Segwit is already activated and enforced on testnet, so you may find it useful to test your infrastructure upgrade by mining with some small amount of hashrate on testnet. The return on your investment can be longer than other alternatives such as buying and selling Bitcoin. Like Ethereum, none of the pools above support litecoin. The rest of the hash power is spread across the rest of the world, often pointed at smaller mining pools like Slush Czech Republic and Eligius US. Consequently, some users on bitcointalk. Sometimes you may want to mine a more profitable altcoin like MWC which is superior for scalability, privacy, anonymity and fungibility. Bitcoin mining in pools began when the difficulty for mining increased to the point where it could take years for slower miners to generate a block.