Zero Investment “Crypto Mining Setup”

8 min readNov 25, 2021

Possible but not for everyone.

Disclaimer

Not a financial or Professional Advice, Purely for Educational Purposes. This doesn’t teach what is block chain or crypto or POW or POS or POH anything like staking , minting etc..,

Points of Interest

Introduces to the basic Steps needed to Start Mining and get awarded by Crypto Assets. and The following procedure based out of Windows environment.

Purpose

To Experiment and Learn The Process of Mining (very basic)
Demonstrate a way of which the Passive Income Can be Generated using crypto mining.
End of the Setup, You should have a windows PC running Standalone Continuously Mine and Generate Passive Income.

Types of Mining On high level:

ASIC Mining (For Another Article)

For Specific Crypto Asset Such as Bitcoin miner cannot be repurposed to mine Eth
Easily understandable if you know FPGA and VLSI back ground or worked on Embedded Systems
High ROI (Can’t Say if the mined asset goes down in value)
Can become a useless Product (High Risk Reward category)

GPU Mining (This is what is explained)

General Purpose Dedicated Graphics card for High Quality Video Rendering
Used for High Quality Experience in Gaming
Used by Most miners (Can be repurposed to Mine different currency if needed)

Gaming Computer (This is chosen to demonstrate the Example).

Buying a graphics card is out of scope for experimentation. Costs 2k approx. for 3080ti LHR card. Where Computer with 1TB, 16GBRAM, i7, RGB Case along with GPU coming for 2.6K. Though we are ready to buy graphics card separately, it become more costly to put together a mining System.
For Experimentation But Off the Shelf Gaming PC, Saved Money as well as time.

Mining Rig:

For Serious Miners
More than one GPU, Can be 3, 6, 8, 12 e.t.c
Single Mother Board and CPU for Utilizing All GPU’s

CPU Mining

No or Low profitability.
Thanks to pools where any amount of compute power can be participated, as small as raspberry pi or old mobile or PC.
Good way to learn using PC to mine selected crypto currency and gain experience.

Hardware Procurement

Gaming Computer (Great Deal On Best Buy for 2.6k + tax)
Trace MR Gaming Desktop (Total:$2,781.99, Product Price:$2,599.99, Sales Tax, Fees & Surcharges:$182.00)
Power Meter Plug: Cost: 15.99 (Optional).
Monitor — Just for one time, Used existing One.

Software’s Required

TeamViewer — (PC came with home edition — RDP was not enabled, if not this also not needed) — Only installable
Trex for mining — there are other alternatives like nbminer etc. (This is only one needed for actual job).
HWinfo64 — For monitoring GPU temperature

Which Crypto to Mine

There are many coins out there which one to mine:

use the https://whattomine.com/
when enabled with 3080ti for me ether is the best to mine. figure 1.
Both the pre-calculated values are inaccurate in my case
My 3800ti after the T-rex update to 0.24.7, hash rate coming around 90Mhs and the Power Consumption by PC is 380W

Solona(SOL) Mining

You may ask are already know Solona is POS and cannot be mined. Yes you’re correct, the pool I’m using does mine eth and provide stake in Solona coins.

Why I want to mine Solona? Solona is on boom, but why see the picture below.

Ethereum vs Cardano vs Solana — A Comparison

https://cryptosoftwares.com/blog/ethereum-vs-cardano-vs-solana/

Don’t want to mine Eth and then convert and get Solona eventually, so decided to go for Solona mining.

Which Pool to use:

The easiest way to use Unmineble. There may be some alternative and also may be more profitable, but this is experimentation purposes and do want to spend too much time. (The setup I went through is far less than the time took to write down these steps)
use reference code to cut down the fees by 0.25%. (Sharing mine if you would like to use s3j5-ji7m
Do not use UI app if you would like to max utilization of your GPU. Instead Follow the steps using trex.
Other pool options can be explored using https://etherchain.org/miner and https://miningpoolstats.stream/

Wallet Setup

You need the Receive address of the token/coin for indicating mining utility for sending awarded assets(coins/tokens). Another decision is made to Create wallet using Atomic 7% Staking interest for Solona

Note Down the Solona Receive address from Wallet — You can Send the Coins to this address if you wish to.

How to Get to work:

Download the trex zip file and copy to a folder which ever location you want to

May need to add the folder Settings->windows Security->Virus and Thread Protection-> Virus and Threat Protection settings -> Exclusions -> Add an Exclusion -> add folder.

Make sure to Select or change Power options to High Performance mode

Make sure you have enough virtual memory

Settings->adjust appearance and performance of Windows -> Performance Options -> Advanced -> Change -> Uncheck automatically options -> feed in the VRAM size of GPU + 4GB

For my case 3080ti comes with 12Gb so total 16GB.

Open Poweshell / Cmd in RunasAdmin Mode

Change Directory to Trex Folder Run Following Command

t-rex.exe -a ethash -o ethash.unmineable.com:3333 -u SOL:Bnmn9PbhLceNDb1FuUffN4SoSVtqMMSuV3DvrTgrBkLA.node1#3jmp-nlop -p x — pl 85 — lock-cclock 1550 — mclock 1500 — fan 80

In above command the Must change the Address to YOUR Solona wallet address.
Standard Format for command: t-rex.exe -a ethash -o ethash.unmineable.com:3333 -u COIN:YOURADDRESS.WORKER_NAME#REFREALCODE -p x

Automate

What if System reboots? Or Power Fluctuated?

Let’s do automation using following steps:

Auto login to default account
Create Mining Script
Create a Task using scheduler
Create a Shortcut and add that System Startup Programs.

AutoLogin to Default Account

Prerequisites : account username and Password.

Open registry editor

Got to “Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon”

Add Following String And Values

DefaultUserName : <username>

DefaultPassword : <password>

AutoAdminLogon: 1

Reboot — This should automatically login to pc. if not check the user privileges.

Create Mining Script

Create a Script in t-rex folder with the Command

script Contents in my Case:

t-rex.exe -a ethash -o ethash.unmineable.com:3333 -u SOL:Bnmn9PbhLceNDb1FuUffN4SoSVtqMMSuV3DvrTgrBkLA.node1#3jmp-nlop -p x — pl 85 — lock-cclock 1550 — mclock 1500 — fan 80
pause

Double Click on it and make sure its runs.

Create a Task to Start the mining Script

Open Task Scheduler and Got to Task Scheduler Library

Actions->create task

command in my Case:

/c start “miner” “C:\Users\sdhrtht\Desktop\miner\t-rex-0.24.7-win\1.SOL-unmineble.bat”

Hit OK

Auto Start the Script on Powerup / Reboot

Right click on Desktop and Click on New and Create Shortcut

Click next

Enter name:

Click Finish. Double click on the short cut on desktop and make sure it runs the script.

Open Run command or Explorer and Type “shell:startup’

C:\Users\sdhrtht\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Copy the desktop shortcut to this directory.

Reboot and Watch the Magic.

After All these Steps you should have a Windows Gaming PC mining the Solona Ready.

Profitability And ROI

if we purchase 1PCs of 3080ti and the H/W cost is $2782 (with tax). (Black Friday Deal From BestBuy).

Here is the Calculation:

So the BreakEven is Around 16 months.

Now Is it worth? Reading This Article Or Mining

Yes if you follow the criteria mentioned below.

How is Zero Investment?

If you have Best buy option to choose for financial option of 18months and no plans of using this card for next 1.3Years, Then Procure as many cards as possible. After 3 Years What every you make is a Plus and H/W carry Some Value.

Put the cards to work. Occasionally monitor the setup

What Else?

Know the underlying Assets Value Swing effects your ROI (if the assets value increases You may close the breakeven early or else you may loose your investment capital)
If you have more cards, Don’t do PC by PC mining, Go for a Rig, It draws More Lower Power consumption compared to PC. With one computer Peripheral set you can run as many as up to 12 GPUs.
If you are serious about mining, Go for HiveOS.
If you really Really Serious, Think about the Solor Energy to Get more better yield (if you have subsidies, Even Better.)
Your PC’s/Cards may fails, Be prepared to see a loss.

What Next?

POW is Going to go away. Proof of Stake is got the Traction.
Best Example ETH to ETH 2.0, Solana, Cardano e.t.c
Just not like a crypto Currency, Block Chain will become a basic underlying necessary infra Like Internet, Electricity, E.t.c.,
Here is the thought process, if the Companies Can sell their virtual asset in the form of Equity Shares on Exchanges, Coins/Tokens Can also Possibly utilized as Share distribution process of the Crypto Based Companies. Soon the Governance issues solved, All Companies may start selling their equity in the form of Coins through crypto exchanges. (Just speculating)
Learn Mining, Staking, Minting and Now Farming and Then What else not?
How you earn (Mine, Invest, Stake, Mint, Farm?). Or Start your own Crypto N/W with Distribution of rewards using your coins. The tricky part is to get your Coins carry some real value. e.g. HDFC card reward points, tie up with partners and make them accept your tokens so customers show interest in collecting your coins.