A crypto miner's story: Mining history in 2013

A true story about how I went all-in on mining cryptocurrency during Bitcoin’s first gold rush in 2013.

It was a cold night in March 2013 in the city of Ylöjärvi, Finland. I was a university student with no money for rent, food, bills, or anything else. I was waiting for the midnight hour when the monthly student benefit would be paid into my bank account. When the day officially changed, I withdrew a few hundred euros from the ATM. But it wasn't for bills or food. The money was specifically for filling up the car with gas and driving to another city in the middle of the night to buy a used graphics card. Getting that card as soon as possible was my top priority in life.

Begin to realize (this matter)

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and a friend of mine asked me if I had heard of something called Bitcoin. This internet currency was said to be rapidly increasing in value, and anyone could mine it on their computer. Bitcoin was trading for around 15 euros per block, which got me interested enough to read up on it and figure out how mining worked. To mine Bitcoin, you have to use your computer's processing power to solve extremely complex math problems.

Other miners in the network are doing the same thing, and the Bitcoin protocol automatically rewards the first miner to get the correct answer with Bitcoins. Due to the difficulty of the calculation, each miner in the network is essentially trying to guess the answer. The more guesses your machine can make per second, the more likely you are to guess correctly. As more miners join the network, the problems become more difficult and the rate at which coins are earned becomes slower.

After some rough calculations, my computer's hashrate was only capable of producing 0.05 Bitcoins (0.75 EUR) per day, which wasn't worth it considering the electricity costs. But there was another cryptocurrency, Litecoin, that caught our attention. Due to its lower popularity, it has been called "the silver if Bitcoin is gold", with faster transaction times, cheaper prices, and faster mining speeds. There are cryptocurrency exchanges online where you can exchange Litecoin for Bitcoin, Euros, and Dollars. Mining Litecoin was much more profitable, and my computer managed to scrape together nearly two Litecoins (5 EUR) a day. I started thinking about ways to scale up my operation as much as possible!

The main components used in mining are the computer and the graphics card. The motherboard, processor and RAM memory do not play a significant role at all. As long as your hardware has a PCI-E slot for the graphics card and a power supply capable of running it at full power, you can mine cryptocurrencies effectively. I used to buy and sell a lot of computer hardware, so I had extra motherboards and other components, but only a few graphics cards.

I built a makeshift secondary computer from spare parts and took it to my friend's student accommodation, where electricity was "free". Once home, I gathered all my computer parts and concluded that I could run a total of five graphics cards across three computers at once. I just needed more cards, but there was a problem: I was completely broke, with overdue bills and weeks late on rent.

Rapid Development

I live on student benefits, which total about 500€ per month. I also own a luxury car that I can't afford. At the end of the month I'm always scrambling for money, deferring my bills and hoping I can find a way out. Mining cryptocurrencies seemed like a real chance to finally "make it". Instead of spending all my money on rent and overdue bills, I made the firm decision to spend it on more graphics cards from nearby online sellers. I now have a total of three cards mining Litecoin day in and day out, generating a profit of about 12€ per day. The income is already almost equal to my student benefits. I have no intention of stopping expanding at all!

Next, I set my sights on a very specific date: March 4, 2013. At midnight on that day, I would receive my next student benefit payment. I had arranged to collect a new card at 1:00 a.m. that evening, just an hour after the money would hit my account. My car fuming, I drove to a gas station, withdrew the money from the ATM, and refueled my trusty ride for the night drive.

The next day, I used the remaining money to buy a fifth card with cash in the city center. I tried to leave some money for food and bills, but it was clear to me that I had no way of using the food to get me through the rest of the week. Eating was a trivial goal compared to maximizing my mining specs.

Mining cryptocurrencies requires a lot of electricity, which equates to a lot of heat. Running my mining cards at full speed caused extreme overheating, and I didn't want to throttle their speeds. I did what any crazy crypto miner would do: I removed all the components from the mining chassis and laid them out bare on a table with all the wires connected. I leaned the table against the kitchen ventilation window so the components could bask in the cold air flowing inside.

It looked like a real fire hazard, with no boxes, cables everywhere, and everything exposed. I couldn't press the power button on the computer case now, and I opened the computer and reset them by shorting out the motherboard pins with a screwdriver. But man, they worked. Even at peak power, the temperatures of the cards were well below the maximum, allowing them to work for long periods of time without crashing.

Go all out!

So far I've been making around 20€ a day in profit. To expand I would have to buy more base components and graphics cards. I sold the valuables and mined gold as they came in, as well as the large amounts of power needed to run them. In the process I was also able to accumulate a pretty decent debt!

I tucked one more mining card on the kitchen table, one next to the backyard door, and a third in the middle of the living room floor. No case, propped up on cardboard boxes and operated by my trusty screwdriver. In total, 14 graphics cards are mining, generating a profit of about 55 euros per day. The cash flow is sweet, so I have been reinvesting everything I have in mining.

I upgraded all my cards to the latest HD7900 series, which brought a 50% increase in hashing power. Then, I even set up a mining rig in my bedroom, and my profit soared to 80 euros a day! I have TeamViewer installed on my smartphone to fine-tune my miner even when I am not at home. It feels like I am on call 24/7, with multiple incidents every day, just to maximize my profits.

Upgrading these cards has increased my total mining power consumption to over 5 kilowatts. I had previously distributed mining cards to multiple areas of the apartment to avoid blowing a single easily replaceable fuse, but now the location of the mining card no longer matters. Mining at full power and flipping on the stove or going to the sauna may blow the main fuse of the apartment. I can't add another card.

Survive the summer

It was July 2013, the hottest month of the year in Finland. During the day, the ambient temperature of my bed eventually climbed to a shocking 43 degrees Celsius (109°F). I no longer had to worry about going to a sauna; I lived in one.

The combined noise of all the cards' fans spinning at 100% speed was deafening, similar to the sound of operating a vacuum cleaner, tripled. I asked my neighbors if they heard any noise to make sure I wasn't disturbing them. I've become numb to it myself.

To optimize my mining cards, I started running them slower during the day and cranking them up at night. I now switch between different cryptocurrencies all the time, depending on which one is the most profitable at any given moment. I might wake up mining Litecoin at lunch and switch to Worldcoin or Feathercoin. This is the only way to keep profitability high. I even have an alert system set up for any price changes, and it really keeps me on top of things day and night.

Winter is coming

When the summer came to an end, the weather got cooler and living conditions in my apartment became humane again. I was able to run my miners at an acceptable speed again, especially at night.

The influx of new people into the crypto mining game during the summer brought my daily mining profits down to 30-40 EUR per day. Meanwhile, my monthly electricity bill was around 1000 EUR. I was barely breaking even, but I kept going, hoping to mine the right coin at the right time.

As soon as winter officially arrived, I had my mining rigs running at full speed. Even so, the ambient temperature in my apartment was only 10 degrees Celsius (50°F) with all the doors and windows open. Because the floor was near freezing, I wore a full set of winter clothes to keep out the cold, and also wore shoes.

I sleep on the couch in my living room at night, and the aforementioned alarm goes off in case the mining card gets destroyed or I have to replace the mined coins. So far, I am enjoying my biggest profits, earning an average of 100 euros a day, but I am also fighting a new enemy: snow.

Yes, the spring, summer, and fall rain was a blessing in terms of temperature, but snow was floating. Snowflakes of all sizes would fly in through doors and windows and land on my mining cluster. Snow and electricity don't mix, so I designed various types of plastic and cardboard shelters that the mining cards could hide under. But it wasn't enough.

I woke up to a mine truck crash alert. It was snowing heavily and snow was falling on the mine truck shelter next to the backyard door. The melted snow accumulated into enough water to drip through the cover and crash the mine truck. I wiped the assembly dry and shorted the start button pins with a screwdriver; maybe it still works?

My action was immediately met with a negative flash from my 700€ Radeon HD7990 dual GPU graphics card from Mining Cards. It was as if someone had lit a big match inside my crown jewel card and turned it into junk metal. This cost me a large chunk of my profits, but the timing was good so I was able to make up the loss pretty quickly.

The end of an era

Although mining is very profitable, China is developing new FPGA and ASIC miners that will soon make graphics card mining futile. They are hardware specifically designed to mine cryptocurrencies, which are constantly driving down coin prices due to the increase in hash rate. I decided to stick with it as long as mining is a little profitable. There is still bread to be taken. Then something big happened: the launch of Dogecoin.

It is based on the wildly popular doge meme and has no real use case or purpose. As a huge fan of doge, I put all my hashpower into mining it, even though you can't sell it anywhere yet. I'm betting on the fact that a useless meme coin has huge potential to go viral and eventually become valuable.

I managed to mine millions of Dogecoins before they were inevitably listed on online exchanges. I welcomed the opening price with open arms and sold them all for a profit of almost 10,000 EUR. This was the big fish I had been waiting for. What followed were a few months of mining with gradually decreasing profits, after which I decided to quit.

I sold whatever equipment I could, trying to recoup as much money as possible from my battle-hardened army of mining trucks. I paid off all my debts, bills, and rent, and a cold realization hit me: I had nothing left to show for it. A year of full-time effort, living in inhumane conditions, turned into a nervous wreck. Nothing more?

It really didn’t seem like much at the time, but now, those experiences have become precious memories of bravely jumping into the unknown, self-discovery, and never stagnating in the advancement of technology.

Hey! At least I have a good story to tell.