I am fascinated by Crypto and altcoins.
In 2013/14 Fr. Robert Ballecer (the Digital Jesuit) had a show on Twit and at that time it was already almost impossible to mine bitcoins. But the still popular Dogecoin was young and very easy to mine and encouraged people to do so. Back then if you mined say £200 and just sat on that today it is worth £6000. But like any mining or trading it is knowing when to invest how long to invest and when to get out!
Here you can see the rig I built back then (2014).
https://surfwidow.samanthajohnson.co.uk/750ti-Mining-Rig.html
The last few weeks the market has dropped a lot. Nevertheless bitcoin and Ethereum (and dogecoin) are still there and ‘inevitably’ will rise again. The Blockchain and computer currencies are the future and even the most cautious investors and experts agree on that. Many believe people should sit on their bitcoin portfolios now till 2024 to do well.
Long term investing say on Coinbase or Binance is something everyone should now learn and there are interesting videos for newbies, take a look at this channel, this is part 1 of an entire course. Plus they have live daily shows.
But mining some coins is going to become almost impossible in time and Ethereum will likely be the next coin to go this way. As Bloomberg reports it is very sad as many in the world rely on mining on their PCs for income. Here is an article about this very issue.
Ethereum Mining Is Going Away, and Miners Are Not Happy
The shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake will cut power consumption sharply—and leave some expensive technology searching for new uses.
In this article they state the following
The Ethereum mining community is a diverse bunch, geographically and demographically. There’s a 28-year-old translator in Ukraine, running computing hardware on his balcony to earn cryptocurrency so he can buy clothing and other necessities. In Argentina, a retiree uses her gaming PC to double her monthly pension. A college student in Canada has mined enough to buy a BMW motorcycle and a modified 2006 Dodge Charger SRT—and pay for gas every month.
As many people even outside of the blockchain world know, a crash in the crypto markets has made the past few months quite painful for anyone whose financial well-being is tied to the currencies. As of June 15, the price of Ether was down about 70% for the year. At the same time, a lesser-known factor—a tectonic shift known as “the Merge”—is set to end Ethereum mining altogether, cutting off earnings for as many as 1 million people. “This will be a huge financial hit and almost a complete loss of a good source of income,” says the Ukrainian translator, who asked to stay anonymous for fear of being robbed.
Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two largest cryptocurrency networks by market value, both record transactions using a process known as proof-of-work, where so-called miners dedicate computer resources toward solving difficult math problems to add blocks of transactions to a public ledger. The miners receive payments in cryptocurrency as a reward. Bitcoin mining, which generally involves specialized gear, has become industrialized; and as mining has moved to data centers, participation by regular people has basically been eliminated. But Ethereum mining relies on the kind of graphics cards found inside typical gaming PCs, and many regular folks can still do it.
Proof-of-work is just a contest to make computers work hard, which means it uses an enormous amount of energy. The environmental toll it takes is one of the primary criticisms of cryptocurrencies. Since Ethereum’s beginnings, its developers have been preparing for a shift to an alternative model called proof-of-stake. Under such a system, people would set aside, or “stake,” a certain amount of Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, to win rewards for running software that properly batches transactions into new blocks and checks the work of other validators. Proof-of-stake could cut the power consumption of the Ethereum network by about 99%. It would also put miners out of a job, a significant blow given the capital investment that goes into setting up operations. Ethereum miners have spent approximately $15 billion on graphics processing units (GPUs), according to Bitpro Consulting, and that doesn’t include ancillary costs like wiring and transformers.
It is clear that crypto is in flux and is very complicated. But for many the uncertainty is why they make money. When BTC value drops then is the time to buy it. That at least has never changed. However, the original idea that people can get into mining coins and making money is sadly less and less appealing and as an ex miner myself I find that a real shame!
Have fun and Happy Mining (while you can)
Surfwidow