In early January of 2018, a friend of mine was excitedly explaining cryptocurrencies to me--as crypto fans often do. I had a waning interest in Bitcoin in the mid-2000's, but it was nothing more than a passing technical interest, like reading an interesting article in a magazine then seeing another a few weeks later. I listening intently to what he was reading about, particularly when he expressed not only genuine interest but also working technical knowledge of the coins and tokens themselves.
Gauging an individual's willingness to invest money, time, or emotion into something against their ability to accrue value is something we're all familiar with--even if it's just paying money to read some financial giant's words to see if their formula works for us on a dissimilar scale and environment. To put it simply, I am firmly interested in whatever this friend is interested in when it comes to business.
I decided to test my own applicable skills to the situation. Mining was the first and last thing that crossed my mind--not to say I didn't make several dozen stops in-between, but that would make this article too long. I asked the big question first, "Is this profitable?" No matter your reason otherwise, if it is not at least self-sustainable--which it's not if you break even and must put physical effort into it, let's be honest.
To cut down another long-winded explanation, I chose Litecoin because at the time, Antminer L3+'s return per Watt was the best bang for the buck, but only at a certain growth point. After careful consideration of time to pay off the initial investment, plus divvy the shares of the project--I knew I was going to ask this friend to partner with me before I knew I had a project--I figured I needed to acquire six miners. The math follows:
The price at the time I researched the machines--and having no contacts within the crypto-community yet--was $4,000 a machine. Each machine was capable of an average of 504 MH/s (megahashes per second--the transactions that make cryptocurrency work) which would yield about 0.06~ LTC (Litecoin) per day. The price was nice at the time--about $250--but, I wanted to be sure that it could drop significantly and still be more than self-sustaining. Each machine uses 800 W of electricity, which can vary up to 10%. At $0.066/kWh, this would be about $53 per month. At $150, 0.06 LTC is worth $9. That's $270 a month.
So... I propose a partnership to my friend, which he easily accepts, and he puts up the initial capital for the miners. All six of them. I build the stand that will eventually help house the cooling system and I drive fours hours, round-trip to pick up the machines. We're splitting everything down the middle--except the initial investment, for which I am still extremely grateful.
I got the miners home earlier than I could have the electrician out to add three more 20 A circuits to my breaker-box, so I hooked two of them up to a lonely 20 A breaker that runs to my lab in the basement--yes, we'll get into that later in the blog, I'm sure. Two issues I had already read about became immediately clear; sound and heat.
The lab room is far from perfectly sealed, but it dampens a fair amount of sound and the miners at full fan speed made it sound like there was an over-heating computer in every room. The temperature in the lab was 84°F while the rest of the house was only 70°F.
The chips never ran over 64°C (~147°F), so I let them run for a few days before...
So, with the electric in place, I set the miners up on the heavy wooden rack I built to serve as a chassis for the cooling and sound dampening box.
Then...
Below is a picture of the thermostat setting (right number) and the reading after one hour of running the miners (left number).
After dissecting a portable A/C unit to boost the vacuum insulated cooling chamber I built some time ago for a gaming rig (more on that later--no pictures here until I can make certain pieces look "safer" or invisible), I built the temporary wooden housing for the miners (it will be foam insulated HDPE eventually). Why is the cooler vacuum insulated, you ask? Well, I want the peak efficiency of the cooler to remain as constant as possible regardless of external temperatures.
Basically, there is a large, pressurized air cylinder with a cooling core in it (think A/C unit) surrounded by another tank. Between the two hulls, there is vacuum. The inlet of the inner tank comes from another pressurized staging tank to make purging faster. The outlet goes to another chamber with a 1,200 CFM blower moving air collected from outside through a HEPA filter. The tanks stage every second or so but the valves aren't very loud, and the tanks are well encased in case of rupture. There is another filter before the air from the cooler enters the miners' box through two duct systems--one above the miners with a booster, and a smaller one parallel to the miners' intakes.
I have some four-inch duct adapters en route for the exhaust fans, and I might be able to start on the HDPE paneling next weekend.
As I write this, the miners are mining 0.6 LTC a day, which at the current price of $114.35 is $68.61. The electric is about $340-$360, so the first five or six days of the month are mining for expenses. I will post more details about setup and maintenance as I progress with the project and with this blog. Below is a screenshot of the automated miner controller I wrote (again, I will be writing about that as well).
So, that's how the mining project came to be, where it is now, and more or less what I'll be writing about in the crypto world moving forward.