This may be of use to anyone wondering if getting a bitaxe is for them.
So I polled SN with questions on bitaxe and little solo miners here #874552, and there was some good info, hence I decided to jump in.
Since I'm in Europe, I started looking here https://bitaxe.org/buy and reached out to a few different vendors to check about their shipping, eventually I settled for solomining.de. Good communication and their price on the gamma seemed ok.
Bitronics looked good also, but they never replied to my questions on nostr, email, and I think after a week on TG they had responded, but it was too late (here's the ceo's npub, for anyone that might need it npub1l3ssk0hawh6s062zrkp2mmyd57n3ezyc8wggjvrzn5lqxmqyd4pqnszlxl).
**Bonus discount **
This guy I found on nostr had a 10% discount code for Solomining
Have I learned anything?
To be fair, I haven't learned anything amazing that couldn't have been learned otherwise, but I can now better conceptualise pools and the concept of 'pointing hash' somewhere.
Another example, my friend told his wife that his very expensive gaming rig was worth it because the processor was powerful enough that he could 'mine bitcoin' on it. Now I really understand why this is not the case, unless running it around the clock for probably less than a few cents is worth it.
It is nice to feel like I'm an actual part of the process now, and I've been looking at different pools. I'm solo mining for now on CK pool, but looking at others to experiment with. Couldn't get it to work with Braiins pool, so will come back to that at some point. VIAbtc pool didn't seem to generate anything.
@itsMoro said he was getting 60 sats a day via Ocean Pool, so I'll look into that next.
Next on the journey is getting something to run a pruned or full node, as I feel like running a node is important, I just haven't gotten around to it - yet!
Bonus learning
What exactly is the best difficulty?
Also, I see ads for mobile apps that mine bitcoin, but if a dedicated little bitaxe isn't even making cents per day, how is a smartphone doing anything?
Like, I guess the idea is millions of smartphones all doing a bit of mining? Something about it seems very scammy, if someone knows more,I would be keen to hear.