My CryptoMining Adventure.

A short story about how millions were never made and the lesson learned.

This isn’t a story about how I made my millions mining BTC in the early years, sitting with my beautiful model wife, garage full of Lambos on my private yacht. This is a story about me which I hope has an insight for everyone. So while we all bundle up and endure the “Crypto-Winter” I feel like I’m reliving history. ASICs for all algorithms released, Insane market demand for GPUs due to cryptocurrency mining followed by a subsequent crash. Major Crypto-exchanges folding such as QuadraCX becoming insolvent or the Cryptotopia hack.

When Lambo?

Topping all that off with a crypto bear marketing taking most cryptos down 90% All-time highs (ATH). Last year brought me to many emotions, fear, elation, uncertainty, and acceptance. So please read on, grab your favorite beverage and learn from me. How I started, gave-up, and came back twice. Because of my hilarious lack of insight into Crypto and Cryptomining I could have been one those BTC miner millionaires. So today I sit and wait for the next boom and bust cycle.

This is the end… my friend.

Currently, the talk all over the cryptomining sphere was “It’s over”, “Not profitable”, and “Cryptomining with GPUs is done”. Today most miners have fled the field in droves. I think the weak-handed miners has finally sold off and are out. Seeing all this reminds me of a couple of years ago when exactly the same thing happened. Let’s take a trip back in time…

2012 the beginning, there was BTC…

Let me take you back to a magical time called 2012. BTC was $12 back in when I started on my first ever cryptomining venture. Unlike BTC my memory is not an immutable blockchain, so I can’t recall everything that happened but only major events. At that time I was in the US ARMY. I learned about Bitcoin through all the techie forums I frequented. “Magic internet money” that could be mined with GPUs. I was, still am, a huge tech enthusiast. I lived in the Army barracks and had free electricity. So it was natural for me to quickly buy up an AMD HD5850 and try my hand at making a Bitcoin.

After learning the miner configuration I was off. If memory serves me correctly, I believe it took me over 2 weeks mining with a single HD5850. I remember waiting and checking every day how much BTC I earned on SlushPool. Well After I checked Slushpool and earned exactly 1 BTC mining I transferred it straight to Mt. Gox to sell it for $12.

Slushspool was my first pool.

Selling the BTC was easy enough and I had my first $12 earned from mining! However Mt. Gox had their Know your customer(KYC) process to transfer that $12 into my bank account. This is where I ran into problems. I couldn’t get through the KYC process. Everything in KYC had to match up. Well being from California, having a California ID, but living in an Army barracks in New York made this difficult. As my address isn’t exactly accessible and forget ever having mail delivered to you when you live in a barracks!

May of 2012 sent my first mined BTC to Mt. Gox.

Unable to pull any funds out from Mt. Gox due to the KYC. I decided it wasn’t worth my time. My computer couldn’t make tangible money. So I quit mining BTC.

December 2013, The Litecoin Fiasco

Well, a year go by It’s late 2013. I finished my service in the Army and I’m in college in Washington State. I’m taking networking and communications degree. Every day I browse my favorite tech to keep up with all the tech news. Well on one website I learn of Litecoin mining is the In-thing due to the 400% price increase while BTC is hitting $1000. Meaning GPU mining is insanely profitable. Spurred by dreams of self-created wealth doing a hobby I enjoy, computers and GPUs, I dive head-first into it this time. I go to all the tech sale forums and start trying to pick up used AMD GPUs, HD5850s, HD6850’s, 7970 whatever I could get my hands on.

My rigs consisted of AMD’s low-power dual-core CPUs, Gigabyte 990FX motherboards, 4GB DDR3, using cheap small HDDs, and first-generation risers that looked like floppy connectors(not the fancy ones everyone uses now). with 1000w-1200w PSU powering it all!

AMD GPU prices increased due to miners buying up whatever they could get their hands on, including me.

Graph taken from www.extremetech.com (2014)

That was around the time AMD released the R9 290X. What a beast of a GPU that was pulling around 1Gh/s in Scrypt! I was able to snag a couple of R9 290x’s from newegg before they were completely sold out. Prices reached $700+ for R9 290’s due to the cryptomining demand. Nvidia was basically left out because of there lack-luster cryptomining performance.

My first mining Rig consisting of 3 290x’s and 1 290. On a AMD AM2+ platform. Mined LTC at the time doing 950Kh/s per card.

I’ve never dealt with mining on this scale and it was quite a learning experience. I don’t think I ever achieved a stable rig during this time-period. I used Windows 8, which allowed more than 4 GPUs to be used due to UEFI. Windows 8 was anything but friendly to use. Miners would crash every few days or so. It was all a fairly painful experience but I was determined.

My room-mate his name was Logan was a heavy weed smoker but all around fairly chill dude. He wasn’t as interested in Cryptocurrency as me but was cool with me setting rigs up in the Living-room and Kitchen due to me needing 15AMP outlets to run my rigs! They became part of the furniture our duplex we ’re renting out.

When I got the R9 290X and start running I start tripping breakers. Logan wasn’t happy about it, but I was paying the full electric bill. I ended up moving the 290X rig into the Kitchen tapping into a 15AMP circuit. And If any of you had 290X reference coolers… well, you know how loud they can get. So it became a small conversation piece whenever we had a guest. They would always ask “What the heck is all that?”

Due to my previous Mt. Gox experience, I avoided them and got into a newcomer called Coinbase. Whatever LTC I mined I turned into BTC using the now Defunct exchange, BTC-E. Unfortunately, I FOMO’d right in when BTC and LTC were hitting all-time highs(ATH) in December and January. by February, prices were heading downhill, the markets were overbought.

The Mt Gox Bankruptcy on February 25, 2014, exploded on the scene didn’t help any. On top of the Mt. Gox debacle, by March, LTC ASICs we being rumored and pre-orders were happening. However, I kept mining until July 2014. By July-August, I was selling off all my mining hardware due to unprofitability of it, the coming ASICs, and moving back to California. In the end, I only made about $600~ worth of BTC from my venture. Having spent around $3500 worth of GPUs and mining equipment. Selling it all helped me recoup some of the costs, but this cryptomining mess left a bad taste in my mouth.

Started mining LTC mid-December kept mining throughout the crash

I moved back to California in Sept of 2014 to help my mom who had lost her job. I kept what little I made during my 2014 LTC mining venture and HODL it. This period was the end of GPU mining era. It was a barren wasteland. I didn't bother to keep following the tech, but I did keep following BTC prices. By the Mid of 2015, I bought more BTC off coinbase for around $400~.

In January 2016 I finished college and decided to move to Pennsylvania. Well, in June of 2016 I decided to sell all my BTC holdings, around 6.5 BTC, worth $700 per BTC to fund my move. I had washed my hands of it all and make a small gain in the process. I never thought Bitcoin would ever recover to make new ATH and GPU mining was never coming back.

June 2017, What the heck is Ethereum?

In mid-June 2017, it seems fate always has a way of interfering. Once again browsing techie sites(This time Techpowerup.com) I stumble up Ethereum. It seems that, once again, AMD GPUs are near impossible to get hold off because, once again, GPU mining is a big thing again. I can’t believe it, GPU mining viable again? Over the next week and I frustrate myself with thoughts. Should I get back into mining again? My last time was a fairly big failure. However, if I had kept up on the Crypto rather than giving up, I could have been riding this Ethereum mining wave! After consulting with my new roommate and friend, Mike, he was enthusiastic and said a resounding YES let's jump into this!

My first foray into Ethereum mining with 7xGTX1070 rigs

Well since, once again in history, every single AMD GPU was out-of-stock we jumped on Nvidia GPUs. Picking up the more expensive EVGA GTX 1070’s and started our Ethereum mining Journey. well from there… it’s still playing out :)

Where to go from here, what road to travel on?

Hindsight’s a real bitch you know? When I first heard of Bitcoin, then litecoin, and cryptocurrency, in general, I never thought it would take off. In my wildest dreams, I never thought bitcoin would even touch $20,000, now sitting around $3,800 at the time of writing. I had the chance, the opportunity, to take advantage long before it became mainstream and failed to recognize the potential for world-changing event.

In reality, I really wanted to share my story, because I feel they may be others out there just like me. Where the concept, the idea, was all right in front of you, and me, all along. And just like me they probably tried, failed or something didn’t work and gave up. The lesson I learned is to keep at it. Do your best not to lose motivation and most important pay attention! Your future could be right in front of you, sometimes you wouldn’t even know it.

Disclaimer: I am an avid GPU miner, huge crypto fan, and hold Bitcoin and Ethereum. I run a farm of 100~ GPUs. This definitely not financial advice.