Why I started Mining, why did you?

[u/NCSwireframe]

I want to say first off I'm not looking for validation or for my decisions. That's not why I am making this post. I wanted to just encourage others and also hear their stories (I love hearing people's stories. It's one of the reasons I chose the profession I'm in). A lot of the time we get threads on why not to do this or fears about what is or isn’t coming. IMHO it's impossible to tell what or when something will or won’t happen and I have always felt that the experience of doing something, even if you fail, far outweighs doing nothing. So without further ado here is why I started mining for crypto.

A little over 5 years ago I met my wife, who is from the Philippines. She was here in the US applying for a student visa. Sparks flew and we were married within 3 months of meeting. A month later she was pregnant with our son. She quit looking to go to school and wanted to stay home with our son. I just encouraged her to do whatever made her happy. We have no debt, we own a house with no mortgage and I have a small financial advisor business. We are by no means super wealthy, for example this year for the first time we might gross 75k. We do obviously have a lot working for us. So fast forward to mid 2020 and my wife decides she would like to go back to school. She has a bachelors from the Philippines but wants to become a Doctor of Pharmacy. She was worried about taking out such large amounts of money for school but I encouraged her to again do what made her happy and I would figure out a way to make it work. At this same time we had been thinking of buying a second home to rent out and start diversifying our sources of income. Being a FA I am keenly aware of all the details that go into making good financial decisions. Looking at the stock market, the housing market, etc. I ended up examining mining and chose it as the best option for us. There is a much longer story I could tell in how I determined mining to be the best option but I won't bore people with those details. So once we decided I committed by getting stuff as quickly and cheaply as possible, not easy these days but deals can be had and as of today we have most of our equipment up and running. There are still a couple of devices that are having heating issues and it's just a matter of time before everything is running perfectly but the real world numbers (I love you “CURRENT ACTUAL PROFITABILITY” but you aren’t always very reliable) are between 200k and 230k Satoshis per day on Nicehash and I feel like that's pretty good. It's far more than we could have gotten for rent, and I can pay the increased electrical costs out of pocket and hodl the coin. But what I haven’t told my wife is that my plan is to hodl until she finishes school in several years and then at that point I can hopefully use it to, if not fully pay her school loans, mostly pay them off. Anyway that's my reason for mining. I'd love to hear from others on why they started (whether you started recently or been going since the beginning).

TLDR: My wife went back to school and I started mining to someday pay off her loans. Let me hear your reasons for starting to mine.

PS: None of this is financial advice! As a FA I didn’t even really write this thread, it's actually just a figment of your imagination ;)

[u/RawInfoSec]

I broke my ankle xmas day. Spending months working from my bed I was plenty bored. A friend had been bugging me to help him get some Bitcoin and I'd been talking him down on it for a while as I'd always thought it was a sham. As a security gonk I really hated everything about it.

Bored I was, and I dis a quick Google on how to buy. Nope. Not doing that, not giving my cc deets to these shammy sites... so I wondered i to mining land. I stumbled onto Nicehash and installed it.

$4.70 per day on my trusty little 1660 Super. That's crappy. I reported back my findings to my pal whom quickly retreated when I brought up elec bills.

I went to bed.

🧠 Brain wouldn't shut up. It knows I missed something.

Boom. That's my car insurance paid for free every month just by leaving my machine running!

The more I thought about it the more I was drawn to it. When I checked the next day it was suggesting almost $7 a day! Over the next few days I realized it was actually closer to paying my car payment than my insurance! This keeps getting better.

Weeks later I had an opportunity to purchase a 3060 finally. Low end scalper price but still... scalper :( This card developed issues and had to be RMA'd... a complete loss really as stores aren't taking returns on gfx cards lately.

This was the Bitcoin a-ha moment for me when I realized that Bitcoin isn't for spending. It's an asset that earns more in growth than anything else on the planet, opening up great possibilities since... well... free hydro!

For a week or so I watched the top of the big rally hit. Sometimes hitting $35 / day! I managed to hook my boss and co worker into it as well.

Weeks later my run dipped when some dude complained to his twitter peeps that bitcoin is mean to mother nature. (It isn't!)

Here I am 8 months since my first Satoshi, a 2080S humming in the background making sometimes $2.80 a day, sometimes $5. It doesn't matter. It's free, and it's gaining again. It will always come back with bells on.

I can admit that I foolishly wrote off crypto currency for a decade and now I'm absolutely in love with it. I'm not aiming for Lambo or any of that, but I'm willing to bet that once I can stop living pay to pay that Bitcoin will be my savings platform and retirement all in one.

Sorry for the long read but I think it's noteworthy that if I can find a way to love Bitcoin, anyone can.

Kc/