[Diary] An adventure in mining (by RTX 3060)

[joker_josue]

Post edited! Due to the reorganization of the topic this post has been edited. The original content of this post was just an announcement for new content.


November 28, 2021
SEE NEW PLANS?
Despite reaching the goal last week, I continue to mine normally, at least to solidify the value gained a bit. And maybe now, trying to recoup the money for the amount spent on energy, despite not accounting for this situation, is just an "excuse" to continue mining.

At the moment I'm still thinking about what I'm going to do, if I continue to mine at NiceHash, if I try other ways of mining or move on to a new investment. I took the opportunity this week to look at some mining options available, without much detail is right, but I noticed that in most cases the withdrawal amount is a little "high" compared to NiceHash, having to wait almost 1 month for able to remove the mined value. That in itself is not a problem, but as I haven't planned anything yet, I didn't want to be getting into that field. But, as I said, I haven't really researched the options yet, so I have to take a closer look at this scenario.

In the meantime, I've been looking into the possibility of investing in a new GPU. But if I choose this option, I also have to invest in a power supply and a hard disk, because that's what I need to build a second PC, but that's also not a big investment and would meet an old idea of having a second PC. In turn, the problem of the graphics market remains, low stock and high values, together with the fact that Nvidia currently has all graphics cards with LHR.

Despite that, I've been doing some market analysis, even looking at AMD cards, which tend to be cheaper, despite having less hash capacity. Even so, the RX 6700 XT model seemed interesting to me, since it has a similar profitability to my current GPU (a little less but not much). Either way, it would require an investment of around €1030, including the source and disc, and it would take another 6 months to recover that gain. I still don't know if I want to make this investment or not, especially because Bitcoin has been in a devaluation phase. On the other hand, when looking at the value involved, the idea of investing directly in a second-hand ASIC still crossed my mind. But of course, in this scenario, I had to study everything very well.

But for now, it is to continue analyzing the various paths I can follow and see what to do. Therefore, new plans may come, but nothing is decided yet.

By the way, I give the status of the other extras that were involved. In the case of Theta, the last time I talked about it, I was thinking of turning off the program, but then I went back to having encoding work and left the program open. But in the last two weeks I didn't have jobs again and that's why I stopped earning. Interestingly or not, today I have a job again, we'll see how this goes again. Maybe I need to talk about the project more often.

In the case of Chia, it is to be maintained, since it has been in a constant rhythm, because in the pool where I am, it usually finds a block every 2/3 days, and I receive about 0.006 to 0.007. Which is not bad for the number of plots I have.

Before finishing, and despite not posting this week's chart, the results were very similar to the last few weeks, with an average of 0.00005947 BTC/24h. Once again, thanks for your support.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
December 06, 2021 - CONTINUE ON NICEHASH?

[joker_josue]

Post edited! Due to the reorganization of the topic this post has been edited. The original content of this post was just an announcement for new content.


December 06, 2021
CONTINUE ON NICEHASH?
As I mentioned earlier, I still don't have a new goal or plan set. I've been analyzing the possibility of acquiring another GPU, both in the used and new market. For reasons of energy consumption and profitability, the RTX 3060 TI seems to me to be the best choice, despite the LHR. In turn, I didn't want to make a much bigger investment than I did in buying the first GPU. Therefore, I am analyzing several possibilities and seeing what is available on the market, and I have noticed that there are models with only 2 fans that have more interesting prices, which can be a good possibility.

Since the value of Bitcoin has been decreasing, I will not make any investment for now, so as not to decapitalize too much BTC, and thus reduce the time for the recovery of the invested BTC. Because, as with the first investment, I want to focus on recovering BTC and not fiat.

As I analyze the market and wait for BTC to appreciate, I continue to mine with Nicehash. But I have been checking the possibility of mining in other pools. I found that the average gain between mining NiceHash or Ethereum directly has a variation of only 0.10~0.20€/day. Bearing in mind that with NiceHash, the program manages the GPU configuration automatically, to get the best performance, I don't see a significant difference to justify a change.

It's still money, so the more you can get, the better. As I didn't want, at least for now, to accumulate ETH and its conversion is usually quite expensive, I've been analyzing the possibility of mining in the 2miners pool. This pool allows you to mine Ethereum and receive payments in BTC, for a low withdrawal fee (+/- 0.20$). So I hope in the next few days to start mining at 2miners, and for a few weeks to analyze the performance, in order to compare it with NiceHash. I will make this change when I have a balance that I think is suitable to withdraw, as I don't want to leave anything there or just enough for a future withdrawal.

This last week, the performance was a little better than the previous weeks, getting 0.00006192 BTC/24h with an average rate of 47.33 MH/s. The month of November was the month that had the least income, only getting 0.00174120 BTC, with a daily average of 0.00005804 BTC.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
December 12, 2021 - START USING 2MINERS

[joker_josue]

Post edited! Due to the reorganization of the topic this post has been edited. The original content of this post was just an announcement for new content.


December 12, 2021
START USING 2MINERS
This week I managed to reach the ceiling planned on NiceHash, to withdraw the mined BTC there and to be able to leave the minimum ceiling sufficient for a future withdrawal. The idea is if you have to go back there, don't start from scratch and if you don't want to go back I can remove what's there. With that, I started mining at 2Miners, a pool that allows you to mine ETH and receive in BTC, with low fees associated with conversions.

I chose to use the Gminer program, taking advantage of a giveaway they are doing at the moment, for those who are using the new version. With NiceHash the program managed the GPU configuration for the best performance, now it doesn't. So I had to start by checking the configuration used by NiceHash and then using the MSI Afterburner program to replicate this configuration.

Then we have the problem of Windows classifying Gminer as potentially dangerous, we have to go to the security settings and create exceptions for the program. By chance I didn't even do it correctly initially, and the program after a few hours of work was blocked, which I had to review this aspect that is now resolved. I still had to analyze the configuration of Gminer, which despite not being difficult, it had been many years since I had used it to mine and so I had to review the configuration functions.

After all, I'm finally mining ETH directly in the 2Miners pool. This is a whole new experience, because I have never mined any other currency other than BTC. Yes, on NiceHash I was actually mining ETH as well, but it was different as it was through intermediaries. Even so, if I didn't screw up the configuration, I will receive it in BTC.

For the first 6 days of the week, I was mining with NiceHash. As I had already noticed in the previous week, the hash value was a little higher, so the average of those days was 0.00006333 BTC/24h with an average of 47.61 MH/s. At 2Miners it is still not possible to make a correct assessment, because during the first day I went through the configuration settings, but I managed to mine the equivalent of 0.00005597 BTC, which may be different, depending on the ETH/BTC exchange value when I receive the payment. Either way, I could see that the value is not far from what happened in NiceHash.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
December 19, 2021 - FIRST WEEK AT 2MINERS

[joker_josue]

Post edited! Due to the reorganization of the topic this post has been edited. The original content of this post was just an announcement for new content.


December 19, 2021
FIRST WEEK AT 2MINERS
As of the end of 12/10/2021, I started mining in the 2Miners pool, and it has been a week of learning how to use the pool and its settings. This made it a somewhat eventful week, full of ups and downs. In the first hours of mining, Windows blocked Gminer, as it had not correctly configured Windows Defender, something I had already mentioned.

Then, the first configuration I made of the GPU through MSI Afterburner was not the best, causing the performance to drop sometimes. I had to run NiceHash again to "copy" the configuration it does, in order to manually configure the GPU. It is true that there are configurations shared by other users, which I could replicate, but the configuration I had in NiceHash allowed me to get a good performance from the GPU and at the same time be able to make normal use of the PC. Setup done, I got a good performance getting almost always running at 48MH/s, which is great for this card.

This week I still had to restart my PC for a Windows update, which normally happens on the second Tuesday of every month. And then, I still had a problem on the internet, being without connection for about 3~4 hours. In the face of all these setbacks, it was not a good first week. According to the data collected, I made an average of 0.00005900 BTC/24h, very similar to the last two months I was on NiceHash. This is based on the first payout I received, which covers the period from the 10th to the 18th (12:00 UTC), as payouts are made whenever 0.005 ETH accumulates.

The file with the numbers already has information about mining on 2Miners. Unfortunately, the data presented for this first week are not 100% accurate, especially for days 13 to 15. This is because there is no practical function to collect mining data. Data is collected via a JSON file, which only displays data from the last 72 hours (approximately). Because I was not aware of this, I did not collect the data every day and thus I was left with incomplete information.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
December 26, 2021 - NO BIG DIFFERENCES

[joker_josue]

Post edited! Due to the reorganization of the topic this post has been edited. The original content of this post was just an announcement for new content.


December 26, 2021
NO BIG DIFFERENCES
I've only been mining for 15 days with 2Miners, and it's still a short time to be able to make a detailed comparison with NiceHash in terms of profitability, but the numbers already leave some indicators. After the first busy week, the second week using 2miners was already "normal" and so I was able to get a clearer idea of the performance.

The hash average remains around 48 MH/s, which indicates that I have everything well configured. Regarding mined BTC value, the average since I started on 2Miners has been 0.00005516 BTC/24h, but we have to take into account that I have incomplete data from the first week. So let's just look at this last week. Between the 18th and the 24th, I got a daily average of 0.00006060 BTC/24h. If you don't count the 18th, and only the 19th to 24th, the average was 0.00006361 BTC/24h. If you look at the last payout period, which took 7 days to mine 0.005 ETH, which took place from the 18th (12:00 UTC) to the 25th (12:00 UTC), the average was 0.00005953 BTC/24h .

On this basis I can say that at the moment I'm doing practically the same daily average as I did on NiceHash. I don't see any advantage on the 2Miners platform in terms of final gain. Of course it has its pros and cons, like all platforms. But, certainly in a few weeks, it will be easier to make comparisons.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
January 02, 2022 - ONE MORE GPU

[jimsta]

Congrats on ROI! now time to make add'l profits!

[joker_josue]

Post edited! Due to the reorganization of the topic this post has been edited. The original content of this post was just an announcement for new content.


January 02, 2022
ONE MORE GPU
After several weeks of researching, calculating and meditating on the subject, I decided to buy another GPU to join this adventure. That involved building a second computer, and for that I needed to buy a power supply and a hard drive, as that was what I needed to get everything working. The idea of building a second computer was already old, so the possibility of buying a GPU was gaining more and more strength. Also because I couldn't add the new card to the current PC, since I no longer have expansion space and then on the 3060 I have the LHR is unlocked by the driver and a new Nvidia would ruin it.

Having decided to go ahead with the purchase of another printing company, I had to choose the model and find it available. I wanted a graphics card that had a lower price than the first one I bought and with a similar capacity. In this sense, the 3060 TI LHR v2 version would be the most suitable. So I looked among several stores and the price was a little high for what I wanted, so I searched the private sales market, where I found a seller who sells new GPUs at more affordable prices.

So I closed the deal, and bought the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 3060 Ti V2 Mini 8GB GDDR6 OC Edition LHR card for €780 - 0.01781695BTC. If we look at the BTC value it was almost equal to the first GPU, but the value in Euros is lower. Also, the value of Bitcoin is lower now than when I bought the first GPU. But the objective remains, to recover the invested BTC, which should happen within 5~6 months, I hope.

Gathering all the pieces and having the assembly done, we will start to understand that this is what the investment was made for. So once I've assembled everything, I started Nicehash, to start mining right away and then make the necessary settings. With NiceHash running, I was only getting 33MH/s. So I started to search for the best settings that pointed to a rate between 41 and 44MH/s, but regardless of the overclock settings I did, strangely the speed didn't increase.

So, nothing better than turning to BitcoinTalk. I exposed the situation to the community, and @rdluffy promptly made himself available to help make the board perform more. He suggested first using the T-rex to mine and then adjusting the overclock. So I did and started using the T-rex, which with the overclocking configuration that I had done before, I got a fantastic 48MH/s, without errors and with stability, well above the most common reports. I made a few more adjustments, to try to get the best performance in terms of energy, and everything was working correctly.

Here is the configuration used:


What about this week's mining? Well, by the middle of the week I already had this extra help, so the result was a little better. Based on the payment I received from 2miners, after 7 days of mining, I averaged 0.00006889 BTC/24h, this with two days using two graphics cards. In the month of December, between the two platforms used (NiceHash and 2miners) it achieved a general average of 0.000059775 BTC/24h, not deviating much from the averages of the previous months.

This adventure has now entered a new phase, let's see how it goes. Thank you once again for your support.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
January 09, 2022 - NICEHASH OR 2MINER
January 16, 2022 - SECOND WEEK OF COMPARISON

[joker_josue]

Note to the reader: The topic has been reorganized, with the reports being divided into several posts. This way, it will be easier to read and follow the events. At the same time it will allow me to make more regular updates. Each post will have a link to the next one, and at the beginning of the topic the timeline is still available.


January 09, 2022
NICEHASH OR 2MINER
When I started this adventure, many asked why I used NiceHash and not mine ETH directly. The reason was that I wanted to recover BTC by investing in the purchase of GPU, and to avoid exchange and fee issues, I opted for NiceHash. But now that I have two GPUs, with the same hash capacity, I decided for a month to try mining on two platforms: NiceHash and 2Miners.

On both platforms I will receive in Bitcoin. NiceHash already pays naturally in BTC and in the case of 2Miners I am using their function, which converts the mined ETH into BTC, at the time of payment. I think it will be interesting to observe, during this month of January 2022, the results obtained on these two platforms and, in this way, to understand which one has the highest profitability, for those who mine with GPU and want to receive Bitcoin.

With two GPUs at the start of 2022, it's a good start and allows you to make this comparison right from the start. It seemed that everything had started well, but unfortunately this first week didn't go so well. I had some instability in the connection to the Internet, being that once more 5 hours without connection. Because of this, it was not the best week in mining, nor for the start of this review, of the two platforms. But, this problem affected both cards, so analysis will always be equivalent.

Looking at the global numbers, I can say that it wasn't a very exciting week, maybe it was the worst week (per GPU) of this adventure, but I can't forget the problems that occurred. On NiceHash I got an average of 0.00004814 BTC/24h and on 2miners an average of 0.00004887 BTC/24h (it could have been a little more, since the two days data is incomplete). So, when analyzing this first week, we notice that there is no significant difference between the two platforms. But more data will always be needed to draw clearer conclusions. Let's see how this month goes.

All these numbers are available here.


January 16, 2022
SECOND WEEK OF COMPARISON
As mentioned earlier, during the month of January 2022, I am mining NiceHash and 2miner, so we can make a comparison between the two platforms and see which one is eventually more profitable.

To better validate the data, at 2miner, I have based it on the payments I receive. And last week, when I presented the numbers from 2miners, I mentioned that the data was incomplete and I still hadn't received the payment to validate. That's why the numbers I put forward weren't very accurate. Now, I can report that on 2miner last week I had an average of 0.00005119 BTC/24h and not the 0.00004887 BTC/24h mentioned.

That said, in a week without major mishaps, we started to have more concrete data. On NiceHash I got an average of 0.00005191 BTC/24h, having accumulated around 0.00073823 BTC.

On 2miners I had an average of 0.00006357 BTC/24, this still without receiving payment to validate. Having already accumulated about 0.00084810 BTC. But, it should be mentioned that 01/15/2022 was atypical, since without any apparent explanation, I got almost double the income, with a magnificent 0.00011085 BTC. How nice it would be if these atypical days happened more often.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
January 23, 2022 - WEAK WEEK
January 30, 2022 - FALLING BITCOIN

[joker_josue]

January 23, 2022
WEAK WEEK
I think this week has been a bad week for everyone. It was weak for miners, it was weak for investors... the truth is you can't always be winning. Since the value of Bitcoin influences the entire market, at this point, it remains to be seen who the resisters are.

After last week ended on a high on 2miners, this week was nothing extraordinary. I had an estimated average of 0.00004948 BTC/24h, without validating with the payment. A very significant drop compared to the averages of the previous weeks. On NiceHash, the average was 0.00005153 BTC/24h, thus remaining stable compared to previous weeks. Showing to be a more constant platform, despite the ups and downs.

With these results I have mined an estimated total of 0.00111679 BTC on 2miners and on NiceHash a total of 0.00109694 BTC. Showing that 2miners still has an advantage, but with a difference of, more or less, a day of mining. Bearing in mind that last week, a day of mining on 2miners was worth almost two, the two rigs have been showing very similar performance.

All these numbers are available here.

However, despite not being mining, I took advantage of this downturn in the market to assemble a team in the game Axie. I've probably already lost the game's boom, but the experience will still be interesting. The money invested was about 150$. Since the process involved several conversions, until reaching WETH in the Ronin wallet, I will do the math to know when I will recover the investment, in dollars and not in BTC, as I normally do. Let's see how it goes.


January 30, 2022
FALLING BITCOIN
If in 2021 the month of January was fantastic for Bitcoin, with historic price hikes. January 2022 has been the opposite, with a price drop that many did not expect. But this is Bitcoin, we have to be used to these ups and downs. But this ends up affecting mining, causing the hash value to also decrease. Even though I don't have a lot of processing power, I still find it profitable to continue mining, so I've kept up the mining pace.

I've been using it for the month of January to buy two mining platforms, NiceHash and 2miners. And it is interesting to note, how the devaluation of Bitcoin has been feeling in mining. Both platforms have similar behaviors, but NiceHash is more stable/regular, where the variation of daily gain does not vary much from day to day, even having days with greater gain than others, the value is maintained . Even when it goes down, it goes down gradually.

On the other hand, 2miners is more irregular, despite maintaining an average gain similar to NiceHash, daily gains vary more, with days where the gain is much higher than others. But this turns out to be normal, as at 2miners I am mining ETH directly, and earnings may vary depending on the overall performance of the pool. In NiceHash I am selling hash and in turn the gain remains daily, as the hash value remains more or less the same.

This past week the trend of decreasing earnings has continued, considering that NiceHash performed a little better than 2miners. On NiceHash the average was around 0.00004689 BTC/24h, on 2miners the average was around 0.00004418 BTC/24h, thus contradicting the trend of the first weeks of this analysis, where 2miners had better averages.

Even so, they were still very similar values. Next week, I will analyze the final results of the comparison between these two platforms, in order to gather information from every day of the month of January and present more accurate values.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
February 06, 2022 - NICEHASH OR 2MINERS - THE RESULT
February 13, 2022 - ADVENTURE EXTRAS
February 20, 2022 - FORECASTS

[joker_josue]

February 06, 2022
NICEHASH OR 2MINERS - THE RESULT
With the acquisition of a second GPU, with the same capacity as the first, I decided for a month to mine NiceHash and 2miners at the same time, to see which platform brings the most advantage. I chose 2miners, because it allows you to receive BTC directly whenever you accumulate 0.005ETH (or more if the user requests). The platform handles the conversion and sends BTC. Thus, both platforms work in a somewhat similar way. After a month what is the verdict?

NiceHash is mined with its own application, which makes remote management much more interesting. I used this platform to mine with the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 EAGLE OC 12GB, which has LHRv1 in which the driver is enough to unlock, with a capacity of +/- 47MH/s. In January '22 he mined a total of 0.00151116 BTC, making a daily average of 0.00004874 BTC/24h.

The 2miners used the card Asus Dual GeForce RTX 3060 Ti V2 Mini 8GB GDDR6 OC Edition LHR, which has LHR and the unlocking is only done through the mining software. After several tests I chose to use T-Rex, as it showed the best performance, allowing a capacity of +/- 48MH/s. Since 2miners directly mines ETH and then converts it, the calculations were made based on the payments received. So in January'22 I mined a total of 0.00153602 BTC, getting an average of 0.00005120 BTC/24h (values for only 30 days).

Looking at these results, we can see that the difference is not much, being equivalent to almost half a day of mining. Perhaps that 1MH/s could also have helped to make a difference. But certainly the difference felt is because of the fees paid on NiceHash, that we have to take into account the positive points of NiceHash: a platform that helps to manage the mining rig in a simple way and presents better reports and other features that can be useful .

The conclusion I have from this comparison is that for those who have few cards and don't want to spend a lot of time configuring and managing mining, NiceHash is a very good option. The difference is not significant for small rigs, and is justified by the resources available. For those who are willing and interested in spending more time on configurations and management, 2miners seems to be a good option.

The interesting thing now would be to change the platform boards and make a new comparison. But unfortunately, in the tests I did, the NiceHash software can't perform as well with the Asus card. This is another element that must be taken into account, checking which software can get the best performance from the GPU, especially these new GPUs with LHR.

After this experience, I will continue with the objective of mining until I recover the Bitcoin spent on the purchase of the second GPU.

All these numbers are available here.


February 13, 2022
ADVENTURE EXTRAS
After a month of mining to compare two platforms (NiceHash and 2miners), the focus will now be on recovering the amount invested in the second GPU. For now, I continue to use both platforms, and the results of this last week remain at the same pace as the previous weeks. On NiceHash I averaged 0.00004764 BTC/24h; on 2miners the average was a little lower at 0.00004363 BTC/24h.

This drop in profitability at 2miners is probably due to the devaluation that occurred in ETH against BTC. When I started mining on 2miners, the ETH/BTC exchange rate was 0.08 and now it is 0.07. But for now the focus is to recover the Bitcoin invested in the purchase of the GPU, so I will keep this conversion. All these numbers are available here.

Since I started this adventure, I got involved in other projects that I found interesting. One of them was Chia. At this time, he continued to mine in the Portuguese pool Leaf Pool. Even though it's not a very big pool, I've been involved in the community since the beginning and I've liked the team that is developing the pool. Despite not being a very large pool, with only 2,822 PiB and sometimes we can't find a block for a few days in a row, I don't intend to leave the pool. In addition to not having many plots, and therefore being in another pool would not significantly increase earnings, I like the community and continue to support it. In this sense, at this moment I should receive about 0.01 XCH/block found by the pool.

Another project I've been "mining" for some time is Theta Token. Despite finding an interesting project, I have not been very excited to continue. I found that having the THETA EDGE NODE running on two computers, with the same Internet connection, does not bring any advantages, since the encoder jobs are distributed between the two, and when it is given to one PC, the other does not receive anything. But the most annoying thing is that sometimes I go weeks without receiving any tasks and that's why I don't receive anything. Although it does not consume many resources on the PC, it is always a program that is open. So I start thinking about turning off the program. For now, it will run until it has the minimum amount to receive and then I analyze whether to continue or not.

About a month ago, I set up a team at Axie. Of course, I didn't make the best team choices, which was to be expected for a "rookie". Still, I enjoyed the experience. But with the changes that came with the new season, no longer receiving SLP in Adventure mode, as I don't have a competitive team, things become more complicated. The fact that it's not my style of play, doesn't help motivate me to invest more or study more about the game either. Also, I think that some ways the game works don't make much sense, but maybe it's because I don't know this type of games. So I'm going to put every Axie up for sale and wait and see. Maybe then you can start over from scratch, or if you can't sell them, try again in the new version of the game that has already been announced. Anyway, I'm very grateful to all the users who have helped throughout this experience, who gave excellent tips, who helped me. Thanks again! (I didn't say names, for fear of forgetting someone, but thanks to everyone who gave tips!)

This week, motivated by TryNinja, I decided to invest in another project that I had already seen some time ago, but I hadn't risked it, the project: STEPN - Move2Earn. I studied the project in detail and found it very interesting, the fact that you can earn by doing physical activities abroad. In that sense I bought some "virtual sneakers" and started my adventure. I've only used it on two occasions, but I liked the way it works and the idea. I don't have a concrete plan yet, but of course I will try to recoup the investment made. I see this project in the medium term, so we will see when I will recover the investment. Soon I will have more details to report here my experience in this project.


February 20, 2022
FORECASTS
After a month of comparing platforms, it's time to look at the investment made in purchasing the second GPU. Of course, this has always been the goal, since I bought the new graphics card, to recoup the investment. But he still hadn't calculated or predicted how much time he would need.

The second GPU had a cost of 0.01781695BTC. As I do not account for the cost of electricity, which I classify as an investment in BTC, this is the amount I aim to recover. The mining of this GPU started in the last days of December 2021. Since then I have been gathering the data together with the GPU I already had. Both are part of the same adventure and, therefore, the amount to be recovered will be analyzed based on the total investment I made for the purchase of the two GPUs. Of course, the investment in the first GPU has already been recovered, now the second one is missing.

So, since I started this adventure, I invested in total 0.03586320BTC (1st GPU: 0.01804625BTC / 2nd GPU: 0.01781695BTC).
I have already recovered 70% of the invested amount, totaling 0.02540877BTC.
Therefore, 0.01045443BTC remains to be recovered.

Right now, my daily average is 0.00006805 BTC/24h. This indicates that if I keep this pace, within 154 days (6 months), I can recover the entire amount invested, in the purchase of both GPUs, which in this case is only equivalent to the second purchase.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
February 27, 2022 - EXTRA INTERESTING
March 06, 2022 - EVERYTHING IN NORMALITY
March 20, 2022 - ELECTRICAL PROBLEMS BUT NOTHING SERIOUS
March 27, 2022 - WHAT IF I BUY ANOTHER GPU?

[joker_josue]

February 27, 2022
EXTRA INTERESTING
A few weeks ago I talked about a new add-on I've been exploring, STEPN. In this application, people earn GST (app currency) when they walk or run, and with that gain they can improve their sneakers to increase their performance, as well as to repair them for the wear and tear they do - when the person wears the sneakers they will spending. Winnings are calculated based on 3 factors: tennis quality; GPS signal quality and network; and speed. With a sneaker in your wallet, you have 2 energy, which is equivalent to about 10 minutes of training, which is spent throughout the activity. As you spend energy, you gain GST based on the combination of the indicated factors. There are several types of tennis with different speed reactions, for those who walk and for those who run. The platform uses the Solana network.

Before buying the sneakers, since it was an investment of 7 SOL, I wanted to understand better how it works and how I could use the app. So I did some tests on the routes I take daily (home-work/work-home). For the use that I would have, I chose to buy some hiking shoes, which have a speed reaction of 1-6 km/h (when I bought it was only 1-5 km/h).

As I didn’t have SOL I had to send BTC to the exchange and make the conversion, in that process, I started to see the price of sneakers going up and I was afraid that the BTC I had destined for this investment would not arrive. But luckily, after the entire exchange process was completed, I managed to get a slight drop in prices and buy some sneakers for about 6.75 SOL.

Since then, every day of the week, I do my 5~7 minute rides twice a day, and over the course of 2 weeks of use, I've gained enough to get my shoes back and upgrades. I still haven't calculated all the GST earned, nor what was spent on recoveries, but what I gained allowed me to make my tennis up to level 9. It's been an interesting adventure, which I'm planning to enter now in a phase of reducing the investment, and try to gradually recover the SOL invested. I will shortly try to gather more details about these numbers, so that I can present them here.

Regarding the main adventure, to recover the BTC invested in GPUs, it was another balanced week and at the pace of the previous ones. At NiceHash I had a daily average of 0.00004601 BTC/24h. On 2miners the average is 0.00004404 BTC/24h. With these values, I have a total of 72% of the objective achieved, with a forecast of 145 days to achieve the total value. It will be noted that last week the forecast was 154 days, that is, 7 days of mining, equivalent to 10 days of forecast. Therefore, I will probably be able to reach the goal faster than anticipated.

All these numbers are available here.


March 06, 2022
EVERYTHING IN NORMALITY
This week there is no highlight, everything went smoothly at a good pace, from the main objective of this adventure to the extras.

Regarding the extras, Chia was even a nicer week because in the last 7 days in the pool where I am, I mined 3 blocks, after having been without blocks for about 10 days. Although it's not the pool that finds the most blocks and I don't have many plots, and that's why it's not very profitable, I continued to farm because I believe in the project and in the pool.

In the Theta extra, as I said before, it seems that it is necessary to talk about the project here to have encoding jobs again, and at the moment I have one job per day, which yields about 0.17~0.19 TFuel each. I am now waiting to receive the next payment, to change the program to the second machine and continue with the application running, since it doesn't consume many resources and I have nothing to lose.

The most recent extra, STEPN, every day of the week (Mon-Fri), I've been spending 2 energies and I've gotten good results. I continue to use everything I earn to improve my sneakers, and that has allowed me to get more and more GST. On my best day, I managed a total of 12.5 GST on two courses. I highlight that the GST has been increasing throughout this week, reaching 4$. This means that if you maintain this pace, and average 10 GST per day, at the end of the month I will get around 200 GST, which could mean recovering the investment. But I haven't done the math yet.

But the focus remains on GPU mining, to recoup the investment made. And this week was similar to the previous ones. On Nicehash I had an average of 0.00004555 BTC/24h, and on 2miners the average was 0.00004304 BTC/24h. At the moment I have more than 74% of the goal achieved, with a forecast of 138 days to reach the goal.

All these numbers are available here.


March 20, 2022
ELECTRICAL PROBLEMS BUT NOTHING SERIOUS
About two weeks ago, something unusual happened in my house: the electrical panel was going down. The first time I thought it was some power surge when turning on the toaster, so I ignored it. After a few days it happened again, but this time it wasn't connecting anything, which made me think that something was creating a short circuit. The question was what and where. A few days later it happens again, but luckily, like the other times, I was at home and I was able to turn everything on quickly, not harming the mining too much. But, faced with this consistent situation, I had to take action. For that he needed time to assess the situation during the weekend.

But even before I can do that, it comes back when I wasn't home and because of that I had an afternoon without mine. It was even a good thing that this happened, because it was the only time I could see where the problem was coming from - the kitchen. The advantage of having an electrician parent is that in addition to having some technical knowledge, it allows you to ask for technical support with some speed and ease. So in less than 15 minutes the problem was detected and fixed. It was an appliance that is shorting out, which is still under warranty and everything will be fine.

It was a few weeks with some uncertainty, where I came to suspect that it could be a problem with the sources or the GPUs, but everything went well and luckily it didn't significantly affect the mining performance. This eventually made it possible to reassess the electrical installation, and to understand some points that could be improved in the near future. These are situations that can happen when mining at home, even when everything is minimally well installed.

The following week, with the energy situation resolved, everything was smoother and more positive. Bitcoin started to have a slight rise, which makes it all the more interesting, we just hope it stays that way. During these two weeks the average was 0.00004338 BTC/24h on NiceHash, and on 2miners it was 0.00004598 BTC/24h. Interestingly, the averages were inverted between the two platforms, compared to the previous report. Therefore, I have already reached 77% of the goal, with the prediction that within 5 months I will have recovered the invested Bitcoin.

All these numbers are available here.


March 27, 2022
WHAT IF I BUY ANOTHER GPU?
No! I'm not going to buy any GPUs, at least for now. But I wondered about it, because I saw that the prices of graphics cards have been dropping and getting very interesting values. Of course, this price is at this stage when Bitcoin is still not as attractively valued compared to about 1 year ago, which could change at any time.

The question now is: when will Etherium mining really stop paying off? Is it this year that the much talked about PoS comes into force? Of course, there will be other coins, which will continue to be used for GPU mining. But will it pay off? These are issues that have to be evaluated, before buying another GPU. Although I always remember what happened to me, which I have already commented on, about the story of "failing to compensate mining" and which in reality is not quite like that. So maybe start being a more active observer of the market, you never know the opportunities that may arise.

Either way, the focus is now on recovering the investment made, with the purchase of the second GPU. And in that sense, things have been on schedule. This last week, on NiceHash I had an average of 0.00004598 BTC/24h, and on 2miners the average was about 0.00004490 BTC/24h. With 79% of the objective achieved, it is expected to recover the investment made within 4 months.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
April 03, 2022 - ENERGY COST, DOES IT STILL PAY?
April 10, 2022 - A YEAR IN THIS ADVENTURE
April 17, 2022 - THERE IS STILL TIME
April 24, 2022 - THE RHYTHM IS KEPT

[joker_josue]

April 03, 2022
ENERGY COST, DOES IT STILL PAY?
Last week, I talked about the fact that GPU prices have been going down, so it might be interesting to invest in a third GPU. But is it worth taking a risk now, with the price of energy rising?

As you know, I'm not counting the energy spent on this adventure, I classified it as an investment and not an expense. But that doesn't mean I don't look at the values and do the math. When I only had one GPU and before these price increases, I spent an average of 15~20€ on mining per month (this is a rough figure, because I don't have any specific monitoring system). With a second GPU since January 2022, the value has doubled, +/- 35~45€ per month.

But, because of recent events, energy prices have increased in the last two months, which has increased by 5~10€/month, the expense likely related to mining. There is still some uncertainty as to whether the recent agreements by the governments of Portugal and Spain will stop the price from rising or not. So right now, the energy cost I'm having, based on previous averages, is the equivalent of having 2.5 GPU's. Basically one GPU is mining to pay for energy and another is profit.

It's true that, after all, it's still profitable, but is it worth increasing the number of GPUs right now? On the other hand, this can make the purchase of GPUs more attractive, as the price of the cards should continue to fall. Added to this is the unknown when Etherium will become PoS. Anyway, these are accounts that must be done, although at the moment I am not considering the energy costs in this adventure, and for now I will continue on this path until I recover the Bitcoins invested in the purchase of the second GPU, and only then do this more careful analysis.

In this path of recovering the investment, another month spent with the values within the expected. On 2miners I made an estimated total of 0.00147460 BTC, and on NiceHash I made a total of 0.00137130 BTC. At the moment I have a global average of 0.00006492 BTC/24h, counting since I started this adventure. This leaves me about 100 days to reach the goal. We hope this continues.

All these numbers are available here.


April 10, 2022
A YEAR IN THIS ADVENTURE
It's been a year since the story of this adventure began (in Portuguese). And during all this time I've been through several situations: from high profitability, one or another technical problem, high valuations, changes in strategies,... in short, a little bit of everything. But one thing is for sure, I had not planned a year later to continue living this adventure and continue to share it.

The initial plan was to buy a GPU and recoup the investment made in Bitcoin and then use the card for gaming and other purposes. It was expected to recover the investment in 6 or 7 months, and it was achieved in November 2021. Along the way, I had months that were very profitable, like in May 2021, which was the best month so far, as I managed to mine 0.00364130BTC with just one card. But I also had less profitable periods, particularly the weeks before reaching the first goal.

After reaching the initial objective, was left wondering what I would do, whether to continue on this mining adventure and risk more or finish this route. But, excited about what I had already done, I decided to take the risk and acquire a new GPU, again with the aim of recovering the invested Bitcoin, within 6 to 7 months.

Throughout this adventure, I found new projects in the cryptocurrency world, which I added as extras to this adventure. The first was Chia, which I discovered a month later, and taking advantage of the money earned in campaigns here on the forum, I invested in some HDDs and mine to this day. It's not a big source of revenue, but it's been an interesting project and one that has been going well. Another extra that came up and that I'm still mining was Theta Network, which is the least profitable, but also the least work - basically it's leaving the program on and that's it. And more recent, have been exploring is STEPN, where a person gains by doing physical activity, and it has been positive.

It has really been a very interesting adventure, and I hope that my reports will be useful for everyone who is following this journey. Well, that was the idea for creating this topic: to present real information on how mining is. Not forgetting to thank everyone who has helped and everyone who has been following this diary.

The second phase of this adventure - the recovery of the investment of the second GPU, is within the expected, being now more or less halfway to the goal. But very dependent on how the profitability of ETH mining continues, which as we know has been gradually decreasing. This past week, on NiceHash I averaged 0.00004912 BTC/24h, and on 2miners I averaged 0.00004731 BTC/24h. I'm like this with 83% of the overall goal achieved, leaving 0.006 BTC left for the final goal.

All these numbers are available here.


April 17, 2022
THERE IS STILL TIME
The entry into force of Ethereum 2.0, seems closer and closer to happening. Despite the dates for the implementation of PoS on Ethereum, have been postponed for years, there is concrete data that this change should occur this year 2022. Initially the changes were expected to take place in June/July, but this week Tim Beiko, developer at the Ethereum Foundation, said that “It will not be in June but probably in the following months... There is no specific date yet, but we are , without a doubt, in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum.". Also leaving the warning, for miners to stop investing in hardware to mine ETH.

This information is useful, as it would be difficult for me to reach the goal until June, which could delay the whole process. But if this change will only take place a few months later, I will certainly have the time to recoup the investment made. At the moment, my estimates point to that within 3 months, thus predicting that between July and August, I will be able to reach the goal.

Therefore, this new delay in the implementation of PoS on Ethereum, turns out to be good news for this adventure. It remains to be seen whether it will give time to generate some profit. Of course, there is always the possibility of further delays, but there will be a day when the changes are implemented, and the tests that have been carried out, show that this is really close to happening. Therefore, it will be trying to take advantage of the little time left to mine as much as possible, in order to achieve the objectives of this adventure. It is true, that there will be other coins to mine, but it may take some time before they are really profitable.

In that sense, the last week kept a steady pace, with an average of 0.00004829 BTC/24h on NiceHash, and on 2miners the average was about 0.00004701 BTC/24h. Interestingly, I have had a higher return on NiceHash, but that may change a little, because of a slight appreciation of ETH against Bitcoin. Based on these values, there is only 15% left for the objective, which is expected to be reached in 84 days.

All these numbers are available here.


April 24, 2022
THE RHYTHM IS KEPT
A few months ago, there were greater variations in profitability between weeks, with weeks being much better than others. But, at the moment, these variations have not been noticed over the last few weeks. I would say that we are going through a plateau period in mining, with no big rises or falls in mined values. Perhaps this is due to the fact that we are waiting for when Etherium will finally come to PoS. Although this will still take a few months, miners must have slowed down their acquisition of new equipment, as it is not yet known what currency will prevail in PoW.

On NiceHash, the average has been more or less constant week after week, with this last week being 0.00004748 BTC/24h.
On the other hand, 2miners has seen much more variations, with some weeks having higher averages than others, and this last week was an example of that, having had an average of 0.00004407 BTC/24h, lower than usual.

The fact of continuing to use both platforms to mine, it has been possible to perceive that for small miners, with one or two cards, and who want to obtain their earnings in Bitcoin, the best solution remains NiceHash. Of course, for those who want to receive in ETH or another specific currency, it is better to use pools directed to these currencies. But, based on these numbers and contrary to what some say, I think that for small miners NiceHash is the best option.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
May 01, 2022 - RENDER 20% LESS
May 08, 2022 - BITCOIN PRICE VS GPU PRICE
May 15, 2022 - LHR 100% UNLOCKED
May 22, 2022 - NINE HOURS WITHOUT MINING
May 29, 2022 - ONLY ONE MONTH LEFT

[joker_josue]

May 01, 2022
RENDER 20% LESS
Since a year has passed since the beginning of this adventure, it is now possible to make a broader analysis. And looking at what the same GPU did a year ago and did now, you've noticed a 20% decrease in profitability. In April 2021, when this adventure started with the RTX 3060 card, I made about 0.00179201 BTC, and it wasn't the full month. In April 2022, a year later, I only made 0.00142939 BTC.

The problem is that the cost of energy has increased, and the pace has shown that profitability should continue to decline, which in some time will no longer be compensatory to continue to undermine. But for now it is still possible to keep mining both GPUs, at least until reaching the goal of recovering the investment made. This should happen in about 60 days or less at the current rate.

On NiceHash, this month I got a total of 0.00142939 BTC, with an average of 0.00004764 BTC/24h. On 2miners I made about 0.00133445 BTC in total, an average of 0.00004448 BTC/24h. These numbers show that the profitability at 2miners has been gradually decreasing, which leads me to consider placing both cards on NiceHash. We will see the developments in the next few days.

Entertaining, the STEPN extra has been quite interesting. I can say in general and due to the appreciation of the game currency, I have already recovered the investment, but I decided to reinvest again in the game in the hope of increasing profitability. I believe that the project will continue to be profitable for a few more months, despite already showing some signs that a less positive cycle of overvaluation could be generated. But the developers have shown themselves to be aware of this, and apparently are trying to control things, so as not to enter a cycle that could jeopardize the continuity of the project.

All these numbers are available here.


May 08, 2022
BITCOIN PRICE VS GPU PRICE
This adventure has allowed us to analyze several interesting details about this mining market. When looking at the amount I paid for the graphics cards I have and the current price of those cards, with the value of Bitcoin, there is a very interesting correlation.

When I bought the first graphics card - Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 EAGLE OC 12GB (without LHR), it cost 849€, at the moment the same card (version with LHR) is worth about 515€ more or less. At the time I bought it it was an investment of 0.01804625 BTC. How much does the same amount of Bitcoin cost today? About 595€. On the second card I bought - Asus Dual GeForce RTX 3060 Ti V2 Mini 8GB GDDR6 OC Edition LHR, it cost €780 and is currently worth €650. An investment of 0.01781695 BTC. How much is this worth today? About €590.

This shows that the appreciation/devaluation of graphics cards, accompany the appreciation/devaluation of Bitcoin. Another interesting point is that the second graphics card I bought, depreciated less in the market than the first. That is, if I were to sell the second graphics card today, I would not lose money and I would recover the investment.

This mining week, things have remained more or less the same. Continued to use NiceHash and 2miners, but this will change after the recent NiceHash announcement got it unlock the LHR at 100%, next week I'll have news. On NiceHash I averaged 0.00004849 BTC/24h; and on 2miners I averaged 0.00004609 BTC/24h. This allowed him to reach 90% of the goal, and within a month and a half, two months, to reach the goal.

All these numbers are available here.


May 15, 2022
LHR 100% UNLOCKED
Last week the mining community received one of the best news in recent times - the LHR has been unlocked to 100%. The first to announce was NiceHash, but in a few hours the other development teams, from other mining software, achieved the same. They are all still in beta, but the results have already been very positive, for the entire mining community.

My Asus RTX 3060 Ti LHR, which I have the objective of recouping the investment, as the name implies, had the limitation of the LHR. Luckily she was covered by this unlock and will certainly be an excellent boost towards the final stretch of the objective. Until last week, I was using two mining rigs, NiceHash with the first GPU I bought, and 2miners with this second card. The performance on both was similar, but I was already thinking about changing the NiceHash at the end of the month, because I'm going on vacation and it's easier to manage the mining remotely.

With this news, I made this change earlier. It wasn't just the day the unlock became available, because I wanted to mine enough at 2miners to get paid. It is true that other mining software also made unlocking available, which allowed you to continue using 2miners. And I still tried Nminer, but it caused some instability, which would force me to review the settings and I didn't want to waste time with that. So, I mined three more days on 2miners, making an average of 0.00004095 BTC/24h in that time. Fortunately, despite the drop in Bitcoin's value, the ETH/BTC exchange rate remained the same, and so I didn't lose Bitcoin in the conversation made, on payday.

On NiceHash, in those three days that I only had one GPU there, I made an average of 0.00004572 BTC/24h, a little higher than the average I had on 2miners, which was curious. On the remaining days of the week, with both cards, the average was 0.00010438 BTC/24h. With this result, I reached 92% of the goal, with a forecast of 40 days to reach it. But since this forecast is based on the general average, with this hash increase, this timeframe should be shorter. Therefore, I believe that within a month you will have already reached the goal.

All these numbers are available here.


May 22, 2022
NINE HOURS WITHOUT MINING
Luckily I live in a place where I rarely have power outages, so I never prepared things in case a power outage occurs, I remotely get everything up and running again. Also because as I use my main PC to mine, after a power outage, I prefer to follow the startup process, to verify that everything is operational.

Since I started this adventure, I only have an idea that I've lost power a couple of times. The first time, I was at home and it was a 2~3 hour break. The second time was this week. One day, at the exact moment he was leaving the house for work, the power went out in the neighborhood. The failure could only take a few minutes or a couple of hours, I didn't know. As I couldn't wait for the energy to come back, I just had the patience to get everything working again at the end of the day.

And that's what happened. Back home, at the end of the day, I turned everything back on again. It was about 9 hours without mining. It was a short break in this mining, for the equipment to rest a little. Since I'm mining with two GPUs, the operating hours were enough to mine the equivalent value of a single GPU.

For now I'm not thinking about preparing things in case this happens again. But for those who live in places where power failures can be more frequent, if they haven't already, I recommend that you prepare things for the PC to turn on as soon as the power comes back on. This is possible to configure in the BIOS, search how to do it for your motherboard. Another suggestion I give is to connect the PC to a smart socket, preferably with consumption measurement, to help them know remotely if everything is on or not.

Despite this incident, the daily average this week was 0.00008640 BTC/24h, with an average speed of 103 MH/s. The fact that the unlocking of the LHR came about, gave a fantastic boost, in the final rectal of the second part of this adventure. Right now, there's only about 5% left to reach the goal, the equivalent of about a month of mining.

All these numbers are available here.


May 29, 2022
ONLY ONE MONTH LEFT
If everything continues to go according to plan, within a month or less, I will have achieved the second objective proposed in this adventure - recovering the investment made in Bitcoin, in the acquisition of a second GPU. This estimate is based on the overall average for this adventure, including many months with just one GPU. So it will probably still be in less time.

But, it's not because you've been on this adventure for more than a year and you're just short of the goal, that some mishaps don't continue to arise. If last week was the power outage, which caused the stop for almost a day. This week, it was a night that the GPUs had a rest, due to an internet failure, they were like 4 or 5 hours without mining. Fortunately nothing that a reset to the router won't solve.

However, in one of the extras of this adventure - STEPN, I managed to take the opportunity to buy a new smartphone before a new devaluation of the GST. Although it wasn't the best moment for the GST to appreciate, I think it was the first time I had the right timing to make the conversion, before a fall. This with the years passing, we started to get more insightful. But what is noteworthy is that this extra adventure is being very positive. Now the next objective is to earn enough, to withdraw and keep the invested Bitcoin. Because despite having already recovered this amount, it was used to reinvest or for the new smartphone.

Returning to the main objective, this week I averaged 0.00008642 BTC/24h, with an average hash of 107.84 MH/s. We hope that everything continues to go well over the next few weeks. Therefore, at this point I have already recovered 96% of the total investment.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
June 19, 2022 - SECOND GOAL ACHIEVED

[joker_josue]

June 19, 2022
SECOND GOAL ACHIEVED
After a short break in the reports, I make a big comeback, announcing that the second objective has been achieved: recovering the investment in Bitcoin made in the purchase of the second GPU. But before I talk about that, I'm going to do a little summary of what happened in these last 3 weeks, very excited.

In my last report, apparently everything was normal in the market. It is true that it was a little on the downswing, but nothing unusual considering how the entire world market is doing. Despite being away from the PC, I was able to monitor it using the NiceHash application, and everything remained normal regarding mining. But the same could not be said of the crypto market, which at the beginning of June, started a vertiginous devaluation, causing a great uproar in the market, and many companies/projects to get into difficulties. I even consider these moments to be good for the market, in the sense that less capable companies/projects are being cleaned up.

This market drop ended up affecting many miners, who, seeing the cost of energy increase and the value of cryptocurrencies going down, decided to turn off their machines or part of them. In my particular case, as I was working on a very specific objective, I let everything work at the same pace, looking at the cost of energy, as an investment. Keeping everything running has even allowed us to take advantage of the slight drop in difficulty and, in turn, obtain a slight increase in performance. All this ended up helping to achieve the proposed objective. In this way, exactly yesterday (18/06/2022) I managed to recover 100% of the investment made in the purchase of the second graphics card.

In the month of May 2022, I mined a total of 0.00270608 BTC, with both graphics cards. This was very similar value to what I managed to achieve in July 2021, with just a single card (0.00269513 BTC). Which shows how the network's difficulty has increased a lot in the last year. The daily average during the month of May was 0.00007475 BTC/24h. In the first 18 days of June 2022, I have already mined a total of 0.00144009 BTC, with a slightly higher average, compared to the previous month, of 0.00008000 BTC/24h. With this number, I reached 100% of the goal.

Now it will be to continue with the machines to work, and to think about the next steps to follow. However, with regard to the extras, there were also some news, which are for the next report.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
June 26, 2022 - ADVENTURE ALSO HAS EXTRAS
July 03, 2022 - FOR NOW, IT'S CONTINUE
July 10, 2022 - CONTINUE BUT CALM
July 17, 2022 - THE GRAPHIC CARDS

[safar1980]

RTX 3060 is the most popular Ampere graphics card on Steam, overtaking GTX 1050 and GTX 1660 Ti
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
https://overclockers.ru/blog/RoadToKnowledge/show/69930/rtx-3060-stala-samoj-populyarnoj-videokartoj-ampere-v-steam-obognav-gtx-1050-i-gtx-1660-ti

When mining is over, gamers will buy your graphics card   Gamers don't like AMD RX 6000, RX 6700 XT, RX 6800 XT.

[joker_josue]

When mining is over, gamers will buy your graphics card   Gamers don't like AMD RX 6000, RX 6700 XT, RX 6800 XT.

That's true. But I have no intention of selling the cards. I'm also a gamer... 

But for now continued mining, I like that.

[0verseer]

When mining is over, gamers will buy your graphics card  Gamers don't like AMD RX 6000, RX 6700 XT, RX 6800 XT.

That's true. But I have no intention of selling the cards. I'm also a gamer...  

But for now continued mining, I like that.

You have two GPUs. Surely you can only use 1 for gaming and the other will siting dust. Considering selling the remaining one isn't hard fletch. From what I understand from your dairy, you considered your investment in BTC. Back then, GPU price was high in terms of fiat but as long as you see it under BTC value and mining, recouping back to BTC, then it was okay since BTC has dropped its price quite a lot?

[joker_josue]

You have two GPUs. Surely you can only use 1 for gaming and the other will siting dust. Considering selling the remaining one isn't hard fletch. From what I understand from your dairy, you considered your investment in BTC. Back then, GPU price was high in terms of fiat but as long as you see it under BTC value and mining, recouping back to BTC, then it was okay since BTC has dropped its price quite a lot?

I used BTC to buy the GPUs. I converted to fiat and made the purchase. In this way, I can say that I recovered 100% of the investment, as I always base my accounts on BTC, regardless of its exchange value.

Therefore:
0,03586320 BTC used to buy the GPUs
0,03730520 BTC mined to date 

[joker_josue]

June 26, 2022
ADVENTURE ALSO HAS EXTRAS
After 1 year and 2 months, I managed to fulfill all the proposed objectives, the purchase of two GPUs and recover the investment made in BTC in this purchase. Right now I have the BTC I had before this adventure started. It remains to be seen what I will do next: if I continued mining until the switch to Etherium PoS or if I stop mining due to energy cost. I'm still thinking which way I'm going to go, and what strategy I'm going to adopt.

For now I've kept everything working normally, and that's how it should be, being able to occasionally stop mining with the GPU I have on my main computer, to rest it and also be able to enjoy it in the gaming part. Since I haven't stopped mining, this week was very positive, with the daily average rising to 0.00008183 BTC/24h, with an average speed of 112MH/s.

Besides that, practically from the beginning of this adventure, I started to add some extras. Some were just addressed, others were left behind, and others continue to be explored. So I'm going to make a little situation point of each one, and talk about a new extra.

The first extra added to this adventure was CHIA, which I continue to mine with my 182 plots in a Portuguese pool. The CHIA network has been feeling this drop in the crypto market, causing many miners to turn off their machines. This has slightly increased my profitability, which is around 0.014 XCH/block found by the pool (previously it was around 0.010 XCH/block). Therefore, it is to continue to undermine in the expectation that the network will value.

Another extra that got in very early on in this adventure was Theta Network. In the first months, profitability was very unstable, where sometimes I was unable to get jobs for several days in a row, and in turn I didn't earn anything. But, since they set up a second PC and I put the Theta Edge Node to run on that computer, which is only used to mine with the GPU and run the Theta Edge Node, I started having an encoding job per day, earning on average 0.17~ 0.20 TFUEL/work. Which has allowed me to earn another 3~4 TFUEL per month, which will be to maintain.

Along this route I also tested Axie. It wasn't quite an extra, but it was something I wanted to try, even though it's not my style of play. Unfortunately, it entered a phase, in which changes in gameplay/profitability were starting to occur, which did not allow to recover that investment made, but it was worth the experience. Despite having already left the game behind, it was only this week that I managed to sell the last two Axies I had. With this sale, and after all, I only recovered practically half of what I had invested.

In turn, in another extra the result has been a little different. STEPN has been a very interesting extra to explore. I managed to get in before the big growth it had, and in a few months I managed to recover the investment. Despite not having directly withdrawn the invested BTC, I managed to withdraw the money necessary to buy a new smartphone, even before the large devaluation that occurred in the GST, following the entire crypto market. Now, I continue to walk and earn GST every day, keeping the pace I had before. Believing that in a few months, an appreciation of the game token will occur again, and they can then withdraw the invested BTC directly. I have doubts that the GST will be worth what it used to be, more than 1~2$, and so now it's time to accumulate as much GST as possible.

Meanwhile, I was invited to be part of the beta team to test another project Elumicate. This project aims to monitor and process traffic information in cities. The team seems well motivated and focused on the proposed goals, something I've enjoyed being involved with. For now, only a few tests have been carried out on the information processing and now we are waiting for some software updates for further tests. As soon as there are some more news that I can share, I will.

All these numbers are available here.


July 03, 2022
FOR NOW, IT'S CONTINUE
Having reached the main objective of this adventure and without any type of expansion forecast, the question remains of what I will do, if I continue mining or if I take another path. That with the cost of energy increasing and the devaluation of Bitcoin, it starts to be necessary to think about whether or not this "effort" is worth it. But this is not the first time I go through a period like this, since in my first mining experience, in 2013, the profit was nil. In turn, my focus has always been to accumulate BTC and not to obtain a direct return. That's why until now I haven't taken what I've mined during this adventure to pay for energy, always looking at this cost as an investment.

Of course, circumstances are changing, especially now that I have recovered all the Bitcoin invested to buy the two GPUs, and the cost of energy has increased substantially. Even so, I have kept everything working normally, continuing to accumulate Bitcoin. And an interesting point is the fact that with this market devaluation and the increase in energy costs around the world, the mining difficulty has decreased, which has allowed to increase the daily profitability in Bitcoin.

In the month of May'22, the daily average was 0.00007475 BTC/24h, and in the month of June'22 the average was 0.00008007 BTC/24h. This last week the average was 0.00008608 BTC/24h. These values are very interesting for those who are focused on getting BTC, and they give the necessary motivation to continue mining. Also, doing the math, what I mine monthly was still able to pay the energy cost and make a profit. So, for now, it is to continue mining.

All these numbers are available here.


July 10, 2022
CONTINUE BUT CALM
Now that the investment is recovered, I am more relaxed to manage mining in a different way. Since it is summer in Portugal, we have days with very high temperatures, and this week was a good example, with temperatures reaching 40º. As I don't have a big mining rig, just two PCs with two GPUs to mine, I didn't do any specific installation for site cooling. This makes the temperature in the space where I have the PCs much higher these days than usual.

So, in order to save some GPUs, after a year and a half of mining without breaks, I decided this week to take some breaks from mining. That's why, on some days, for a few hours, one of the plates was paused. In this way, I reduced the GPUs' exposure to such high ambient temperatures. It is true that with these breaks you will earn less, but the fact that mining has been more profitable in recent days means that the loss of gains is not very significant.

These breaks have also allowed us to study the performance, to see what the mining gains will be like, when you start taking some time to play. Because, I also want to take advantage of the fact that I have a good GPU, to enjoy the games I like. And I had practically a year and a half, without playing big games because of mining, and also because no new games came out, the ones I like the most. But they're starting to hang out, so maybe I'll start taking some breaks to play.

So, this week the average was 0.00008073 BTC/24h, as a result of the breaks I took. Despite being lower than last week's average, it is above the previous month's average, thus maintaining a good pace.

All these numbers are available here.


July 17, 2022
THE GRAPHIC CARDS
In Portugal we have been experiencing a period with very high temperatures, and therefore keeping the rigs at an adequate temperature is essential for their proper functioning and durability. Since I only have two GPUs to mine, I didn't create any extraordinary system for cooling, just having good fans in the computer towers, to circulate the air. And on these hottest days, I also reduce the working speed of the GPUs a little, in order to maintain a lower temperature, and occasionally I can turn off mining on a GPU for a while, in order to stabilize the temperature. And everything has gone well.

At the moment, with the current settings and without being in a heat spike, the performance of my graphics cards is as follows (at the time of the print screen):


You can notice that temperatures are around 66ºC and in the hottest moments they can reach 69ºC, but I try to prevent that from happening.
Right now the RTX 3060 is not using full power, since as it is on my main PC it is used more, causing it to heat up more. Even so, it keeps the speed in the range of 46 MH/s on average.
On the other hand, the RTX 3060 Ti continues to use the configuration at maximum power, since I can keep it more stable in terms of temperature, with an average of 62 MH/s.

So, this last week with a global average of 105.88 MH/s, which gave an average of 0.00009408 BTC/24h. A very good average, compared to a few months ago, even so in 2021, with just a single GPU, I could get very similar averages. Either way, the average has been rising and so I hope to continue accumulating Bitcoins.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
July 24, 2022 - "THE MERGE" ANNOUNCED, MORE PROFITABILITY
July 17, 2022 - MONTH JULY 2022

[joker_josue]

Update info: Due to personal availability, I was unable to update this topic previously. I will resume your update until the end of the report. I apologize for this delay!


July 24, 2022
"THE MERGE" ANNOUNCED, MORE PROFITABILITY
I have been reporting a gradual increase in mining gains, and this week was no exception and the average daily mining gain has increased again. I believe this is happening for two reasons: with the devaluation of cryptocurrencies, many turned off their mining rigs, thus reducing the difficulty and increasing the gains for those who continue. Another reason will be the approaching date for the switch from Ethereum to PoS.

Late last week, Ethereum developers announced that the network will switch to PoS in mid-September 2022. This may have increased interest in mining the latest ETH on the part of many people. As I am using NiceHash, this has been feeling a lot, with daily averages increasing interestingly, which for my mining rig means being able to mine more than 0.0001 BTC daily.

I had already had similar values in May 2021, but at the time I only had one GPU mining. This means that I am now earning less than I did at the time, since to mine the same amount, I need to have two GPUs working. But, taking into account that the value I was able to obtain had been decreasing since the beginning of 2022, even with two GPUs, to be currently undermining this value, this is just over a month to the end of the PoW on Ethereum, it seems me very good. There is now the question of what will happen from September/October with regard to mining via GPUs.

That said, let's look at the results of another week of mining. Over the last week, despite occasional pauses on the GPU with less hash capacity, I got an average of 105.28 MH/s, resulting in 0.00011011 BTC/24h. This was an increase of almost 20% (+0.00002 BTC/24h) compared to the previous week. It would be great if this rate of increase continued over the next few weeks.

All these numbers are available here.


July 31, 2022
MONTH JULY 2022
A year ago I wrote about the month of July (2021). At the time I was mining with only 1 GPU and I was halfway through the initial adventure with only 4 months of mining. A year later, I have two GPUs to mine, I have already recovered the investment in BTC related to the purchase of two GPUs. What else has changed?

In 2021, we had the shadow of what could happen with the entry of EIP-1559, at the moment we have the shadow of what could happen to mining with "The Merge". With the entry of the EIP-1559, mining profitability began to halve. In July 2021 I was doing a daily average of 0.00008693 BTC/24H with only one GPU, which was my second best month of mining with only one graphics card. Already July 2022 with two GPUs the daily average is at 0.00009668 BTC/24H, and it was the best month so far mining with two graphics cards.

So, the biggest difference between July 2021 and 2022, is the profitability being practically half of what it was per graphics card. Added to this is the fact that the price of energy has increased all over the world, many have turned off their mining rigs. In turn, this has given a boost to the profitability of miners who remain active, in this final stretch for Etherium to become PoS. It remains to be seen what will happen after "The Merge".

In this last week of July, the daily average has been increasing, following the same pace as the previous weeks, achieving an average of 0.00011422 BTC/24h. An increase of about 4%, compared to the previous week. I believe that now, the increase will begin to stabilize, staying more or less at these values for the next few weeks.

All these numbers are available here.

^ VIEW TIMELINE ^

TO BE CONTINUED
Coming soon, the continuation of the story of this adventure.
I thank all users of the forum, who have given good tips and helped in this adventure.
Thank you so much!