Mining Bitcoin at Home: Week 8 Update
Hello everyone!
Another week has passed and on Christmas Day it will be exactly two months since I started my mining operations at home. In these two months the miner has earned a quarter of the price I paid for it. So far so good! More details in the weekly update below:
Who’s keeping me warm in the midst of the Swedish winter? This metal box is!
Just like in the past three weeks, I am continuing mining exclusively on Bitcoin.com’s mining pool. I see it as the winning strategy at this point, considering everything I learnt about mining on different pools in the first month of my home experiment.
The two most important changes from the previous weeks, however, are:
- The drastic increase in the computational difficulty of Bitcoin’s hashing function.
- The drastic increase in the total computational power of Bitcoin.com’s minig pool.
The combined effect of these two factors can be clearly seen in the weekly earnings in the table below:
For the first, my miner’s share in the pool’s mining rewards per block found has decreased, because the same amount (12.5–13.5 BTC) has to be divided between more of the pool’s members, often with mining equipment more powerful than my Yukon SP30 (mining at 4 THash/s). Secondly, it’s becoming harder to find new blocks with the increased difficulty of the required computations. Thus, our mining pool has been founding fewer blocks in this past week.
As you can see, this week my mining profit has dropped by about 0.01 BTC compared to the week before. I’m curious to see if the earnings will stabilise somewhat for the coming few weeks or if the drop will continue further. You and I will know the answer in the next week’s update. So stay tuned and leave your feedback in the comments section below!
Previous Updates:
- Week 0: Unpacking and Setting-Up
- Week 1 Update
- Week 2 Update
- Week 3 Update
- Week 4 Update
- Week 5 Update
- Week 6 Update
- Week 7 Update
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@oleg326756 I went to a btc meet up last Sunday and met 2 German guys there and one of them knows about Steemit already but hasn't given it a try yet, I showed them my page and they scrolled and checked out some of the comments, resteemed posts on it and authors who commented found one about mining - that's the only thing that got them reading
so you're doing a great job!
Wow, that's amazing, @englishtchrivy! Thank you for sharing this with me! And thank you for spreading the word about Steem among bitcoiners. In fact, we do the same at our Bitcoin Meetups in Uppsala and Gävle. We mention Steem and talk about it and other blockchain technologies, not only the Bitcoin Blockchain.
Right back at you: keep up your great work! ;)
How profitable do you think it is compared to your ongoing expenses?
Great question, @getonthetrain, thank you!
No ongoing expenses whatsoever. My electricity costs are included in the monthly rent, at a flat rate (that is, independent of the actual amount of electricity consumed). Thus, for the purpose of mining profitability calculations, earnings = profit. If it wasn’t for this particular circumstance – plus a bunch of other favourable factors, such as: the low price of the miner I found on eBay, no sales tax since the seller too was in the EU, no external PSU required, since the miner comes with two built-in ones, plus the cold Swedish winter that helps to keep the miner and the apartment cool – I probably wouldn’t have started mining at home in the first place.
Interesting project and the "free" electricity is key to your success. Do you expect to be into profit in another 6 months?
@kus-knee (The Old Dog)
Yes, exactly. My rough calculations suggest that I should break even in the next 5–6 months. Or even earlier, if I decide to sell the miner before that.
This is the question every miner is asking.
mining at home esp in winter is great :)
True that! I'm not sure it will be possible to continue in summer. Maybe in a cool cellar with good ventilation…
Hi Oleg,
I wrote a post recently comparing your mining experience with mine experience of curation on Steemit, you might be interested
https://steemit.com/steemit/@svamiva/is-lazy-curation-a-new-mining
Oh, it looks really interesting, thank you for sharing! Reading it now. :)
This post has been linked to from another place on Steem.
Is lazy curation a new Mining ? by @svamiva
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Thanx for the post ,i love mining ,though i don't have mining equipments, im bless to have a platform to do that
#bitclub