Hi all 👋, I’ve been offered the chance to buy a small Bitcoin mining setup from a trusted friend, and I’d really appreciate your experienced eyes before making a decision. The setup includes: - 6 complete Bitmain AntMiner S9 units - 2 additional modules reconfigured for liquid cooling - Full infrastructure shown in a video (link below) covering ASICs, power layout, ventilation, and more Context that matters: - Location: Mexican Caribbean — where electricity is both very expensive and highly unstable - The farm ran successfully for 2 years but has been idle for 4–5 years - My friend is offering it for 20,000 MXN, which includes initial setup support and maintenance guidance I’m still new to mining at this scale, so I’d love your input on: 👉 What should I look for in the video? (e.g., signs of wear, dust buildup, corrosion, cable quality?) 👉 Given today’s hashrate, difficulty, and BTC price — is this hardware even viable? 👉 With high electricity costs and grid instability, could this ever break even? 👉 Are liquid-cooled S9s a red flag or a clever hack? 👉 Any critical questions I should ask my friend before saying yes? Video link: Grateful for any insights — whether you’re pro-mining, skeptical, or just been through something similar. Every perspective helps! ⚡️₿ #BitcoinMining #CaribbeanBitcoin #NostrMiners #Mining #Asknostr

Replies (6)

modulo's avatar
modulo 1 month ago
It will be a $1,000 educational expense for you.
A.A.Ron's avatar
A.A.Ron 1 month ago
Can you make beneficial use of the heat produced? It will never pencil out otherwise.
Dresden6's avatar
Dresden6 1 month ago
I work in mining. S9 is a very old model and very inefficient compared to today's models. Expensive unstable power is the opposite of a good mining environment. You'll likely loose money on this deal. Mining generally is almost impossible to make more SATs than you spend unless you have some edge, like subsidized power, valuable use for heat, etc. It would be a hell of a learning tool though, 4-5 years idle... eeek!
Thank you as well for your note on this!… I’ll just add that I personally see Bitcoin strictly as a monetary system—and that’s the only role I support for it. Since I switched to running Knots (initially as a test on one of my nodes), the change has been wonderfully quiet—especially compared to when I was running Bitcoin Core. This silence isn’t just soothing for my ears… my dogs are sleeping better too! 🐾 And beyond comfort, it likely helps extend the device’s lifespan by giving the RAM a real break. 😉
Dresden6's avatar Dresden6
Sorry man, filters don't work. Look at the sub sat transaction research. Flip it over, imagine you want to stop me from putting a consensus valid (this is very important) transaction on chain and you have 90% of nodes. Research shows you cannot stop me. Again b/c my transaction is consensus valid, filters are relay policy. If filters actually worked an attacker could easily spin up thousands of AWS nodes and eclipse the network. Bitcoin would have very little value b/c that's not censorship resistant. BTW I fucking hate ordinals and OP_Return increase, but this ain't the solution.
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