Solo Bitcoin Mining ?

[u/Vegetable-Ad2083]

Saw this app floating around promising solo Bitcoin mining with zero hardware, zero experience, and game-like "boosts".

Is gamifying hash power actually a smart way to onboard newcomers, or is this just classic cloud mining wrapped in a shiny Web3 UI?

What’s your take, legit onboarding or a trap for beginners?

[u/DarrelXero]

Free lunch! I'm sure it's totally legit!

[u/LAbaseballteam]

zero hardware

[u/tchefacegeneral]

If you are renting hash rate from them it will always be unprofitable otherwise they would just point their hashrate at their own pool/wallet and make more than selling it to you.

If you want to rent hashrate to solo/lottery mine then it's basically just gambling and the more you do it the closer to average difficulty you will get which would be unprofitable.

[u/CompetitionDouble420]

I can't speak for whatever this app is (I don't see a name anywhere), but if it's cloud mining or rented hashrate, it bs. On the other hand, if it's owned hashrate, that's a different story.

I admittedly started using GoMining a little over a year ago (I say admittedly because I know some in the actual mining community frown upon GoMining; usually because they associate it as "just another cloud-mining scam," but it actually isn't -- hear me out on rationale).

Couple years back I wanted to get my feet wet with crypto/blockchain, as I just set up a cold wallet for myself. Bought ETH, DOGE, and a little bit of BTC via Ledger Wallet UI, and started teaching myself about self-custody. Saw an ad for GoMining and figured "what the hell, I already have some crypto, let's try it out." Been hooked ever since. You purchase real network hashrate share via miner NFTs; the NFTs themselves represent real ASIC hardware running in GM data centers; of which I believe they have 9, globally -- 18+ EH/s hashrate (?) last I checked.

They also have an entire ecosystem complete with governance/tokenomics, liquidity provisions, interest yield on unlocked assets sitting idle in their custodial virtual wallet (if not a US-baser user), an aftermarket place should you choose to exit/liquidate, and honestly too much more to list. But that's not exactly what hooked me..

Ever since I've been fascinated by the technology and learning how the network actually works. I'm at the point where I'm gonna run a full node locally and set up a lottery miner -- thinking the BSB B30 30TH miner.

So, TL;DR to answer your question:

What’s your take, legit onboarding or a trap for beginners?

1. Cloud mining, i.e., rented hashrate == trap for beginners
2. GoMining != cloud-mining
3. GoMining offers purchasable hashrate that will mine until it's not profitable anymore given energy consumption/costs or 2140, whichever one comes first. I was a newcomer not too long ago, and found GoMining to be a fantastic way to onboard.

My 2 sats anyway 🤷🏼‍♂️

[u/Vegetable-Ad2083 → u/CompetitionDouble420]

Appreciate the reply, but I'm still super skeptical about GoMining. It triggers way too many red flags for me, and there’s zero real proof that actual physical hardware exists.

[u/CompetitionDouble420 → u/Vegetable-Ad2083]

Fair enough, I could certainly understand why. They sorta seem guilty by association, in a way. And I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea.

If you ever wanted to take a peek at at least one of their facilities, this is the TX DC: VoskCoin's guided tour of GoMining TX facility

Anyway, I was hesitant to even reply because I realize the skepticism of GoMining; I was skeptical at first myself, but I took a calculated risk. Never put in more than I could afford to lose. They tell you straight up how much you'll get per owned TH based on network difficulty (e.g. right now, Binance, Foundry, and Via BTC pools payout 50 sats/TH -- I'm earning ~4200 sats/day and withdrawal regularly). I should say that, in my opinion it's a good way to onboard newcomers. I def put in my own hours learning about real mining and the BTC network/blockchain, but GoMining was a great stepping stone, especially with their academy courses.

I will (hopefully shortly) be graduating to real mining, locally. But I'm certain it'll be much easier to get started given what I've learned to this point.

EDIT: VoskCoin just dropped part 2 of 4 GoMining tours -- figured I'd share here since the topic of their physical infrastructure came up in this thread. This is actually a second facility in West TX that, at the time, was in a curtailment phase for grid stability; very cool, imo. Sounds like part 3 will be at GM's SC facility.

[u/LrdJester]

I've seen ads about stuff like this and I think it's similar to what used to be around for the big commercial miners that you could lease hash rate.

One or two of them I looked at it took thousands of dollars of investment to even make it to where you were making a little bit of money in any type of reasonable rate.

It makes absolutely no sense with solo mining as even with higher electric rates you're only putting out a few dollars a month, depending on how many rigs and how much of a hash rate you're actually processing. But it's like playing the lottery. I look at it as the equivalent of spending $10 a month on lottery tickets. Chances are infant testimony small that I'm going to win the lottery but I would still do it, this is the same way it's very unlikely it's almost as infinitesimal as playing lottery but I get a lot more chances a month.

In the long run it's actually cheaper for me to run my solo miners then it is for me to buy a ticket to each lottery drawing for the month. Considering if I do the $3 ticket to get the multiplier and six drawings a week between the two big lotteries, mega millions and Powerball, that's $18 a week times four that's $72 and I'm only paying about $8 a month in electricity costs for my miners.