Helpful People

As I mentioned previously, the owners of the building, where my company leases our offices, are having lots of work done.  One of the tasks they’ve hired out is replacing the air conditioner in our server room. It has caused me problems in the past with my bitcoin miners, and again today. (link to previous post).

Yesterday, I left work early to spend a spring break day with my kids. The contractors were working in our server room.  My helpful business partner didn’t want any damage to one of my bitcoin miners (Worker 1) so he turned it off and moved it to a safer place.  He didn’t start it up again.  I appreciate his thoughtfulness, but let’s look at what the 19ish hours of Worker 1 downtime cost:

Yesterday was an INCREDIBLY lucky day for the Slush Pool! It won 13 blocks in the time my Worker 1 was off! 13 in one day is very rare.  If I have 4 miners mining at average rates, my reward is 0.008 BTC per block found.  With only 3 miners mining yesterday, my reward was 0.006 BTC per block.  At today’s exchange rate, $250.39/BTC, that is about a $0.50 per block difference.  Multiply that by 13 blocks, and Worker 1 missed out on $6.50 yesterday!

It seems small, but that is a big day, and every little bit counts in the bitcoin mining world.