Subsistence Mining in 2019?

Unfortunately, we Hungarians, as with (almost) everything, overthink this too, and believe it will work and we'll make a good living from it. Unfortunately not — this won't work in 2019 anymore. Subsistence mining was already on its last legs in 2018 and simply ceased to exist by 2019.

Of course, people can be outraged now, saying what an idiot I am and what nonsense I'm writing, so anyone who thinks that should rather not read this post any further, as they won't want to understand what I'm trying to say.

Nowadays, alongside the ever-growing ranks of ASIC devices and individuals with serious financial resources, home mining is more of a hobby — perhaps hobby mining of a chosen cryptocurrency — rather than an activity that generates a reliable income source.

Lining up graphics cards wasn't a bad idea, and neither were the cryptocurrency creators' visions that first CPU, then later GPU mining would incentivize users to run nodes and maintain the network with their real computing power. And generally, to get them interested in the whole thing.

However, today, saying that whatever they come up with will happen, only Szállás.hu can pull that off with their terrible "it'll happen just like that, the Darabos family said so!" commercials. In reality, there will be one person who will have enough knowledge and money to create something that will generate far more profit for themselves than anyone else would ever have a chance at.

This is how it was back in the day with Bitmain's number one and two men who founded the company, and we're slowly reaching the point where there won't be an algorithm for which a Bitmain AntMiner machine doesn't exist. This is reality, and the most painful point is that even today, many people only focus on the price and don't bother with how much harder it is for a machine of a given performance today compared to, say, a year ago.

Because more and more machines entered circulation, more and more big investors established warehouse-sized mining farms, raising the "difficulty level" to such an extent that even with 500 million-trillion-light-years worth of Terahash power, we're still at the point where solving a single block would take decades. In plain terms, our chances of delegating a Bitcoin block to the blockchain and receiving the well-deserved 12.5 BTC reward are approximately 0.followed by a million zeros and a 1 at the end.

So in plain terms, what am I trying to tell anyone with this long paragraph? That home mining and the hope of big profits are things of the past. We should start looking at this whole thing as if Bitcoin and its SHA-256 network is no longer our playing field (especially after the halving it won't be...). So if we want to mine and have money to pay for the consumed electricity (and don't want to cover it from mining), then we can look at home mining as some kind of investment in the future.

For this, however, we shouldn't be looking at the biggest, most performance-intensive, and most ASIC-compatible cryptocurrencies, but rather take up the fight with the internet's cesspool and start on a path that might yield "serious!?" savings in 5-10-15 years. These are the smaller cryptocurrencies, possibly newly forming ones that don't require a big investment. It's enough to mine 1,000 units of something, then safely store the codes in a safe and check back in 10 years whether the mined 1,000 units of "Smurfs Supercell Coin" still has a wallet, whether the whole thing even exists, and if so, whether we can somehow exchange it for any meaningful cryptocurrency or real money at all.

Outdated ASIC miners are basically good for this. You don't even need to run them continuously — rather keep them in deployment-ready condition in the mining room we set up during the big Bitcoin rush, then search the net for new coins, and as soon as there's something that favors our old little ASIC machine, fire it up immediately and don't stop until 1,000 units. Then either something comes of it or not — time will answer that for us anyway.

This is also why it's not worth flooding people selling old ASIC machines on Hardverapró, Jófogás, Vatera, or eBay or any other alternative platform with know-it-all comments, insults, and any kind of rudeness just because they're asking XY amount for a machine they want to get rid of. You often see ads for pocket change where you can get some ASIC machine in exchange for monthly cigarette money. True, that machine won't be able to provide a guaranteed income and comfortable livelihood anymore, but getting something for 30-50,000 Ft, which, with just a few hours or days of operation and the electricity wasted on it, could yield serious savings after 5-10-15 years — that can make even a machine considered worthless today priceless.

As a closing thought, for anyone who still doesn't understand my point, think about how many years Bitcoin was worth nothing. And when it started to be "worth" something, what would you have done at the moment when around 2009-2010, the 1,000 Bitcoin mined in 1-2 weeks and sitting in your wallet was worth, for example:

• (fictional data) in 2012 would have been worth 10 USD?
  • Would you have sold?
  • If not, would it have hurt if:
• (fictional data) in 2013, your wallet holding 1,000 BTC was worth only 1 USD?
  • Would you have sold for 1 dollar?
  • If not, would you have been happy if:
• (fictional data) in 2015, your 1,000 BTC was worth 1,000 USD?
  • Would you have sold?
  • If you sold your 1,000 BTC for 1,000 USD, would you have felt pain when:
• (real data) in 2018, your 1,000 BTC would have been worth 20 million US Dollars?
  • Would you have sold and enjoyed the life secured by 20 million dollars?
  • Or would you have believed it would go even higher and:
• (real data) by early 2019, instead of your 20 million dollars, would you have been happy if someone bought it from you for 3 million? Although 3 million dollars is still about a billion forints, you'd have to spend a lot of years working in a factory...
  • Would you have sold?
  • If so, would it hurt that now:
• (real data) by summer 2019, the 3 million dollars' worth of Bitcoin you sold last year would now again be worth close to 11-12 million dollars?
  • Would you sell now?
  • Or would you not stress about anything and check on the result of your 2009-2010 two-week mining:
• Option 1: (fictional data) in 2024, 15 years after your 1-2 weeks of mining, you would face the fact that 1 Bitcoin is worth 200,000 USD, meaning your 1,000 Bitcoin sitting in your wallet for 15 years is worth 200 million USD at this moment (!) or:
• Option 2: (fictional data) in 2024, 15 years after your 1-2 weeks of mining, you'd get slapped with the realization that your wallet containing 1,000 Bitcoin is worth 0 USD because (for some reason) just.

That's right, so who knows what anyone would do in any given moment, or what they wouldn't. All it takes is for someone to say, yes, now I'll spend 1-2 days/weeks/months on it and let it rest in peace, I won't tinker with it, I won't listen to others and won't worry about anything, only when I've set for myself that in 15 (20-25-30) years we'll open the wallet (if we still can). This is the future investment part, which seems to be the most humane form of investment. No stress, no panic, and a few kW of wasted electricity won't send the world to hell.

So currently, this is roughly what we can get out of an outdated ASIC machine, but we definitely won't make a living from NiceHash-style BTC production with a different algorithm machine, one way or another. No other platform will provide a secure livelihood in the struggle with a 2-year-old once-popular ASIC. Unless you get the electricity for free! 😀