I started my venture into Bitcoin about 9 months ago after I stumbled upon silk road ;) I used Bitcoin on a very small scale just to see how it worked but didn't take the time to research and understand why a virtual currency could become extremely valuable. I lost interest in Bitcoin until the end of October when I started seeing news stories on Forbes, Fox News and all the other major news outlets. I finally took the time to research and understand what could make a virtual currency like this so valuable in the future. With this new knowledge and the realization that if I would have invested $1,000 into the currency 8 months ago it would be worth over $10,000 now that I decided it was time to begin my investment into Bitcoin.
After researching how I should invest I came up with two options.
1: Buy the currency outright and be stuck with a finite amount with the risk of loosing it all if Bitcoin one day becomes worthless
2: Buy an ASIC miner that should pay for itself in about a month and I still risk it being worthless if Bitcoin crashes but with the chance that I could use the hardware for something else in the future.
Being a nerd I went with option 2 and bought two ASICminer Blades for $260 each and got them up and mining at a consistent 22GH/s. These things were super easy to set up, sipped power and just required a small fan to keep cool. I made a huge mistake though when choosing which pool to mine with, I started with slush's pool because that was where I mined 9 months ago when I first discovered Bitcoin. After a little more than a day mining and having .02 BTC transfered to my wallet I made the decision to switch both my blades to mine at triplemining with the promise of higher payouts. It seemed great for the first 5 days with an estimate payout over .1 BTC. At this rate I was going to have my hardware payed off in less than a month, however the problem came when another week passed and my estimated payout started declining. I was confused at first but after thinking about it I realized that if my hash rate stayed consistent at 22GH/s but the pool's grew before a block was discovered my shared would get diluted and my payout would start to decline.
At this time I had invested 2weeks of mining power and didn't want it to go to waste. Rather than switching pools I continued to mine with triplemining and this was the biggest mistake I made so far. It has now been over a month and a half of solid mining at trippleming still without a payout because they haven't discovered a block yet. I didn't realize there was such a risk of this happening when I started. This experience has definitely thought me to be extra cautious when mining with a small pool. I definitely should have cut my losses at triplemining earlier and won't make the mistake again.
After researching how I should invest I came up with two options.
1: Buy the currency outright and be stuck with a finite amount with the risk of loosing it all if Bitcoin one day becomes worthless
2: Buy an ASIC miner that should pay for itself in about a month and I still risk it being worthless if Bitcoin crashes but with the chance that I could use the hardware for something else in the future.
Being a nerd I went with option 2 and bought two ASICminer Blades for $260 each and got them up and mining at a consistent 22GH/s. These things were super easy to set up, sipped power and just required a small fan to keep cool. I made a huge mistake though when choosing which pool to mine with, I started with slush's pool because that was where I mined 9 months ago when I first discovered Bitcoin. After a little more than a day mining and having .02 BTC transfered to my wallet I made the decision to switch both my blades to mine at triplemining with the promise of higher payouts. It seemed great for the first 5 days with an estimate payout over .1 BTC. At this rate I was going to have my hardware payed off in less than a month, however the problem came when another week passed and my estimated payout started declining. I was confused at first but after thinking about it I realized that if my hash rate stayed consistent at 22GH/s but the pool's grew before a block was discovered my shared would get diluted and my payout would start to decline.
At this time I had invested 2weeks of mining power and didn't want it to go to waste. Rather than switching pools I continued to mine with triplemining and this was the biggest mistake I made so far. It has now been over a month and a half of solid mining at trippleming still without a payout because they haven't discovered a block yet. I didn't realize there was such a risk of this happening when I started. This experience has definitely thought me to be extra cautious when mining with a small pool. I definitely should have cut my losses at triplemining earlier and won't make the mistake again.
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