Never Too Late To Bitcoin

Matt - What's it Like to be a Miner and the Mining Philosophy

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What do you need to know to mine Bitcoin? Is garage mining profitable? Join host Kathleen Jobin and guest, Bitcoin miner Matt as they discuss everything from what you can expect in terms of power usage to if using an ‘on/off’ model can be profitable. 

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Matt was using 30 or 40 kilowatts in his garage to mine bitcoin (500 KW/half-MW could be consumption of anywhere between 100-200 homes), now he’s moved into an industrial unit he uses up to half a megawatt of power. 
  • There's unused capacity from the grid which are built keeping in mind peaks and valleys, but they're built handle peaks so most of the time the grid has excess capacity. Bitcoin mining is a 24/7 operation so you're ideally using non-stop flat load of consumption. And most utilities want load to offset their fixed costs at least.
  • Matt got into Bitcoin through mining. The first Bitcoin he had was the Bitcoin he mined. He started out with homegrown GPU miners using graphics card in making a custom computer, not Bitcoin (because there were already ASICs) but Ethereum, but he was mining on a platform which paid in Bitcoin. So you mined Ethereum etc but got paid in Bitcoin.
  • Matt’s recommendation is that if you’re into your tech then you should dip your toe and try out mining. Learning mining works best if you're actually doing it. You can find older generation machines at good prices and can make a little money out of them. 
  • If you look at any website that shows profitability of miners, that shows profitability right now today if you have the miners with you but it doesn't compare with long term factors like mining difficulty or the price of Bitcoin. The profitability changes dynamically everyday every second. And generally, that profitability gets lesser over time because the difficulty gets harder.
  • Home miner's are not going to get competitive rates. But when profitability is high, like really now, it doesn't matter much, you will still make some. 
  • When things get really bad in bear markets, you see dips in hash rate as the least profitable miners drop out. In the early day, when Matt was mining from home, he was finding it barely profitable, and was earning about enough to pay the power bill. 
  • If you think long term, you can scoop up a bunch of machines for cheap during a bear market. Mining is very opportunistic, very flexible, it's a type of business that uses electricity in a way that is very unique.
  • Matt firmly believes Proof of Stake and other alternatives cannot work with the same vision (of Proof of Work to achieve global free permissionless digital money). Mining is designed in such a way that it creates a backbone that secures immutability of the blockchain and its transactions and scarcity. Just like gold is hard to mine as it takes real world resources to create is what makes it scarce.
  • Matt's mantra is to mine and hold and sell only for the sake of paying power bills and so on. 

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    BEST MOMENTS

    ‘Believing mining is a get rich quick scheme is a mistake’

    'If you're looking at all I care about is making money in the simplest way, then just buy Bitcoin'

    'Bitcoin is a free sovereign monetary asset that is free of governments'

    'Bitcoin mining is not a lottery, it’s a type of math problem that you can only solve by making guesses’

    ‘Cryptography is its own rabbit hole’ 

    'You do not get something for nothing'

    'The only thing that a miner should buy with bitcoin is more mining machines'

    'If anything Bitcoin is, it is also freedom of expression'

     

    EPISODE RESOURCES

    Matt's Twitter

    Ville de Baie-Comeau Call for proposal: https://t.co/Q4KdqXmhUa?amp=1

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    Never Too Late To BitcoinBy Kathleen Jobin