Comments

An Update on Crypto Gulch — 60 Comments

  1. What if we don’t know what we’re doing as far as buying equipment? Is there any consulting?

    • You can’t mess it up, Ben is using and selling standardized equipment this makes it easier to manage and makes it easy for customers as well, There may be a few options, but it will be quite simple to understand, Ben is also the kind of guy that always helps his customers with anything they need.

      But it is likely to be like, I want a box and 4 GPUS, that is all.

    • Hi Brandon,

      That’s exactly what we’re offering you. We have a standardized setup. You just determine how much money you want to invest into your own hardware.

      We do all that purchase and setup for you. We configure everything.

      The only other thing you have to do is provide us your “wallet address” where your coin will be mined for you. That’s it!

      We’re trying to make the system as turn key as possible.

    • I would like to support as many countries as I can.

      I’m only aware of two European countries (Ukraine for example) where I cannot accept customers.

  2. What is the ROI time that people are experiencing with gpu mining? Looking at whattomine.com I calculate over 12 months. Is this reasonable?

    • I’d say at least because you are paying Ben a fee in mining time to mine for you, pay the power bill, maintain the equipment, etc. So far in less than a month 4 GPUs mining Zcash have made me about 120 bucks.

      Coins go up and down in value, coins get harder to mine, etc. Ben will have projections based on coin average values but it is mining, not buying. I’ll talk about this more in today’s show.

    • Hi David,

      I’m going to suggest it will take 15-18 months. Will it actually take that long? I hope not. But I don’t want to mislead people either. This year the way coins went up in value you could buy new equipment in January and pay it off by July. BUT that kind of gain is extremely unusual and probably won’t happen again.

      How fast you recoup your investment will depend on a couple factors:

      1. How much equipment you buy
      2. The coins you mine
      3. How long you hold the coins before you sell them

      1. The more equipment you buy the more hash power you have and the faster you get paid back. Also because of the “base cost” of setting up one rig that expense is the same whether or not you want 1 GPU or 6. That means if you only buy 1 GPU you have to pay for the GPU and the base rig before you are in profit mode. If you buy a rig and put 6 GPUs in it that base cost is averaged out across 6 GPUs so they will be in profit mode faster.

      Additionally, it is set up so my fee goes down based on how much equipment you buy.

      2. You can try to mine the most profitable coin today… or the coin you think will be most profitable in the future. If you pick right you could make a lot of money. We’ll offer some suggestions but ultimately this is up to you.

      3. When you sell your coins is ultimately the most important factor. Do you max out your credit card to buy equipment? If so then you’ve got to pay your credit card bill every month. You have to sell your coin as you make it to pay your credit card bill. In this case it will take you a long time to be profitable. There are things you can do like 0 interest credit cards, day trading, etc. But I do not recommend it.

      Do you buy with “extra” money… preferably cash so you don’t have any monthly payment at all? In this case you can hold onto your coins until the most profitable time to sell. Maybe it’s an addition to more traditional investment. Maybe you’re diversifying and holding your coins to see how they do in 3 years or 10 years or whatever. Maybe you do a little bit of trading and take some profits occasionally when the coins really increase in value. Maybe you sell a little along the way but hold the bulk long term?

      Finally, you can be a day trader. There are plenty of people that like to try to game the market. They watch the charts and the news and try and predict when to buy and sell. This is very risky but it can be very profitable for those that know what they are doing. Mining can be a way to reduce your risk if you’re a day trader. You have consistent income coming in from mining to reduce some of your risk if your other trades go bad.

      It’s really up to you. It also depends on the overall market. If the coins go up 500% or 2500% like we’ve seen from some coins this year… then it’ll be easier to make a profit 😉 but do NOT count on those kinds of gains.

      • Question about coins. In the original release of this news it sounded like everyone would be mining the same coin. In this post it sounds like everyone can choose the coins you want to mine.

        Can you clarify if everyone mines the same coin or if each individual can pick any coin under the sun?

    • Hey Jack, would you mind expanding on your test run. It would help in determining the investment approach by using some actual numbers. You stated you are running:

      > 4 GPUs (cost per GPU $750 per website) = $3,000
      > Less than a month (can you share number of days or actual results after 1 full month) = ~$120

      ROI or Payback Time = ($3000 / $120) = 25 months

      Would you say that’s accurate or could you provide commentary around the numbers you shared?

      • Hi Jared,

        There are a limited number of options for coins to mine in the system.

        Bitcoin
        Ethereum
        Zcash

        It works like this. You select which coin you want to mine by clicking an on/off button. Only one can be on at a time.

        If you turn on a coin you also need to have a wallet address for the payment. The system won’t let you “save” without that information.

        If you have more than 1 rig you can choose whether or not to select one rig or multiple rigs. So you could have them mine different coins or the same coins.

        In the future I’ll have more advanced options for those that want them. But let’s start small and work our way up 🙂

        And a quick comment on earnings last month. September was really bad for crypto. Basically, the market crashed. If the market goes back up not only is Jack making more money per day, but he’s also got all this coin he mined this month which will also go up in value.

  3. I think bundling the GPU, power supply, cooling, racks, etc. make a ton of sense if that’s what you end up doing.

    I’m seeing the same ROI as David Ermer as far as setting up my own rig at my own house, with my cost of electricity, etc. Basically just over a year to pay off a rig, sounds par for the course right now, but I’m still an amateur so take my info with a grain of salt. And it makes complete sense at least to me if ROI takes longer because I don’t have the loud-ass rig to deal with, I don’t have to set up the software, I don’t have to worry about a fan catching fire and burning my house down. I’m happy for ROI to take longer if I don’t have any headaches 🙂

    • Yeah, it’s certainly cheaper for some people to do it themselves. I’ll probably also work on some sort of “guide” for people that want to do that. I have taken photos and some video I just need to put it all together.

      I understand some people like to do it themselves. I understand everyone’s technical skill level is different. Some people even have circumstances where they get free or cheap power. It doesn’t make sense for them to pay me to host for them!

      Jack could do it himself if he had the time. But he doesn’t. So that’s why he pays me to do it.

      • “Jack could do it himself if he had the time. But he doesn’t. So that’s why he pays me to do it.”

        Precisely I could dick around for days learning the basic coding, researching the current best value in GPUs, make a space in my house and heat the damn room up even more than my fricken fish tanks do, and get it running. Then when some new coin that is the best to mine comes along change the code, etc. I could do that but you know what, in the last 5 years I have not have I?

        Why? Am I too stupid to do it? LOL

        NO, I simply don’t have the damn time and I believe in putting my time where it is best used and paying experts to do other things.

        Rich Dad Poor Dad springs to mind even though the author completely made up 90% of the story the lessons are solid as a brick shit house.

        • I can guarantee that the phrase “solid as a brick shit house” has never been in the same thread as crypto mining.

          Only on The Survival Podcast! That’s why we love it!

  4. Thanks for the update! I’m excited and very grateful for you guys putting this kind of opportunity together. Can’t wait to get started 🙂

    • Thank you, Jordan!

      We look forward to providing a great opportunity for everyone to make crypto currency together.

  5. So the base one CPU for $720 is no longer a thing? I see on the site it’s only listed as an add on now. Adding rack, additional equipment and minimum of 2 CPUs looks like the pricing will be a bit higher than what I put aside for this. I may just buy coins with the funds instead.

    • Hi Dan,

      Yes, we don’t recommend getting started at that level. We recommend you trade coins.

      It would take awhile to see a return on your investment. Especially considering we’re changing our pricing model.

  6. I usually day trade and don’t really have the time or space for rigs here, so this is an interesting idea. As coins move from PoW to PoS, especially ETH, how do you see this going? What kind of electricity cost are you working with etc? If these kinds of questons are answered in the episode, forgive me as I won’t hear it until tomorrow.

    • Hi J,

      As a day trader you may just want to continue trading… or maybe you want to diversify a little bit. I’m sure our “community” would love to benefit from your knowledge though. I’m sure others are interested in day trading even if you don’t mine with us.

      I am charging a hosting fee where I mine with the equipment X amount of time a day. The majority of the time it mines for you. That small portion left over is how I pay for the electricity costs.

      At the moment most of us are not mining ETH. The difficulty bomb has made other coins more profitable. You could choose to mine ETH though if you really believe in it or if you are trying to save coins for PoS.

      Just this week I turned one of my personal rigs off ETH to point to one of the other Equihash coins. I’m speculating on an alternative to Zcash with that rig.

  7. Added to the list and I also am ready to purchase.
    Will this offer be available to those on the mailing list before the general public, or will we be competing to get those 50% spots?
    Will there be a capability to add on and purchase more units as time goes on? I see this option is available on the website, but I didn’t know if it was going to make it to the final version. My plan would be to buy two units out of the gate and purchase an additional unit every 2-3 months.
    Thanks

    • This post triggered another question for me. Will you be staying current on the newest GPUs that come to market and be informing your customers when new upgrades are available?

      For example, if we buy now and in 5 months something better comes along will you be sending out a message for those who want the latest and greatest tech?

    • We’re changing pricing again based on feedback from the initial customers. I think we’re going to have a super simple model.

      A flat fee for the first starter kit… with 2 GPUs and the computer to support up to 6 GPUs. Then a flat fee per GPU after.

      As far as how to get on the list… Jack’s list is a great way to start. I have a few friends I’ll be inviting as well. It will probably be a one day launch.

  8. Looks interesting – signed up on the list for more info. What wallet is best for zcash mining as well as ethereum? Tx!

    • I use Jaxx to receive mined crypto, easy to send elsewhere when it builds up, shape shift is on board for rapid conversions. Until Ben is mining something for me not on Jaxx, I will use Jaxx. For some new fangled alt coin I would likely use Bittrix and convert it to BTC there or something like that. For now Jaxx handles everything Ben has been mining.

      • You could also try Exodus. Great UI and support and it has a ton more coins now. Also uses Shapeshift. It’s my preferred multi-coin wallet.

    • At the moment Jaxx can handle pretty much any coin we want to mine.

      As we start to add more coins we’ll probably have some more speculative ones. If we add a coin we’ll have instructions for how to add it’s wallet. We’ll also provide some information as to “why” we’re adding a coin.

      There are hundreds of coins out there. We don’t want to confuse people by offering too many. One of the benefits is also that we spend time learning about crypto, attending conferences, meetups, etc. Hopefully we can weed out some of the junk and focus on the better coins.

  9. No question but comment… Ben it’s really great your timeliness in answering questions and being available… thank you!

  10. Ben, what about hosting a rig that I have already built and have running. Kind of like a colocation situation? Is that an option?

    • Hi Frank,

      It’s a good question. A couple people have asked about that. I’m sorry but that is not an option.

      1. How do I get paid my fee? Your rig may be built for different software? Mine is customized to work with the web site and with my fees and such.

      2. We standardize on a specific set of hardware. I don’t know what hardware you have. I don’t want to have to learn an unlimited set of hardware.

      3. I’m not giving anyone access to the network. If you had your gear here I’d expect you want it to be accessible remotely. (That’s what I’d want if I was colocating my gear somewhere.)

      4. How do I know your computer isn’t infected with some virus/sniffer/trojan… whether intentionally or unintentionally.

      Now… maybe it becomes an option in the future. Or maybe I can refer you to someone that would be willing to do that. There’d need to be some other security and things in place to make it work well for you and protect you and other clients of the colocation from each other.

  11. I have two 7 GPU (NVIDIA) rigs that I built and ran at my previous home. I recently moved and the electric cost is significantly higher now, so I’m looking for a place to house my rigs. Any thoughts on colo rigs that are customer built and managed?

    I have various parts that I’m collecting for an additional 8 rigs but haven’t pulled the trigger since I don’t have a place to house them yet.

  12. I added my name to the list but haven’t seen a confirmation email. Do you send one? Sorry, I don’t want to miss out! My apologies also if my name shows up multiple times. Thank you Ben and Jack for this opportunity!

  13. Jack & Ben- what’s your viewpoints on the new Bitcoin / Segwit 2x hardfork?

    This is a case of holding again to acquire both coins or sell and wait it out?

    Based on what happened last time with bitcoin cash, this seems like another chance at free money.

    Love to hear your guys’s thoughts.

    • Actually, we have both Bitcoin 2x and Bitcoin Gold hard forks coming up. It’s pretty much screwing up the entire market right now.

      It doesn’t seem like the majority really want Bitcoin 2x. Some of those people are acting out of their own self-interest. They have involvement in an altcoin other than Bitcoin.

      Even some exchanges have said they will call Bitcoin BTC and 2x will have to take on a new ticker. Other exchanges have said they will call 2x BTC and the original BTC will get a new ticker. It’s a MESS right now.

      It seems like a lot of this is motivated by greed. I admit I’m holding more BTC than normal right now because I like getting free Bitcoin when they split. I got my Bitcoin Cash and sold it right away 🙂 I would probably do the same with the new coins.

      Bitcoin Gold is also interesting because they’re actually changing Bitcoin to make it more friendly for GPU miners. I will watch this closely and see if it makes sense for us to enable it in Crypto Gulch. It might be something to “speculate” on if someone wants to take the risk. It’d be pure speculation and very risky though.

  14. Hi Ben,

    I’m not very tech savvy so if this is a dumb question, I apologize. I live in an area that does not have access to high speed internet and requires us to use a data plan through cell providers to use the internet. If I mine with Crypto Gulch, does the sending to my wallet use up a significant amount of data. I guess, in general, is my limited data plan going to mess something up if I get into mining and/or trading crypto currencies?

    • Hi Matt,

      That is a great question and the first time I’ve been asked it.

      If you put wallet software on your computer then yes, it would be a very big download. You might want to use a hosted wallet instead. If you mine directly to Bittrex or Coinbase or even if you use a JAXX wallet the “blockchain” is kept on their servers, not your home computer. So you don’t have to download as much.

      • Thanks for the response, Ben. We have about 2-6 GB of data per month, extra, that we don’t currently use. Do you know if I could maybe disable a Jaxx wallet while I’m home and turn it back on when I’m in an area with free Wi-Fi and have the downloads occur then? Or does that create a security issue? Maybe this doesn’t even make sense, lol. My mind isn’t as nimble as it once was, though I’m trying hard to understand how all of this works.

      • If you use Jaxx, they won’t use a lot of data. The Jaxx wallet stores most of the data on the Jaxx systems. So your wallet on your phone won’t waste a lot of data.

  15. Hi Guys,

    I’ve registered to the mailing lists. Few questions:

    1. Can BTC and ETH be sent to my wallet on coinbase?

    2. Can a user define that he/she wants to mine only specific set of coins?

    3. Or do I need to set up a wallet (like Jaxx) to handle all coins you mine?

    4. What time of day you’ll be using the equipment to mine for the fees? Random during the day or a specific one? I don’t know if there are the peak times during the day where mining is more productive, like more transaction during the day or something. So would like to avoid situation where you mining for 8h of the day getting more coins than me for 16h afternoon and night.

    5. How do you envision helping users to sell their equipment? I live in Europe so my exit plan would be to sell GPUs rather than getting them.

    6. There is no registration on your website. Is this intentional?

    • I can answer some, sure Ben will the rest.

      1. Can be sent to any address you want,that said Ben is not mining Bitcoin as it is not very profitable to do so at the current time at our scale. Mostly they are mining Zcash and Ether and some others. I PERSONALLY seriously recommend Jaxx as your receiving wallet. You can then shape shift it into any of the major coins you would want right now an send it anywhere you wish from there. I like Coinbase for what they do, I really do but if I have mined currency I have no plan to ever put it into a service that may at some point have to report everything to the dot gov. Think of mined crypto like mined silver, no one knows shit about it until you tell someone, just saying.

      2. Yes, there are as I said only a few coins to pick from (the most currently profitable) but the back end lets you just say, I want to mine ETC right now. You can’t split GPUs say one at Etc and the other at Zec because they are run by a single rig. You can split boxes so if you fill one box and get a second (free by buying 7 or more GPUs) you can point one rig at one coin and one rig at another. I am not a fan of this but you can do it, my preferences is mine what ever is most profitable this week/month and if you wanted a differnent coin, again shape shift or changely and you have what you want.

      Making this point because I think it is important. A guy we will call Mike buys 6 GPUs he wants BTC so he mines BTC and because it is so hard he makes 10 dollars USD of BTC a day. But if Mike were to mine say DASH he could make 13 dollars a day (understand I am pulling numbers out of my ass to make a point). Mike doesn’t care he wants BTC, and you know what, Mike is a dummy! In one week with these numbers he can have

      70 dollars in BTC
      or
      91 in DASH

      He could then convert his DASH to BTC with shapeshift in jaxx, this requires a few seconds and about a one dollar fee and zero technical skill.

      He ends up with 90 in BTC. Make sense?

      3. Again it can go to any address but personally I like Jaxx it is an app for your phone, you could have installed in twice in the time it will take for me to finish this one sentence. It gives you a lot more freedom and anonymity.

      4. Don’t know if it might change but for me he has been doing it beginning about midnight.

      5. All on Ben but my guess is as we grow frankly people like me will tend to wish to buy GPUs to mine alt coins more than anything else. Also I do see some potential at some point to basically sell them to the Gamers that can’t get the latest an greatest but would still love stuff a year or two old.

      6. No idea but when ever I am doing something other than parking a domain I always pay to proxy it and be left the hell alone. I don’t do it with TSP cause that ship has sailed.

    • This will be fun to answer as I get to disagree with Jack a bit.

      1. You can mine and send to any wallet. I like Jaxx too.

      I have added BTC in the back end. What that means is you don’t actually mine BTC. You are basically setting your rig up to be rented out by other miners. We have one test customer currently doing this. His 6 GPU rig mines Zcash through a rental service. People rent it out and he gets paid weekly in Bitcoin. I only recommend this for people who a full rig. I don’t recommend it if you have only a starter rig.

      Shapeshifting through Jaxx is also a good way to get BTC. That way you can shapeshift when the price is high rather than doing it automatically.

      2. We limit the coins you can mine. Eventually, we’ll add more coins. We want to get this right first before we add more coins. I also don’t want to overwhelm novice users so we might make an “advanced” mode where someone could mine Zen or Hush instead of Zcash for example. Or Expanse or Musiq instead of Ethereum… But that comment right there just confused some people reading this 😉

      I disagree with Jack a bit. There are reasons where you might want to split your mining. But probably not when you have 1 rig or maybe not even 2. If you have 5 rigs and you want to have 1 speculate on a coin while the other 4 mine the most profitable coin for example… That way you’re still generating a decent income even if the speculative coin doesn’t work out.

      Jack’s just talking about pure profits and not speculation. There is a lot of speculation to be had… when a coin is going to split or when a new coin is coming out, etc. Speculation can generate more profits if you get it right.

      3. Jaxx is good. It’s also good to have a hardware wallet to store your coin securely. However, I would still mine to Jaxx and send to the hardware wallet weekly or monthly.

      4. It starts around 1 AM Central. Mostly because people will be sleeping and I’ll have less questions 😉

      5. I envision having a tool to let you assign a rig for “sale”. You set a price. We then make that item visible to other customers as being for sale for your price plus our fee. The fee covers things like our credit card processing fee for taking the other customer’s order and for converting your rig over to that customer. I envision not having to sell your rig on the open market unless you setup a crazy price. BTW – your rig still mines for you while it’s on “sale”.

      Let’s say you go to sell a 6 GPU rig for 70% of the value as “used”. Who wouldn’t want to pick that up at a discount? I think a lot of people would.

      Other options. We could sell it for you on eBay. Our parts business has a pretty big ebay following. But we’d have to charge a bigger fee for that as eBay is going to take 8% and PayPal another 3% not counting our time and stuff.

      Finally, we can ship it all up and send it to you. You can sell on your own. This will probably be the cheapest option, depending on shipping costs. If you live in Moldovia (I shipped there once and shipping was horrible) then it’s cheaper for us to just sell it for you.

      Oh… Another thought I had last night actually. What if we reach an “upgrade” time where we encourage our customers to sell their old GPUs and upgrade to a new and improved model. In this case we’d probably do something like offer customers X$ per old GPU towards the cost of a new model. Then we’d take the responsibility of selling all those old GPUs ourselves. We’d try and make it as easy as possible for customers.

      6. Yes that’s intentional because Jack has his own registration list. I don’t want people bypassing Jack to go to my web site and sign up with me direct. I want to make sure he gets his little 5% referral fee 🙂

  16. Do you have any idea how long the GPUs you buy today will stay relevant? So basically, once the GPUs have paid for themselves (say 12 months), how many months after that will they be worth keeping?

    I’m just wondering if Moore’s law will apply here. With Bitcoin the difficulty grew so fast you’d have to swap out machines every __ months.

    • Hi Peter,

      Unfortunately, that is impossible to answer. We’re trying to select GPUs that we think will be relevant for awhile. They are useful on a wide variety of algorithms and coins.

      We’ll probably also try to implement some sort of upgrade plan if we decide to switch to more advanced GPUs in the future.

      I personally don’t like to keep cards for a long time. The diminished return is two fold.

      One: their mining performance is degraded by new faster / better cards
      Two: their resale value is diminished

      For example. I bought cards in January/February that I ran for 6 months. They paid for themselves in crypto PLUS I resold them in July for more than I paid for them new. I knew some new technology was coming out in August/September and wanted to maximize my return.

      If we do something like this we’ll try to make an upgrade path. (Scroll up to the previous question for an idea of how that might work.)

      Of course, this would be optional. People can continue to use their old cards as long as they want. We’ll try to find other coins to make those cards still valuable. Heck, my own hosting fee comes from “mining” with your cards so I want it to be as profitable as possible.

      Thanks for the question!

  17. I see 24 Oct is the start date. However I do not see the link on thesurvivalpodcast home page or under MSB. Where will the link be to become part of Cyptogulch?

    • When we launch I will post here on how to sign up and I will email everyone on the Cryptogulch email list BEFORE I DO THAT, say a good hour before. I will also do a pronouncement about it to the list about it as well.

    • No need to reply! Picked up from a few other posts. Missed the lottery, but decided having been in IT for 20+ years I’m going to try my hand and will be setting up an AMD Vega 56 rig and 1070Ti rig, mostly off the back of yours and Jack very informative podcasts. I too thought the cost was on the high side until I saw your breakdown, the tax structure, $>£ conversion etc etc, and you having a good relationship with your supplier for supply and warranty is huge bonus. I can attest to what a PITA it is getting GPU’s when most stores here in the UK have a 2 card buy limit to your address. My mother in law must rank as the oldest person pre ordering 1070Ti’s! Good luck with your venture, and to those invested on this first run!