Should We Start Mining Testnet Coins?

Got some miners here thinking about jumping into testnet mining. Expect a bunch of old mainnet miners to flood in. I'm trying to set up a GLDN/tBTC trading pair on this exchange soon. It might not mean much now, but it could help boost crypto adoption. Also, check out mintme.me, looks promising for altcoin gains.

I'm willing to buy testnet coins, aiming for around 10,000 at least.

Most miners are rolling with ASICs now. Inviting them to mine on testnet? That's just gonna wreck it for research. Current testnet difficulty is way lower than mainnet, and moving any serious hashrate from mainnet will just break it for all of us.

Honestly, mining testnet feels like a waste. Rewards are too small, and you need an ASIC to even make it worthwhile. Even then, you’re looking at around 0.012tBTC after a whole long wait. Just buy testnet coins instead.

Yeah the rewards are trash, but shouldn’t testnet coins be worth at least 1% of mainnet BTC?

I just think the OP is trying to screw us up. Testnet is supposed to be a low-cost testing ground for devs, not a place to mine high-value coins. If everyone starts using high hashrate miners on it, what’s the point?

Here’s a link to a testnet site for more info.

Tried it for a week, didn't hit a single block. CPU mining vs ASIC? No competition, even with the difficulty resets.

Forked coins like BCH barely hit 1% of BTC price. Testnet is even worse, and mining with CPU isn't viable. You need high-performance hardware if you want to actually find blocks.

Comparing it to saying my made-up coin should be worth 1% of Bitcoin is pointless.

And I also wish I could fly and shoot diamonds from my mouth. Not happening. Testnet coins are free from faucets so no way they have real value.

True, no value is expected, but it’s still a PoW chain needing electricity and hardware. Faucets don’t just hand out tons of coins for free because mining isn’t easy. I ran a faucet once, it doesn’t mean BTC had no value.

Good point. Trying to think of other ways to use tBTC. Maybe it’s more like silver to Bitcoin’s gold?

If you really want to dig deep, regtest would let you generate blocks in no time. Or just build your own chain for testing.

Developers could just fork Bitcoin, make their own chain and test without all this worry. Testnet should exist to give everyone a shot at coins instead of just stacking satoshis.

I disagree, the reason faucets aren't giving away more is the growing difficulty. That’s caused by ASIC miners smashing the testnet. Piling more high hashrate miners isn’t a solution.

I did trade some silver for testnet before, it was a bit of a loss but felt good helping others get coins fast. Been trading testnet since 2022.

Proof of work is still a solid option for devs testing stuff. Testnet’s just there for testing, not meant to compare to silver. Silver's always held value, unlike free testnet coins.