Posted in Cryptocurrency, Technology

Mining Cryptocurrency in January 2018

My last post was the beginning of mining at home with Ethereum and also with my cloud mining efforts with Genesis Mining. I wanted to do an update since then, just so I could see for myself what my efforts have brought me and just to report to the world, how it is going in the world of mining. So the first thing I want to cover, is the fact that the mining at home, in it’s current state, has gotten quite expensive, if you have not already gotten into it and bought the hardware needed to mine. Typically, people want to buy a GPU with a certain number of Gigabytes for mining, and right now, the cost per GB has gone up severely. When I made my first post, about the card that I purchased, it was running $299.99. I even was able to go back, a few weeks later, when they dropped the price to $269.99 and get my $30 back on the price difference.

Well, things have changed. If you look at the XFX Radeon RX 580 8GB card that I got, it is now over $500 to purchase now. Miners have caused the cost of graphics cards to go up significantly. I actually shared a news article about this whole phenomenon from Tech Radar a few weeks ago. With this push back, it looks like makers like Nvidia have asked retailers to make sure that no one is walking out with more than 2 graphics cards at a time. If you look at the current cost of an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition 8GB, it can vary in range from about $380 (IF YOU CAN FIND IT)all the way up into the thousands!

This has changed some people’s mind about purchasing cards right now, due to the fluctuation in the cost of entry for getting just one card. Such is the law of supply and demand, though. I highly recommend against it at this current writing of this article, but it could change in the near future, with all that Nvidia is working on for their machine learning and computer vision projects they are working on for their autonomous car driving aspirations they are trying to reach. Only time will tell though.

At Home Mining

So, let’s get back to my at home rig that I have been running for a few weeks now. Remember, I just got started in November, so there is a little bit of difference in these. Previously, with the cost of Ethereum, I was getting anywhere between $1.25 and a $1.50 a day. Since I last  wrote, Ethereum has now broken the $1,000 level and has stayed above that for the most part and now I am getting over $2 a day. Which is GREAT! So let’s start off with what I got from November. The mining pool that I started with, required that you be at a certain minimum before you were able to cash out, which was 0.05 ETH. I say was, because they tweeted out, that starting on December 1st, 2017, they would start cashing out anything above 0.02 and from then on, they would cash you out if you have not cashed out in the last days.

As you can read from my last post, I was able to start cashing out on December 2nd, 2017 and every week after that, since then. I would say it has been pretty much on schedule, every Monday since, except for when I recently changed my request to put my mining efforts into my Exodus wallet instead of my Coinbase wallet. Now it looks like I will get my efforts on Sundays instead. Either way, let’s take a look at what I have been getting. Keep mind, that the USD comparison, is for the exact worth at the point of deposit. Since Ethereum is traded daily, that worth is volatile and changes the instant it was deposited. All of that, aside, here you go:

Date ETH USD
12/2/17 (Tuesday) 0.07880366 35.8
12/11/17 (Monday) 0.03345818 16.12
12/18/17 (Monday) 0.01984642 15.31
12/25/17 (Monday) 0.02131229 15.85
1/1/18 (Monday) 0.01870194 14.02
1/8/18 (Monday) 0.01909514 22.01
1/15/18 (Monday) 0.01844023 24.24
1/22/18 (Monday) 0.01331773 12.98
1/28/18 (Sunday) 0.01436816279 16.98

This means that since I have started, I have mine’d 0.2373437528 of ETH with a cost of $173.31 (calculated, not actual current trade rate). That means that there is a difference of $96.68 in the 9+ weeks that I have had it. Meaning, I should be well on my way of having the card paid off, in less than 7 weeks from this writing, if I use a low average of $15 a week. You can see the price change over, week by week. For instance, you can see that the week of 12/11, I deposited 0.033* and only got $16.12 for it. Where as of this last Sunday, because the cost per ETH has shot up over $1,100, that same $16 is only 0.014* ETH.

One thing has changed sine I last wrote as well. Previously, I did not factor in the cost of electricity. This time, I sort of can. Since I started this in November, I was able to see the bill from October to November, jump up from $90 to $120. Luckily, I did not have to pay any of the first month’s electricity. Then I saw the month of December jump up to $180, so I offered to pay half of the bill, since I did not purchase the kW monitor for this PC. Then for January, it went up to $256, so I offered to pay $125 of the bill. So I have paid $215 out in electricity, but I just can’t give you a really good, ACTUAL per unit cost, due to the fact I am just guesstimating and volunteering to pay 1/2 of the electric bill. Remember though, I can tell you, it is still roughly $0.10-$0.11 USD for electricity here. So right now, I am still “in the hole” on the card, but it should start coming through very soon.

The other thing I have been able to see though, is a slight drop in my mining hashrate. I was typically getting about 20 MH/s on average, but that has recently dropped to 19. Which is odd and because I don’t really research it, I don’t know if it is my card getting worse, or if the traffic on the ETH network is getting more and more and thus making it more difficult to mine, I have no clue. I keep a close eye on my mining from anywhere I am though. I can always watch my efforts on the Ethermine website either at the old site or the new Beta site.

I have been using my mining efforts to do more trading on Binance and HitBTC to get other forms of cryptocurrency like Cordana, Ripple and Ark. So my actual total sum, isn’t the total sum anymore. I have moved some of it over, but for the last 2 weeks, I have kept the balance and just added it to my Exodus wallet. You can check out my balances on both of these trading platforms, as of this writing here:

HitBTC Binance
ETH 0.00063153 ADA (Cardano) 57
XRP (Ripple) 20 ARK 3.51
IOTA 0.997
Est Value 0.00489153 BTC Binance 0.03066671
$22.8075 USD XRP (Rippl) 0.0148
TRX (Tron) 0.0125
ETF 0.00792166
ETH 0.00007447
LTC (Litecoin) 0.000025
Est Value  0.00489153 BTC
$48.85 USD
Cloud Mining

I continue my cloud mining contract with Genesis Mining (Affiliate code for all Genesis Mining users:K8MO34 ) as well, but it isn’t as lucrative, since I bought in at such a low hash rate. My zCash continues to grow, but I am currently sitting at just under $13 USD since I started it. With my ETH contract, I am currently sitting at just under $10 USD with it. This is a continual thing though, like a slow leaky faucet that I put in $80 USD on, so it is nice to see the outcome each day. The only thing with Genesis is, with ETH, they “claim” there are “fee” issues where the costs are too high to cash out, so you have to actually wait until your ETH meets 0.075. I am currently sitting at 0.0086854. With an average of 0.00016* coming out each day, it will be about 1.5 years before I actually get the payout. Which is completely annoying, because I can send my above mentioned mining efforts of either 0.01 or 0.02 ETH every single week!

The biggest problem, isn’t Genesis Mining. It is me and the fact I got the cheapest mining contract they had, because I just wanted to try it out. If I were so inclined, I could have bought more power, or soon to be, buy more power. They recently announced a pre-order that I can make if I want, but the minimum purchase is just over $1,500 USD! Now, I am currently only at 1 MH/s in the contract I am in with Genesis for my ETH. It was roughly $80 USD. So, to go up to 40 MH/s and not have to pay 40x the cost, I guess is a deal, but I just don’t have that kind of money (extra) to buy in right now.

 

With zCash, I have been getting, every 3rd day or so, about 0.001 to 0.0011 every time. This is a little bit nicer, since the fees are a lot smaller, I actually get my cash out, every third day. Even though I have been mining at 25 H/s, instead of MH/s, like with ETH, I am able to get “real” payouts without having to wait. The biggest issue I have with Genesis though, is the fact that I can only purchase whatever they have available for contracts. I assume this is because of their own build outs. They physically have to be able to afford to buy more equipment before being able to sell cloud mining contracts. Either way, I just don’t see it being worth the money, unless you don’t have the knowledge or money to get into building your own mining rig.

Off until next time..

– Rusty G