Thread by @econoalchemist

1/34 Home mining for non-KYC #bitcoin

An thread on setting up an ASIC Bitcoin miner at home with the goal of generating a non-KYC stack.

-Procurement
-Electrical infrastructure
-Ventilation requirements
-Noise treatment
-Connecting to a pool
-Operational costs/rewards

2/34 This thread is the short version of a more detailed article published on my blog. If you want to read it, I recommend setting aside 1 hour for reading the whole article and checking out the additional resources.

econoalchemist.com/post/home-mini…

3/34 Have you ever considered mining Bitcoin at home? Maybe you were deterred by naysayers claiming you cannot compete with big players. Or it's too complicated to configure your own setup. Or that residential electrical costs make it so that you will never be profitable.

4/34 Mining struck me as a crucial piece of network that I just didn't understand, it seemed out of reach from a technical understanding & ability. I made assumptions that resonated with the naysayer's narratives until I read the guide by @diverterNoKYC

keybase.pub/diverterbtc/Mi…

5/34 A little bit of ambition, creativity, patience, and resourcefulness can go a long way. Here is how I routed around the FUD and reached my goals, I hope you find some of these resources helpful & some of these ideas thought provoking.

6/34 First I had to get an ASIC. Procuring a miner can go really smoothly or it could quickly become a traumatizing experience. It depends on your ability to take your time, plan ahead, listen to your intuition, & take into consideration some important factors.

7/34 The unfortunate truth is that there are scammers out there. To avoid them, start with these Telegram channels:
t.me/Hardwaremarket…
t.me/HardwareMarket
t.me/minerspeak
t.me/CryptoMiningSc…
t.me/BlockwareSolut…
t.me/kaboomracks

8/34 There is a helpful community on Telegram. I bought my ASIC from @BlockwareTeam they were great to work with. @kaboomracks also has a good reputation. Make considerations of your payment methods & shipping details to preserve your privacy.

9/34 Any serious Bitcoin mining equipment will require 240v AC electricity. So make sure you understand the specifications of the equipment you're buying & ensure that your home can handle the load. I had to make some upgrades to my home.

How it Started: How it's going:

10/34 If the pictures above don't make sense to you, hire a licensed electrician. Do not attempt electrical work if it's foreign to you. Make sure you have the right connectors for your ASIC & a properly rated power cord.

11/34 Before plugging in the ASIC, ensure all connections are tight, correctly oriented, & nothing is rattling around inside. Make sure the buss bars are not touching inside the power supply too.

12/34 The first thing I noticed when running the machine was how loud & hot it was. Since I just introduced a literal power house into my living space, I was going to need to address this.

13/34 My basic idea was to build an enclosure to suppress the sound while still allowing adequate air flow. The difficult thing about addressing a problem that is loud & hot is that thermal insulating materials & acoustic insulating materials have completely different properties.

14/34 Trying to better understand the exact sound problem, I made a short audio recording of the ASIC, did some clarifications on it, & came up with 720Hz. Which should have been obvious because the power is delivered at 60Hz.

15/34 This allowed me to calculate the wave length of the problem frequency and incorporate those dimensions into the design of my enclosure to avoid standing waves. Also using non-parallel surfaces, air gaps, & varying materials helps.

16/34 The enclosure has a 6" duct collar on both ends. The inlet side is shorter & narrower than the outlet side. The plywood & MDF are separated by a 1/2" gap of dead air.

17/34 The inlet side has a furnace filter & the outlet side has a sound diffuser. I added panel mount connectors for the power & Ethernet.

18/34 I had planned on using canvas sand bags to pack around the ASIC tube to help with the sound but it turns out that caused problems expelling heat so I had to remove them.

19/34 Once installed, the enclosure achieved a 10dB noise reduction. Not quite as much as I wanted but humans perceive a 10dB drop as being half as loud. This definitely did the trick.

20/34 There are a few options when it comes to keeping your ASIC's circuit boards cool; water-cooled blocks, oil submersion, & air flow are a few common ones. In this guide I'll be sticking with the stock air-cooled method as the machine was manufactured for.

21/34 I removed a window, installed plywood with two 6" holes to run the inlet and exhaust duct work.

22/34 I also installed an in-line duct fan to help evacuate the hot air. The ASIC fans had trouble moving that much air through the duct work fast enough to keep cool. But it works great now.

23/34 Once the infrastructure was installed the ASIC could be powered on & connected to a pool. The basic idea is:
1) Install the miner software
2) Find the ASIC's local IP address
3) Create an account with a pool
4) Copy/paste the pool's URL into the mining software interface

24/34 Selecting a pool is a personal choice, I chose @slush_pool to start. It was recommended by @Crazyk_031 who helped me get going in the right direction. I'm also on the @laurentiapool waitlist which I'm very interested in seeing develop.

Connecting to the pool was easy.

25/34 The numbers don't lie, so let's look @ some real data & see if mining at home can be profitable. My basic idea is that I'm DCA'ing through my electric bill. I fully intend on keeping the bitcoin rewards I earn from mining as opposed to selling the bitcoin to cover my costs.

26/34 First off, KYC'd bitcoin is more expensive than non-KYC bitcoin. Deposit fees, exchange fees, spread fees, & capital gains tax all add up quickly.

27/34 Beyond the financial expense, KYC can put your life at risk in the wrong hands via a data breach & it can put your freedom at risk in your governments hands. Non-KYC #bitcoin is the kind of power that's worth fighting for. It's freedom from living by someone else's rules.

28/34 When a nation's sovereignty is threatened, they will stop at nothing to isolate the threat. Including a 6102 order. Boating accident? Bullshit. Your UTXO ever moves, straight to jail. Mixing KYC'd coins? Bullshit. They can't prove you do, you can't prove you don't.

29/34 Mining at home for non-KYC bitcoin is even cheaper than buying it. This screen shot was after 113 hrs. That's 0.0000215/hr.
$0.12/kWh x 3.4kW = $0.408/hr
0.408 x 5,814 = $2,372.11 to mine 0.125 BTC that cost Bob $3,797.54. Bob paid a 60% premium for 0.125 BTC.

30/34 Since my ASIC wasn't free, what's the ROI?

$30,350 USD per 1 BTC
$9.79 per day in electrical costs
0.000516 BTC rewards per day
$15.66 value of daily rewards
15.66 - 9.79 = $5.87 profit per day.
2,850 / 5.87 = 485 days for the profits to pay off the initial investment.

31/34 The numbers above are constantly changing variables, so it's just a rough idea. There are good mining calculators like this that can help you make a more informed decision.

insights.braiins.com/cost-to-mine

32/34 I hope you found this thought provoking and insightful if you have ever been interested in mining at home. It can be done. It can be profitable. Any effort towards non-KYC bitcoin now is the best investment you can make for your future self.

33/34 The full details of this thread can be found on my blog with some other interesting stuff related to self-custody, censorship resistance, & non-KYC #Bitcoin

econoalchemist.com/post/home-mini…

34/34 Here are some resources that helped me learn more about mining:

keybase.pub/diverterbtc/Mi…

medium.com/@laurentmt/gra…

braiins.com/blog/data-priv…

sgbarbour.medium.com/there-will-be-…

aniccaresearch.tech/blog/the-intel…