How many crypto miners on Pelican?
 

I see there are some discussions of bitcoin on pelican. How many of us are actually mining crypto currency? Who is willing to take crypto as a form of payment for parts or services? What is your favorite alt coin to invest in and why? Post your miner pictures.

I have considered doing crypto-mining for our powerplant. We produce power in the 6.0 cents per kWh region all in (including financing and partner payouts). We get about 7.2cents per kWh.

One way to increase the value of the electricity would be crypto mining.

I am trying to get my business partners to go in on a "test" unit spending about $50K. Our powerplant is 3.2 MW

PM me if you're looking for an investor.

it's it just more effective buying low and selling high ?

all that hassle with mining gear and cost of electricity.
to me it just doesn't seem worth it if you actually pay the Electricity bill and all the gear

Sam Brannon, III is selling shovels for crypto-mining

what do you want to mine? Bitcoin, Ethereum, ravecoin etc.... Ethereum is only good for gpu mining for the next two years. It will switch over to proof of stake Ethereum 2.0. Mining rigs are power hungry. They gobble up electricity like the cookie monster gobbles up cookies. I run mostly gpu rigs with one asic miner.

Asic miners are doubling up in price due to the bull run right now.

I am a techie person, i enjoyed the building and configuring of the rigs. Since the market for equipment is screwed right now, I resulted to buying more bitcoin and other altcoins instead of buying equipment. It is nice seeing my rigs bring in about $200 a day.

I was looking at Bitcoin. But I'm open. We have a net of 3050 kW. If I setup 50-100 kW worth of rigs, GPU Mining, it would hardly be noticed. I expect it could pay more than 7.2 cents per kWh.

I did it (BTC mining) for about 6 months in the winter/spring of 2018 - - the last time BTC surged.

To make money, you need at least one of the following:

1) Very Cheap Power - my rate at the time was ~7-8c/kwh, and honestly, that wasn't very advantaged

2) Access to cutting edge BTC miners. A friend had a line on some direct from China back then. Each miner is essentially a fit-for-purpose computer that the blockchain solving algorithm. It cost about $1750 at the time, was about the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread, required a 240V/20A circuit, pulled ~2000 watts continuous, had cooling fans that screamed like the loudest hair dryer you ever heard, and generated a tremendous amount of heat.

3). Rising BTC prices. While I was mining, the BTC price went from something like $4k to $16k. Felt like we were killing it, but prices came down, and the number of people mining went up like 3x in the 6 months I was mining.

The net result was that my mine, which initially appeared to have 2-3 month payback, quickly declined to being about break even with my power cost (~$100/month). It also made my garage even hotter and noisier than normal.

I sold my mine on Ebay for 25% of what I'd paid for it and broke even overall. I haven't bothered to run the math on what coins would be worth today or if my old mine is back to having value in the current market (I doubt the latter). The coins would be worth quite a bit at the moment.

The halflife of BTC mining technology is very short. In my opinion, it takes industrial scale, access to low cost power, and some technology edge on manufacturing your own miners. Sure, you can mine with video cards and old computers, but it's unlikely you cover the cost of power.

Overall, it was a good learning experience, but I decided I'm not a BTC fanboy. I suppose it's a real asset class, but it's also easy to just forget your password or accidentally send coins to the wrong person without recourse. Seems unlikely BTC ever goes mainstream - - too many issues. But for those that like to gamble, it's certainly fun to bet on....

“blockchain solving algorithm”

SHA-256 hash for Bitcoin.
It’s basically an arms race - you keep trying randomly generated numbers until you get one less than a target. The more you can try the better your chances. Remember you get one chance every 10 minutes and it’s winner takes all.

If you don’t have a large power station doing nothing and a lot of starting capital I’d look at mining one of the alt-coins.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1610295037.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1610295037.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1610295037.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1610295037.jpg

Not "large", but 3.2MW isn't nothing.

I used SlushPool to get credit for my hash cycles contributed. Instead of winner-take-all, it's a commune that shares in the harvest (i.e., a mined coin when someone solves the hash).

But as said, it's an arms race. You want the most hash cycles per unit power consumed.

Interestingly, I'm hearing that the BTC mining professionals are targeting night-time power in West Texas, when the wind blows but load is low and power in excess. The price of power in the region [used to?] go negative, as producers still made money with the government subsidies. Now they can make more money selling low cost electrons to the bitcoin crowd.

Nice looking GPU rigs.

I went back and looked -- I had a Bitmain Antminer S7. Looks like the used prices on those are about what I sold it for (or less). They're on version S19 now apparently.

Your photos remind my of my buddy that had the line on the miners. He had about 35 S7s in a shed in his backyard using a massive attic fan to push air in/out of the screened sides of the shed. It sounded like he had the biggest beehive in the world in his backyard...

Not sure if he still mines, but if so, I'd bet his bitcoin collection is worth some serious money now. Easily seven figures at recent prices.