Alternative crypto currency analysis and mining

Over the past few years, bitcoin has become a globally successful and much followed project. It is a kind of decentralized digital currency, which functions based on mathematical-cryptographical principles and is created using a computationally intensive process called mining. Thousands of other alternative crypto currencies exist, which have so far stayed unnoticed by the media, even though they outperform bitcoin in many aspects. The central topic of this paper is the extensive ecosystem of alternative crypto currencies and an analysis of their mining process. The goal is to demonstrate, by means of a practical example, how alternative crypto currencies are mined and also to find out, if it's possible to mine crypto currencies profitably with specific type of a graphic card. To successfully reach this goal I had to first analyse the ecosystem of crypto currencies. Subsequently I compared different crypto currencies to one another and eventually successfully implemented the mining operation and evaluated its results. The main contribution of this paper is to answer the question of whether and how alternative crypto currencies can be profitably mined. I believe the particular benefit of this work rests not only in the practical demonstration of how alternative crypto currencies are mined but also in the summary description of the crypto currency ecosystem's composition and the factors that influence the price of these crypto currencies. Structurally, this paper is divided in three main parts. The first part is dedicated to the explanation of the term crypto currency, what it comprises and according to which principles it functions. The second part contains an analysis of the ecosystem as well as a comparison of a fixed sample of alternative crypto currencies. The third part is the practical part, during which I undertook a real mining operation.