+ Hi, Pablo here +
+ ++
10 million sats into mining
+Published: 2026-05-25
+In my previous article My first petahash I discussed my beginnings + with mining via rented hashrate from + Braiins' Hashpower market plus my own + DATUM gateway pointing to + OCEAN, with + hashbidder to automate my bidding in + the hashmarket. I also mentioned that my starting plan was to put a total of 10 million sats into this + experiment then checkpoint how things were going. Well, the 10 million sats have gone through Hashpower + (and partially come back to me), so I'll deliver the checkpoint as I promised myself.
+Before going into it, I want to share my rationale for writing and sharing this. Most stuff I fiddle and + tinker with, I don't write about publicly. But this experiment is different. Although simply setting this + up and mining is plenty of fun and pretty much justifies doing it by its entertaining nature, the reality + is that my interest in controlling hashrate goes beyond sweet weekend hacking fun. Truth is that the + BIP110 softfork is on the table, and its success will depend on people + adopting it and hashrate being deployed to support it. My node has been running with the BIP110 patch for + quite a bit, but I didn't control more than 1TH/s until I started this experiment.
+I think just learning how to set up this system and pointing a few petahashes to support the softfork is + enough of a contribution for my paygrade. It's been long since I thought I should save the world. + Nowadays I'm happy doing what a pleb must do, which is tending to his garden and doing his humble + part.
+
+ Nevertheless: I wrote my previous article because I found there seems to be quite a bit of interest among + the plebs around renting hashrate, and so far I had not found much written about it beyond shit slinging + between knotzis and coretards. I'm writing this second part for the same reason, plus another specific + gap I've noticed. I see many plebs ask questions about how much money will you spend doing this, or what + amount of hashrate can you secure if you are willing to dedicate X sats per month to mining. And the + answers that come back are typically long rants on the different convoluted factors that influence the + answer. Not that those answers are wrong, for it is really a convoluted topic and it's hard to talk + specifics a priori. Hence why I want to write this article where I provide specific numbers on my + experience: so that it serves others as a very relatable and simple to understand report on how much + someone actually spent mining in a certain way. Hopefully it makes for a better data point to those who + find themselves on the fences of trying out.
+The ultimate goal of it all is to spread knowledge, in the hopes people will be enlightened and motivated + by this and will take part instead of letting Foundry mine everything. My part will end here, and then + it's your turn to act.
+I hope you find it interesting and useful. And I hope that, if you support BIP110, you'll roll your + sleeves and replicate this, adding the hashrate you can afford to the cause.
+Now let's jump into the mud.
+ +Quick review of the system + how it performed
+I'm running Knots with the BIP110 patch, DATUM and hashbidder in a server I physically host myself. All + three services are hosted in a single VM. The DATUM endpoint is publicly reachable via a VPS I rent + (with sats), which then gets redirected to the DATUM process running in my server.
+The uptime of this has been perfect. Any bit of downtime has been related to blips in my residential + networking or host downtime due to maintenance that is not related to the mining bit. None of the + Bitcoin/mining services have had any operational hiccup (hashbidder did stop working here and there, but + that was simply because I was always using the bleeding edge version and some bugs made it to + production). Resource consumption for this stack is a non-issue: stable and predictable, so the VM this + has been running on has had 99.86% uptime during the last couple of months.
+I encountered a few small issues with Hashpower, but they were all trivial and didn't affect my + experience. The service has had a few outages of the API and web, yet as far as I can tell the actual + delivery of hashrate has been working constantly. If that failed at any time, it was brief enough to get + camouflaged as your usual hash delivery spikeyness.
+I did face some issues with Hashpower's API docs being + incorrect: some endpoints behaved differently than what they advertised in the documentation. I got in + touch with their support in mid April and they told me they would address the issue. I checked while + writing the article and the issue is still unsolved.
+Regarding rejected shares, I think the setup has worked out great. I just checked, and the datum dashboard + indicates I'm sitting at 0.06% (0.0006). I wouldn't be able to judge the quality of this rate myself, but + others more experienced in mining have assured me it's great, so I'll parrot back that it's great.
+When it comes to bidding, I can assure you it has been quite optimal. I've taken whatever prices existed in Hashpower and never said "no, I won't mine now because XYZ price is too high". But I did a pretty decent job at staying as close as possible to the cheapest price being served. It is common to see bids that are 10%/20%/50% above market price in Hashpower. In my case, I'm pretty confident I must have stayed constantly between 0-5% of the cheapest bid. I can't show you the data to back it up, and won't go into the details, but hashbidder just does a good job of doing that. You can try for yourself and verify.
+ +Facts, figures, performance
+Okay, now let's show some serious data. Let's begin with how much I mined:
+
+ 
+ After some initial fiddling, I decided I would settle for a goal of mining at ~5PH/s. I estimated this + would allow me to spend my 10 million sats over 6-8 weeks. I wanted to mine at least that long to have a + decent statistical chance to getting close to non-extreme luck streaks with OCEAN (either good or + bad).
+You can see in the chart the first days were more unstable due to this. It also took me a bit of time to + get hashbidder properly implemented and operational, hence why I didn't really start tracking the target + hashrate great until early May.
+Is this enough to amount to anything significant? Well, if I had solo mined at this pace, there is less + than 2.5% probability that I would have found a block in less than a year. There is also around a 2.5% + probability that if I had mined with the same weight in the network all the way to 2140, I would still + have not found a block. Thank God for pooled mining and for OCEAN to make it fair, simple and + transparent.
+How much did I pay for this? Well, the actual exact amount of money I've spent is not exactly 10,000,000 + sats, but rather 9,929,972 sats. The difference is mixed between mining fees I spent sending my money to + Braiins and some leftover sats I have still sitting on Hashpower because they're not enough to place an + order.
+
+ This is a chart showing how my expense accumulated slowly by the day. Unfortunately, it only shows some + days because the Braiins API doesn't give you back the full history, hence why you see that interpolated + bit at the start. Pretty boring. Stable hashrate, stable expense.
+Although it's not a perfectly straight line! Prices do change quite a bit overtime in hashpower. The chart + of average sats per PH/s/d shows how the average price fluctuates over different days:
+
+ As you can see, prices change significantly measured in sats. Differences of +-20% in a few days do + happen.
+On the income side: this chart shows the earned rewards day by day (not to be confused with payouts).
+
+ Extremely volatile, as you would expect due to the nature of + TIDES, the protocol that OCEAN follows. Having said that, the + volatility of this also relates to the size of OCEAN: as they grow their share of the total difficulty, + they hit blocks most frequently and wild spikes of luck become less frequent.
+This is the chart that should make it clear that mining with OCEAN nowadays for a brief window of time is + russian roulette. There are entire days where NOTHING is paid. If you have any hopes of having a stable + experience, plan to mine for months at least. The cumulative average line in the chart shows you how, as + you stay longer and longer, you start stabilizing on the average.
+Finally, this chart sums up the financial performance, showing expense and reward day by day along with + the cumulative net loss:
+
+ So what does the final P&L look like then?
+| Mining experiment P&L | +|
|---|---|
| (in sats) | +|
| Expenses: | +|
| Transaction fees | +817 | +
| OCEAN fees | +93,218 | +
| Rented hashrate | +9,929,972 | +
| Total expense | +10,024,007 | +
| Income: | +|
| Mining rewards | +9,321,406 | +
| Net | +−702,601 | +
What comes next
+So, I poured 10 million sats into this and got roughly 9.3 million sats out, thus spending 700K sats.
+Surely it's time to stop, right?
+
+ Unhosted Marcellus made + this reasoning I find great that if + your bags are in Bitcoin, it is in your best interest to keep hash raining on the blockchain tip. He + changes the way of looking at mining as a "business" for miners, and rather as a maintenance expense for + users (and fees and miners are just a way to organize so that each user doesn't need to run an S21 in + their kitchen and risk divorce).
+I think it's a good POV. And I'm going to stick to it. I think putting 0.1% of my network, on a yearly + basis, towards adding hash is valuable for me. Now that I've run this couple months experiment, I have a + good feel for what is the "loss" factor of cycling sats through hashpower, so I can crunch the numbers + and find out what is the hashrate I should aim for to spend 0.1% of my bags on a yearly basis.
+Some fellow Bitcoiners are aware of my plan and have pointed out to me that my actions are pointless. That + I'm too small to make a difference in the mining scene. It must suck to have such a terrible low-agency + mentality. Pleasure should be found in doing the right things, even if they amount to little.
+
+ And you? Will you mine? Why not?
++ +