Hi, can anyone help explain how mining a less profitable coin is a good idea?
For example, say Ethereum is #1 most profitable.
Say Ubiq is #5 most profitable.
Some people will still prefer to mine Ubiq, even if it's #5. Why is that? Isn't it smarter to just mine Ethereum since it's most profitable, and then use the earnings to buy Ubiq? You will get more Ubiq per day wouldn't you?
This is a million dollar question and nobody can answer you with 100% certainty. If you go through this forum you'll find out that so many people asked the similar questions (same context) hoping someone can guide them or provide the "Best" answer!
It's all up to your research, opinion, analysis, believe, speculation towards a coin. Some take the easy way and mine the most profitable, some other do research to discover the full potential of a less profitable coin to profit in future. Each strategy has its pros and cons. Who can guarantee the current most profitable coin will retain or increase in value? And who can give you assurance that "this" less profitable coin will skyrocket?
To me, it seems the math proves the point though.
If you mine the #1 coin and make $100 in a day > Mine #5 alternative coin and make $80 in a day
If you take the $100 you made, you can buy more of the $80 coin, you are better off, right?
I may be wrong though but it seems pretty clear.
Meh.
I used to stick to the most profitable, but you end up being a small fish in an ocean of farm whales and nicehash a-holes where the difficulty just grows constantly and you're mining crumbs. As soon as I was unable to mine 1 ETH a day, I switched. I didn't like the whole diff bomb BS either. Miners made ETH what it is today and I felt like Vitamin Butterflick just told us all to go screw ourselves. This made me realize that just because something is extremely profitable to mine, doesn't necessarily make it the right choice at my level.
I also used to think like you, get the most profitable then sell it to buy other coins. Sounds good, but doesn't work, unless you do this all day long and have no full time job, family, house etc to take care of.
What has been way more profitable to me has been to look for coins that are easy to mine and accumulate while using algorithms that also use less energy, like cryptonight. While everyone was going mad on ethash to mine 0.5 ETHs a day, I was happily mining my XMR, then switched to sumo when no one cared about it (it reached 10 bucks today) and then to electroneum.
The key is really to find a coin that has a solid project, community, dev etc. Most of the time, the patience pays off once the coins starts to shine and gather interest.
Then again, you need to do this research yourself...