What do you consider to be a hobby miner?

[ImThour]

Depends from person to person to be honest, I would not consider it a hobby as it takes a lot of efforts at first to setup and then to maintain the Bitcoin Mining Farm. No way it's a hobby for me atleast. And if someone thinks it's an hobby, they might be having fun doing it. My hobbies are to play games, listen to music, travel etc. That pleasures me, not looking at ASIC miners running hard on heat mining sats haha.

[NotATether]

EG hobby miners would panic and pool jump to an altcoin or stop mining in a bear market of profitability of mining. where as asic farm professional mine 24/7 even during potential loss periods of th market cycles.

If you are on short margins, then I can see how a spike in the electricity bill will cause a bunch of hobbyists to quit until they get better rates elsewhere.

hobby miners are more the type that pay residential electric rates and pay it per month when they get a bill.. where as professional asic farms  prepay an x amount of MW/GW of electric to cover a 1-2year length of powering the asics, which they will run constantly because the prepaid electric means there is no gain by switching asics off and instead they waste their allocation by not using it.. also by not mining they lose out on the opportunity to acquire more sats(to hopefully recoup their initial spend) if they switch off, so its in no benefit to switch off

It only makes sense to spend a lot on miners and electricity in advance when you're mining a coin that will appreciate in value. Which is the case for Bitcoin and to a limited extent some others like LTC.

The pricing of the ASICs themselves mitigates any sort of block reward that you will get otherwise.

[Wexnident]

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I mean what metric would we even use? Equipment level? Quality? I reckon it won't (or shouldn't) be profit since every miner out there is for profit.

I'd honestly just compare it to how people compare pc builders. You know someone does it seriously if they've built/customized something heavily and are always using the latest rigs/maximizing literally every part they have regardless of how good it is. I'd probably use the same here with miners, just a comparison between the quality of equipment, optimizations, etc.

I'd probably consider one a "hobby" miner if they just fired up a random rig they found in their garage and just mined whatever really. Like they probably just got the bare minimum they could needed to start mining.

[SFR10]

Mining is not what that should be regarded as a hobby. Or I can not consider it as a hobby. The reason for this is because I do not think someone will say he is mining bitcoin for pleasure. Hobbies are activities that you do for pleasure. Even if some people just like to be a miner and not benefiting from it, it is still not a hobby for such person because no pleasure derived from not benefiting from being a miner.

You made some valid points, but some users actually enjoy tweaking ^{[overclocking and in certain cases, even underclocking a few things]} their rigs just for the sake of getting the most hashrate while keeping it in a stable condition. There are also a few who enjoy modifying the appearance of their mining rigs and they constantly do this for fun, so these things are visually pleasing.

I would not consider it a hobby as it takes a lot of efforts at first to setup and then to maintain the Bitcoin Mining Farm.

There's no need to go that big when you can have fun with a single mining rig

[DaveF]

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I mean what metric would we even use? Equipment level? Quality? I reckon it won't (or shouldn't) be profit since every miner out there is for profit.

I'd honestly just compare it to how people compare pc builders. You know someone does it seriously if they've built/customized something heavily and are always using the latest rigs/maximizing literally every part they have regardless of how good it is. I'd probably use the same here with miners, just a comparison between the quality of equipment, optimizations, etc.

I'd probably consider one a "hobby" miner if they just fired up a random rig they found in their garage and just mined whatever really. Like they probably just got the bare minimum they could needed to start mining.

Not everyone is out there for profit. That's the point.

I enjoy mining Bitcoin. I started doing it in 2011 and it has always been a hobby to me. I’ve had custom electrical work done to enable it, custom ducting, went solar, got a battery backup. I did all these things not to increase profitability or anything like that. I did it because I was having fun supporting a project I care about. I’m still solo mining for fun now and I donate all the coins I get to a community project. No concern about profitability whatsoever.

Everyone has their opinion, but it is a fact, I know someone who, just because he knows that his mining equipment is state-of-the-art, makes him happy... it is a hobby, in fact he tells me that he loves the noise that the machine makes. It may be read as a joke, but it seems "strange" to me, but the guy can pay for electricity and buy the latest equipment, without being interested in a return, and that in itself is a breeding ground for turning it into a hobby....

I personally feel I have drifted into the hobby miner status for what I feel it is. There is no possibility of the hardware I have ever generating a profit. But, I do love tinkering with it. Attempting to fix broken miners that I just about have 0% chance of fixing. See how quiet I can make an old miner so I can use it as a space heater and so on. People have called me a home miner. But, to me a home miner is still someone trying to make a profit mining at home or the office or wherever but it's not their main thing.

Instead of home miner should it be small miner?

All in all it's not THAT important but at times I have seen someone say home miner, when it looked to me to be more of a hobby because they knew that even with $0.04 kwh electric that the miner they bought would never make a profit. But it was fun to play with.

The GPU rig that just I put together for running vanity search was never going to make me a dollar, but it was fun until the smoke came out.

-Dave