I’m not the most OG of the crypto-nerds, but yeah, I mined. And not with GPUs, mine you- ASICS all the way. My friends and I chipped in on a 2nd gen KnC Saturn. Between 2013 and 2014 that thing tore through the blockchain at 330GH/s. It mined 23 bitcoin in it’s short but glorious career. But was it the best angle to pick up bitcoin?

(My KnCMiner: Loud, funny looking money)

Not really. If we had put that money into just buying BTC, we would have had 18 bitcoins before the miner even arrived at our door. We would have been up $16000 in USD and if we kept buying bitcoin with what we were spending on power, we would have made it to 23 bitcoins if not more.

Of course I looked into cloud mining when I originally got into the scene and I’ve checked in on it periodically since. Knowing first hand how crazy and unpredictable the difficulty adjustments were, it never seemed like a sure enough bet compared to just buying and holding. I’m not the only one to notice this of course; it has been argued countless times in other blogs and in message boards all over the internet. The counter argument is that with Bitcoin increasing in value, you can still make a buck sometimes for cheaper then buying straight up.

For me, it was always to much of a coin toss... Until recently, when I started looking at it differently.

Forget buy vs mine. Right now, mine with what you bought.

The concept hit me while going through my master crypto spreadsheet and fretting about my next move. In 2017, I had huge success with ARK and it’s staking rewards have changed how I think about growing wealth with crypto. ARK has spoiled me. I still want to have strong HODL positions, but I look at my bitcoin and it's just SITTING there. You know what my ARK does? It doesn’t just become more valuable over time, it gives me more ARK. That’s what I want my Bitcoin to do.

I won’t sell off my core BTC. I know a correction might be imminent and that's okay with me, but I also know that bitcoin will be worth a LOT more in the future. If I sell off to have cash in a down market and that downmarket doesn’t come right away, there is a very real chance I’ll never have that much BTC again.

But if I won’t be able to sell my BTC, what can I do with it? I want to hodl, but I also want more of that sweet sweet passive crypto coming in.

Flash back to the present. I’m fiddling with the coinwarz profitability calculators, putting in nightmare scenarios trying to break it's rosy outlook. I always try to do this to splash some cold water on any get rich quick thoughts I may be having- I tweak the numbers to something very bad but believable and then the smart money is on staying put.

But this time I wasn't thinking about putting in USD. My headspace was stricly crypto.

With the Bitcoin I've already bought, all I care about is BTC gains. And right now, with my high priced BTC in a mining contract, I’d earn back my BTC in about three months. Four to five, worst case scenario. From there? Any BTC earned is more for the HODL pile.

And before you wrinkle your brow at the inflated pay off calculations of hashflare or coinwarz, don’t worry- I ran the numbers aggressively. I ran difficulty increasing 20 percent, 40 percent- even 140 percent. I know that over 2017 difficulty increased by 400 percent. But with how much hash power I can buy with a bitcoin right now, I don’t need a year. I just need the first 3 to 4 months.

To be clear, this won’t always work.

If the calculators say payoff is 200 days to pay back, it’s anyone's guess whether you’ll ever see it all again. There is a reason I haven’t tried this before.

Would I be so confident if I was making this purchase with USD? Hell no.

A storm of difficulty increases and exchange rate drops could kill my ROI. What if bitcoin flash crashes down to $8k? It could happen. If I was just getting in the game and was still hungry, that'd kill me. But if I don't pay with my bread, then I'm not worried. Bitcoin price could go up or down. I'll still have more Bitcoin.

Will it work? I don’t know. I am abundantly cautious- maybe the calculators are way off! To be safe, I put in a small amount last night. I will watch the daily numbers to verify they line up with the initial calculations.

If they are way off, then I can pull out with just some injured pride. If it works, then I've got something amazing- at least while the ecomonics work out, at least for a little while:

An account that pays interest in Bitcoin.

Edit: I didn't put in a referral link because I don't want to sound spammy, especially as a new Steemer who hasn't quite earned his stripes just yet. But lets do this: If someone wants to join because of me, let me know in the comments. I'll give you the link and we can split the bonus 50/50- which will basically be like you getting a 5 percent discount on your first purchase. Not to shabby, eh?