Could you live on $40 USD / day? (mining-related)

[VirtualLarry]

What kind of a lifestyle would you lead? Could you afford rent? Or just be a "homeless wanderer" with a crypto.com debit card? Beach bum?

Public housing, that would pay the electric bill for your mining operation? (and cost you 30% of your income)

Assume for the sake of argument that this is after taxes.

$40 / day x 30 days is $1200 / mo. Public housing rent would be $400. That would give you $800 / mo to live on, practically what one gets on SSI in the Commonwealth of Mass, when you're on welfare disability (as opposed to strictly SSDI).

T-mobile's cheapest cell phone plan with unlimited T&T is $15 / mo.

Comcast's cheapest internet plan for those on disability in public housing is $9.95 / mo.

Food Stamps (EBT aka SNAP) gives you ~$200 / mo., for food only.

 

[ultimatebob]

Thinking about a career change, VL?

Considering that crypto mining income is highly volatile, this seems like a REALLY bad idea.

You would probably be better off collecting cans and bottles on the side of the road and recycling them in Michigan. You know that you get 10 cents a can there, right?

 

[bbhaag]

Could I? Yes, would I want to? No.

 

[Captante]

Just barely but not with a car and would need food-stamps to eat.

So no I could not.

 

[lxskllr]

Absolutely. I figure I need $200/week to live, and that hits it on the dot. It's less than I'd prefer, but it would be fine.

 

[balloonshark]

I think in most public housing the electic is not included. At least not around here. I think in my state you can sign up to see if you're eligible to get one month payed in the winter but you need to qualify.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Saw a recent youtube vid, that ex-google guy that chastised Vitalik B., makes $50K / mo. doing "crypto youtuber vids".

He lives at home with his parents.... in Cali... they have tennis courts...

Heck, he's got to have money though, being ex-google and ex-facebook tech leads.

 

[ponyo]

If I was single I could.

 

[ultimatebob]

I would say "ask Cheez for advice", but he obviously has some wealthy parents bankrolling him.

 

[dasherHampton]

I have before in my life but at this point I don't think so.

As far as power consumption goes - wouldn't those public housing apartments be individually metered regardless of whether the tennant pays the bill? You really don't think they'd figure out fairly quickly that someone was mining 24/7 in one of the units?

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

40 * 30 days = $1200?

Meh, depends. If you get food stamps on top of that, definitely.

Otherwise, I would be analyzing things and figuring that would require living in an 4-bedroom apartment and sharing with roommates, and dedicating the rest to bills, food, etc... I would try to scrape by as much as possible to get out of that hole, but very doable IMO.

 

[Muse]

I flew to HI in 1970 (only airport you could land at then from the mainland was in Oahu), a few days later took a prop to Maui and stayed there almost 3 years. I arrived with $50. I had one job on Maui, drew unemployment, had food stamps part of the time, learned to dive for octopus, which I sold to local markets. Paid rent part of the time, but most of the time I didn't. I bought a '57 Chevy off a guy leaving for $200, which was fixed up to sleep in. The rear seat had been removed, a piece of plywood inserted behind the front seats and I slept in the back. When that car died I had to find other accommodations. It wasn't hard to sleep for free on Maui, lots of people did. I met a lot of great people, did great things.

Nowadays I own a house, outright. Property tax is $12/day. Insurance is another $15/day if I keep my EQ insurance. Could I live then on $13/day? Well, there's water, electricity/gas, food, it would be tough. I guess I'd get food stamps.

 

[VirtualLarry]

$16 an hour is about the starting point for middle class (single person).

This was posted in the forum that we shall not name, but that's about $128 / day, for an 8-hour day.

So my scenario would be more than 1/3 middle-class, which is a bit low.

There were a few days to weeks where I was making $120+ USD worth of BTC daily.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I flew to HI in 1970 (only airport you could land at then from the mainland was in Oahu), a few days later took a prop to Maui and stayed there almost 3 years. I arrived with $50. I had one job on Maui, drew unemployment, had food stamps part of the time, learned to dive for octopus, which I sold to local markets. Paid rent part of the time, but most of the time I didn't. I bought a '57 Chevy off a guy leaving for $200, which was fixed up to sleep in. The rear seat had been removed, a piece of plywood inserted behind the front seats and I slept in the back. When that car died I had to find other accommodations. It wasn't hard to sleep for free on Maui, lots of people did. I met a lot of great people, did great things.

Nowadays I own a house, outright. Property tax is $12/day. Insurance is another $15/day if I keep my EQ insurance. Could I live then on $13/day? Well, there's water, electricity/gas, food, it would be tough. I guess I'd get food stamps.

Exactly. I think most people it's $40 + whore money....not just $40.

 

[Red Squirrel]

That comes up to about $50 CAD, my total expenses broken down per day come up to $91 so I could not as is.

But if I was doing that as a career I would move somewhere with less taxes and be off grid for energy production and it's probably safe to assume I'd sell the house and not have a mortgage either as the money from the house would go towards the new place. If I eliminate all that I can bring my per day costs to $37. Of course if I'm doing it off grid I'm also limited by energy production so the rigs would not be running 24/7. I'd have it setup to ramp up/down based on energy production. I actually toyed with setting up an off grid mining farm years back, but it was just too hard to get hardware even back then.

Mining and crypto usage in general is also taxed here in Canada and you need to do all the legwork yourself, so you'd probably want a full time accountant on payroll to figure it all out.

 

[pete6032]

What kind of a lifestyle would you lead? Could you afford rent? Or just be a "homeless wanderer" with a crypto.com debit card? Beach bum?

Public housing, that would pay the electric bill for your mining operation? (and cost you 30% of your income)

Assume for the sake of argument that this is after taxes.

$40 / day x 30 days is $1200 / mo. Public housing rent would be $400. That would give you $800 / mo to live on, practically what one gets on SSI in the Commonwealth of Mass, when you're on welfare disability (as opposed to strictly SSDI).

T-mobile's cheapest cell phone plan with unlimited T&T is $15 / mo.

Comcast's cheapest internet plan for those on disability in public housing is $9.95 / mo.

Food Stamps (EBT aka SNAP) gives you ~$200 / mo., for food only.

That doesn't leave you much of any room to upgrade or maintain mining equipment.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Thinking about a career change, VL?

Considering that crypto mining income is highly volatile, this seems like a REALLY bad idea.

You would probably be better off collecting cans and bottles on the side of the road and recycling them in Michigan. You know that you get 10 cents a can there, right?

https://imgur.com/nAvzaot

 

[dasherHampton]

Electrical engineers - how big of a water wheel would you need to power enough crypto rigs to make it worthwhile?

Let's say you find a nice quiet spot next to a quick stream away from civilization. Would it be a feasible project to power a mining op with a single water wheel?

Just curious.

 

[ultimatebob]

Electrical engineers - how big of a water wheel would you need to power enough crypto rigs to make it worthwhile?

Let's say you find a nice quiet spot next to a quick stream away from civilization. Would it be a feasible project to power a mining op with a single water wheel?

Just curious.

Yeah... once you remove the power costs, crypto mining is basically free money once the equipment is paid for.

Would a windmill and battery pack/inverter setup be cheaper? Maybe go for some of those cheap Chinese solar panels instead?

 

[Red Squirrel]

I doubt you could generate a significant amount with a water wheel, would be better to go with solar and wind. Though if you had a decent size stream it would be worth looking at building a dam and then piping the water through a turbine. You do want to have mitigation measures to let fish and other wildlife through though.

 

[dasherHampton]

Well, I finally got off of my metaphorical ass and looked it up. I guess these guys came up with one that powers a house back in 2010.

Power a house using a waterwheel - Living Off the Grid: Free Yourself

The first off-the-shelf waterwheel system which can generate a good supply of electricity from a water fall as little as 20cm

www.off-grid.net

But that's probably not enough to mine crypto, right?

 

[Red Squirrel]

They say they're getting 2kw so you could probably run a single rig actually. I did not figure a reasonably sized (ex: something DIYable) water wheel could get that much tbh. The nice thing with that is it's continuous. You could still have solar and wind to supplement and a battery setup to carry you over through the night, but the water wheel would be adding constant power, making the batteries last longer. So you could perhaps run two big rigs and be good.

 

[lxskllr]

Been a long long time since I've read, but I think the hard part of a waterwheel's the drive train. A tractor axle was the econo way of doing it, but you need access to axles, and the know-how to put it all together, and fix failures when they arise.

 

[Muse]

Could someone please explain this mining thing to me? It's what? Some way of producing money, a sort of digital alchemy? WTH is it?

Edit:

But that's probably not enough to mine crypto, right?

Yeah, what is this anyway? My crypto IQ is teeny.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Could someone please explain this mining thing to me? It's what? Some way of producing money, a sort of digital alchemy? WTH is it?

That's a good way of putting it. "Magical Internet Money Machine".