I began my crypto life as very much an enthusiast, doing as much research on the backgrounds & projects of crypto assets that reigned my attention, with a keen eye on Ethereum with Smart Contract functionality.

 

Tracking crypto prices then became a bit of a obsession, with a hesitation of dampening my toes in the sector, watching the prices sky rocket in Jan 2018, I began doing more research on GPU mining & setting up my own rig.

 

Why limit myself to a fiat/crypto purchase portfolio when I could generate as many coins as the hardware was capable of doing within the difficulty parameters??

 

The decision of what to mine came next.. the Ethereum project stood out..

 

And why not, most of the new crypto startups were based on the Ethereum solution, it seemed like this project was defining a standard & was begging me to support it..

 

Looking back, I had a serious case of FOMO going on but didn’t have the scratch for the whole system & had to wait until March.

 

In March 2018 I spent the money & took the plunge into setting up the rig.

 

In the midst of crypto prices crashing from their highs, all of the speculation of forum content & YouTube channels predicting a bounce-back, the cost of GPU’s at an all time high, it was a time of mixed messages, all while the Power Supply taking 5 weeks to be delivered..

 

It was time to strap in, the rollercoaster ride had begun..

 

So I set the rig up in the shed, it was a thing of beauty, noisey, but a techies wet dream, although the Windows setup sucked & the system kept crashing.

 

The rig needed to be babysat more than I predicted & a lot of downtime occurred. I was questioning myself if I’d made the right decision..

 

I then found SMOS, what a lifesaver! Payed the small fee & it took care of the system for me. Haven’t looked back since, from a monitoring perspective anyway.

 

Then came the power bills, all in brittish pounds & at London rates nonetheless..

 

More expense..!

 

I kept the rig running for 3 months before needing to put it in Storage & move house, there it sat for 4 months while my new house purchase settled..

 

During this time, the CryptoKitties dilemma was all over the web, with a lot of negative sentiment toward the Ethereum project & now I’m wondering if I should sell the rig.. Checking GPU prices, they have more than halved since March.. Hmmm, bugger it, I’ll keep it & run it until it dies..!

 

Then came the news of the Constantinople hard fork, what does all this mean..?

A more scalable product with a reduced Block Reward & a difficulty bomb to disincentivise miners, oh dear..

 

With a partial implementation of the advertised scope & another implementation date slipping, giving more negative sentiment with the Project, this begs the question, what is next for this project..

 

I didn’t have to wait long, the headlines listed, in-house fighting with developers leaving the project, along with many dApps jumping ship, a 51% attack on ETH Classic & a price ceiling of what seems to be $180, what on earth could possibly come next??

 

This begs the question, has the almighty Ethereum project become unstuck from the inside out, unhinged in the fight for scalability & becoming unattractive for dApp’s to be based on?

 

Looking back, from a financial perspective, if I invested my £3k in crypto, I would have taken a 90% hit, leaving me with £300..

 

I still have the rig, albeit, at 35-40% of what it was purchased for, lets say £1250.

Its generated 3ETH to date at a cost of close to £600..

 

Lets do the math: £3600 outgoing, £360 of ETH generated & the rig is still worth £1250, equivalent to £1610, in comparison to £300

 

Although a mining rig in 2019 isn’t a financially positive position, it seems to be the better option for my journey in a ever so fluctuating Crypto market..

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading my experience

 

Feel free to comment on where you feel ETH is going below ..