Nick Sears is only 19 years old, but in just two years he has managed to build a career as a BTC miner for full time. He earns $ 54,000 a year and lives in a room inside a cryptocurrency farm.
BTC mining as a full time job
Sears was 17 when he heleped with building of the farm, told CNBC that he lives in a soundproof room inside the Dallesport farm in Washington and is responsible for ensuring the smooth operation of 4,500 Bitmain and Whatsminer machines.
“I can’t hear the machines when I close the door, but they are definitely noisy when I have the door open,” he said, adding that 80 decibels of noise generated by each device did not deter him from staying on the farm because he preferred to stay close to the event and avoid daily commuting. .
“I’m not thinking about going to college at all,” said Sears, who admits that he has spent virtually every day of the past two years gaining knowledge about how mining equipment works and how to fix it. The chief technician added that he is certified for maintenance repairs, so what he has been up to lately is improving his skills in this category.
Thomas Heller, chief sales officer of Compass Mining, which works with Sears’ employer SCATE Ventures, said managing noise and heat is key to launching a successful cryptocurrency career.
“There are so many things going on around this. It’s pretty cool to enter a data center that benefits BTC for the first time, because you can actually link the intangible aspects of BTC as currency to the physical nature of these machines, which consume energy and perform these calculations, “Heller told CNBC.
SCATE Ventures states that the company’s mining farm covers an area of 4,645 square meters and has an output of 10 MW.
The farm staff “learned how to manage and optimize the unique electricity and cooling needs of the 7,500 S9 Antminers in a wide range of temperature scenarios. Since we focused on immersion cooling, we have tested and continue to test new generation hardware (S19, M30, & M31, etc.), “said the company.
For Sears, the normal day starts at 7 am and works from 8 am to 4 pm. He then stays in place in case of emergency, but repairs on night shifts are handled by another technician. Every day brings different problems, he says.
“That’s great about this job – I don’t have a set routine that I do every day,” he said.
“Every day you find machines that have stopped hashing, then remove them from the rack and solve problems,” he explained, adding that sometimes only a restart is required, but other times the problem may be related to the hashboards themselves or even seasonal weather changes that could cause overheating and power outages.
In addition to his annual salary of $ 54,000, Sears also benefits from full health insurance and a quarterly bonus of approximately 0.02 BTC ($ 797), as his company operates some machines exclusively for its employees.
“With all the miners in China who were offline, the difficulty has changed, so the rewards are higher,” Sears said. “We got a little more last time, which is great for me.”
Scott Bennett, CEO of SCATE Ventures, is a self-taught miner who started operating in his parents’ garage in 2017 and uses the location of the facility at Columbia River and Dalles Dam to generate renewable energy for the farm.
