Every now and then I see "mining tutorials" that make me wonder if their authors have ever seen an ASIC, even on Youtube. Interestingly that many of such "tutorials" have affiliate links to some "cloud mining" websites. Out of pure coincidence, of course.
Anyway, I spent two years with mining on GPUs during crypto-hype and today I want to show my "yet another PoW mining tutorial". Though it will be relatively short, of little details, and most wannabe miners will hardly like it.
Because today home mining is dead.
No, you still can do hobby mining at home, and even get some pennies (the same pennies you could get from the faucets). But most likely home mining wouldn't make you rich and quickly, particularly if you live in a rich country like the US, EU, Australia or Japan. Anyway, if you agree to have "profits" like 5-10-20-30 cents a day -- you can well start with a single gaming GPU or even with a laptop CPU. Get a second-hand Nvidia GTX 10xx, download a free HiveOS, and off you go, there's no rocket science here. Since I have the same 20 cents a day simply handjobing faucets -- I will not talk about hobby mining and its "profits" any further.
Others had better admit that buying and setting up an ASIC or a GPU is the simplest thing in mining, even a monkey can do it.
A really hard part of the game is electricity and space. Today any decently profitable mining project requires dozens of ASICs or GPUs, which in turn require a lot of electricity and installment area. For example, a rig of a dozen GTX 1080Ti needs about 2,5kW of power and 2 cubic meters (70 cubic feet) of space and it will earn about 8-10 bucks daily, provided that power and space in your basement are free and your wife doesn't mind your tiny mining plant. And even then, before getting any profit, you first have to earn back the money you spent on GPUs (that might take months, or years, or might even never come). So, the cheaper your power, space, and hardware are, the more profitable your mining will be. The best thing is to get it all for free. Today it's the most important secret ingredient of any profitable mining project.
"Well, I'll buy an Innosilicon G32 that brings 150 bucks daily on GRIN at 1800W only, and will cut all the costs easily!", huh? Well, that wonderful piece of sh*t costs about $15K at the moment, makes a lot of noise, and will earn 150 bucks a day for a very short time, especially if you're not the first one to buy it. Within several months or even weeks, thousands of shipped innosilicons will drive network difficulty to the moon and flood the exchanges with GRIN, dumping its rate. So pretty soon 150 bucks a day will become 100, then 50, then... It will be a tough race. eBay is full of cheap old ASICs which now don't justify the electricity they eat, and it's yet to know how many of them paid themselves off at the end of the day.
"Ok, I'll get 100 second-hand GPUs on eBay, earn my 50 bucks a day, and will then sell the GPUs off on eBay in a couple of years", nah? Again, a good idea if your wife, your children, and your cat wouldn't mind having a data-center in da house.
"So what's the moral of yours then?", you might ask.
Well, I'd say that until BTC is not $1M apiece or unless you can rent a cheap warehouse, plug it directly into a power plant with nearly zero electricity cost and stuff it with ASICs directly from Bitmain, Innosilicon, and Co. or with GPUs from eBay -- it's better to forget about really profitable PoW mining.
Alternatively, spend money on electricity, rent, and hardware no matter what, mine crypto, hodl it, and call it "investment"...
