Which Coin Should You Solo Mine on mkpool? (2026)
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Frequently asked questions
What is the easiest coin to solo mine?
Easiest in the sense of most frequent results is a low-difficulty SHA-256 chain rather than Bitcoin: for the same hashrate, a smaller network is found far more often because you represent a much larger share of it. The catch is that the block reward is worth less and the chain carries more risk. There is no chain that is both easy to win and as valuable as Bitcoin.
Should I mine Bitcoin or a smaller coin?
It depends what you want. Bitcoin is the largest prize and the longest odds, a genuine lottery ticket. A smaller SHA-256 chain turns up results more often for the same hardware, which is more engaging, but each win is worth less and the chain may have thin liquidity or a lower security budget. Many miners run Bitcoin for the prize and treat smaller chains as the more active option.
Does mining a lower-difficulty coin improve my profit?
Not reliably. A lower-difficulty chain means more frequent blocks but a smaller and often more volatile reward, so the two roughly trade off, and market price and risk dominate the outcome. Lower difficulty improves how often you see a result, not a guaranteed return. Solo mining any chain is probabilistic and can lose money against electricity cost.
Can I mine two coins at once?
Through merge mining, yes on one algorithm: mkpool's Litecoin pool merge-mines Dogecoin, so a single Scrypt miner gets a chance at both LTC and DOGE blocks from one connection at no cost to Litecoin hashrate. Otherwise a miner hashes one chain per connection, though you can point different miners at different chains.
How do I compare my odds across coins?
Use the solo mining chance calculator. Enter your hardware's hashrate and it estimates the mean time to a block on each chain from the live network difficulty. That turns the abstract 'Bitcoin is harder' into concrete numbers for your specific miner, which is the only honest way to compare.
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