How you can make 56 cents a month mining Monero (XMR)

Posted on September 13, 2022 by admin
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So I ordered a Helium Miner….. (Part #5) – 8 months of mining fun

Posted on September 13, 2022 by admin

So it’s been quite a while since I have provided an update on my Helium (HNT) mining so here it is…….

When I first got my miner back in January 2022 setup I was mining low end of my original expectations, bet it was still between $5 – $9 dollars day. After about 2-3 months I mined roughly 10 HNT valued at close to $300 Canadian Dollars (CAD), and it was all downhill from there. I slowly watched the amount of HNT mined going up as the overall CAD value was going down due to the under-lying price of Helium (HNT) and the overall downtrend of Bitcoin. Currently I have close to 23 HNT mined valued roughly at $161 CAD. At this rate my Return on Investment (ROI) is estimated to be around 115 months.

Few things to note of 2022 so far….

  • The overall price of altcoins (following) Bitcoin have been in a consistent downtrend for pretty much all of 2022.
  • Overall financial markets are down due to inflation and higher-interest rates.
  • There are greater global Geo-Political risks raising fears and potential instability in the markets

Understanding this, my original plan was to buy and hold anyways so I’m currently just stacking HNT until the next bull run.

The Helium network has not been performing overly well in 2022 as well and have gone through some significant changes, and even more more to come (HIP70). I have also been trying to improve the performance of my setup through some upgrades. I’ve tested a few different Antenna’s, filters and amps expecting some change, yet this did not make any significant difference to my CAD earnings or HNT mining rewards. These enhancements did comes at a cost of roughly and additional $400 CAD on top of my initial investment.

The only other upgrade I can think of is my internet connection (currently 25mb/down, 10mb/up). I have not really had any significant reason to upgrade this until recently when a competitor was selling GigaBit (1GB/down, 30mb/up) service in my area for the same price as I was paying for the above. This upgraded services is to be connected within the next few days and I’ll be interested to see if there are any improvements to my Helium Mining Rewards.

Stay tuned for an update……

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WealthSimple Crypto Credit Card – Review

Posted on September 12, 2022 by admin

For the past 4 months I have been using a WealthSimple Crypto Credit as a replacement for my major Canadian bank credit card, and so far I have been really pleased with my experience. As an existing WealthSimple customer for the past 2-3 years this was a new service I began to use. In short, I have never experienced an issue using the card, it funds very quickly, and both the physical card and Mobile Wallet Card work very smoothly everywhere VISA is accepted.

WealthSimple Cash App / Crypto Credit Card

My previous credit card, while having it for year, did not have the best rewards program as is was a basic card with no annual fees or anything like that. I used it for years and I would typically get around $250/year in rewards. Recently I started to look more closely at my monthly statement (in terms of cash in/out and rewards) and noticed something was off. With my original credit card the rewards program was 1% cashback on for most purchases at select types of retails locations (i.e. grocery, gasoline, etc….). What I found was that I was only receiving the 1% rewards on roughly 2/3rd of my purchases, so for example if I sent $3,000 on the card in a month I would roughly receive $20 in rewards. While this was not a bad reward rate, but I knew there were better options out there.

Throughout my search for a credit card replacement I found that WealthSimple offering a pre-paid Crypto Credit Card. As a current WealthSimple customer I already had my bank account setup, so adding the Crypto Credit Card was just a few clicks of a button. Once the Credit Card service was added to my account, I had access to my new credit card number so I could use it virtually (i.e. online purchases, or mobile wallet apps), with the physical card to be mailed out within 7-10 days. There is also the WealthSimple Cash Mobile App, that you can also use to see more details and settings about your credit card, including adding the card to your cell phone, changing rewards type and locking the card.

As this was pre-paid credit card service you need to pre-fund the account prior to spending. Funding is simple and is the same way you would fund a trading account, except you just click your “cash” account and the funds are available within 45 seconds to a minute literally. My bank account was already setup as I have other accounts with WealthSimple, but added a bank account can be easily be done within a few minutes. I was using this to primarily fund the card, yet I found that the limits on bank transfer was $250 over a 3-5 day period. This was getting annoying as I was often hitting these limits, and this also affected my spending dates and time, and how I would be paying. While looking through the other funding options support by WealthSimple, I noticed that Debit-Cards are also supported. Thinking this would be an excellent supplementary option for funding my Cash/Credit Card account, while reading the fine print it was noted that only VISA/MasterCard Debit cards are permitted, which my bank debit card was neither. My bank did offer this type of card as a Virtual Visa Debit as a separate card, and this was primarily intended for online purchases via Visa/MasterCard, yet directly debits a bank account. I signed up for one of these Virtual Visa Debit cards offered by my bank as I had other reasons to use that card on other sites, so this was just the kicker I needed to sign-up for one. Fast forward another 7-10 days I received the card in the mail, and easily added this as a funding option for the WealthSimple Crypto Credit Card.

Once you have the Credit Card setup, the next step is to set your rewards to one of the following 3 options:

  • Add the rewards to the cash balance of your stock trading account
  • Add the rewards to the cash balance of your crypto trading account
  • Auto-purchase the cryptocurrency of your choice in your crypto trading account

Using the card is very simple as well. If I am making a large purchase, I typically plan funding the card ahead of time to ensure that the funds are available and I get the full rewards. Otherwise if I am just using the card for regular purchases I estimate what my bill will be, and add the funds via my cell phone when inline at the register. Over the past few months that I have been using this card I have never had an issue funding the card and is usually done within 45 seconds to a minute. There have a been a few times where the transfer did not work, but it always go through the second time.

Over the time that I have been using the card I always receive my rewards within a day or two of purchase, and have received the full 1% cash back on all my purchases. Overall I am completely happy with this card, and it has become the credit card I primarily use, and am working towards transferring my pre-authorized credit card purchases such as my cell phone to this card as well to ensure I get the most rewards for my spending. In addition, from a personal finance perspective, now that I have been primarily using a pre-paid credit card my original Canadian Bank Credit Card consistently has a very low balance.

WealthSimple Crypto Credit Card Review (5 out of 5):

If you are interested in signing up feel free to use my Referral Code to get rewarded with up to $3,000 in cash to trade stocks or crypto commission-free.
https://my.wealthsimple.com/app/public/trade-referral-signup?code=RZZLSW

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Helium Miner setup and Connectivity – Part #2

Posted on February 22, 2022 by admin

Continuation of our “Bobcat Helium Miner – Setup and Connectivity” series. This video shows how I installed my Bobcat 300 miner in my attic (in the middle of a Canadian Winter), including physical protection as well as power and networking. I published this video later then I wanted, so I also tested a few different antenna’s, and also have my plans on improving my setup.

Check out the other posts in my “So I ordered a Helium Miner” Blog series:

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UPDATE – Check out my profits after 7 days of CPU mining Monero with spare hardware

Posted on January 15, 2022 by admin

Mostly out of curiosity, I have been mining the Monero crypto-currency on old laptops just to see if it is actually possible to make any-type of profit.  In a previous blog I outlined the process I used to setup an old Lenovo ThinkPad X131e and also an HP ProBook 4440s.  I was planning on adding a third laptop, yet I am experiencing some hardware issues.  Neither of actively mining laptops are overly powerful, but after almost consistently for the past 7 days I have made….. Are you ready for it?

I made a grand total of 0.000605 XMR.

XMR at the time of writing this blog Monero is currently valued at $285.52 CAD.

And not converting those 0.000605 XMR’s to CAD is a Grand Total of $0.17 CAD.

At this point this definitely is not worth it to make it profitable.  After 7 days of 2 laptops running at 100% CPU utilization and I only made $0.17, and at this pace after 1 month this would be roughly $0.75 CAD.  These laptops also needed to be monitored and maintained to ensure that they were running XMRig (and it hasn’t crashed), and also if they were actually connected to the mining pool. 

As shown above, I mostly have issues with the Kali worker (Lenovo ThinkPad X131e) not registered as connected to the mining pool.  I’ve noticed that sometimes one worker appears to be offline and after a short period of time eventually recovers.  There are also times where XMRig has completely failed on the worker and needs to be restarted, or the last resort a hard reboot.  This was pretty inconvenient, and I experienced a failed worked like this almost on a daily basis (so maybe I could have earned a little more).  As my original plan was to let this go for a month, there are a few more weeks to go so we will see if things remain the same – which I highly suspect they will. 

Stay tuned to see how this exciting journey turns out

See my previous posts on Monero CPU Mining:

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Updated Helium Miner setup and Connectivity – Part #1

Posted on January 13, 2022 by admin

A few days ago I created a blog post regarding the changes to the installation of my helium miner Bobcat 300. Well the parts arrived and the below video shows how I plan to install these, and what role they will play in my setup.

Check out the other posts in my “So I ordered a Helium Miner” Blog series:

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My Bobcat 300 – Helium Miner Finally Arrived !!!

Posted on January 13, 2022 by admin

So the big day finally arrived, and I received my Helium Miner yesterday.

Check out the video I made as I was unboxing this.

Check out the other posts in my “So I ordered a Helium Miner” Blog series:

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So I ordered a Helium Miner….. (Part #4) – UPDATED Estimated Setup, Installation and Network Connectivity

Posted on January 11, 2022 by admin

In my previous post, I outlined three different installations that I was planning on for when I installed my Helium miner.  The first was simply set the antenna by a window, the next was move the antenna to the attic, third was to mount the antenna on my roof.  I have been thinking about the additional costs that would be associated with each of these phases and what would be the most cost effective approach, and how I could save and/or reuse hardware. 

Coming from a computer and IT background, in my opinion each of these solutions had their strengths and weaknesses, and as always areas for improvement.  In my first solution (shown below), for example I was simply going to connect by Bobcat Helium Miner connect it to wifi and place the antenna by the window.  While this would completely work, I had 1 major concern with this, which was the metal screen on the outside of the window, and the metal awning covering half my window.  The other concern I had with this installation, while minor was and use of wifi to connect the Bobcat to the internet.  I would have preferred to connect the Bobcat to the internet through a wired Ethernet cable, as a device like the bobcat would perform best with a strong and stable network connection. 

The benefit of the first solution is that there would be no upfront additional costs, yet either way I would be moving to the second installation as (shown below).  With installing the antenna in the attic I would need something to mount the antenna on which is not a big deal because I can build something.  The concern is the placement of the antenna in the attic as this would determine the length of antenna cable I would need to run it nicely, from the attic, along the ceiling and down a wall, which I estimated to be about 25 feet. 

With a 25 foot cable I may now run into dBi loss due to the length of cable from the antenna to the Bobcat, where I would prefer the loss to be as close to zero as possible.  I’ve been in several forums, discussion boards regarding this and the best way to set this up is to install the bobcat as close to the antenna as possible.  I could do this by placing the miner in the attic, and then running a power cable up to the attic.  Issue now would be the length of the power cable I would need as it would be the same about 20-25 feet.  Where I would need to plug an extension cable in, is not in a convenient locations in related to my attic access, so I would need to “nicely” hang the cable along the ceiling and walls.

Considering the above concerns I’ve updated my initial plan for installation.  My new plan now consists of using PowerLine Networking to get wired Ethernet to my second floor, then use a Power-over-Ethernet connection between the Helium Miner and the PowerLine Network Adapter.  This will enable me to connect the Helium Miner in my attic with an Ethernet cable, which will also provide the power required to power the Helium Miner. 

So I went shopping yesterday for the following to start building this new plan:

  • TP-Link TL-PoE150S Gigabit PoE Injector Adapter, IEEE 802.3af compliant, Up to 100 meters (328 Feet) – The next network hardware device would be the PoE Adapter/Injector which will be connect to the PowerLine Network Adapter over Ethernet and add the Power-over-Ethernet capabilities to the output port on the adapter.  From the output, I have a custom cut Ethernet cable roughly 25 feet long that will be used to connect the Bobcat Miner to my home network, and also power the device. I had no real requirements for this other than using a known brand and supports gigabit ethernet speeds.
  • Heavy Duty Weather Proof Multi Purpose Enclosure Amphenol Broadband 9 x 9 x 4 (Interior Approx. 8 x 8 x 3-1/2) – This will be the casing that will be used to house the Bobcat Miner, and give it some protection from the environmental conditions while in my attic.  As it gets quite cold in the winter where I live, I will have to monitor the temperature of the Bobcat to ensure that it remains within the recommended operating temperature to prevent over cooling.  If the Bobcat is on the cool end of the recommended operating temperature I will wrap a towel around it to help it retain its heat.
  • Command Utility Hooks Value Pack, Small, White, 6 Wall Hooks 12 Small Strips (17002C-VP) – As I will be powering the Bobcat Miner over Ethernet (which is fairly light), I needed a way to hold the cable in place (for a clean installation) as it goes up my wall from the outlet then across the ceiling over to my attic access.  For this I wanted to use a plastic “peel and stick” type of wall hook that would not damage my walls when removed.

With good old Amazon luckily I was able to receive all the above items within a few days, and also just received news today that my miner will be delivered tomorrow and antenna within the next few days.  I am certainly looking forward to getting my Bobcat miner all setup and installed.  I’ll provide another blog update within a week or two to show my progress.

UPDATE: Check out the first video I made regarding how I will be using these parts as part of my Helium Miner installation.

Updated Helium Miner setup and Connectivity – Part #1

Check out the other posts in my “So I ordered a Helium Miner” Blog series:

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CPU Mining Of Monero On Old Hardware For Shucks And Giggles

Posted on January 6, 2022 by admin

As I travelled through my YouTube journey I came across this video by NetworkChuck – Cryptocurrency Mining on a Raspberry Pi (it’s fun….trust me) and thought wait a minute, I have 6 raspberry pi’s, and 3 laptops in my basement sitting there and doing nothing.  Mind as well put them to good use and try to make some money mining the Monero crypto-currency with them to see if it is possible to make a profit.  NetworkChuck did a great job in the video describing each step of the process for setting everything up on a Raspberry Pi and through some other research the process was almost exactly the same for any other operating system as they all use the same mining program called XMRig to connect to a mining pool and invoke the mining capabilities of your computers CPU.

To start I went to the XMRig website and was going to try and install this as a standalone application on one of my Windows based machines to see how hard it is to get it up and running, and connect to the mining pool and start mining.  Well this did not go as planned as once I clicked the download button I was presented with the following warning. 

XMRig Download Warning – Windows Binary

After clicking the “I understand, show the link” and downloading the XMRig binary executable from the XMRig website, my anti-virus immediately flagged the file as malicious and deleted it from my system.

Anti-Virus Warning of XMRig Download

Next I tried to use an old Lenovo ThinkPad X131e (4GB RAM) that I have with Kali Linux already installed.  The installation and setup was fairly simple and straight forward, and took about an hour from start to the point where I could see my miner and workers in the Monero mining pool dashboard.  The best resource I found to set this up on a Linux based system was found on a website called VPSFix.com.

Once the installation and setup has completed you will need to launch the XMRig application by command line which requires a bunch of parameters, flags, and switches within its execution strings as shown in the below example.

/root/xmrig/build/./xmrig -a cryptonight -o stratum+tcp://pool.supportxmr.com:5555 -u MoneroAddress -p MinerIdentifier:Email -t 1

Sample command line execution for XMRig on Linux

Each of these parameters would be unique to yourself and your situation, so it is not a good idea to just copy and paste one you found on the internet otherwise you could be successfully mining, but with the profit going to someone else’s wallet.  The best resource I could find on how to setup this command string is on the Configuration Wizard on the XMRig website. 

As shown below this wizard simple asks for the mining pool you wish to you, the wallet address for payments, and the worker names, and it produces a json file, and full commands for command line execution.

XMRig – Configuration Wizard

After following the above instructions, and launching the XMRig command line application, I could see my little old Lenovo ThinkPad sitting there mining Monero.

XMRig Application

After letting this run for about 5-10 minutes I could also start to see the performance of my Lenovo as part of the mining pool on minexmr.com (this is the mining pool I selected).  This was at about 5pm in the evening, so I left it for the night to see how it was doing.  When I checked the following morning it showed that I has mined 0.000011 Monero or roughly 0.0022 USD after 16 hours.  It was going to take a lifetime to make any real money at this rate so I added a second laptop to my mining power.

The next laptop was an HP Probook 4440s with 8GB RAM but this had Windows 8 installed on it, so I formatted the hard drive and installed Linux Ubuntu Server on the bare metal of the laptop.  The installation of Ubuntu Server and setup of XMRig again roughly took an hour and there I was mining Monero to the same wallet address but now using 2 workers to do the mining as shown on the MineXMR Dashboard.

MineXRM – Active Workers

I let this run for about the next 8 hours with my 2 laptops mining and below is the MineXMR Dashboard for my workers.  So in about 12 hours of mining with my Lenovo, and 8 hours mining with my HP ProBook I have mined roughly 0.000027 Monero worth 0.0055 USD.  That’s right just over ½ of 1 penny.

My intent is to let this mine for roughly a month, while adding other hardware to the worker processing power, and see if this is actually profitable.  Mind you I have not taken into consideration my hydro costs, but even at this point I can assume I am already at a loss since I only mined ½ penny in a day, which at this rate is estimated to be about $0.15 after a month a mining.  Either way, let’s see how this goes, and I’ll provide regular updates as the month progresses or other significant events occur.

Time for the updates:

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So I ordered a Helium Miner….. (Part #3) – Estimated Setup, Installation and Network Connectivity

Posted on December 29, 2021 by admin

Based on the steps in the previous posts, in my situation I’m targeting to mine 4-6 HNT per month, and found that the popular and successful miners in my area are the Bobcat Helium miner using a 6-8dBi antenna so this is what I ordered from Helium Deploy (a Canadian reseller of Helium miners and other accessories).  Mind you I am still waiting to receive confirmation that my order has been shipped (which should be in the next week or so), as I ordered this the last week of November and estimated delivery was within 4-6 weeks.  So now I am preparing for the network setup, miner placement, and antenna installation within my house.

Throughout my research the number one way to get the best performance of your miner is to get your antenna up as high as you can.  Considering it’s currently winter in Canada, so there is no chance of me crawling up on my roof to install an external antenna, the best option for me to start would be in the window of a room on the second floor, and work towards putting up an external antenna in the summertime as outlined below.

Installation Phase #1

The first stage of my installation plan is to simply install the miner and provide 4dbi antenna in a window in the second floor, and connect the Bobcat miner to my dedicated Bobcat wifi access points which are connected via Ethernet cable to the router and internet.  The objective of this installation phase is simply to test the hardware, create the helium accounts, wallets and other setups, and get everything setup and working.  This will also establish the performance and profit baseline, without purchasing additional hardware.

In my situation placing the Bobcat antenna by the second floor sounds great, but the problem is I have a huge metal awning that covers most of my window, similar to the below.  So I have no idea how this will impact the signal strength or performance, in some cases I heard that metal close to your antenna can increase your signal strength, while other say the complete opposite.  I’m interested to see how this turns out, and where the helium witnesses are that see me when I get it up and running.  Unfortunately, all windows in the second floor have the same style awnings so I cannot simply move it to another room.  So the next best solution is to move it into the attic.

Please Note: In the drawings provided I have a second independent wifi access point dedicated to the Helium miner.  The reason for this is that I want to segregate and restrict helium related traffic, with my other internal and personal internet and local network connectivity.

Installation Phase #2

The mid-term plan is to upgrade the provided antenna with the 6dBi one I purchased, and place this in the attic.  I believe with moving the antenna to the attic, the antenna signal would be on top of the metal awning, so this should enhance performance, and with the antenna upgrade this would put me inline with the other successful miners in my area. 

Unfortunately with moving the antenna this would require a longer antenna cable (such as RG58 Coaxial Cable or LMR400 and roughly 20-30 ft), and some brackets or hangers to help with the cable management as it goes up the wall and into the attic.  Something like the below would work for my situation and is around $30 CAD on Amazon.  For the hangers I am just thinking at this point to just use dollar store peel and stick hangers, or finishing nails.

RG58 Coaxial Cable

Now that we will have a cable in the attic we will need to rig up and mount the antenna to something.  There are a two options here, the first is to just look around my garage and try to build some type of mount, or purchase one.  In either solution the pole would need to be able support a 3 foot pole (attic height), and also be able to support itself over the exposed ceiling joists in my attic.  This would require some type of base like a small piece of plywood and from there the homemade or purchase mast would need to mount and screw into this for support. 

Antenna Mast

Suitable masts are available for around $25 such as the one above on Amazon.  As my longer term plan for the installation is to move this outside when the weather is better.  I would like to use the same antenna mast for the attic install as well the external installation so I am taking this into consideration when selecting a suitable mast for both.

Installation Phase #3

The longer term goal is to have the Helium antenna installed above the peak of my roof at the back of my house.  This would roughly put my antenna height at ~10+ metres, one of the highest hotspots in my area, and also would be able to connect the bobcat miner directly to my internet connection through Ethernet as opposed to wifi.  This installation will be a more difficult installation as I would need to attach an antenna mast to the peak of my house then run a ground wire (via a lightning arrestor) to a grounding rod, and also the antenna cable (RG58 Coaxial Cable or LMR400) to the demarcation point of all my telco equipment which is in the basement of the house. 

To do the above installation again we will need to go shopping and pickup a few necessary pieces of hardware.

From what I have seen the the lightening arrestor is around $30 CAD, the 75 feet of RG58 cable is around $65 CAD, the grounding cable is around $40 CAD, the grounding rod is around $50 CAD, plus additional random bolts and brackets $20 CAD. In total to mount my external antenna would cost an additional $200 CAD for parts and equipment.

I am looking forward to receiving my Helium miners and setting it up as described above to see how close and accurate my initial planning and research was.  The good news is that I received an update regarding my order and the delivery dates for my Helium miner and antenna, and I am expected to receive this sometime next week.  I’ll provide updates and additional blog posts when I am going through the setup and installation process to continue to document my Helium Mining journey.

Check out the other posts in my “So I ordered a Helium Miner” Blog series:

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