware is eyeing to dominate the ZCash mining industry by providing a whopping hash rate of 140 K/Sols. In addition, the price of this hardware will be around $2,000 and it will require a PSU of 1550W.
But let’s quickly go to our ZCash mining calculator and see how much we can make by deploying this piece of equipment.
By punching the required fields and assuming the same electricity cost and pool fee, an average investor would easily make a mind-wobbling profit of $380. This means that if you are able to get your hands on this Equihash mine, the ROI would easily be reached within 6 months.
And I assume that it is likely that this equipment will quickly be short in the market and the price might even surge. So, best of luck deploying one!
Conclusion
Because of limited saturation around ZCash mining, the coin still seems profitable. There are only few ASIC machines available in the market running Equihash algorithm. It is likely that once the ZCash price starts to grow, many investors would hop on towards ZCash mining, in turn increasing the total network hash rate and thus mining difficulty.
As of now, investment in ZCash mining looks like the most attractive option for miners to start. Especially if you are new to mining industry or struggling to make profits from your current mining equipment, giving ZCash a try would be the perfect fit!
Disclaimer:
This is a purely informational post. All the metrics and calculations above are done while fixing the price of ZCash at $56. The network hash rate at the time of calculation was 2,598,518 KH/s and the block reward was fixed at 10 ZEC. The impact of future block rate changes and mining difficulty were not taken into account during the measurements. Further electricity cost and pool fees might change over time. In case, of changes of any of the above estimates, we are not responsible for damages. So, invest at your own risk!