I work as part of a team of cryptocurrency miners and, although that may sound complex, I’d say the hardest part of my job is helping people understand what that actually means. Although we have nothing against pure crypto traders, we have a slightly different mindset so I’ve written a piece that explains how we view crypto and why we do what we do.

Mining for newbies:

Mining rigs are essentially extremely powerful computers. These machines power the blockchain and cryptocurrency network. They are programmed to solve mathematical problems in order to confirm cryptocurrency transactions and update the public cryptocurrency ledger. This is what keeps the system secure and totally decentralised, unlike our current banking system. For upkeeping the system, the machine earn their owner a small amount of the cryptocurrency it is ‘mining’.

Miners believe in the future crypto.

If you’re getting into mining, you need to have faith in the industry’s future, at least for the next couple of years. Crypto growth is how miners make serious money. It started as a hobby with people accumulating crypto, hodling it (hodling = holding, for any crypto newbies) and watching it rise in value as Bitcoin and other coins increased over the years.

Unlike day trading, we don’t spend sleepless nights checking the price of Bitcoin. We receive regular crypto earnings from rigs. Then, if we want to trade with your crypto or convert it to fiat, we can do whatever we please.

So why aren’t we worried about the $ value of Bitcoin or other cryptos today?

The USD or GBP value of crypto only matters when you use it!
One 6 x 1080ti GPU mining rig (our most popular setup) was mining over $70 a day in January. Now, it’s closer to $15. If you sold the crypto for dollars every day, these numbers matter. If you didn’t, they don’t.

The machines are mining virtually the same amount of Alt coins; the respective Satoshi value hasn’t changed dramatically. It is only the dollar value that has taken a hit. And unless you plan to sell your crypto in the dip, you’re not worried about this.

In January, everyone and their dog was biting our hands off for a rig. During the dip, we were selling the same quantity of rigs, only to fewer customers. Those customers are very clear on the approach to crypto mining we’ve outlined above. As the market begins to mature and general crypto knowledge increases, we're seeing an influx of more educated customers who appreciate the potential long term gains to be made in crypto as opposed to the riskier quick wins the media tends to hype.

There are 4 things to consider when thinking about getting into mining.

1. What miners invest:

Initial outlay + electricity cost. Our most powerful rig only uses 1300w, around £130 a month for UK domestic customers - less for business customers, on average. We have to fund this with fiat so we can pay this as any other bill or sell a proportion of our mined crypto each month for fiat to cover this. Either way, it’s a very small proportion of our earnings. We obviously cling to our crypto!

2. What we're left with if the whole crypto market blows up:

Now, clearly this contradicts our whole argument about mindset but bare with us. What makes GPU mining an exceptional value proposition is that your financial exposure is still low, even in the worst case scenario, that you can’t mine crypto anymore. How? Ultimately, your rigs are constructed from top end gaming computer hardware which you can resell to gamers all day long. 1080tis are the best value proposition in this sense as they are the most powerful and the only cards you can play 4k games in, increasing their value to gamers. Along with the fact that they perform best across the widest range of cryptos, this is why we specialise in 1080tis.

3. What we earn each day:

This is where the mindset above comes in. We can give you an average $ or £ value over the last 4 months but, honestly, we wouldn’t be selling someone a rig without them understanding that this figure is somewhat irrelevant. Acquisition of Alt coins and their respective Satoshi (decimal of Bitcoin) value is what mining is all about. Our machines are the most powerful on the market for accumulating the widest range of cryptos so we know we're maximising daily mining.

4. What your mined coins will be worth in a year’s time:

Last year, if we'd have run our rigs on auto-mine software throughout 2017, we'd have earned a big chunk of coin. As the market grew, the value of this crypto got up as high as around £90,000.

Additionally, we can set the rigs to mine virtually any coin you like. We can mine coins that aren’t even on some of the bigger exchanges yet. This is where the future mindset comes in. If we mine a ton of a new coin before it hits the exchange and then its price doubles, triples or grows 20x, BOOM; our equipment has paid for itself.

Key Takeaways for Crypto Miners:

• Forget Fiat Value - this only matters if and when you sell! Focus on crypto acquisition rather than dollar gain.
• Appreciate Asset Value. Buy top end equipment with high resale value. This is why we specialise in 1080tis.
• Deal With Experts.

I hope this helps some people understand crypto mining a little better - there's so much confusion out there and I really want to help educate people about the machines that ultimately enable PoW coins to exist! Leave me a comment with any thoughts/questions!