Mining for bitcoins isn't a glamorous job.
Gitzes owns six machines that he says are on the "higher end." When China expelled all its miners, Gitzes says it doubled the amount of money his devices generate daily.
After paying the mining pool fee of 1.25%, Gitzes' miners generate about .0055 bitcoin a day, or $216 at today's prices. Daily electricity costs are about $30, so he's pulling in roughly $186 a day, or just shy of $5,700 every month. At that rate, he'll recoup his investment in about 11 months, assuming no major fluctuations in energy or bitcoin prices.
Gitzes was so impressed by the Compass business model that he quit his job at Amazon to join the team in March. "The mission to decentralize mining and make it so that everyone can participate is something that I find important," said Gitzes.
The SCATE Ventures mining farm runs on hydropower generated by the Dalles Dam.
Mining remotely and Cloud Mining
It is also possible to become a cryptocurrency miner without physically handling any mining equipment at all.
Adam Gitzes decided in early 2021 that he wanted to mine for bitcoin. After his wife vetoed the idea of installing equipment in their home, he began to look for alternatives.
Gitzes discovered Compass Mining, which allows customers to buy mining machines for between $5,800 and $11,700, then locates them in partner data centers and takes care of the physical logistics.
"I bought the machines on the website; Compass managed the logistics, delivering the machines to three different data centers in North America," said Gitzes. They explained he spent 1.1 bitcoin -- about $60,000 at the time of purchase -- on them.
So, a typical day in the life of a miner like Gitzes consists of waking up and checking online to see how much bitcoin his machines mined overnight and to ensure that none of his units are down.
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"I have a certification of maintenance repair, so lately, I've just been perfecting my skills in that category," explained Sears. "It certifies my knowledge and gives me access to buy supplies and material directly through Bitmain."
Next, he hopes to attend an in-person class in Atlanta, Georgia, to learn more about soldering. "The hard part is learning how to solder and disassemble a circuit board," said Sears.
Sears' boss, Scott Bennett, is big on giving his team access to the resources they need to get better at their jobs.
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"All of our facilities are 100% hydro-powered," said Bennett.
Sears's mining facility is next to the Columbia River and directly adjacent to the Dalles Dam. "We love that source of power. It's cheap, renewable, and very abundant," he said.
As for employee pay, Sears says that he makes $54,000 a year, plus full health insurance, paid for by the company.
Bennett also runs some mining machines exclusively for his employees. That amounts to about .02 BTC quarterly, which by today's price equates to $788 bonus every three months to Sears.
"With all the miners in China going offline, the difficulty rate has been changing, so the rewards are higher," said Sears. "The last time, we got a little bit more than we did the previous time, which is cool by me."
Storms can lead to power outages or other disruptions. Heller says that the machines can also overheat in the summer, especially at the farms that have upgraded to using more powerful units for the last two years.
Training up and getting paid
Sears may not need a diploma to mine, but taking online training courses run by Chinese engineers who work for Bitmain has gone a long way toward helping him repair specialized mining equipment.
Last month, Sears and another employee completed a virtual class through Bitmain to learn how to work on the ASIC chips on hash boards, as well as the power supplies of the S17s, one of the most popular machines now used to mine bitcoin.
Roughly every ten minutes, 6.25 bitcoins are created. To mint, these new tokens, a global pool of miners contribute their computing power to running a hashing algorithm. But these miners aren't working in a vacuum. They're competing against each other to see who can unlock each batch of new bitcoin first.
So the stakes are high for Sears. Being diligent and knowing how to triage issues across the entire facility is critical to success.
Some mining sites use more sophisticated software to monitor the machines, including checking each hash board within the individual miners.
But most important for Sears is just figuring out which of his machines aren't functioning at total capacity.
"Every day, you find the machines that have stopped hashing, then you remove them from the rack, and you troubleshoot," he explained. "You've got to find the problem with the machines. You've got to find out why it went offline."
It could be a power outage, which would affect all the machines or a network outage that could impact all the devices or just some.
"Sometimes they just need a power cycle or a reboot," he said.
But the hardware fix isn't always as simple as that.
"It could be that the fan on the individual machine that is used for cooling is broken, or maybe it's the power supply that needs to be repaired or replaced," explained Heller.
"It could be the hash boards themselves," continued Heller. "Each hash board has lots of individual chips, and those are the chips doing the calculations. I think with a Bitmain machine, if more than four chips on a single dashboard are broken, the whole hash board will switch off. So instead of hashing at about 100%, you're only hashing at two-thirds or one-third."
Seasonal changes in the weather add a whole other layer of complexity.
"When we first got here, we were setting up racks, creating the network infrastructure for the internet, and we essentially had to wire everything," he said.
Once the physical infrastructure was up and running, Sears got into more of a rhythm. He's now up at 7 A.M. every day and works from eight to four. He remains on-site afterward, just in case of an emergency, and a technician works night shifts so that Sears can get some sleep.
But beyond the hours, there is no typical workday for Sears.
"That's the cool thing about this job – I don't have a set routine that I do every day," he said. "Every morning, I find what needs to be fixed."
Some days that mean Sears repairs walls and other physical infrastructure. "If we have to repair a camera, maybe I'm fixing a cable."
But the biggest part of the job is monitoring and managing every one of those 4,500 Bitmain and Whatsminer ASICs to ensure they are running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If even one of those machines goes offline or is only running at partial capacity, the SCATE Ventures mine loses money.
That's because when someone is mining for bitcoin, what they are doing is lending their computing power to the bitcoin network. The more machines you have online, the better your chances at winning bitcoin.
Roughly every ten minutes, 6.25 bitcoins are created. To mint, these new tokens, a global pool of miners contribute their computing power to running a hashing algorithm. But these miners aren't working in a vacuum. They're competing against each other to see who can unlock each batch of new bitcoin first.
So the stakes are high for Sears. Being diligent and knowing how to triage issues across the entire facility is critical to success.
Some mining sites use more sophisticated software to monitor the machines, including checking each hash board within the individual miners.
But most important for Sears is just figuring out which of his machines aren't functioning at full capacity.
"Every day, you find the machines that have stopped hashing, then you remove them from the rack, and you troubleshoot," he explained. "You’ve got to find the problem with the machines. You've got to find out why it went offline."
It could be a power outage, which would affect all the machines or a network outage that could impact all the devices or just some.
"Sometimes they just need a power cycle or a reboot," he said.
But the hardware fix isn't always as simple as that.
"It could be that the fan on the individual machine that is used for cooling is broken, or maybe it's the power supply that needs to be repaired or replaced," explained Heller.
"It could be the hash boards themselves," continued Heller. "Each hash board has lots of individual chips, and those are the chips doing the calculations. I think with a Bitmain machine, if more than four chips on a single dashboard are broken, the whole hash board will switch off.
So instead of hashing at about 100%, you're only hashing at two-thirds or one-third."
