Going by the ticker, ‘BTG’, the Bitcoin Gold blockchain is a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. However, unlike Bitcoin, it doesn’t use the SHA-256 algorithm. BTG coins on the market are priced at a tiny fraction of BTC thus making them affordable, yet profitable to mine.

Leveraging Bitcoin Gold mining pools to optimize your mining profits can be one of the best crypto-mining investment decisions that one can make in the world of cryptocurrency mining. To help you find the best Bitcoin Gold pool, we have come up with a list of the 10 best BTG pools for you to choose from.

This post is part of my series on Altcoin mining.

Top 10 best Bitcoin Gold mining pools

The following is a list of the best BTG pools for you to earn BTC Coins block reward:

1. Pool Gold

Established by one of the founding members of Bitcoin Gold, Pool Gold is not only user-friendly but also has great 24/7 customer support that one would need when setting up a Bitcoin Gold pool mining rig.

Pool Gold uses the PPLNS reward system. It charges a pool member a 0% pool fee and has a minimum payout of 0.001 BTG.

2. MinerGate

Boasting the most beginner-friendly interface, MinerGate GUI can be easily downloaded and quickly configured. Bitcoin Gold community members love it for its auto-mine mechanism that allows them to swiftly switch to any coin that is most profitable at any given moment.

MinerGate employs the PPLNS reward system with a minimum payout of 0.1 BTG. A pool member is charged a 1% pool fee for the Bitcoin Gold pool mining operation.

3. 2Miners

With server locations distributed around the world, 2Miners boasts the lowest latency of any given Bitcoin Gold pool.

2Miners has both PPLNS and SOLO block reward systems and charges 1% and 1.5% pool fees, respectively. It has a minimum payout of 0.1 BTG.

4. BTGPool Pro

If you are looking for a decentralized Bitcoin Gold pool with servers across the world, then BTGPool Pro can be a good choice.

BTGPool Pro uses the PPLNT reward system and charges a pool fee of 1% with a minimum payout of 0.01 BTG.

5. SuprNova

With more than 50 supported cryptocurrencies, SuprNova is one of the most popular Bitcoin Gold mining pools with server locations spread across the world.

SuprNova distributes mining rewards using the PPLNS reward system. It charges a 1% pool fee with a minimum payout of 0.01 BTG.

6. ZSolo

Solo miners who desire to keep their autonomy yet enjoy the benefits of Bitcoin Gold pool mining will find Zsolo their best choice.

Zsolo distributes Bitcoin Gold pool mining rewards using the SOLO reward system. It charges a pool member a small commission of 1%.

Apart from providing BTG pools, ZSolo supports Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin Cash mining, and crypto mining a host of other coins including DOGE, LTC, and eCASH.  

7. Prohashing

A solid reputation is what sets Prohashing apart from the rest. Apart from providing BTG pools, Prohashing supports Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin Cash mining, and crypto mining of other coins including DASH, MXR, DGB, ZEC, LTC, and DOGE, among others.  

Anchored on the PPLNS reward system, Prohashing charges a 1.99% pool fee.

8. Zergpool

Those who zealously seek anonymity will find Zergpool a good place to mine BTG coins anonymously without violating their privacy policy.

Based on the PROP reward system, Zergpool charges a 0.5% pool fee. In addition to providing a Bitcoin Gool pool, Zergpool also supports Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin Cash mining, and crypto mining a host of other coins including ETH, DASH, RVN, DOGE, and LTC.

9. Pool4Ever

Small-scale individual miners who rely on home computers find Pool4Ever a good choice as it offers them great flexibility in their choice of BTG coins mining hardware.  They can use either CPU mining or GPU mining and still return good mining profits.

Pool4Ever provides a PPLNS reward system with a 1% pool fee. It supports multiple currencies including BTG, BTC, LTC, DGB, and DOGE, among others.

10. Zpool

Smart multipool is what makes Zpool. This mechanism allows a pool member to swiftly switch between BTG coins mining, bitcoin mining, and Bitcoin Cash mining, among others. This enables a pool member to maximize pool mining profits. 

Zpool employs the PROP reward system and charges a 1% pool fee. In addition to BTG, it also supports BTC, DOGE, DGB, and KMD, among others.

Factors to consider when choosing the best Bitcoin Gold mining pool

Various factors play a role in determining your best choice out of the many BTG pools. The pool reputation, block reward system, mining profits, affordability of the mining operation, mining hardware, and mining software requirements are the key factors to consider when choosing your best out of the many Bitcoin Gold mining pools.

Let’s digest each of these factors below:

1. Pool reputation

Many Bitcoin Gold mining pools exist on the market today. Making a good choice can be hard, given the attractive baits floated by some of the bad players. To avoid being scammed of your newly mined BTG coins, it is important to consider the BTG pools’ reputation. Financial integrity, platform security, and market stability are the key metrics to consider in making your choice.

2. Reward system

Mining rewards vary from one Bitcoin Gold pool to another. Your ultimate block reward will depend on the pool’s reward system. The reward system incorporates the pool fee, minimum payout, and block reward sharing formula.

(a) Types of Bitcoin Gold reward system

A typical pool mining reward system has the following two prominent bases for computing mining rewards for a pool member:

• Shares – A share is the percentage a pool member contributes to the total mining power of the group in finding a new BTG block.
• Scores – A score is a weighted index that prorates the share of block reward awarded to a pool member. This score is usually based on how long a member participates in the Bitcoin Gold pool during the mining process. Thus, a pool member with a higher score will earn more mining rewards compared to a pool member with a lower score, despite both contributing the same share of mining power. The purpose of the score is to reward loyalty, or some other form of consideration.

(b) Bitcoin Gold pool reward system

Each Bitcoin Gold pool has its reward system. This affects your overall earnings and payout. The following are the common schemes of a typical Bitcoin Gold pool reward system:

• PPS – stands for ‘Pay-Per-Share’. In this scheme, a Bitcoin Gold pool member is paid based on a share contribution to the cost of a given mining operation, irrespective of whether a new block has been found or not.
• PROP – In this scheme, the Bitcoin Gold pool member is paid based on share contribution to the output of a given mining operation, thus, the pool member is only paid when a new block is discovered.
• PPLNS – stands for ‘Pay Per Last N Share’. In the “Last N Shares”, the letter ‘N’ stands for the last number of shares received up to the block solving. This scheme blends PROP with a weighted time score index. Thus, those who have contributed for the longest duration earn more than those who have contributed for the shortest duration.
• PPS+ – this is a hybrid blend comprising both PPS and PPLNS reward schemes. Thus, Bitcoin Gold pool mining rewards are paid based on PPS while the Bitcoin Gold pool fee is paid based on PPLNS.
• FPPS – stands for ‘Full PPS’. In this scheme, both the Bitcoin Gold pool mining rewards and the Bitcoin Gold pool fee are based on PPS.
• SOLO – stands for ‘Solo mining’. In this scheme, several solo miners share a Bitcoin Gold pool mining infrastructure. The infrastructure provider avails a node-running service and charges a deductible commission on the block reward earned by the solo miner.  

3. Mining hardware requirements

Different Bitcoin Gold mining pools have different minimum mining hardware requirements. Thus, it is important, before joining, to ensure that your BTG coins mining hardware not only meets the minimum hash rate requirement but also meets your affordability criteria and mining profits expectations. This is why you need to consider mining hardware specs before buying hardware for your own mining rig.

(a) Hardware specs requirements

The following are the key BTG pool mining hardware specs:

(i) Hash rate

An important indicator of the computing power of crypto mining hardware is its hash rate. The hash rate refers to how many hashes per second (H/s) the processor can yield. A higher hash rate increases the chances of finding the next block of BTG coins, and thus, the greater the opportunity to make bigger Bitcoin Gold pool mining profits.

(ii) Power consumption

The cost of electricity has a significant impact on mining profits. Hence, your mining hardware’s electricity consumption rating is an important consideration in your BTG coins mining hardware investment decisions. This is why Bitcoin Gold mining pools find server locations with cheap electricity a good place to carry out mining operations.  

(iii) Power efficiency

The power rating of a given mining hardware is important. However, power efficiency has a great impact on the overall power cost. Power efficiency refers to units of hash power output per single unit of electricity consumption. Higher power efficiency translates to bigger mining profits.

(iv) Mining rig’s operational efficiency

To ensure that you achieve the best results from your Bitcoin Gold pool mining hardware, the following factors need to be put into place:

• Sufficient high-speed virtual memory – a higher memory ensures that the processor is sufficiently served with both data and instructions
• A good hard drive – ideally, an SSD
• A good motherboard – should have a high bus width and power efficiency
• Optimized advanced system settings – e.g., CPU/GPU overclocking
• Effective replay protection
• Properly set mining config files
• Efficient use of cookies
• Safeguarding the pool’s privacy policy
• An easy-to-use coin daemon
• Bitcoin Gold wallet whose BTG wallet address is fully compatible with the hardware wallet

(b) The best BTG mining GPUs

The two most popular GPUs for BTG coins crypto mining video cards are:

• Nvidia GPUs
• AMD GPUs

(i) Nvidia GPUs

Out of these top two brands, Nvidia GPUs lead the way. These GPUs come in two series:

• The Nvidia GeForce RTX series
• The Nvidia GeForce GTX series

Most high-end Nvidia GPUs fall within the RTX series while most of the budget-friendly Nvidia GPUs fall within the GTX series.

High-end NVIDIA GPUs:

• Nvidia RTX 4090
• Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti
• Nvidia RTX 3090

Budget-friendly Nvidia GPUs:

• GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
• GeForce GTX 1080
• GeForce GTX 1070 Ti

(ii) AMD GPUs

The best AMD GPUs for mining BTG coins come in two different series:

• The AMD Radeon XT series
• The AMD Radeon RX series

Most high-end AMD GPUs fall within the XT series, while most budget-friendly brands fall within the RX series.  

High-end AMD GPUs:

• AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
• AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT

Budget-friendly AMD GPUs:

• AMD Radeon RX 7600
• AMD Radeon RX 6600

4. Mining software requirements

When considering your preferred BTG coins mining hardware, also consider your preferred BTG crypto mining software. Different graphics cards may require additional software packages for mining. The following are the two best BTG coins mining software:

• EWBF miner – this is the best choice for Nvidia GPU mining.
• Claymore’s Miner – this is the best choice for AMD GPU mining.

3. Mining profits

Electricity costs (KW/h), BTG Coins block reward, hash rate, BTG coins mining hardware cost, and the Bitcoin Gold network difficulty factor, are the main determinants of Bitcoin Gold pool mining profits.

Different geographic locations of the Bitcoin Gold pool mining hardware have different power costs (in terms of electricity cost pricing, taxes, administrative costs, etc.).

Also, profitability is subject to the pool fee and the sharing formula for mining rewards and infrastructural efficiency.  To predict the amount of mining profits, your mining equipment can generate, use the Bitcoin Gold pool mining profit calculator.

Whattomine, Coinwarz. CryptoCalc and Minerstat are some of the best BTG coins mining calculators. The  99Bitcoins provides some of the best instructions on how to use a crypto mining profit calculator.

Why Bitcoin Gold pool mining?

By design, the Bitcoin Gold blockchain network utilizes a unique version of the equihash algorithm that is ASIC resistant. This means that huge mining farms that rely on ASIC mining are kept away.

Thus, individual miners can use their home computers to carry out CPU mining. However, the Bitcoin Gold network difficulty factor makes it not profitable to carry out CPU mining. Ideally, GPU mining is the best option for solo mining.

On the other hand, the prohibitive cost of building your own mining rig, which requires several expensive GPUs, makes solo mining an extremely capital-intensive operation for ordinary users. Thus, the Bitcoin Gold pool mining operation becomes the best choice to optimize profit for small-scale miners without incurring a huge initial investment. 

The desire to incur the lowest initial investment cost while reaping the maximum possible mining profits are the two combinational factors that make pool mining of BTC coins a good choice.

The two prominent alternatives to pool mining are solo mining and cloud mining. For solo mining, the initial investment cost is extremely high as you need very expensive hardware to meet the minimum mining profits requirement.

On the other hand, cloud mining has the lowest initial investment cost. However, cloud mining operators take up a huge chunk of your mining profits. This leaves you with pool mining as the middle ground that strikes a balance between investment and profit.

Conclusion

The world of cryptocurrency mining is awash with many opportunities to fork out significant mining profits. Mining BTG coins is a lucrative venture. BTG coins are traded on the world’s best exchanges. Thus, joining a Bitcoin Gold mining pool is one of the best investment decisions one can make. In this article, we have provided detailed information that can enable you to become a successful member of the Bitcoin Gold community through pool mining. We have not only provided a list for you to find the best GPU to build your own mining rig but also the best Bitcoin Gold mining pools that you can join.