btconboard #LNHANCE or #CTV on Nostr: I bought and operated two home miners that are both aimed at the entry level both in ...
I bought and operated two home miners that are both aimed at the entry level both in terms of cost and technical knowledge: Canaan Avalon Nano 3 with US power supply from Canaan.io and a Bitaxe Ultra from altairtech.io. I came away with a generally favorable opinion of both but wanted to dive in a little further for other home mining noobs; written from an American perspective.
Bitaxe Cost: 10⁄10 This is the lowest cost home miner. Simply no cheaper realistic way for a noob to mine at home. They now often sell for \(110-130 with shipping.
Avalon Nano Cost: 9/10 Also a great value but the all in cost is roughly \)30-40 more with shipping and import taxes. You also face much longer lead times, I had to wait roughly two months vs a few days with my Bitaxe.
Bitaxe Value 7⁄10: The Bitaxe should be seen as some combo of fun, learning tool, and lottery miner. It’s not a profitable miner as the raw hash power is quite low, I’ve gotten an average of around 450 gh/s. If you go in with this mindset and are okay with that it’s a solid value, but if you want to mine profitably you’ll be disappointed.
Avalon Nano value 9.9⁄10: A home miner that can consistently put out 2.5-4 th/s for under $200 is just an amazing value and clearly better than any other noob and home friendly product. The only reason I dropped a point is that it’s fully closed source so you cannot really evaluate the code, security, or other trade offs you’re making. There could theoretically be a flaw affecting the value that I cannot see. There is a significant degree of trust. I live somewhere where we are forced to use electric heat due to a communist local government, so for me earning sats while I heat my home using the same underlying “fuel” source is a strictly better win. If I already have to use electricity for heating then I might as well earn a few sats doing something I have to do anyway. Given my situation the Nano is actually profitable to mine.
Bitaxe freedom score: 10⁄10 This is a FOSS project where the primary maintainer doesn’t even manufacture the hardware, and everything is open and transparent. Self sovereignty and freedom tech principles are all adhered to admirably. You are helping decentralize the network and increasing your own skills sovereignty. It’s a little more challenging UX but you accordingly learn a lot more.
Avalon Nano freedom score: 3⁄10 This is a closed source product where everything is proprietary, and I found this very frustrating. The key thing that helped its “freedom” score to me was it just being ridiculously easy to setup and earn sats. Ideological freedom isn’t worth much if it’s so complex a noob can’t put it into practice. However in the default setup you use Braiins pool which is part of the Bitmain/Antpool mafia, which sucks big time and actually subtly pushes mining towards centralization.
Bitaxe ease of setup and operation 6⁄10: This was overall pretty easy but I did have two minor hiccups where I had to seek online support and documentation to troubleshoot. No big deal and resolving with FAQs and the Bitaxe GitHub only took 20-30 minutes, but my less tech friendly family members likely couldn’t have done it. You need to be comfortable troubleshooting wifi issues and updating firmware. Until I updated the firmware my Bitaxe only ran at 1-2 gh/s for some reason, but once I updated the firmware I consistently got the 400-500 advertised. I know it’s a ton to ask of an open source project with minimal funding, but I’d love to see an integration with Ocean so you can easily mine with them and withdraw via lightning. Currently I could not figure out how to get that to work. Ocean has documentation but it’s complex. You need a core lightning node and CLI experience, and it’s just too tough for a noob. Bolt12 is brand new and too complicated for noobs, but hopefully it gets there eventually. Much of this is unfortunately out of Bitaxe’s control. Given this complexity, I just chose to lottery mine with CK pool since that’s the easiest and still helps decentralize the network a tiny bit.
Avalon Nano ease of setup and operation 10⁄10: Only a few easy steps and I was up and earning sats in probably 2-3 minutes with zero issues or confusion. Remarkable how clean the UX was. This is so much easier it may be the best place for a noob to start and then as you learn more and seek to increase your personal sovereignty, Bitcoin knowledge, and help in decentralization graduate to getting a Bitaxe. You also can change your pool to mining with Ocean, but unless you can figure out Bolt12 lightning withdrawals the hash power and accompanying payouts are so small it’s pointless financially speaking.
Hope this helped. Let me know if you have any questions.
Published at
2024-08-20 15:06:15Event JSON
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"content": "I bought and operated two home miners that are both aimed at the entry level both in terms of cost and technical knowledge: Canaan Avalon Nano 3 with US power supply from Canaan.io and a Bitaxe Ultra from altairtech.io. I came away with a generally favorable opinion of both but wanted to dive in a little further for other home mining noobs; written from an American perspective. \n\nBitaxe Cost: 10/10 This is the lowest cost home miner. Simply no cheaper realistic way for a noob to mine at home. They now often sell for $110-130 with shipping. \nAvalon Nano Cost: 9/10 Also a great value but the all in cost is roughly $30-40 more with shipping and import taxes. You also face much longer lead times, I had to wait roughly two months vs a few days with my Bitaxe. \n\nBitaxe Value 7/10: The Bitaxe should be seen as some combo of fun, learning tool, and lottery miner. It’s not a profitable miner as the raw hash power is quite low, I’ve gotten an average of around 450 gh/s. If you go in with this mindset and are okay with that it’s a solid value, but if you want to mine profitably you’ll be disappointed. \nAvalon Nano value 9.9/10: A home miner that can consistently put out 2.5-4 th/s for under $200 is just an amazing value and clearly better than any other noob and home friendly product. The only reason I dropped a point is that it’s fully closed source so you cannot really evaluate the code, security, or other trade offs you’re making. There could theoretically be a flaw affecting the value that I cannot see. There is a significant degree of trust. I live somewhere where we are forced to use electric heat due to a communist local government, so for me earning sats while I heat my home using the same underlying “fuel” source is a strictly better win. If I already have to use electricity for heating then I might as well earn a few sats doing something I have to do anyway. Given my situation the Nano is actually profitable to mine. \n\nBitaxe freedom score: 10/10 This is a FOSS project where the primary maintainer doesn’t even manufacture the hardware, and everything is open and transparent. Self sovereignty and freedom tech principles are all adhered to admirably. You are helping decentralize the network and increasing your own skills sovereignty. It’s a little more challenging UX but you accordingly learn a lot more. \nAvalon Nano freedom score: 3/10 This is a closed source product where everything is proprietary, and I found this very frustrating. The key thing that helped its “freedom” score to me was it just being ridiculously easy to setup and earn sats. Ideological freedom isn’t worth much if it’s so complex a noob can’t put it into practice. However in the default setup you use Braiins pool which is part of the Bitmain/Antpool mafia, which sucks big time and actually subtly pushes mining towards centralization.\n\nBitaxe ease of setup and operation 6/10: This was overall pretty easy but I did have two minor hiccups where I had to seek online support and documentation to troubleshoot. No big deal and resolving with FAQs and the Bitaxe GitHub only took 20-30 minutes, but my less tech friendly family members likely couldn’t have done it. You need to be comfortable troubleshooting wifi issues and updating firmware. Until I updated the firmware my Bitaxe only ran at 1-2 gh/s for some reason, but once I updated the firmware I consistently got the 400-500 advertised. I know it’s a ton to ask of an open source project with minimal funding, but I’d love to see an integration with Ocean so you can easily mine with them and withdraw via lightning. Currently I could not figure out how to get that to work. Ocean has documentation but it’s complex. You need a core lightning node and CLI experience, and it’s just too tough for a noob. Bolt12 is brand new and too complicated for noobs, but hopefully it gets there eventually. Much of this is unfortunately out of Bitaxe’s control. Given this complexity, I just chose to lottery mine with CK pool since that’s the easiest and still helps decentralize the network a tiny bit. \nAvalon Nano ease of setup and operation 10/10: Only a few easy steps and I was up and earning sats in probably 2-3 minutes with zero issues or confusion. Remarkable how clean the UX was. This is so much easier it may be the best place for a noob to start and then as you learn more and seek to increase your personal sovereignty, Bitcoin knowledge, and help in decentralization graduate to getting a Bitaxe. You also can change your pool to mining with Ocean, but unless you can figure out Bolt12 lightning withdrawals the hash power and accompanying payouts are so small it’s pointless financially speaking. \n\nHope this helped. Let me know if you have any questions. ",
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