[Discussion] My Bitcoin Mining journey - 400 1080 Ti's To Present Day -

[VyprBTC]

I wanted to first say thanks to all the great people here on the forum, this community is awesome, thanks fam!



Wanted to workshop and run a few ideas maybe bounce some stuff back and forth -


A couple months ago my partners and I sold off all our (their share) equipment and shut down our warehouse - roughly had about 400 1080ti's.


We spent roughly 200 BTC back when it was 2k/BTC (50 was from me) so needless to say even though we made our money back, if we would have just left those coins in our wallets, we would have been much much much more profitable with today's valuation @ 11k/BTC.


I still have my share of miners at my house, 50 1080ti's but my house is MAXED out - 80A and I'm paying $0.27/w here in Los Angeles, it's insane.


So now I'm at a crossroad -

• Let my coins sit and keep mining with only 9 Rigs
• expand this time no partners just myself

My electric is roughly 2k/mo right now so expanding to a small warehouse my bill would be only 600/mo so basically with the equipment I have now and the cost I'm paying, that savings alone would offset the monthly lease by $1,400 - it has me thinking.

[VyprBTC]

reserved

[VyprBTC]

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[GCMiner]

Yeesh, 0.27$ is insane. How did you manage to buy so many TIs in bulk?

[cryptbro]

i hear ya man. paying .35 cents/kw down in SD sucks. hows the commercial electric rate up there? been thinking about getting a spot to take advantage of the lower rates (i think its .15-.20 here)

[Serental]

With that many rigs and so much equipment, have you ever considered setting up a warehouse out of state or even out of country? Here in Canada, we get between 8-15 cents/kw depending on province (in CAD). It might be worth it to spend the flight up, find a few partners, and work things out.

Also same question as above; how did you manage to get so many 1080 Ti's in bulk? I'm trying to build something of my own.


Edit: Correct me if my math is wrong, but you're looking at almost $15,000 monthly with that size of farm! For same power consumption would be ~$6,000 in Canada. Definitely worth the research if you are serious about this project.

[VyprBTC]

Yeesh, 0.27$ is insane. How did you manage to buy so many TIs in bulk?

It's absurd!


I started out before my other partners, and the bulk came from Newegg, the rest came from Fry's and Microcenter before Microcenter changed their policy to only 2 per customer. Even after they did for additional rigs we would just go 4 or 5 of us and buy them all. There are also 5 Fry's around Los Angeles/OC so we would drive to all of them and buy everything.

[VyprBTC]

i hear ya man. paying .35 cents/kw down in SD sucks. hows the commercial electric rate up there? been thinking about getting a spot to take advantage of the lower rates (i think its .15-.20 here)

Ouch.... SD doesn't play fam!


Commercial rates here range from $0.09 on up depending on the zone

[VyprBTC]

With that many rigs and so much equipment, have you ever considered setting up a warehouse out of state or even out of country? Here in Canada, we get between 8-15 cents/kw depending on province (in CAD). It might be worth it to spend the flight up, find a few partners, and work things out.

Also same question as above; how did you manage to get so many 1080 Ti's in bulk? I'm trying to build something of my own.

The hard part believe it or not wasn't getting the cards, because we just mixed brands and models, as long as it was a 1080 Ti, we bought it. At the time nobody was really buying them because everyone was land grabbing for 1070's and 470/80s.



The hardest part was getting PSU's, 8+8 cables and RISERS.

[bigjee]

Hey Vypr.
Im impressed you have 9 rigs at your place. I only have 4 and the place sounds like an airport!


That being said I think you need to define a goal for yourself. What do you want out of all this (to me this is the most important question).
You could decide to hodl by building a simple portfolio and sell your assets/rigs to create it
Alternatively if you want to get back in and ride the bitcoin waves just keep mining with what you have (are the rigs at home paid off? or are you carrying debt).
If you expand you will be investing more capital (youve sold once and buying again so Im pretty sure youre not coming out ahead) to begin with so might want to run the numbers again to see if it makes sense.

[VyprBTC]

Hey Vypr.
Im impressed you have 9 rigs at your place. I only have 4 and the place sounds like an airport!


That being said I think you need to define a goal for yourself. What do you want out of all this (to me this is the most important question).
You could decide to hodl by building a simple portfolio and sell your assets/rigs to create it
Alternatively if you want to get back in and ride the bitcoin waves just keep mining with what you have (are the rigs at home paid off? or are you carrying debt).
If you expand you will be investing more capital (youve sold once and buying again so Im pretty sure youre not coming out ahead) to begin with so might want to run the numbers again to see if it makes sense.

LOL Yes indeed it does sound like LAX - I am using my garage to house the equipment. I'm using Vortex 10" Inline fans which has about 700 CFM - don't be fooled by all these 5000 10000 CFM fans, they don't work at EXTRACTION due to static pressure. A few of my old clients had huge marijuana grow ops, these are the fans that these people use to remove heat from their giant lights. They work amazing.

I've actually been hashing numbers for the past few months since we liquidated the warehouse - I'm a financial planner by trade so the spread sheets run wild!

I have a decent holdings of BtC, all the rigs were paid for in BtC and they are most definitely paid off, zero debt.

You hit the nail on the head, if I expand, I will be investing more capital, which puts me at the difficult decision. On a speculative basis, I don't think BtC will grow the 550% it did - that's one of the main reasons the partners dissolved the warehouse - profits were and are good, but not 550% good  

I don't see 5x growth this coming year, again speculative as it's a very volatile (obviously) market.


But it's why I decided to try to have a discussion here, bounce some ideas around, hear opinions, views etc to expand my consciousness in whole.  

[QuintLeo]

I miss San Diego climate (lived there for almost 12 years, part of that in the Navy but most of it after I got out) and watching lots of pretty gals in bikinis on the beaches almost year-round.

I do NOT miss the cost of living there.

[cryptbro]

I miss San Diego climate (lived there for almost 12 years, part of that in the Navy but most of it after I got out) and watching lots of pretty gals in bikinis on the beaches almost year-round.

I do NOT miss the cost of living there.

Amen bro lol. Currently scoping out some commercial areas so I can quit paying this ridiculous residential rate but I'll need some more rigs first to make the profitability worth it.

[VyprBTC]

I miss San Diego climate (lived there for almost 12 years, part of that in the Navy but most of it after I got out) and watching lots of pretty gals in bikinis on the beaches almost year-round.

I do NOT miss the cost of living there.

hahaha one of my closest friends was stationed in Coronado lucky bastards ship was under repair for like 3 years so didn't do any sea duty till his last year! It was a blast every time I was on leave I would head down there and party with him. Good times! Crazy guy got out and stayed in the area, but in Chula Vista I think, very very ... rural. Looked like Fontana meth ville to me

[QuintLeo]

I was stationed on USS Ranger out of North Island for a while - there were parts of the WestPac I made I definitely would have liked to repeat (like the stopover in Thailand) and other parts I would like to have missed.

 Chula Vista- varied when I was living there, some parts were decent some were starting to get iffy.
 Nowhere near as bad as Barrio Logan though.

 Climate in Central Washington isn't a ton different, except we actually have winters here (usually mild though).


 I wish I had the money for 50 x 1080 ti cards AND the rigs to put them in. Might get into that ballpark in another year, if profitability stays good, but I suspect it's going to take a good bit longer.

[VyprBTC]

I was stationed on USS Ranger out of North Island for a while - there were parts of the WestPac I made I definitely would have liked to repeat (like the stopover in Thailand) and other parts I would like to have missed.

 Chula Vista- varied when I was living there, some parts were decent some were starting to get iffy.
 Nowhere near as bad as Barrio Logan though.

 Climate in Central Washington isn't a ton different, except we actually have winters here (usually mild though).


 I wish I had the money for 50 x 1080 ti cards AND the rigs to put them in. Might get into that ballpark in another year, if profitability stays good, but I suspect it's going to take a good bit longer.

haha. Thailand is fun, only been once, wasn't really my scene but partied it up. When I got out I got picked up as a security contractor in the middle east. We would take so many trips to everywhere, blow obscene amounts of money because 1 - young and dumb 2 - honestly didn't really know if we'd live till the next vacation and 3 - what else is a 22 year old going to do making 6 figures? Spend it all like an idiot, that's what!

[VyprBTC]

Well my realtor buddy just called me up, he actually found a spot for me and I get to inspect it tomorrow and pick up the keys as well if I like the terms.


Main thing I need to inspect is the Electric Panel ... and where I can put some massive vent holes lol


Still undecided as far as how much expansion I'm going to be doing, but at least this is a step forward.

[d00f]

Up in the frozen wasteland to the north of you I'm paying about  $0.065/kwh (converted to USD for you). The cooling is provided by mother nature for 6 months of the year and a small collection of cards is heating my home. To the south (the area where you're at) it really doesn't seem to make any sense dealing with the high costs of power and cooling. I feel like Quebec (Canada) is probably ideal because there is so much cheap hydro and as you go North it gets cooler - although not too far north or your internet will suck. Commercially, demand metered I had my own phase converter and was paying about $0.02/kwh. Not free, but almost.

[bigjee]

  Im in Winnipeg and the outside temp is -15C tonight; My room's window is wide open and the room temp is 22.3C to give you an idea of the heat being dissipated in here.

Good luck on the expansion and Im sure since youre a financial planner you'l do just fine.
All the best!

[VyprBTC]

Im in Winnipeg and the outside temp is -15C tonight; My room's window is wide open and the room temp is 22.3C to give you an idea of the heat being dissipated in here.

Good luck on the expansion and Im sure since youre a financial planner you'l do just fine.
All the best!

Wow from 5ºF outside to 72ºF inside... you must be running a nice bit of gear, holy mama!

I don't think I'll be so lucky, my buddy told me that the building is all concrete and only a front side roll-up door, so ventilation is going to be a tiny bit... tricky. Going to snap up picks when I visit the location tomorrow. I might just have to take it though, honestly I'm shocked a building is able to be locked down this quickly, anyone in LA knows how time consuming securing a lease is. I used to be a commercial agent many many years ago. it's never stopped being so fast paced.



Thanks for the vote of confidence, I still have some decisions to make. Part of me wants to just sit on my coins since time and time again holding onto coins has MASSIVELY outperformed buying mining equipment. Mining has never been a loss, but nowhere as lucrative a return as just holding onto those dear old coins and investing in more.



We'll see how it unfolds.