Mining the minds of miners, Part 2

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster . When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

Prologue

Hello everybody!
My name is Mickey, also known as Tezkatlypoka from Reddit, and with the help of this article, I will make you laugh, I will inspire you, I will motivate you I will lead you through the hell of minings beginnings, will force you to think about your life, and also will show you that there is the only way in Nut punch challenge:"Keep moving on."

Manual to this article: You have to read this article from front to back and show your grace. After all, that is how literature works, right?
(unless it is instruction manual, in which case no one reads them at all)

Play the soundtrack here

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Intermezzo

Ok, let's get straight to the center of action in the center of the universe, the Ostrava city!!!
Our brave hero has to undertake another cruel nutshot from a very sarcastic and sometimes unfair lady called life. Will he endure all this pressure, or was this hard hit the last cup of the cup of naughty nonCzech beer? Will our hero take a lesson and rise again from the dust of the sour fate?
Can he make it again? Is this guy just so impressive that he will never fail under the force of a substantial pressure (I honestly think he just likes that stressful shit, or he is just so much better than the rest of us :D )?
Let me guide you through his tremendous story full of hard work, fucked up funny moments and heroic resilient and detachment. Let's get back to Ostrava (center of the universe).

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Section one: Vladimir, the Greatest miner of Ostrava

Hey Vlad! What the fu*ck just happened? I have been driving around the city and saw gigantic smoke. That kind of smoke signals the Indian people had done when they wanted to warn their allies! Can you tell us what happened to your mining pool and if you are ok and stuff? Well, I think your book will be a bestseller with action like this described in it.

Hey mate, so it was one of those days, everything was going great until one of my business partners called me up saying “Dude!! You have to come to the farm IMMEDIATELY!! It's on fire, there are four firefighter trucks, cops, and everything!!” and then he hung up. So naturally, I was freaked out as hell and drove there as quick as I could. By the time I was about 20 meters away from the building, I could scent the overpowering smell of burned plastic, which didn't get my hopes up.

This particular mining location was hosted in the basement and had only small barred windows on another side of the building, I went there wholly horrified, and I saw tons of smoke pouring out of the window, couldn't see anything else. Now if this wasn't already bad enough, I could hear some pouring water inside the room, so my first thought was if it all did not burn, its currently being drowned. I went to firefighters and told them there is cracked water pipe, so they sealed off central water vent.

After about 2 hours of never-ending investigations from police and firefighters, tons of questions regarding what's in the basement, how much does it cost, etc., etc. We were told that power distribution cabinet caught on fire, which was set up on the wall there and it melted plastic water pipe which was subsequently leaking water there. Now, in my opinion, an electrician that set this up did a poor job, because it was designed to run up to 50 rigs, there were only 32 rigs at that time. Luckily nothing apart from that cabinet got damaged, which was for about 750$. However, 100k$ worth of equipment was OK; only one motherboard went to silicon heaven.

Since I did not appreciate the way how my business partner handled that situation, I decided to take my equipment elsewhere. I must say it was a pretty annoying job to clean all of those rigs, but everything worked, so I was delighted. Now I’m mining in a new location, and its significantly better, temperatures are pleasant, and I'm also saving close to 10% on electricity, so as usual, bad things open doors for good things.

What are your plans for this year and the year after that? Some prominent business moves on the horizon?

As I was saying last time, I'm keen on getting several master nodes. I managed to setup PIRL master node about two months ago, I'm almost done with LINDA master node, and hopefully, I will get another PIRL, before they reach block number 2 mil because they will triple master node reward when that happens, which could lead to the decent price spike. My target with nodes is nothing too ambitious; I just want to have the 50$ income per day, because I'm trying to build up as many income streams as possible so that I can leave my day job.

I love this idea. Go on.

In the last two months, I've learned that huge things can indeed come from most unexpected places. I made a FREE ad saying we’re building/optimizing rigs, providing consultancy services for cryptos in general. I placed it on Czech version of Craigslist; normally you get a bunch of weirdos replying, asking for discounts, etc., last time I was selling some old CPU for 20$, a guy called me up and said his daughter has a birthday, so he wants a discount to 10$. I told him, no, so he said he would send me a scanned copy of his daughters birth certificate so that I trust him. I said I’m sorry, but I don’t give two shit’s who’s birthday it is, CPU costs 20$, so he called me an asshole and a bloodsucker and hung up. Then I had this other guy coming over to buy a laptop; I had to go to meet him at the bus stop because giving him my home address wasn’t enough since he didn't have a smartphone or didn't even know how to use google maps… I know, why the hell do I even bother.

However, this time, things went on little differently. This guy calls me up, saying that he would like to buy some rigs, so we arranged a meeting that very day, and he drove 100km to meet with me. He told me about his idea to build a vast mining farm with about 2500-4000 mining rigs. He also said that he currently has a mining rig in his car and if I can show him how do I optimize rigs, then he would really like to do business with me. Naturally, I completely crushed his expectations and other competition in Czech and lowered power consumption on his rig by 40% while increasing hashrate by 5%. He was blown away, and during last month, we've built over 30 rigs for him, which may not sound like a significant number, but if you know what it is to build one rig and configure it correctly, you know it’s entirely a bit of a good hustle. We are currently developing our own aluminum frames to go with these rigs and expanding our infrastructure so that we can be building over 100 rigs per month.

With these going on, I kind of wasn't able to kick off whole social media concept that I wanted to introduce, I kept thinking where do I start from, the other day I decided I have to set up another company, due to tax reasons, so it will be called “Czech Crypto Institute” and my goal here is to consolidate all the activities we are currently doing, get some social media coverage, I also have a guy which is currently developing crypto apps for Android/iOS which I hope we will be able to introduce in Q4 this year, which should be followed by an app that will allow you to “pool” invest in master nodes, so that entry barrier gets eliminated and that you can buy for example 1% of any node you would like.

During September, I should finally get my new mining facility which is inside a working power plant so that I will be expanding some hosting business, nothing too big, but there is currently free space to host additional 100 rigs. Power cost for hosting will be 0.09+VAT euro cents per kWh and 20 EUR for hosting including insurance, security, etc. which is quite competitive for the Czech Republic.

Everybody talks about graphic borders Nvidia 1080ti which are a legendary item in an inventory of every true miner beginner. As I can see, you are choosing an utterly different setup, and also I think that you are the man that knows his shit already. So please tell me, what is the difference in between Nvidia 1080ti and cards you are using and the way you are using them?

Here's the thing, last year you could be the biggest ignorant of them all and mine with any old GPUs and still be profitable. With bear market in which we find ourselves now, efficiency wins the game, and that’s why my miners are tweaked to the max, sacrificing few percents of hashrate, but it helps me achieve best ROI and also prolong the lifespan of my HW.

GTX 1080ti are great cards for somebody who either wants to have only a few of those or for somebody with the scarcity of room for miners. Meaning, you condense your hashrate so to speak. However, if we are purely after getting the return on your investment as soon as possible, then RX570/RX580 have been dominating this area head and shoulder above for a very long time and no GTX card came close. There are of course many things that can mess up these stats, whether it’s geographical, what stores are you buying from, etc. I’m buying from wholesale distributors and always dig deep for the best price I can get.

With all this being said, I myself am sitting on 90%+ RX570/580 cards, but to my clients, I recommend diversification if it’s at all possible. RX Vega and GTX are always interesting choices if you are somebody who’s afraid of Casper :-)

What kind of advice would you give to young Vladimir now?

I think that would be pointless because that know-it-all dick wouldn’t listen to me anyway. However, I would try to explain to him that even with his “positive attitude” and wishful thinking, he’s not going to beat those Forex markets and he needs to let that one go because it’s a death trap.

You look like a guy who had a really decent library when you were a young boy. Can you tell us also something about your life wisdom and your working codex?

Any inspiring book you read, any great people you met? You think that this half gambling/half trading spirit has to be inherited in you by born, or You think it's an attitude everybody can learn, poses and embrace?

Books? Man, I’ve read a few, but I definitely need to read MUCH more, 90%+ of books I’ve read are either fantasy or about how to be a successful individual. What life wisdom this gave me? Success is not for suckers or anybody who always finds an external excuse for their own failure. Here are the three things that stand out for me:

1. Take responsibility for your life and acknowledge/accept that the point where you find yourself right now, is your own doing and you solely are responsible for it (doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad). Once you accept this, you can start evolving to a better version of yourself.
   Financial education, financial responsibility, and control - these boil down to getting yourself educated as much as possible. Not everybody can be a genius, but everyone should be able to understand buying the power of his or her money, the difference between right or lousy debt, determine whether something is a risky or conservative investment. Regarding financial responsibility, you definitely know somebody who has a decent financial education but doesn’t act on it, spends most of their money on needless things that will only take more money from their pocket and that’s that. Then you have another group of people who try this financial control/responsibility but are not educated, so they invest poorly, buy high, sell low, act way too emotional.

2. In order of becoming financially successful, you need much more than just to be educated; you need to be very strict with yourself and with the way you handle your finances. Once you master being responsible when managing money, you also need to control what does this money go to and re-evaluate now and then if it’s still worthy of your time and investment.

3. In words of famous Peon from Warcraft 3 - “Work work. What I mean is, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and anything in this world that is worth something takes time and effort. The average person works about 40hours a week; if you have undying desire to build an empire and leave a legacy, double that, start working 80hours a week and call it a start of something new, results will start showing up pretty quickly. I sometimes hit 100hours a week and do not regret it at the slightest.

To answer your question about gambling/trading spirit, that’s a tricky one. I realized not too long ago, that my attitude towards life that ‘anything is possible’ comes from my mom. My parents got divorced when I was about four years old, and she had to take care of everything by herself, and she never gave up, even for a second. That’s why I believe that anything can be achieved and I dream big and always will. That second part is because my dad, on the other hand, was gambling and raging alcoholic, but he knew a thing or two about flipping things, so to a considerable degree I am but a result of what I see from my parents when growing up.

On the other hand, I have blamed my whole life that I manipulate people way too much, which I can’t really deny. At the age of 4-5, I remember deliberately telling other children to do or not to do something when I knew they would do the right opposite and I frequently used that to my advantage. When I was six years old, I convinced my neighbor-friend to pay me money for playing on his computer, don’t ask me how or why. However, my mom eventually found a 100 CZK bill in my room and was asking me where did I get it from, so I told her my friend gave it to me O:-). Yes, I had to give it back. When I was 13 years old I would go to a wholesale store called “Makro,” and I would buy snacks and sweets for wholesale prices and bring them to school in my bag and resell them with profit, but I was still cheaper than School buffet, and kids could place orders with me for any kind of sweets they wanted to buy in the following days. I particularly loved kids from wealthy families; I often sold them bags of crisps on ‘loan’ where they would sign a piece of paper saying they owe me 10CZK (about 0.5$) with interest of 10% per day. Yes, PER - DAY, so I didn't remind that debt to them for a week and using compound interest, in week’s time they paid me double. This worked until my dad found an excel spreadsheet with details of all loans that I was providing and he ruined my business :-D. By the time I was 16 I was working for my first MLM - Amway, was a great experience, I had quite a bit of affiliate reporting to me but didn’t make any real money on that one. When I was 17, I started something like my own Forex Managed Fond, people would put money in it, and I was trying to manage it, and I blew it all. Great experience, unfortunately, I did not learn from it for a very long time.

What I’m trying to say here is, I used to believe everybody can be trader/entrepreneur, etc. However, it’s bullshit, you either have the drive to do something with your life, or you don’t. I unfortunately just turned 29 and I’m still far away from where I’d like to be, but at least I feel like I’m going in generally reasonable direction :-)

Can you tell us something about the most adventurous trip you have ever made, please?

I think I haven’t really done many of those, but visiting countries like Tanzania, Zanzibar, Iceland, Seychelles or Indonesia and renting a car there to driving around usually only with my GF would definitely be very high on the ladder because it feels pretty adventurous to me. But I guess visiting Chernobyl in Ukraine could stand out, seeing this shadow of ancient horror that happened decades ago, yet it’s still going to linger around for hundreds of years, I mean it makes you think.

What advice would the young Vladimir give you? :)

Probably something like ‘’life is short, don’t waste it, enjoy it as much as you can,’’ and I would be like, yeah sure, that’s really something, coming from a guy who stares 100+ hours a week at forex charts and at the end of the day losses money. Get your head out of your ass... d*ck!

The end.

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Section two: EvilMonkey, the guy who wrote a lot of mining stuff.

EvilMonkey is really peaceful and spiritually balanced guy how will do his best to always help a friend or give his opinion on almost everything crypto/ trading/mining related. But don't write him and ask him stupid questions when he is drunk or when he has his gun nearby...and not always in this particular order.

Thank you very much, my friend, that you find some time to fill us up with some advanced mining know-how and also for telling us your story.

Please tell our readers something about yourself and describe the start of your mining journey.

Probably don’t write me stupid questions when I’m sober. If I have been drinking you are probably fine :P. I got into mining because I quit my job and bought a top of the line gaming PC to game on.

Did you also start with mining/gaming PC? How did your evolution go from your early days till present?

I wanted to know if there was other things I could do with my Nvidia 1080ti and I used to do bitcoin mining briefly way back. I starting mining just Zcash or other single coins and realized I could pay off my graphics card in about 2 months at the current rate. The next day I went out and bought 7 more 1080ti, and set them up on old PC parts I had.

Can you tell us some mining background to help us understand the alpha and omega of mining in the way you do it?

I have been in IT for a long time and I always like to make sure I understand why and how things work. I spent around a month or two configuring and tweaking my rigs to maximize the efficiency. I documented the whole process because I found that there was really bad information out there that could have saved me weeks and weeks.

I now multi algo, multipool mine because there is no real decent single coins out there to mine. You also have to hunt out the best mining software as you can often find modified versions that can squeeze an extra 20 or 30%.

What was your first mining hardware at the moment when you consider to take this seriously?

Nvidia 1080ti, unless you count mining bitcoin on really old gear. At the time everyone was going on and on about mining ETH and amd 480’s. I found a few algorithms such as Skien and zcash that the 1080ti excelled at and rivaled the ROI of any other card out. It also happened that ETH mining died off and Nvidia cards became king.

There is a lot of noise out there about what OS and setup to use for mining, what do you use for your farm?

I use windows. Purely because you kind of need to for nvidia and the configuration options it gives you. If you just want to mine a single coin and set and forget then there is lots more options. You can do ok on a few other OS also. For me I just used all the same hardware across 2 rigs so I just had an image fully configured and ready to go in case it became corrupt or whatever. So far after a 1.5 years mining, they are still going fine.

How many GPUs per rig do you have?

Generally 3 - 4. I prefer less hardware and fewer cards. You can use the newer 1070ti or 1070 and price per card they can be as cost effective. But you need extra cables and bits to get them going. Every new bit of hardware is a point of failure. If there is a problem, you don’t want a rig with 8 cards in it all shut down while you try and find the faulty item. I have been tempted to run 5 but it would have required dual power supply.

What tools do you use for monitoring?

Teamviewer and MSI afterburner. I don't really monitor them anymore. There is lots of ways to get alerts if a PC goes down. I get an email. I used to enter total profits into a spreadsheet daily when I cared. But after they paid themselves off (initially was going to take 2 months but ended up taking 4-5 months if you include all the extra stuff like power supplies etc. I gave up monitoring them. I check once a week to make sure the daily profits are still decent.

What amount of electrical power are you able to consume for one mining day?

Power is not that cheap in New Zealand. Per card, including all the other parts divided by the amount of cards in the rig it costs me around 40-50 cents a day New Zealand. Which is around 30 cents the US. At one stage I was getting $10-13 a day per card.
Right now we are probably down to $2-3 per card and on a good day $5.

What kind of crypto is in your mining crosshairs the most?

Anything that is minable by Nvidia GPU. There is no single target. Any coin can be profitable if the price pumps.

What hardware and algorithms do you use for your mining?

Hardware? Or you mean software? I have used custom scripted miners written by others and modified them myself, but that was too much work. There is things like Nemominer and Sniffdog miner, which are all command line specific and very simple to configure. You can copy the config to another rig in seconds. There is other software like the Awesome miner, it’s excellent software, but if you want to configure it to the same level as these other programs, it can take a very long and tedious amount of time. Purchasing the full version can make this a bit easier, but even then there is quite a bit of fluffing around and errors etc if you want full customization.

Tell us something about money income a man can do from mining like yours in the bear and bull market.

It’s hard to say. Like I said. I had a dream run for about a year. The last five months were decent over the bull run and had really drifted off over the bear run. Who knows if it will ever recover properly. There are still profits. However, I would never invest in new gear.

Do you have some exciting/crazy story which happened in this business to you?

Not overly. Mining got me into trading and ICO’s. I put all of my mining profits into a single ICO and made a killing. After that, I spent a lot less focus on mining.

Can you tell us something about Cloud mining principles?

I have had this conversation many times. I essentially think 95% of them are scams. Anyone that made money only made money because the coins went up in value. If you had bought that coin outright with the same money you invested in cloud mining then you would be in the same situation with less risk, instant return and full control over your asset. Is there a market for it? Sure, there is hash power out there people want to rent. But IMO many of these outfits just faked the hash power. I just saw no point in it and people were blinded by the fact bitcoin was just going up in value so it looked like they were making profits. This is why when we hit massive bear markets, many of them collapse or people lose a lot of money. Then others claimed they were hacked etc. In real mining when you want to close up shop you can always sell your gear to gamers for a very nice price. In cloud mining you just get shafted.

What does a future hold for crypto mining and how the mining changed your life?

It changed my life because it got me into trading and ICO’s. I think there is uncertainty really. There is a future for blockchain somewhere. Crypto could survive but it will be more focused.

What would you say to a guy who wants to start with mining and know nothing except the paragraphs of this article? What would be your advice for miner novices?

Probably don’t bother. It’s not worth it right now. If you already have a gaming rig and you want to play, find a good guide and set it mining while you sleep. You can still turn a profit after power on most Nvidia cards, even with basic configuration.

In bear markets, you mine and get minimal profits. If you just hold that bitcoin and wait before you sell, it can really pay off. For example, I might be getting only $3 a day per card right now. However, in a few months, it could be worth $6-7.

What would you did differently if you would have the power to go back in time and change one mining related thing you have done in the past?

Instead of buying $7000 worth of mining cards, I would put it into ICO’s. My wife capped me after that so I had no capital until that first ICO I invested in took off crazily but it took a little while. I could retire now, but so could anyone if they could go back in time.

What is your favorite contribution of the blockchain to this world?

Bitcoin. It’s simple secure and fast most of the time. It allows you to send money anywhere you want in a few minutes in any amount for 5 cents or less. It does need upgrades or some other platform that in ensures it scales. ETH would be a close second.

The end.

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EvilMonkey's: "The guides."

If you have been inspired by this article or maybe by his first part, there are only little things in his world that can stop you know. As I promised you earlier, I am attaching Monkeys guides for mining novices, and with the help of those, you can start to mine your own world.
Take care

Guide #1 will get you setup and going if you already have a gaming PC. You could be mining in 20mins. Nicehash miner auto picks the most profitable coin to mine and converts the profits to BTC. You can see how much money you are making and work out how long it will take to pay off your graphics card.

Guide #2 Gets you minging targeting single coin and squeeze the extra money out of it.

Guide #3 How to configure windows for mining. Provides batch files that auto-configure all the optimal settings. And building a simple rig.

Guide #4 Building a rig and building a rig with more than one card.

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Go and see more stuff from my library!

For the first episode of Mining the mind of Miners click here

My Steem

Tezkatlypoka from Reddit

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If You have any questions regarding my article, send me a message in the bottle
(Prefer Tequila) at Telegram or shoot a shouted "Tweet".

Never stay tuned

                                           Mickey