Chronicles of a Crypto Miner.1

Welcome Steemians... to the first edition of the Chronicles of a Crypto Miner.

I've been prompted to begin writing down these thoughts in at least a semi-regular schedule for my own benefit and for those that might learn and grow from my triumphs and mistakes. I welcome your thoughts and comments so that we can all learn and grow from this unprecedented experience. I'm just going to begin writing as thoughts come to me and don't plan to organize them in any particular manner so that I can keep the thoughts and words flowing and have an outlet to process it all.

I guess we can start there, I've been up late, missing sleep and just basically obsess over crypto. I think about it and it's relevance and impact on our society every day, and I marvel at the acceleration of it's advancement over the last year. Part of the sleep I lost was due to the fact that I mined bitcoin for a brief time twice in my past and the funds have long since been taken, by what was once just a humble mining pool at the time called Eclipse Mining Consortium. EMC shuttered the site and took the remaining funds to launch Butterfly Labs, made famous by selling ASIC bitcoin mining rigs. I'm sure they aren't losing any sleep over taking my profit and those of many others, although to be fair, I had all but forgotten about it until bitcoin began making headlines this year in major news.

However, this experience cost me, it taught me a valuable lesson to keep my coins on me and to never trust another, especially in this wild west. I thought that I was priced out from participating in bitcoin for the most part and decided to live a normie life. Let's just say I'm not built for a typical 9-5. I gravitate towards the computer for its predictability when humanity just won't ever be. It feels like when I sit at my computer or phone, and especially when I begin delving into the crypto space, that I enter a black time and space vortex void that catapults me well into the future bewildered, cold-sweating and white-knuckled.

Litecoin came to me this year from a programmer friend of mine and it really opened my eyes to the fact that alt coins were about to shine in 2017 brightly and I decided to begin assembling a GPU miner this spring. I told my employer, who operated a SaaS Datacenter, about my plans and they were so intrigued that we partnered together on an epic 6 GPU Ethereum and Sia coin miner. We had many difficulties building the final product since we were both relatively green in the crypto world even though we had lived and worked in the tech world our whole lives. We both just couldn't hardly believe that crypto existed, and even thrived, right below the surface, beneath our very noses, the entire time and we did not capitalize on it. And when I say capitalize on it, I don't just mean money. I mean capitalize on the trust, the opportunity that was before us both, and we largely squandered it. If only I had invested more time and money into the project, perhaps I'd still be with that company working in the datacenter on miners.

Alas, we ultimately decided to part ways, I was back to square one with only a few fragments of Litecoin, the share of the Ethereum and Sia that we had mined, and my small gambles in various cryptos, totalling no more than $100 USD in November of this year, 2017. After moves and cashing out, I made over $1800 USD but I was not satisfied. I knew that with some different moves I could've done things much better and I decided to hit the drawing board and come back bigger and stronger. I had some problems to overcome, however. I faced no employment or income and since I had partnered with others on the miner they took their parts when we parted ways along with a few of mine, but I won't get much into that. I wish them well, although I believe they took my vision and are running with it. I disassembled my gaming rig, no longer caring about such trivial things, made a desktop computer with spare parts I had for two, seperate systems; one that I could mine with 24/7 and another I could surf on and access my portfolio and begin to trade. Luckily, since I had worked in IT for several years, I had access to most of the parts I needed. Food stamps and unemployment insurance wasn't going to do anything more than sustain life and I started to live vicariously through crypto.

My first home miner sported an overclocked i5-2500k CPU (4.7gHz on air!!!) and a software tuned 280x AMD GPU. I started mining Ethereum again, until I discovered Monero. It was like I had discovered crypto all-over again. Why had I not heard of this amazing technology? I feverishly scoured every forum I could find to learn all I could about Cryptonight. I started having dreams that I would finally "make it" on my own. About this time, people in the forums were talking about this GPU called the Vega that was destroying all prior cards' hashrates when mining Monero, and I began to look for one. They were way too expensive for me to attain as scalpers had aqcuired most of them and had jacked up the price to double retail. Ironically, the developer friend that gifted me my inital Litecoin seed ran into trouble financially, had assembled his own mining network that was quite extensive, and had torn it down in the time I had built my modest setup- and he also sacrificed two Vegas for under $500. Man, what a gut punch that was. Lesson learned, keep your friends close. you never know what opportunities may open up for you. That experience forced me to look for my own cheaper Vega.

I found an amazing deal for a Vega 64 for $466 and I sent my folks an e-mail about it to ask them for a loan so that I could mine the return. That was, suprisingly, an easy sell to my folks who has heard about bitcoin and were interested in my proposition, but not enough to front their own money. Now, of course I live on my own in low-income housing, so I'm barely scraping by on Top Ramen and a never-say-die attitude so that probably helped me persude them a bit. I decided to take the risk and asked them to buy one for me after calculating that my cheap power, the fact I don't have to use my heat as much, and the surging prices of crypto would save me. In this time, however, even though they eventually agreed after seeing the numbers I drew up, the card sold out. I began to dispair that I might never afford one and mine my way into oblivion not being able to keep the lights on let alone strike a profit.

Then, my folks called about five days later as I got a second notification that the exact same deal for a Vega 64 was back! $466 for a Vega! I appealed to my folks again, and they thankfully pulled the trigger within ten minutes. Ten minutes later the cards were all sold out, a grand total of 721 cards in total. Sure wish I could have talked them into buying more, but even I was unsure how successful I would be. A week later, the Vega 64 was in my thrilled and trembling hands, now tired and weak from lack of nutrition and sleep, wired on nothing but crypto; infused by it, and I installed the Vega alongside the 280x. Monero at the time was $120 per, and I calculated that as long as it doubled within a year, that it would be worth my trouble, and even if I lost out I was at the end of my rope anyway. I'd just file for bankruptcy and start to rebuild. I tuned the miner and got it up to about 2700 h/s and started raking large mining profits for the first time ever using Nicehash. Then Monero doubled, and I ate ok again. Then it tripled and I could afford Christmas for my wife and kids, better and bigger than ever. I could pay my rent on time and my power company stopped threatening to shut my power off. But my profits were being stymied from my cashing out. In the middle of all this, Nicehash had apprently been hacked, and I needed to build my own miner configurations. This truly accelerated my knowledge in mining and threw my profits to all-time highs. Even though some of the parts are showing their age and I'm one disaster away from living on the street, I'm living in the best time of my life. I felt and now feel truly alive.

I continued combing forums, to see how I could remain in this sweet spot earning and growing in the space, fearing that one day the Monero gravy train would end. It was so good, and as all great things, it had to come to an end too, right? RIGHT? But no, Monero continues to grow even today, and other cryptos related to Monero are on fire they are so hot today. I began to mine these only recently, calculating that the upside was much more than Monero in the end, although Monero had been so good. I started splitting time between mining Monero, Electronem, Sumokoin and Karbonowec. I also started trading at Cryptopia so I could take advantage of the peaks and valleys. I became an alpha tester for the Karbowanec mobile app. I joined Discords, Telegrams.. whatever I could find I was sinking my teeth into.

Flash forward to today, I have over $1500 in crypto investments, I'm caught up on my bills, and am planning to expand my mining efforts to further capitalize on this amazing time. But, I paused many times while writing this wondering if anyone would care, or if it would expose me to risk, or if it would create a rush to mine or trade and create additional competetion, but you know what? I believe in this movement and I hope one day I will never need to use the paper we call cash ever again. The only way that I can ever hope to do that is by sharing this knowledge and the currencies. Consider sharing some of yours with me. If you enjoyed reading this, please upvote, follow for more, and consider donating to help a struggling minnow just trying to live a decent life in these shark-infested waters, that I might live in this space unafraid to use my real name instead of my handle.. Until next time..

-klymacks

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