Bitcoin mine using SHA256 Algo, while Litecoin uses scrypt Algo. There are fewer SHA256 algo coins then the massive scrypt coins being created. Today GPU mining are popular with scrypt mining, while GPU mining no longer feasible or profitable with Bitcoin or any sha256 algo.
SHA256 such as Bitcoin now being mined with ASICs and more and more Asics are coming out with faster hash rate will push the difficulty level to higher than ever, so if anyone have BFL 10GH/s 30GH/s or even 60GH/s they’re not making much per day, and the return of investment ROI will takes forever to get back, maybe in one year if the coin value stay stable and the difficulty don’t triple. Taking electricity cost into considerable, if you’re paying for electricity, stay away from crypto coins mining, as the amount of money you make, you will not be able to cover electricity cost and get your return of investments. Unless you’re ok to mine just for fun and saving up the coins and ok with paying for electricity and don’t care about the ROI in years 10 years or more.
As for scrypt coins currencies mining, unfortunately those GPU mining days are coming to an end also. As more and more scrypt mining devices looks similar to USB Erupters and so on popping up all over the internet and many people are now spending their money on these usb mining devices so call ASIC for scrypt. The hashing speed of these scrypt mining devices will only get better and better, and the price will drop as well making the difficulty level to mine any coin skyrocketed whule Bitcoin price remain stable or could be lowered due to no new development future forecast. The end result could be not much profitable for day miners. I call it day miners because these are the server farm folks, mine coins and sell it the same day.
The day mining folks would have to upgrade their equipment constantly in order to profit, and if not calculating ROI and electricity cost properly could land the day miner in big debts instead of profit.
So how to profit form mining? You can only profit based on the following.
- You get free electricity.
- You already profit in the past to purchase newer actual crypto coin miners constantly and up to date.
- You mine and not selling your coins until it reach a point where if you sell you would profit.
Other than that, if you still want to play around with cryptocoin without spending money on electricity or investment on equipment then it’s best to buy Bitcoin today and keep it for a few years or when you see if skyrocketed again, sell it for profit. However watch out for news in regard to government interference could shut down Bitcoin totally, it is possible, although as of today the government still maintain its status of not going to interfere with Bitcoins but will watch it closely and will shut down exchange business don’t comply with regulations.