But I must confess, it’s freakin’ fun too!
The shocking cost of doing business -
With rates of $0.21 to $0.30+ per kWh, the Philippines, Singapore and Japan sell the most expensive electricity in Southeast Asia.
This is also above the 2023 U.S. electricity rates that ranged from a low of $0.10 per kWh in Idaho to a high of $0.28 per kWh in California.
Anything more than $0.10 per kWh makes it virtually impossible to make any profits mining with a CPU or even a mid-range GPU.
Believe me, I KNOW.
Lessons Learned -
Although it was a lot of fun living “Mining Economics 101”; setting up my workers to pool mine or to solo mine - hoping that Lady Luck would allow me to hit a random block or two before operating costs literally brings the house down.
I must admit, mining can be addictive - all those variables to tweak, all those state-of-the-art, multi-thousand dollar ASICs that could make you richer than you could ever imagine or make you so rekt that the only smokes you can get are the cigarette butts you scavenged from the roadside and public ash trays.
If you buy a cheap knock-off ASIC model from a shady manufacturer, you get what you pay for: an unreliable rig, chronic migraines and a million “I told you so’s” from that annoying voice in your head.
Or if you stupidly hitch your wagon and devote all your mining resources to the next trending “Shitcoin De Jour” cum “Rug Pull Finale”, suddenly it's, “Goodbye Lambo. Hello instant Raman Noodles - again.”
Mind you, if you can manage to avoid ASIC sales scams, get decent low Watt, high Hash Rate machines, get (or better yet, make clean) cheap electricity, then rinse and repeat all of that at scale, you may have a fair chance of not getting thoroughly rekt after the Bitcoin Halving in April, 2024.
Secretly, I think every hardcore miner believes he or she will be "The Next One” that, through sheer brilliance and exhaustive research - aka Round-Robin Q&A’s high on cigar-sized, Zion Coptic blessed spliffs, decides to point his rigs at that one special, under-the-radar project and amasses a butt-load of its tokens right before it does a 1000X’er!
End result?
An obscene, life-changing, “f*ck you’all and the horses you rode in on!” mountain of sudden wealth.
Ok. Back on topic: Mining is Rigged!
The Butterfly Effect explains what most miners already know: Everything Matters; especially in the beginning (a la “Hypersensitivity to Initial Conditions'' - Chaos Theory).
In mining, it’s things like cost per kWh, rig efficiency (Watt Rating, Hash Rate achieved and sustained), the algorithm, the token mined and its market landscape, impending block reward halvings, rising difficulty for block discovery, spikes in the minimum competitive Hash Rate, network uptime vs downtime, etc.
TBH, in spite of all the headaches and hassles, if I could have at least broken even, I’d probably still be mining in one way or another (ASIC, CPU or GPU rigs).
Why?
Because I’m too curious for my own good and a staunch contrarian geek who loves to learn new stuff and tinker…
The Mining Road to Perdition -
I was totally unaware that my local $0.20 Kwh/Hr rates had me 6 feet under before I even started.
For example, the free HP Pavillion Sleekbook 14 that I restored in 2020, runs at 70 Watts/hr or 1.56 kWh per 24 hours.
The Lenovo IdeaPad 110S, a throw-away laptop that I “Un-Bricked” by temporarily removing the internal battery and resetting the CMOS, consumes 55 Watts/hr or 1.2 kWh/day.
Their combined Hash Rate is a meager 225 H/s.
The final CPU mining worker I setup was a Gaming Desktop I built from old, but functioning spare parts from Pawnshops.
It’s your typical Desktop kWh hog, running at 450 Watts/Hr or 10.8 kWh/day and produces 275 H/s.
Now for some Ugly Numbers and my Harsh Reality -
Using Unmineable.com’s RandomX mining calculator at
https://minerstat.com/coin/UNM-RandomX, I generated these two charts.
Do you see how much money I lose by CPU mining with the laptops and the Desktop?
Running the 2 laptops:
Running the Desktop:
And that’s why RE: CPU Mining, “You can put a fork in me. I’m done. No, really. I mean it. It’s over and the fat lady is singing…”
[Hey, I seem to recall that in spite of max loads, Raspberry Pi’s use a mere 6 Watts/hr... Hmmmm…I wonder if...]
Submitted FYI.
And may you and yours be well and loving life today.
In Lak’ech, JaiChai