Running my bitaxe since yesterday. Pointed to ocean for now. Dashboard states 59 years estimated until minimum payout!
Are the only practical options to either solomine or get paid out via lightning?
#bitaxe
Discussion
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I feel like buttaxe doesn't have enough power to do anything. It doesn't break the barrier imo.
Yeah, it's spitting in the ocean but point is to play with mining I guess. Just not obvious to me yet what is best way to use it. I'll tag nostr:npub16vzjeglr653mrmyqvu0trwaq29az753wr9th3hyrm5p63kz2zu8qzumhgd in case he has some ideas. Seems silly to mine with a pool for zero ϟ instead of like 40 ϟ a day or so
Totally makes sense, And that's a good idea. I think it's a good start. If America can start manufacturing chips and other hardware that would really accelerate the industry imo. Increase power decrease price. Buttaxe is like "here's a car with 200mpg, but you can only drive it 5 miles a day" lol
I understand the math enough to know it's burning money, but the value is the learning and it's a fun conversation piece and item to look at. Mining in earnest is not an option for me for a variety of reasons, with cost of electricity being high in the list 🤷♀️
I completely agree and understand. Learn but maybe not earn.
What do be your thoughts on Knots and Core?
I assume you mean more broadly on op return and not the two implementations.
Mine? lol, they don't matter and I haven't done enough considering to have a strong opinion yet. I find myself agreeing with any well laid out argument made at this point (very uncool, I know).
ATM lean toward being annoyed with core. Leave the default alone, and keep option available. Faster block propagation times seem like a more sound argument than fee estimation for what they're doing (honestly don't personally care about fee estimation right now). But haven't seen any hard numbers on the impact of fragmented mempool on block prop speed. Is it minor, very big? How many seconds we taking about on average?
Yeah I mean about running nodes, not necessarily miners. I think the removal of configuration options is the red flag.
Yes. I don't appreciate the use of soft power to change things. Hope I partially answered your question. Hard to get into details much on phone typing interface
Totally, I just wanted to hear your side
Yeah, sticking point for me is still that I'd like impact quantified. I suspect it's negligible delays on block propagation, so impact to small miners isn't that big a deal, and the whole miner centralization argument hinges on this as far as I can tell. Fees shmees, nobody cares (maybe lightning heavy users do...not sure).
Yeah I feel like a lot of dorks are missing the forest in the trees with that stuff. Like fucking relax, maybe I'll change my mind when I have larger transactions but I still use on chain and wait for low fees sometimes. Like Bro at least it isn't ACH taking days to clear or having weekends and holidays off.
Which leaves utxo bloat the issue, I guess. Here I'm too ignorant to say much. I know some stuff would likely move over to op return which can be pruned, so improves health of utxo growth rate, but trade off is relaying spam more. I don't know that this would even be a lasting equilibrium, and that other types of spam wouldn't come back to utxo set later. Sigh...🤷♂️
I feel like the bigger thing is Bitcoin being accepted by merchants and government adoption. Otherwise just stay humble and stack sats
And yeah why wouldn't Core be the most default most neutral?
Yeah it's currently just a hobby. ASIC space heaters are closer than you think. The real revolution won't start until we get the first popular heating appliance combined with ergonomic payouts.
Have never understood the heating use case very well. Is it really the case that running a machine designed for something other than pure heating could be more economical? Clearly, since heaters today aren't built to hash, hashing hardware itself isn't most efficient way to produce heat, so the claim must be that the income from bolting on this unnecessary computer stuff offsets the added inefficiency and cost modifying heaters into miners has. Guess it's possible, but something smells off on it to me
Ie, buy a heater and spend savings on buying BTC seems like it'd be better strategy.
Anyway, just rambling. Thanks
This depends on the heater. All heaters have varying degrees of efficiency in terms of BTU of heat output per watt of energy input.
Lots of electric heat sources like space heaters are just a fat resistor with an electric charge getting converted directly to heat and a fan to blow the heat around. This type is used as a reference efficiency of 1.
A modern heat pump uses electricity to move existing heat from one place to another. These are 3-4 efficiency last I checked based on memory.
All the hash chips in a miner generate heat because they are resisting the flow of electricity, the same as a dumb resistor in a typical space heater. All the electricity goes to the miner hash or to cooling fans. Remember space heaters need fans too though. That means that a miner has the exact same electricity in to BTU out efficiency of 1.
Main building heat is usually heat pump based now due to the higher efficiency.
So the efficiency question is, which type of heater do I have? If it is a resistor and you need less than 60c heated temp then the answer is use a miner and capex payoff from switching is your only issue. Your opex doesn't change.
If you are replacing a heat pump it is harder to calculate. You get roughly 4x the electric bill opex per BTU, so your costofmining = .75*electricityrate is that a profitable cost of electricity to mine with your miner? Don't forget to include your capex in your calculation.
Wasn't aware of these distinctions. Thanks. Puts a whole different paint job on things...
So capex aside, space heater mining for normal home use case, is free mining? Just making sure I didn't grossly misunderstand
Solo lottery mine.
Ocean supports once per block bolt12 payout.
Buy more and faster miners.
You do some mining? Not feasible for me (cost and sound, but mostly cost), not to mention the heuristic that jumping into mining just because you like bitcoin usually leads to regret.
Guess I'll solo mine for now, since setting up lightning payments seemed tricky from little I watched on it, not to mention the thrill of possibly getting a whole block to myself!
I have a few miners. Multiple generations of BitAxe, an s9, and an s19.
The BitAxe all lottery mine.
The bitmain miners only get run when waste heat can be used effectively and they pool mine.
Finances of it vary wildly depending on your situation and there are a lot of factors to consider.
For me I don't track my gains and losses that closely. Call it having a profit interest but not a profit need. I bought them to research mining as heat generation possibilities for potential future business ideas. Any losses are part of the cost of learning and getting that business running to me. I'm comfortable taking that risk for my potential future.
I've been mining for a couple of years and I am still learning. I have more ideas lined up that I want to try. It is a deep field if you want more out of it than to say you made some hash because you like Bitcoin.
One thing I can say is I learned enough to steer clear of the current generation of mining firms as an investment. Cheap electricity is simply not enough of a market edge.
That's awesome. Hope is that the toy will motivate me to go further down the road to understanding it more like you describe.
Unfortunately have to run, but would love to talk more mining down the line.
If you’re running a node, download Datum and solo mine. The payout on a Bitaxe will never accumulate to be anything. Bitaxe is an all or nothing play. Your attitude of “it’s a learning tool” is the correct one, I have adopted the same one.
Ok, this seems to be consensus. Thanks! Wasn't immediately clear from some quick searching so wanted to make sure. Solo block here I come
Go solo. You never know your luck. On top of that and imo much more important is its decentralisation effect. If big miners shut up shop it won’t matter as enough small ones will still secure the network. It makes your and everyone else’s stash more “anti-fragile”.
As an alternative you can join a solo mining block party which collectively gives us a greater chance of earning BTC if one of us mines a block. every couple weeks or so we also have hash parties where we donate some sats to increase hash power temporarily to increase our chances of getting a block reward.
https://solostats.ckpool.org/users/3Gk1GfP3bHA6M2ZzK5mHdqbWN1iNsqAenH
go to https://upendo.rigly.io/ then follow the instructions under “I have a miner” to adjust your bitaxe’s pool settings.
Ooh thanks. I'll give this a look when I get back home. Have to run now.
Thanks all for the helpful info!
You got it! Let me know if any questions with the setup if you decide to join our block party.
Hey, finally getting around to doing this. Is it really as simple as changing pool to solo.ckpoop.org and leaving my BTC address in there, save and restart?
yes it is.
Stratum address: stratum+tcp://solo.ckpool.org:3333
Username: 3Gk1GfP3bHA6M2ZzK5mHdqbWN1iNsqAenH.[Add your BTC on-chain payout address as the workername]
Password left blank
be sure to save and restart your bitaxe.
In current version you don't add the stratum+tcp bit, but otherwise I'm with you.
For worker name I'll want to use the combined address like you have there, eh? I had just added my own with a unique worker name at the end, does that mean I'm mining solo? And if I change that to the two-address format like you have, then I'll be mining with small pool with you guys?
Just making extra sure
yes. dont add a unique worker name after your btc address. you are identified by your btc address.
You should be able to lookup your worker in the json here:
https://solo.ckpool.org/users/3Gk1GfP3bHA6M2ZzK5mHdqbWN1iNsqAenH
wait like 10-15 min for your btc address to pop up
Ok, think I'm all set. See it in json. Wasn't seeing it on website (link near bottom of dashboard).
LFG!!
Glad to be aboard. No telegram for me. Nice try fed ;)
💪💪💪
Unless you're in a very unique situation that provides you with unusually cheap (or free) access to electricity, it's very unlikely that mining (regardless off equipment) with metered payouts can be financially rational for the typical pleb. Even with solar panels, for example, you'd almost certainly be better off using them to offset your other electrical needs. (it's just a matter of properly assessing opportunity costs).
You may as well just accept the project as a loss, solomine, and cross your fingers. 🤞
Yeah, that seems to be consensus. Will have to review options I got later, and definitely not planning to grow my operation
Mine is currently pointed to Braiins. Might change that in the future
Misread this initially. Ln payout for Bitaxe makes the most sense to me
Join those guys maybe they have mining parties nostr:nprofile1qyt8wumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgtcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qqs9avl6hmfcqrma3s3haa94c4h436skujtl44qvlht59hwhxksr8ngaflajl I can recommend 🧡 nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj76n4deuxjmn8waskueewdaexwqg7waehxw309a4kummnw3ezumn9w468y6twv5hxxmmd8gurswpsqqsydzystv8gjd2gg8ph83ackvju4mk3nejxvzlefut9c0m8nwaz7qgk0gjyx
Join us! We are having a group solo mine this Saturday from noon-2 ET!
If you join our nostr:nprofile1qqsrrnwckh0z7p5vkrskwpxm0wwqupkqfzu8x7q8jzq3ptphac5t8tgpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduxn2648 pool, you get us up near 40 workers:
hey, *u* got any/\/\Oar Of thEm satz-miners/minorz*/*ya [Dave Chappelle gif] 
*/*ya 😎 👀 👈 ◝(ᵔᗜᵔ)◜
Looool, great gif 👌
GM YODLnostr:npub162zpxufpw8pnuytaf0gfxzkqtvk9rvcwkvppa7x57y3n7qkfpg4shatdhy how's IT gO-ing friend*/*ya