So a couple months ago i made this post
I was downvoted pretty heavily by lemmy standards but there were a decent amount of constructive comments so i deduce that there is some interest in this topic, so thought i would update.
I’ve gotten through the coldest months of the year here in the UK and i have been mining less and less as a result now that spring is springing.
This isn’t a professional set up at all, I have an AMD 3900x processor and a Radeon 6800X GPU running Manjaro. I decided to mine Raven on the GPU (seems to be a dead coin tbh) and Monero on the processor. I also have an old quad core intel media server that runs Ubuntu server with Folding@home in the same room, so generating heat, but not crypto income. As far as actual crypto earnings are concerned it didn’t really yield a whole much; i am the proud owner of 546RVN (current market rate about $6.74USDT) and 0.033 XMR (approx $6.84USDT value). so not even going to bother selling it, will just hold it and hope it pops one day.
The real return though is the reduction in electricity usage. The flat was kept not quite as warm as previous years but still warm enough to be comfortable so long as you wear socks and occasionally put on a jumper on the really cold days. With this experiment i was for the most part only heating a single room. As a result my power usage plummeted for the normally heaviest months.
2024 peaked at around 1,100kWh in Jan normally heating my flat with its in built resistive element electric heaters (no gas here)
2025 peaked at 800kWh in Jan
Costs are generally averaged out over the course of the year here in the UK and my energy supplier has told me they’re reducing my Direct Debit by -£30.48 a month, i’ll assume this holds for the rest of the year.
So with that in mind my net gain was (£30.48 * 12) + (13.58USDT converted to GBP at current rate of £0.77… £10.48)
£376.24
Admittedly there are other variables i’m not really controlling for, the cost of power peaked in 2023ish and has been reducing since for instance.
i had fun though, will try again next year
was fun tho. and if those coins do pop in future then i stand to make a decent amount of money.
I’ve spend more on the lottery for worse odds
Honestly, thank you for posting the details and results. Regardless of anyone’s opinions, it’s a fascinating thought experiment.
distraction/diversion are little pieces of heaven that make life worthwhile in this painful and difficult world if you’re not born into wealth or lucky circumstances; keep doing it no matter what other people say if it works for you and doesn’t cause harm or loss to others.
i got downvoted heavily for creating my own home router based on linux; but it works well (most of the time) and it has given me a project to focus on when i’ve needed the distraction myself many times.
haha i also have my own homemade linux router. debian based on an orangepi r1
thinking about replacing it with openwrt on some more application specific hardware soon though