June 22, 2022 - 19 min read
Ravencoin (RVN) is a fork of Bitcoin launched on January 3, 2018. Unlike Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and other Bitcoin variants, however, Ravencoin was designed to be mined on average computers rather than on specialized equipment like ASICs. Instead, Ravencoin can only be mined on regular GPUs, such as NVIDIA and AMD chips. This was intended in order to reduce the centralization of mining power that currently exists in the Bitcoin ecosystem, with a few large mining companies possessing the vast majority of Bitcoin mining power. Like Bitcoin and its other variants, Ravencoin has a limited supply of only 21 million coins. Like Bitcoin, Ravencoin uses the unspent transaction output (UTXO) model.
In order to prevent ASIC mining, Ravencoin utilizes a specialized variant of the proof-of-work consensus model known as KAPOW. KAPOW limits the complexity of the mathematical problems miners have to solve from becoming too difficult in order to ensure that smaller miners still have a good chance of validating blocks and winning mining rewards.
KAPOW, however, was not the first algorithm that Ravencoin utilized to limit the complexity of mining. Before KAPOW, Ravecoin utilized other algorithms, including the well-known X16R algorithm, and eventually, the X16Rv2 algorithm, which was later updated and named KAPOW. A new Ravencoin block is created every minute, and currently, the reward for a block is 2500 RVN. The last halving occurred in January 2022, with the previous block reward being 500 RVN.
While the current iteration of Ravencoin uses the KAPOW algorithm, a fork of Ravencoin, Ravencoin Classic (RVC), still utilizes the X16R mining algorithm of the original Ravencoin blockchain. Unlike forks of other blockchains, those who have RVC in a local wallet can claim their RVC for Ravencoin (RVN) on a 1:1 basis with a small amount of coding. Ravencoin Classic can be mined solo or in some pools, such as F2Pool or BSOD. However, it may not be advisable to mine Ravencoin Classic, as it is (at the current moment) slightly less profitable than mining Ravencoin, and is only currently traded on a few exchanges, including Gate.io, BitGlobal, and Bittrex, though it can also be swapped on some decentralized exchanges (DEXs).
Unlike Bitcoin, which is mainly used as a store of value, Ravencoin has a variety of other uses, in some ways, making it slightly more similar to the Ethereum network. Like Ethereum, users can mint Ravencoin NFTs, specifically, by using the MangoFarmAssets RVN wallet platform. Unlike Ethereum, however, it is currently not possible to build dApps on the Ravencoin network due to its lack of smart contract functionality, so this is not a use case. Users can also utilize the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) tokenized version of RVN to trade, borrow and lend on DeFi dApps.
Perhaps most importantly, however, Ravecoin can be utilized to represent real-world assets, such as gold, real estate, and shares of stock, among other types of assets. From November 2018, when the asset layer went live, to January 2021, more than 25,000 tokenized assets have been issued on the chain, which are created by burning RVN. It takes only 5 RVN to create one unique asset.
In addition to creating traditional tokens, users minting asset-backed tokens on the chain sometimes decide to issue them using an STO (securitized token offering), in which the token is legally regulated as a security. While this does take longer and generally requires a legal process, it does lead to legal clarity and avoids potentially violating securities laws. The process of making a Ravencoin STO token is no different than a regular token– the only differences are legal and regulatory in nature.
Some of the most interesting assets that have been tokenized using the Ravencoin blockchain include:
Tinaga Island Resort: The Tinaga Island Resort, a luxury resort construction project in the Philippines, utilized the Ravencoin blockchain for an STO, securitizing $19 million of property, which at the time, was the largest securitized token offering in Asia.
Vinsent Wine: Vinsent Wine utilized the Ravencoin blockchain to tokenize $1.5 million of wine futures on the Ravencoin blockchain in the form of NFTs.
Chainstone Labs: In 2018, Chainstone Labs used the Ravencoin blockchain to transfer $3.6 million worth of securities tokens (representing 29% equity ownership in the company) to Medici Ventures, a subsidy of retailing giant Overstock.com and a leading blockchain accelerator.
Project 33: Project 33 is an art project that creates glass coins that are also represented as NFTs. The project utilized the Ravencoin blockchain to create 265 NFTs, the ownership of each which is connected to a real glass coin. Overall, the project tokenized nearly $80,000 of original art.
Rick DeMont Art and Paintings: Rick DeMont, a contemporary watercolor artist, created NFTs representing $127,600 of his paintings using the Ravencoin blockchain via collaboration with IP Assets Tech and Mango Farm Assets.
Before deciding to commit to mining Ravencoin, there are several questions you should ask yourself first. Some of these include:
As with any business venture or investment, you should have a clear idea of how much you are willing to invest in Ravencoin mining before deciding to begin. The amount of money you invest will impact the efficiency and profitability of your operation, so if you only want to invest a tiny amount of money, Ravencoin mining may not be for you.
However, compared to mining other cryptos, Ravencoin mining is relatively cheap, as you do not need hot, power-hungry ASICs to begin mining. Typically, you should try to commit between $700 and $1000 to a serious (yet small) mining operation if you want to make serious profits. Despite this recommendation, you can mine Ravencoin for free on a laptop with a decent graphics card, so if you just want to get your feet wet and make a few dollars before committing to an investment, this could be a viable alternative. In general, you will need a minimum of 4 GB RAM GPU to mine Ravencoin.
How much money you can make mining Ravencoin will vary based on a variety of factors, including the hashing power of the hardware you use, the current difficulty of mining, and the current price of Ravencoin, just to name a few.
Let’s use the smallest solo operation as an example. If you purchase the Nvidia RTX 3080T, which starts at $699 and has a hashrate of 58.1 MH/s and uses 327 watts, at the average energy price of $0.10 and the current Ravencoin price (as of the writing of this article) of $0.029, you would profit $1.39/day or $507 per year. This means it would take around 16.5 months to break even on your operation. After two years, you would gain a profit of around $316, a 45% gain or around a 22.5% (non-compounded) gain for each year, calculated retroactively. If running for 3 years with the same inputs, the operation would profit $823 overall, an 117% profit, or about a 38% profit (non-compounded) gain for each year, calculated retroactively.
However, despite these potential profits, the crypto market is unstable, and if Ravencoin’s price were to significantly fall, so would the potential profits of mining. For instance, if Ravencoin’s price halved, it would likely take twice as long to break even. However, if this leads fewer people to mine Ravencoin, the difficulty could decrease, which could somewhat compensate for the loss in revenue due to a decline in the price of Ravencoin.
In general, the best way for small Ravencoin miners is to join a pool. It is difficult to calculate exactly how much more profitable joining a pool is, but many pools operate on the Pay Per Share (PPS) system, where a miner is rewarded by their hashrate regardless of if the pool finds a block or not. This is ideal for smaller miners, who may not get the ability to validate many blocks if they have a low hashrate. In general, profitability is the goal, solo mining should only be reserved for the largest of Ravencoin mining operations. As we touch on later, there are currently no known Ravencoin cloud mining operations in existence, though this could change in the future.
Depending on the size and scale of your Ravencoin mining operation, you may want to set up a business in the form of an S-corp or LLC. This way, you may be able to take significant tax deductions, such as expensing your hardware, which could reduce your income tax burden from any money you make mining Ravencoin. However, this may be overkill and eat into your expenses if you are running a small operation, so unless you are making at least a few thousand dollars mining Ravencoin, this may be a waste of your money.
Unlike ASIC mining, mining Ravencoin has fewer risks and is generally smaller in scale, so you will typically not need business insurance unless your operation is extremely large. If you already have a personal corporation or LLC, particularly if it is involved in other crypto activities, you may be able to run your Ravencoin expenses and profits through this instead of starting a new corporation. Your individual tax situation may vary based on a variety of factors, so always contact a qualified tax professional before deciding to take any steps that could impact your taxes.
Ravencoin, at the current moment, has similar profitability to mining other cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. Ravencoin mining, as previously mentioned, does not allow ASIC mining, so it can be more difficult to scale. If you are looking to invest $10,000 to $12,000 or more, you may want to consider mining larger cryptos like Bitcoin. Ethereum, of course, is another popular mining option, but since it is switching over to a proof-of-stake consensus method, traditional mining will soon be rendered obsolete.
Overall, Ravencoin is typically the most cost-effective for small miners who want to supplement their income via mining operations instead of large mining corporations or farms looking to generate hundreds of thousands or millions per year in profits.
Before beginning to mine Ravencoin, it’s essential to get a high-quality Ravencoin-enabled wallet to store your mined Ravencoin. Just as with other cryptocurrencies, if you have accumulated a large amount of Ravencoin, you may want to consider storing it on a hardware wallet, as this will provide significantly more security, as these wallets are disconnected from the internet most of the time and are hence much more difficult to hack. Here is a list of all the wallets known to hold Ravencoin; below, we have listed a few of the best.
Mining website Minerstat has calculated the highest performance GPUs for mining Ravencoin, which we’ll review below. As you can see, when it comes to mining Ravencoin, Nvidia is the clear leader in GPUs, though there are other brands to check out, including AMD.
Some of the highest-performing GPUs for Ravencoin mining include:
As you can see, the Nvidia RTX 3080Ti gives you, as a miner, the best bang for your buck by far, so you would likely be best-suited buying one or more of these. Due to their high expense and lower hashrate, the other machines only make sense financially if you are already using them for gaming or other uses and want to mine Ravencoin as a secondary function.
Some of the top Ravencoin mining calculators include:
Minerstat: Minerstat is a company that provides mining software and hardware as well as providing a variety of mining calculators for various crypto assets. Its comprehensive mining calculator includes all the basics, including difficulty data, hashrate, block rewards, as well as function for calculating rewards in various currencies. It provides profitability data on various pieces of Ravencoin mining hardware, as well as providing information on the largest Ravencoin mining pools, including 2Miners, BSOD, F2Pool, and Minerpool.
Coinwarz: Coinwarz specializes in selling mining hardware, particularly for those mining major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Dogecoin. Its Ravencoin mining calculator is perhaps the easiest to use, with inputs for essential factors including hashrate, mining consumption in watts, electricity costs per kilowatt-hour, and pool maintenance fees. With these factors, it calculates a daily mining profit estimate, as well as broader mining estimates for the entire Ravencoin ecosystem.
RavenMiner: RavenMiner is a website specifically set up to help users mine Ravencoin. It includes all the usual calculator inputs as well as showing a miner’s potential profit in both Bitcoin and dollars. In addition to its mining calculator, it provides detailed information about blocks and luck, wallet statistics, upcoming Ravencoin halvings, a comprehensive FAQ, and other information that may be of interest to potential Ravencoin miners and investors.
2cryptocalc: 2cryptocalc is another website focused on providing easy-to-use crypto mining calculators. It also provides mining difficulty and hashrate charts, as well as information about Ravencoin mining software.
Coin Calculators: Somewhat like 2cryptocalc, Coincalculators.io is a website specifically created to offer easy-to-use crypto mining calculators. Unlike many other Ravencoin mining calculators, it offers hardware cost as an input, which can make it easier for potential miners to calculate the overall profitability of their operation. It also offers information on the most recent prices for Ravencoin on various exchanges, such as Binance.
Cryptorival: Cryptorival is a comprehensive cryptocurrency information website, including mining calculators, product, wallet, and exchange reviews, as well as detailed information on various cryptocurrency algorithms. Unlike some other calculators, Cryptorival offers both Ravencoin price predictions and daily, weekly, monthly, and annual Ravencoin mining profit projections.
When determining your Ravencoin mining strategy, choosing a pool is almost equally as important as choosing your hardware. That being said, some of the top Ravencoin mining pools currently include:
2Miners: 2Miners is currently the internet’s most profitable Ravencoin mining pool. It currently hosts nearly 9,000 Ravencoin miners around the world. In addition to Ravencoin, 2Miners has pools for Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Monero, ZCash, Nervos, Bitcoin Gold, Ergo, Grin, Beam, and a large number of cryptocurrencies not found on most mining pool websites.
BSOD: BSOD is a popular mining pool that, like 2Miners, allows for the mining of both well-known cryptos like Bitcoin and Litecoin, as well as a variety of lesser-known cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin Diamond, DeVault, Exosis Coin, Litecoin Cash, MONA, Peercoin, SCRIV, XAYA, AXE Coin, and xRhodium. In addition to Ravecoin, it also allows for the mining of Ravencoin Classic.
F2Pool: F2Pool: F2Pool is an extremely popular mining pool with a network of servers located both in Asia and the U.S. F2Pool was founded in China as Discus Fish in 2013, making it one of the oldest mining pools on the market. Notably, F2Pool pays a pay-per-share commission. In addition to Ravencoin, F2Pool allows for the mining of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and a wide array of other cryptocurrencies. Users get daily payouts once they have reached a daily threshold. Fees are currently 2.5%. Like BSOD, F2Pool also supports mining for Ravencoin Classic.
Mining Pool Hub: Mining Pool Hub is a mining pool that, like 2Miners and BSOD, is known for supporting a wide array of lesser-known cryptos. In addition to Ravencoin, Mining Pool Hub supports niche coins including Vertcoin, Feathercoin, Monacoin, Zencash, Maxcoin, Groestlcoin, Digibyte-Qubit, and others.
Mining-Dutch: Mining-Dutch is a Dutch mining pool. It’s well-known for its 24/7 customer service and payouts that can occur in as little as every 15 minutes. It supports pooled, solo, and multiport mining, which allows users to jump from crypto to crypto depending on what is the most profitable at the moment. Its multi-exchange algorithm allows users to sell coins as soon as they are confirmed in order for miners to get the best price on their mined assets.
Nanopool: Nanopool is a mining pool that is mainly autonomous, with little customer service, but has benefits including its user-friendly interface, high level of privacy, and low commissions. Users can only mine several cryptocurrencies on Nanopool; it currently supports Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Ravencoin, ZCash Conflux, and Monero.
NLPool: NLPool is a pool specialized for GPU mining. Like Mining-Dutch, it runs a profit-switching and exchange-sale system that allows miners to switch between coins quickly and sell them quickly for maximum profits, depositing the funds back into miners’ wallets, which it claims increases miners’ profits by approximately 30%. Like many other of the pools on this list, NLPool supports mining niche cryptos like
As previously mentioned, cloud mining is the process of purchasing a mining contract that pays another miner or mining pool to mine for you. You pay upfront and receive the profits on a set schedule, typically on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, or, much more rarely, at the time of the contract’s expiration. While most cryptos have a variety of cloud mining services available, as of 2022, there are no current cloud mining options for Ravencoin. This may be because of the lack of ASIC mining for Ravencoin, which does not make mining economies of scale nearly as effective as for other assets, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Bitcoin Cash.
In addition to selecting high-quality hardware and joining a good Ravencoin mining pool (unless you want to mine solo), it’s also important to choose high-quality mining software. Some pools require specific software, but if you mine solo, you can choose whichever software you like. Some software only works with Nvidia cards, some works with only AMD cards, and some options work with both.
As we’ve discussed, the main steps you need to take to begin mining Ravencoin include:
Below, we will run through this process, using the example of downloading the official Ravencoin wallet, using the NBMiner software, and mining Ravencoin on a Windows machine, with some advice for Macs as well. It should be noted that NBMiner does not work on Mac. These steps may vary if you utilize a different wallet or choose to mine Ravencoin on a Mac or Linux. Each mining software and pool typically has a listed series of steps and a troubleshooting guide to guide users as they set up their mining operation for the first time.
It should be noted that, for the official Ravencoin wallet, both Mac and Windows may prevent you from installing it due to the fact that the wallet will come from “an unidentified developer.” For example, on a Mac, to fix this, a user will need to go to finder, locate the .dmg file, press control + click, and click “open,” after which the user will have a chance to override the regular system preferences and install the app.
To configure your mining software, you will need to get the receiving address for RVN. Go to Receive >> Request Payment >> Copy Address. You now have the wallet’s recipient address.
Depending on your specific Ravencoin mining software, there will be different steps you will need to take in order to configure it, but all begin with downloading and unzipping the files on your computer. On a Mac, you may need to override this using the method mentioned above.
If you’re using Windows, you will need to add an exception in Windows Security. This can be done by going to Windows Security, Clicking Virus & Threat Protection, clicking Virus & Threat Protection Settings, clicking Manage Setting, clicking Exclusions, and adding your mining software as an exclusion.
In the example of the NBMiner software (which again, is not available for Mac), after unzipping the folder, you will need to go into the folder and go to NBMiner_Win > start_rvn.bat. Right-click on start_rvn.bat the file to edit it. Inside start_rvn.bat, you will add your Ravencoin wallet address. You should then replace “default” with the name of your mining GPU. Before the wallet address, you have another one, which is the address of the mining pool. Copy the mining pool’s address in the file.
The text in the file should look something like this:
nbminer -a kawpow -o stratum+tcp://rvn.2miners.com:6060 -u YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_ID
Save the sart_rvn.bat file and close it.
To start mining Ravencoin, double-click on the start_rvn.bat file.
You will then want to check your mining pool site to ensure your miner is working properly. Each pool has a payout timeline, so after the minimum timeline, you can check to see if any Ravencoin has been distributed to your wallet.
Many major cryptos, like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, USDC, and USDT allow users to stake to earn additional rewards in terms of APY. Many cryptos can also be either lent out on a platform for interest or used to provide liquidity for decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap. Unfortunately, there is currently no known service for staking Ravencoin, though this could change in the future.
If you believe Ravencoin prices are relatively high, or if you want to lock in your profits immediately, you should sell Ravencoin as soon as it hits your wallet, or at least after you have accumulated a decent amount of the coin. Ravencoin is supported by a variety of exchanges, including Binance, Upbit, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitfinex, Huobi, and OKX, among others. Most of these exchanges have fiat offramps, which will allow you to directly deposit U.S. dollars or other currencies into your bank account, which you can then spend as you like.
Overall, Ravencoin is one of the easiest cryptos to mine with a regular computer and a small amount of money, due to the fact that it does not allow ASIC mining, which is expensive, power-intensive, and highly competitive. However, this doesn’t mean that Ravencoin mining is a great investment for everyone, particularly, larger miners hoping to take advantage of economies of scale.
Ravencoin, like other cryptos, is also a highly volatile asset; for example, in mid-2021, it reached an all-time high of more than $0.23, while, as of May 2022, Ravencoin sits at $0.028, almost 10x lower than its all-time high.
In many cases, those looking to mine Ravencoin could be better off simply investing in cryptos long-term– and those looking to profit specifically from mining (particularly smaller miners), may profit the most from cloud mining operations, in which an individual purchases a mining contract (typically with a duration of 1 year+) and gets regular mining payouts from a large mining pool or mining operation.
However, for those who already have one or more high-quality GPUs for gaming, 3D rendering, or other purposes, mining Ravencoin as a source of side income could be a great idea. As with any crypto venture, mining Ravencoin comes with certain risks, but it also can provide rewards for those who are both smart and lucky in their approach.
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