How to Mine Testnet Bitcoin: A Practical Discussion

Anyone got a solid guide for mining testnet bitcoin? I'm looking for a decent amount instead of just the usual tiny bits from faucets. Appreciate it.

You might wanna hit up n0nce, he put together a faucet project that’s pretty good here. But mining on testnet is kinda like mainnet, just the difficulty rules tweak a bit.

Good on you for posting in the right place this time. Just remember to try using a search engine next time. Type in how to mine testnet btc and you’ll find loads of stuff.

Check this out: [Guide] Solo mining with cgminer and Bitcoin Core. Also, there’s [Guide] Solo mining with bfgminer and a CPU/GPU.

Thanks, everyone. I found a guide, but I'm searching for more detailed info. It's not just plug-and-play with an S9 and testnet address. I need a full setup guide, like how to run a testnet full node and connect it to a mining pool.

Ever think about backing up your mainnet stuff to an external drive? Setting up a testnet is easy, just change bitcoin.conf to testnet=1 and restart. S9 is not ideal for testnet mining; you'd be better off with CPU or GPU unless you set up a pool.

Yeah, I don’t mix wallets between testnet and mainnet to avoid mess-ups. Got Bitcoin Core running on a separate machine, pruned it down to two months. Found a guide for setting up a pool on S9 too, but might just use the built-in GPU for simplicity.

Just a heads up, don't quote the whole post it gets messy. If you add server=1 to bitcoin.conf, it'll let you accept RPC commands. But be cautious if you're exposing RPC to the net; not safe without encryption.

Thanks for the tips! I got Bitcoin Core running as a testnet full node, pruned to two months. I entered the RPC details but now I’m stuck with cgminer saying there’s a config error. It keeps saying "invalid parameters to set_kernel". Not sure what to tweak.

First gotta find out where to rent an S9. My node's set up, P2Pool's running, but no miner yet. The config generator for Bitcoin Core is pretty handy too.

I’m only getting 119GH/s on testnet. Doesn't seem like I need an ASIC after all. But still wanna give it a shot.

So, just ran a test on nicehash and it says pool is incompatible. It didn’t have the sha256t option, just sha256. Mempool shows nicehash testing on testnet though. Looks like my pool setup is off. Any better pool suggestions?

Have you checked out MiningRigRentals? It can be a bit pricey, but if you rent some th/s, it might just work with your setup.

Tried signing up for miningrigrentals but they didn’t send me the confirmation email. Can’t set up an account.

Testnet's hashrate is over 500TH/s now. I seriously want in on that mining.

I managed to create an account on miningrigrentals. But does anyone have a stratum address:port for mining tBTC?