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Ups and downs
Bitcoin has had a good run, reaching a peak of almost $ 20,000 in 2017. The draw is not just that you could have become a millionaire if you bought at the right time; it is also possible to "extract" the cryptocurrency on your computer, as if invoking wealth from the digital nether.
To collect that public interest, this week a startup called Coinmine announced Coinmine One, a $ 799 plug-and-play encryption device that looks like a Mac crossed with a heater. It's an elegant shade of white and you control it with a smartphone.
Coinmine One immediately attracted media attention. Fortuna He praised his "catchy design with an apple-like look" LA Times he has dubbed him a "consumer-friendly gateway" for mining and Fast company he called it a "more accessible access point" to it. Highsnobiety compared with an "elegant gaming system thanks to the elegant rectangular profile".
"Coinmine One is for everyone," co-founder and CEO Farb Nivi told Futurism. "You do not have to be an encryption expert or a hardware and software expert."
Coinemine also has some legitimate financial support: the investors of Coinbase and other "well-known cryptocurrency supporters" have supported the initiative, which called Coinmine One the "first plug-in device, mobile app and operating system" in a press release. It will also create a wallet for you and store your cryptography extracted on your servers.
It looks fantastic. Too bad that it is extremely unlikely that you will make a substantial amount of money, even if you manage to reach a draw.
Thin margins
The main problem: Coinmine's specifications are mediocre. It uses less energy than a PlayStation 4 at 120 watts, and its GPU – mining is usually demanding on your graphics card – is an AMD Radeon RX570, a card that you will find in the entry level gaming tower of a university student.
It also takes low-cost electricity to make a profit in the mining industry right now. We connected Coinmine One's energy consumption, the hashrate, which is the speed of mining calculations, in practice, and the average cost of electricity in the United States in a mining calculator called CryptoCompare.
There is good news and bad news. The good: you will earn a profit at today's Ethereum value. The bad: it comes to about $ 1.37 a month – not even enough for a cup of coffee. You would do even less to Monero, for only $ 0.70 a month. And you actually to lose $ 1.53 per month on Ethereum Classic, once the electricity bill has been taken into consideration.
In other words, according to CryptoCompare – and other computers that we used as a reality check – it would take more than 45 years of mining the Ethereum to pay the $ 799 you paid for Coinmine One. And that if the taxes were ignored and it is assumed not only that prices will remain stable for the entire period but that technological progress will freeze, which means that the computers of others would never be faster.
Oh, and did we mention that Coinmine is taking a five percent cut?
The managing director of Coinemine, Nivi, however, was not underestimated by all this.
"Because we have created the operating system by ourselves, we can automatically update you when new promising networks start," Nivi said in response to questions from Futurism. "So you can be one of the first to upgrade new networks and earn their cryptography before they even trade."
Obviously, this is based on a series of assumptions: that there will be a next hot coin that will increase the price, for example, and that of Coinmine, and you, you will anticipate it correctly.
And this is without entering another capture: though a new new currency arrives on the market, and miners around the world are spinning their engines, you'll have to wait for your Coinmine One to officially support it. As of now, it only supports Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Monero and Zcash, with support for other "incoming" crypts, according to Coinmine's official website.
And anyway, if there's a new hot altcoin that you think might increase in price, it looks like you'd be much better off buying $ 799 up front, instead of spending it for years.
Enclosed gardens
Does Coinmine make a lot of complications, sweat and tears out of the mining encryption process? Likely. The company's customized operating system, MineOS, will probably make the process easier than ever.
Everything reminds of Apple: a beautifully crafted walled garden experience for which you will have to pay extra.
Neither Coinmine One nor any other mining hardware will guarantee you a profit. In fact, you almost have the certainty of losing money with today's rates, unless you have access to a hydroelectric dam in mainland China and a warehouse full of graphics cards.
At the end of the day, it could be well designed – but in practice, without a scorching hot market, the Coinmine One is an over-engineered space warmer.
