The second biggest mistake I made in mining.

[mikeywith]

I will keep the biggest mistake to myself since that was really really really the stupidest thing one can do, it was 3-4 years ago and probably nobody can fall for it now, so there is really no need to talk about it now because it's embarrassing, but when the right time comes, I will tell the story.

My second biggest mistake:

"A picture is worth a thousand words"



Antminer S9k, I lost track of how many boards I lost, we did some cleaning and found these and I am about to take them to a "special" garbage dump myself because the truck driver refused to take them since they are made of steel-like materials he said.  

The number of the hash boards in the picture alone is about 40 (majority is S9k, maybe 2-3 S9j) that's about 13 S9ks, I brought those in an attempt to "revive' them, but never had the mood nor the time for that, plus it was never worth it to begin with, we still have about 50-60 toasted boards at the farm, so at the best-case scenario there is probably 30 bricked S9ks + shipping that is about $10,000 wasted on nothing, most of those gears didn't run long enough to ROI the shipping cost.

Why do I call this a mistake and not bad luck? because I was reading on telegram mining groups from "random" people talking about how bad the S9ks were, and I simply ignored them thinking Bitmain can't make such terrible gears with such a failure rate, I hope this serves as a lesson not just in regards to the S9ks but to the fact that when people share their experience - you should NOT ignore it.

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[Pendrak]

One man's trash is another man's treasure...

My biggest one was buy 1 T17...

[thierry4wd]

so confusing ! 

For me, my biggest mistake.... i have buying two D3 ... so stupide !!! lol , lost all my money...

[philipma1957]

my Mistakes. 

Not holding early mining gains.

I have had 57 btc free and clear and did not hold it.
It Was worth about 9 a coin.

At those prices it was cheap enough to hold.  Down side would be only a 500 dollar loss.

The lowest price btc I ever earned was 6 dollars.

The highest price btc I ever earned was 20000 dollars.

that is an expansion of 3333 to 1.

I simply do not see BTC ever doing an expansion like that. 3333 x 10,000 = 33,330,000 a coin. that simply won't happen.

I Think some lesser coins could do 100x. what they are now.

I hold 1,600,000 Doge. worth about 4100 usd.

I could see it being 10x what it is now far more easily then I can see btc worth 98,000 a coin.

My goal is to have 10,000,000 doge

or to sell all my doge if it reaches 10 cents before I get to 10,000,000 doge. that is about 38x bigger then it is now.

I still hold BTC
I also hold LTC

[DaveF]

Just saw this post.
Look for e-waste buyers in your area.
Grab a hammer and knock off the aluminum heatsinks, you can probably get $0.25/ pound for them.
The boards with chips will probably get you $1.00 / pound.

You are not going to get your lost money & time back but at least you are not just dumping it for free.

https://cashforcomputerscrap.com/current-pricing


-Dave

[mikeywith]

Look for e-waste buyers in your area.

e-waste buyer in my country is like a Unicorns elsewhere  , I live in a developing country and we only read about these stuff on the internet, as for knocking off the heatsinks that sounds like a great idea, but I will let the gentlemen who work at the garbage dump collect them and make some money, they do that for a living since their salaries are terribly low, so they would collect whatever they can sell and I am sure they know how and where to sell those aluminum heatsinks.

Thanks Dave.

[philipma1957]

Having been stationed in Subic Bay, Philippines  back in the late 1970's. I got to see third world poverty conditions for the first time.
It was pretty bad in comparison to a USA slum in a city which I had experienced as I lived close to one in New York City. I would not be surprised that there are garbage pickers in the dumps trying to make a buck.

[chillfactr]

Not holding early mining gains.

my mistake also, not holding

ive mined over 100btc since 2015.  i first started with a Butterfly Labs Jalapeno(local pawn shop for $20) miner that got me into this expensive
journey

then i started selling bitcoin as i mined it. ugh bigggggg mistake

[philipma1957]

WELL

I have a lot of doge now.  I would love a nice spike in it.

Btc is hard as fuck to mine now.

I burn 115kwatts vs 5kwatts

I have 1.2 ph as high as 1.5 ph before the 1/2 ing. I mine 0.009 coins a day and have partners

back in the day with 22 gpus and 11gh using 5kwatts I mined a coin a day. now coins had 6 to 13 dollar price back in 2012.

But I could have kept coins with ease.

[mikeywith]

my mistake also, not holding

ive mined over 100btc since 2015.  

In the grand scheme of things, nobody held bitcoin for too long, when bitcoin was going for 10$ nobody would have guessed it would be worth $9000, I am almost sure that MOST of those lucky hodlers either forgot they had bitcoin or they were lazy to sell it back then, and once bitcoin went viral they remembered about their holdings, sold and made a fortune, also a huge portion of them had no easy way to sell bitcoin back then so they stored their PK somewhere and retrieved it later when selling bitcoin was much easier. Unless you could foresee the future, I don't think you should be feeling bad about it.

[Artemis3]

Just sell them on ebay or equivalent. There is people who can reuse those chips or repair the boards for spares. I know a person who bought many "damaged" S9 boards for scraps and got at least half of them working again, most came from the US, and yes, they ended in my "third world" country where the electricity is too cheap for our own good...

Ironically we used to be a "rich" country in the 70ies. Leave the money to politicians to ruin your lives...

Yes, i know s9k and s9se are the garbage dump of the last (clearing) s9 chips for Bitmain. Even to this day, S9, S9j and S9i are going strong over here.

[DaveF]

Just sell them on ebay or equivalent. There is people who can reuse those chips or repair the boards for spares. I know a person who bought many "damaged" S9 boards for scraps and got at least half of them working again, most came from the US, and yes, they ended in my "third world" country where the electricity is too cheap for our own good...

Ironically we used to be a "rich" country in the 70ies. Leave the money to politicians to ruin your lives...

Yes, i know s9k and s9se are the garbage dump of the last (clearing) s9 chips for Bitmain. Even to this day, S9, S9j and S9i are going strong over here.

Isn't shipping usually a killer? I am US based an whenever I have "good" PC scrap just shipping it anyplace is a killer.
Once you are talking about possibly bad / damaged stuff it just became 100% insane.
I had a 40 pound box of motherboards / CPU / Ram. All were good but were 2nd gen core I3 getting it anyplace was just an insane cost.

Is there a secret way to do this that I don't know about?
Could bring another life to 2 or 3 generation out miners that a lot of us have sitting around.

-Dave

[mikeywith]

[...]

Too late, it isn't feasible in my case anyway, "exporting" these kind of stuff isn't easy and most certainly not worth the efforts, thanks for the info anyway.

Mind sharing your electricity cost? and can you host old gen miners? let me know we might work something out.

[...]

sea freight or at least this is how we do it here, shipping old gears using air freight is very costly, imagine you buy an S9 for 40$ and have to pay about  $80-100 for shipping? using sea freight we pay per cubic meter and pay about $200 per cubic meter, 1 cubic meter can safely take 30 miners + 30 PSUs so that' 200/30 = 6.6$ as opposed to $80-100 per miner, and it's 2 months vs 2 weeks.

[DaveF]

sea freight or at least this is how we do it here, shipping old gears using air freight is very costly, imagine you buy an S9 for 40$ and have to pay about  $80-100 for shipping? using sea freight we pay per cubic meter and pay about $200 per cubic meter, 1 cubic meter can safely take 30 miners + 30 PSUs so that' 200/30 = 6.6$ as opposed to $80-100 per miner, and it's 2 months vs 2 weeks.

Any reputable shippers or shipping services you recommend for this? And special packing needs?

Also have to factor in the time = money thing for the seller (me).

Mail / UPS / FedEx Ground all I have to do it box it, put on a label and leave in in the front of the office and away it goes.

If I have to drive someplace to drop it off or package it a certain way then selling 10 miners + PS for $850 to ship internationally might not be worth if if I can sell them for $500 locally and not have to deal with any special shipping issues.

-Dave

[mikeywith]

Any reputable shippers or shipping services you recommend for this? And special packing needs?

This depends on the buyer, in my case as long as they are packed with some good protection like how you got them from China for an example, then I will be more than satisfied.

Also have to factor in the time = money thing for the seller (me).

If the buyer trusts you, they would pay you before you ship anything way.

Mail / UPS / FedEx Ground all I have to do it box it, put on a label and leave in in the front of the office and away it goes.

You will still use these guys in most cases, let me explain the process on how things work for me and I guess Artemis3 uses something similar, let's imagine a scenario where I want to buy your gears and ship them to the other side of the planet.

Since Air freight is so expensive and not everything can be shipped via air anyway, some local freight companies will have warehouses across major cities around the world, if I want to buy your miners, I will ask you to ship them to that warehouse in the U.S, it's up to you how you decide to get them there, you can use UPS/DHL or you can drop them off it doesn't matter, what matters is that you get me a receipt to prove that you have delivered say 10 boxes to the warehouse/company address.

At this point and assuming I trust you, you would have already gotten your money and you are not a part of what's going to happen next.

The warehouse/company have other clients who also buy all sort of different stuff and send them there, once they get the minimum quota to fill a 20F/40F container, they will load it on the back of a ship and off it goes.

The buyer will, of course, have to wait for a much longer period, you (the seller) don't.

It may sound simple but it's a bit complicated as the buyer won't be able to test the gears until they arrive which could take a few months, also the seller isn't going to wait all that long to get paid even if escrow was used, so this needs mutual trust between both parties, I bought a ton of used gears mainly from China and shipped them this way, I was only able to test them MONTHS after they arrived, by that time I would have already paid the seller because I trust him, he also trusts that I will be honest after receiving the products, say I find 2 dead PSUs and 4 bad hash boards, knowing that I won't lie about it, the seller will return the money or send me the replacements on my next order.

So far no problems, but this way of doing things can be a little bit complicated, I would only make such a transaction with someone I highly trust.

Now since I do trust you, if you have a good amount of these old gears I might be able to take them, if they are just 5-10 miners then I can't do it because there is a minimum price I have to pay (Usually it's 1 cubic meter) so if I buy only 5 miners then the shipping cost of each miner will be beyond reasonable.

Hope by now you understand how many of these old gears get moved around the world and why the hashrate isn't dropping .

[Artemis3]

Sounds over complicated. Its simple: Buyer pays shipping, the shipping company picks it up and delivers it. Its usually by ground/sea yes, since its usually pallets of the stuff. From the US it would take about a week.

Electricity price here is so low often people joke about it being "free". It isn't, but is a fraction of the USD ¢ (much much lower than 1¢ the Kw/H). Because of hyperinflation, tomorrow is already half the price as the State owned electric company takes too long to increase the rates to compensate. The electric grid is not in good shape from years of negligence, so not all is rosy.

My acquaintance is doing oil immersion to S9s, he often goes to kaboomracks or ebay. Has some old Avalons and assorted stuff too.