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Crazy crypto mining story from 2013
- lemonking 4y agoI wasted my student welfare checks, sold my belongings and dragged myself into debt to go all-in during the first Bitcoin mining gold rush in 2013. A true story that sheds light onto what crypto mining was like before the times of warehouse mining farms and dedicated mining hardware (FPGA & ASIC). Wishing to hear from others with similar experiences in the comments. Take me back to the good old days.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoI bought an FPGA miner in April 2012. Very soon made obsolete by ASICs. So by no means was 2013 "before the times" of FPGA & ASIC.
- adrianomartins 4y agoWell, that sure is an entertaining read. I can't imagine what the struggle was. Back then I would do ridiculous small bets on rising crypto coins and feel extremely stress, I can't imagine what you've been through...
- mdrzn 4y agoI sort of had a similar story, started mining mid-2014 and went "all in" after Doge was born, for a couple months. LTS I sold all my doges in the following years, the last of which just a couple months before Elon decided to tweet about Doge and skyrocket the price. Good times.
- llampx 4y agoDid you keep some coins for later and sell near the peak in 2017 or 2021? If not, do you wish you had?
- lemonking 4y agoI didn't keep any, but I also don't regret it. I would have sold them many times over on the way to those peaks. I do nowadays HODL some coins no matter where the price goes but these were purchased via fiat during the last year or so.
- devX3 4y agowell shit, I'm also not a financial genius myself, had a huge opportunity to buy a lot of eth in 2016 and was like meh. So now I'm back to wageslaving.
- flotzam 4y agoAnother classic in the genre: https://nitter.net/eigenrobot/status/942839737563234304 https://nitter.net/eigenrobot/status/942839737563234304 "so I'm mining monero to heat my apartment this winter" ... "My ceiling is now on fire"
- lemonking 4y agoThanks for the link! You have no idea how strong of a connection I immediately felt to the thought processes of that guy :D
- flotzam 4y agoI can relate. The optimal number of ceilings on fire is not zero.
- k__ 4y agoI was thinking to do something like that, since heating got so expensive this year.
- Thlom 4y agoOne of the first crypto personalities in Norway did this back in 2011. Even had an article in the local paper. “Local man heats bathroom with his computer”. Basically he had water based heating in the floor on his bathroom and had hooked the water cooling on his computer to that. Even had a script that would “start doing heavy calculations” when the temperature sunk below a threshold. Reference: https://www.cw.no/it-bransjen-komponenter/bruker-pc-en-til-a-varme-opp-badet/247561 https://www.cw.no/it-bransjen-komponenter/bruker-pc-en-til-a...
- spyder 4y agoHeater that mines bitcoin :-D : https://www.heatbit.com/ https://www.heatbit.com/ https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-09-qarnot-qc1-cryptocurrency-heater-rig.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-09-qarnot-qc1-cryptocurrenc...
- foobarian 4y ago
- vvvvvo 4y ago
- ambicapter 4y agoIf anyone was wondering, he made 10000 euros in the end.
- Renevith 4y agoAs soon as I started reading I knew this was going to involve stealing electricity. "took it to my friend’s student dormitory where the electricity was “free”." I was not disappointed! Life hack: stealing can make you money!
- vvvvvo 4y ago
- top_sigrid 4y agoThis is just at the beginning of the story to be fair. Later on he is mining in his living place and also writes about the electrity cost needing to be covered by the mining revenue.
- lemonking 4y agoThe universities also very quickly banned crypto mining in dormitories. People still did it secretly, but it was very easy to get caught. There would have been no way to have any sizeable operations in a dorm.
- AmericanChopper 4y agoA friend and I managed to run a PS3 cluster mining bitcoins in one of the labs on campus for pretty much the entire 2009 academic year. But I think that was before mining rigs became much of a nuisance.
- seper8 4y agoAnd you're proud of this treft why exactly?
- snapcaster 4y agoYou're on _hacker_ news dude
- vc9999 4y agoIf you continue to mine you would be a billionaire today? Maybe the lesson here is just don't give up. Nice story anyway.
- g_sch 4y agoSeems unlikely, given that this story was told from the perspective of someone mining in the pre-ASIC era. I suppose they could have invested in ASICs early on, but they started as a broke student and the reason the story is fun is because they made it work on a shoestring. "And then I bought $200,000 worth of ASICs in an overseas datacenter" doesn't have the same effect.
- lemonking 4y agoThe problem with ASICs and FPGAs were indeed that you would have to order them some 6-12 months in advance and pay the multi-thousand cost up front. The FPGA/ASIC manufacturers were actually using their own stock to mine the best profits and only then ship them to customers.
- SamPatt 4y agoASICs existed in 2013. But they wouldn't have been obtainable to a broke college student.
- spyder 4y agoProbably more so by "hodling" instead of immediately selling to buy more hardware, or selling half for hardware and holding the other half to split the risk between the two option. But it's easy to be smart after the fact...
- SevenNation 4y agoGood stories have a lesson of some kind. What's the lesson here?
- mrpopo 4y agoIf you want to become rich, take advantage of what comes for free and sell it. For this guy, it was welfare and free electricity. For others, it is healthy soil, or rich natural resources.
- minitech 4y agoIn this story, the electricity wasn’t free and he didn’t become rich.
- imtringued 4y agoFor landowners they sell the free government services provided alongside their land and call it rent. For money owners they sell the free liquidity services and call it interest (Marx defeated?).
- JohnJamesRambo 4y agoI sold all my Ethereum miners around 2017 I think because proof of stake was “coming soon”. It arrived a few months ago haha. I used the profits and all future money to just buy coins and that has worked much better. :) I do miss the heat of the Ethereum mine though. Thank you for sharing your story, it brings back a lot of memories. It also echoes the stories of most Bitcoin mining companies I read in The Age of Cryptocurrency by Casey and Vigna. Always racing on the hamster wheel of profitability against the difficulty algorithm and electricity prices and flirting with or going bankrupt. I’m glad proof of stake is finally here and we can move to a more sane way of doing things.
- unboxingelf 4y agoI’m glad proof of stake is finally here and we can move to a more sane way of doing things. Proof of Stake isn’t a drop in replacement for Proof of Work - it comes with completely different properties and implications. If you’re just looking at it from the perspective of running a miner in your room, sure, but if you’re talking about the security and longevity of the actual network… Proof of Work means participants in the network exchange energy to validate transactions. Anyone may participate without permission. Anyone may leave at any time. Proof of Stake means participants in the network, that already hold a large stake in the network (32ETH in Ethereum) deposit that stake in exchange for permission to validate transactions. You may not withdrawal your stake (Coming Soon™) and if the transactions you publish are not inline with the rest of the network, you are fined (slashing). So while it’s true both PoS and PoW can be used to validate and secure a blockchain network, they couldn’t be further from each other. Proof of Work is currently the only solution for a truly decentralized network that’s not susceptible to coercion.
- Defitio 4y agoAh yes of course there is no way of coercing someone in a PoW scenario. Very well argumented! (This is sarcastic )
- JohnJamesRambo 4y agoYou couldn’t be more wrong about what you are saying. Bitcoin has zero long term answers for what happens when the block reward isn’t enough to secure the blockchain in the future. https://www.bis.org/publ/work765.pdf https://www.bis.org/publ/work765.pdf
- bjt2n3904 4y ago
- WarChortle 4y agoThis is nothing like welfare. Its really disingenuous to compare the two.
- humanistbot 4y agoThis was a student receiving a monthly stipend from the government for their living expenses, which is normal in many European countries. Wikipedia defines welfare as "a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter." That seems like a good definition to me, and this case definitely fits. Edit: In fact, there is a conservative anti-welfare narrative that this post plays right into. If the author was waiting until midnight for the deposit to post so they could buy drugs, alcohol, or some other 'vice', this would certainly be picked up by a conservative politician or media outlet and used to argue against welfare.
- WarChortle 4y agoSorry I read the first post in the wrong context, your right it was welfare. That being said, I do think that taking 1 persons experience and using that as an argument against welfare is, just dumb.
- 4ggr0 4y agoIs your argument that we should stop giving welfare to people, because not 100% of the people use it in the way you determine it to be useful?
- Defitio 4y ago
- plebianRube 4y agoBitcoin is great for the climate. It currently uses .1% of global energy, instead of all the worlds energy as predicted in 2017. It makes use of stranded energy, off peak energy stabilizing grid production, incentivizes green energy build outs, and with the landfill methane caputure business will soon be the only digital asset that is carbon negative. What have you heard? That it is a climate disaster and you should stay away?
- plopilop 4y ago> It currently uses .1% of global energy ie. about between 300 and a million times more energy than VISA/Mastercard when adjusted to the number of transactions. [0] > It makes use of stranded energy Miners who mine 24/7, by definition, do not consume stranded energy. There are no numbers whatsoever that can affirm which part of the miners use stranded energy. On the other hand, when one coal mine got flooded in China last year, 33% of the mining power came to a halt. [1] > off peak energy stabilizing grid production So much stabilizing it has caused blackouts in several countries [2]. Texas has resorted to pay miners so they don't cause blackouts [3] > incentivizes green energy build outs No, it incentivizes cheap electricity sources. Moreover in the topic of climate change the greenest energy is the one you don't consume. > with the landfill methane caputure business will soon be the only digital asset that is carbon negative What? Landfill methane business is basically saying "instead of just burning methane, let's burn it and use the heat to power up some BTC mining". At best, that makes the operation carbon neutral. If you are trolling, I must say, congrats, you triggered me. [0] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption [1] https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-environment-pollution/ https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-env... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-25/kazakhstan-unplugged-bitcoin-miners-before-blackout-hit-region https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-25/kazakhsta..., https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59879760 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59879760, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/26/iran-bans-bitcoin-mining-as-its-cities-suffer-blackouts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/26/iran-bans-bitcoin-mining-as-... [3] https://fortune.com/2022/07/12/texas-bitcoin-miners-paid-shut-down-power-grid-electricity-blackout-heat/ https://fortune.com/2022/07/12/texas-bitcoin-miners-paid-shu...
- woah 4y agoCorrection: The gif in the article is actually a depiction of Dogecoin mining
- giarc 4y agoWhich gif? All of them?
- andai 4y agoCan anyone suggest a way to read this without the gifs? I tried my phone's reader mode but it shows the gifs too.
- Eisenstein 4y agoBrave browser can block them. That's what I did.
- stall84 4y agothis sounds like a college fever dream
- Underhill7 4y agoYou can't undervalue the education received for this experience. The point is to try and fail at as many thing as possible if you are truly leaning from them.
- jliptzin 4y agoI hate when cryptomining is described as "solving extremely complex mathematical problems." That makes it sound like math professors gathering around a conference table burning the midnight oil trying to crack a formula when in reality it's just trying to crack a safe by randomly guessing the code over and over again - nothing complex about it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- marktangotango 4y agoI get your point, the calculations are generally just arithmetic, but there are in fact many cryptologist who spend a lot of time and effort understanding these algorithms and finding ways to "crack" them.
- jliptzin 4y agoYou mean they are trying to break the underlying cryptographic hash algorithms?
- InCityDreams 4y ago>burning the midnight oil Deliberate?
- jliptzin 4y agoMaybe :)
- tromp 4y agoThey mean very complex in the sense of very difficult. Which finding a hash output with over 75 leading 0 bits most certainly is.
- jliptzin 4y agoThat’s as much of a “math problem” as winning the lottery is a “math problem”
- pelasaco 4y agoI had a similar story, mining bitcoin with fpgas, litecoins with gpus and energy for free in a student dorm. I could however pack it in a free room in the dorm. Nobody cared about it. I did around 20 bitcoins, but sold almost everything before it hit 500 euro/coin, because my girlfriend got pregnant and we needed an apartment. I held 3 coins, that after the network split with Bitcoin cash, was doubled. I ended up selling them well.. I still have 5000 peercoins, since the idea was great, and I was able to mine and mint them well, but unfortunately it never became the thing.. Maybe one day, I get rich. For now, I just was able to buy a small apartment with my 3 BTCs..
- rambambram 4y agoNice read! But the gifs, man. I was reading on desktop and your paragraphs are too short to find a quiet place I could scroll to.
- lemonking 4y agoThanks for the feedback! This was my first blog post so I didn't really have a reference.
- rambambram 4y agoNo problem. I would love to read more about your stories. Have a blog somewhere? The gifs just really distracted from the interesting content. I think simple images from these gifs would do the job as well, or a short video - which can be smaller in filesize than gifs, I read somewhere - that I can pause.
- lemonking 4y agoThe link in this post is my blog, it's just that it's my only post so far. Probably gonna post non-crypto related stuff there too, but feel free to follow.
- mustafabisic1 4y agoIt ended a bit anit-climatically :( but a great story tho
- naet 4y agoSo tons of energy (and mental energy) was wasted, graphics cards were hoarded and abused, and in the end nothing of value was gained. Sounds like crypto to me :) I'm glad the author took some positive experience from it though. There is something "fun", or at least gratifying, about going all in on something even when it puts you through hell.
- extr 4y agoI have a similar story (albeit at a much smaller scale). Around 2017 when you could still mine eth-derived altcoins feasibly with a GPU, I repurposed my old gaming PC into a mining rig with a few old cards. I took off the side and taped a box fan to it to provide air-flow [1]. My apartment at the time was $950 flat, all utilities included, zero language about max usage in my lease, so effectively whatever I mined was 100% profit. I wasn't making much, maybe $50/mo at absolute peak? I'm sure if I had scaled up the property manager would have eventually wondered why/who was spiking the apartment building's electrical bill and I would have found the limit to my unit's "unlimited" electricity. But it was a fun project. I was working a full time job too, so I learned a lot about remote managing something like that. I had it all wired up with a VPN so I could SSH into the mining box from my phone. Here's another pic of my "workstation" at the time. The right hand monitor was my "status dashboard", really just a tmux session with htop, iftop, eth miner, etc... [2]. I was ~25 and single at the time and the biggest obstacle to 100% uptime was actually if I wanted to bring guests or dates over, they would wonder why there was a jet engine in the corner of my studio apt. So I would shut it down in that case. Eventually that + loss of profitability + general jankyness of the setup led me to dismantling it. But it was fun while it lasted. The part in the OP about restarting the box with a screwdriving short definitely spoke to me. My box had a whole ritual around restarts that I discovered through trial and error, where I would power up, pull the plug, restart, restart again, and then it would run stable indefinitely. Good times. [1] https://i.imgur.com/vTDr7Ap.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/vTDr7Ap.jpeg [2] https://i.imgur.com/SUFzTZh.jpg https://i.imgur.com/SUFzTZh.jpg
- banannaise 4y agoWhen there's a gold rush, the only ones really profiting are the ones selling shovels. Who won in the whole arms race? Hardware manufacturers, and people who could either run arbitrage or steal resources. (Which is which was often a matter of perspective.) Everyone else? Break-even or worse. What was actually built, for all that effort? Almost nothing. What did we gain as a society? The same. And I'm not sure that dollar-denominated financial markets are really any different.
- extantproject 4y agohttps://archive.ph/6JiHU https://archive.ph/6JiHU
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoFirst gold rush was in summer 2011, when GPU mining was invented, Bitcoin hit $17, first articles appeared in mass media, and Radeon 5XXX cards suddenly vanished from computer stores.