We're still mining! A look at our small farm and our current strategy.

When graphics card mining profitability is at rock bottom, should you switch everything off? In this short video (in French), we give an update on our own mining farm: the rigs we kept, what they mine, how we cut the cost of electricity and how we complement mining with Flux masternodes.

Video from autumn 2022: the figures below date from that time. See "What about today?" at the end of the article.

What we sold and what we kept

A month before filming, profitability had become so poor that we had switched the rigs off. We then sorted through our hardware: a good share of our RTX 3060 Ti cards were sold, for around €350 to €400 each, and we kept the most worthwhile cards. Here is our farm:

• a rig of 8 RTX 3070s, running for a little over a year and a half;
• a rig of 6 RTX 3070s;
• a 6-card rig combining 4 RTX 3070s and 2 RX 6800s, our only AMD cards: one bought for about €600 in a drop on AMD's website, the other for around €800. They have more than done their job;
• a multi-level rig, with five cards per level, mixing RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti cards with other models, including two RTX 3090 Founders Edition cards;
• a rig of 7 RTX 3060 Ti cards.

The RTX 3070 remains our favourite card: stable and very efficient. The RTX 3070 Ti, on the other hand, was a bit of a disappointment. Some of the cards in the multi-level rig are very efficient on Kaspa and on algorithms such as Radiant's, where they end up drawing little power.

What we mine: Flux and Ergo

Our RTX 3070s mine Flux. lolMiner has made progress recently: with this software, we get a little over 70 Sol/s out of these cards.

The RTX 3060 Ti rig mines Ergo. After some work on optimising the overclocking, the cards average around 140 to 145 MH/s, with very low power consumption.

Electricity, the deciding factor

For us, the price of electricity is what decides profitability. We are on EDF's Tempo tariff, with its blue, white and red days:

• blue days: around 10 to 11 cents per kWh on average;
• white days: around 14 cents on average;
• compared with 16 to 17 cents on the standard tariff.

Two more levers bring the bill down further:

• Mining through a business: remember that, in our view, mining in France is not officially open to private individuals and requires at least a micro-enterprise. Electricity then becomes a business expense, and the general rule of thumb is that you recover at least 30% of what you put through as expenses. In the end, our effective rate falls to about 7 cents, 8 at most.
• Using the heat: the rigs heat the house. We estimate the saving at 30, 40 or even 50% on the heating bill, depending on whether you heat with electricity or gas.

Conversely, at 16 or 17 cents per kWh, you lose a lot of money every day by mining.

Buy graphics cards now?

In our view, it is nevertheless an interesting time to buy hardware, especially second-hand. An RTX 3070 cost around €600 new, but around €400 to €450 used. Second-hand RTX 3060 Ti cards were going for around €350 to €400.

You will need to be patient, though: for profitability to really come back, we will have to wait for the macroeconomic context to improve.

Complementing mining with Flux masternodes

Alongside mining, we run Flux masternodes, servers that take part in the network in exchange for locked collateral:

• Nimbus: 12,500 Flux of collateral, about 150 Flux per month each. We have set up three of them;
• Cumulus: the small nodes, 1,000 Flux of collateral, for about 18 to 20 Flux per month.

With our masternodes, we accumulate a little over 500 Flux per month. Our strategy: as soon as we reach 1,000 Flux, we set up a new masternode. The return is about 14 to 15% gross, whereas some pooled staking services offer only 4 to 5%.

There are other options for those who do not want to manage a server: Flux Titan nodes, where you simply deposit your Flux (the network takes care of the setup) for a return of 6 to 7%, or the staking offered by platforms such as Binance, at around 8% on some products. On Ethereum, which has moved to proof of stake, you need 32 ETH to run your own validator.

What about today?

Since Ethereum moved to proof of stake in September 2022, GPU mining income has collapsed, and the arrival of Kaspa ASICs in 2023 (IceRiver, Bitmain's KS series) made Kaspa mining with graphics cards marginal. The price of electricity, the Flux price and masternode returns have changed too: check the current conditions before making any decision.

The price of electricity remains the number one profitability factor. To mine today, estimate your earnings with our Bitcoin mining profitability calculator and browse our ASIC miners. No cheap electricity at home? Have a look at our miner hosting. And to learn more about masternodes, read our article Flux masternodes: still profitable?

This article summarises the content of the video and is not investment advice.