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184 articles · 12 years archive

The blog.

Plain-English writing on mining, security, market behaviour, and the GCC project. A decade-deep archive, rebuilt and reorganised after my last site went down. Weekly. No paywall, no popups, no AI-generated filler.

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asic pplns monero hardware wallet electricity uk

Editor's pick · this week

Mining tutorial Featured

./asic-bench --model s21-pro

nominal: 234 TH/s

measured: 218 TH/s · 93% of spec

power: 3,460W ± 4%

efficiency: 15.9 J/TH

firmware: official v2.4.1 · no lock-in detected

./profit-calc --kwh 0.18 --hours 24 \\

--price-btc 67412 --difficulty 88.1T

daily revenue: £18.42

daily power cost: £14.96

daily profit: £3.46

warning: thin margin · electricity-sensitive

benchmark · 4,200 words

May 18, 2026 · 9 min read

Choosing your first ASIC in 2026: what actually matters.

Wattage per terahash is the obvious metric. The non-obvious ones — firmware lock-in, resale value, electricity contracts, noise floor — are what burn newcomers. I benchmarked four current-gen miners against their spec sheets, and the gap is uncomfortable.

TL;DR

Spec sheets lie by ~7% in the real world
Firmware lock-in is the silent margin-killer
Electricity contract beats hardware choice 9/10 times

S

Steven

@getcryptocoin

Archive

Everything we've published.

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A field guide to seed phrase storage that won't get you robbed

May 11, 2026 14 min read

$ ./bench --rig 2

> hashrate ok

> uptime 14d 2h

> payout pending

> ok

Testnet retrospective: 4 weeks, 3 forks, one good idea.

May 4, 2026 11 min read

The post-halving cycle isn't over. Here's what the on-chain data says.

Apr 27, 2026 8 min read

$ ./bench --rig 4

> hashrate ok

> uptime 14d 2h

> payout pending

> ok

Mining tutorial

Switching from PPS+ to PPLNS without losing a payout cycle.

Apr 20, 2026 6 min read

Hardware review

The cheapest GPU that still earns: tested seven cards.

Apr 13, 2026 12 min read

How a £40k Monero theft happened (and the one thing that would've stopped it).

Apr 6, 2026 15 min read

KawHash explained: why we chose ASIC-resistance for GCC.

Mar 30, 2026 7 min read

Pool centralisation is the boring crypto risk no-one wants to talk about.

Mar 23, 2026 5 min read

$ ./bench --rig 9

> hashrate ok

> uptime 14d 2h

> payout pending

> ok

Mining tutorial

A printable mining checklist for solo operators (PDF inside).

Mar 16, 2026 4 min read

… page 1 of 21 · 9 of 184

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2,184 readers · since 2014 · 43 issues / year

Risk warning. Cryptoassets are largely unregulated in the UK. Their value can go down as well as up, and you may not get back the amount you originally invested. Past mining returns do not guarantee future returns. You should not mine or hold cryptoassets with money you cannot afford to lose.

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