I ran a 13TH mine of KNC Neptunes and Jupiters in 2014. I failed up from a deal where I designed boards for Avalon ASICs, set up the production pipeline, then the chips got stolen by the Chinese government (as far as I can tell), and my chip broker paid me back in BTC when it was at about $12. Then it shot up... $200... $300... I REALLY wanted to run a mine and I got in through a friend early on the Neptunes. They were late and gave us a bunch of Jupiters they had already mined to death. Eventually our Neptunes showed up. I got the office in my little rental house wired up with some 220 breakers and turned my tiny house into a space heater. I had to insulate the windows in this front office that got the August setting sun. I literally had to let my neighbors in for a tour so they knew I wasn't growing weed. They were not really convinced I wasn't doing anything illegal. When the sun hit, I had to put misters on my 2TON window AC unit so the room wouldn't heat soak. That was in addition to the 2TON that already fed the house.
I couldn't get people to sign mine share contracts with me to support the operating costs, I ended up spending most of it on my power bill, food, and my therapist (that sounds like it's a joke, but it's not). At the time my tiny run-of-the-mill software consultancy barely kept it's head above water. This thing actually put me deeply in the red. Texas summers. heh.
All the people I offered those mine shares to have called me this year thinking I was on to something! I wasn't on to something, I lucked into a situation and did something with computers that I liked. I didn't hold shit. I regret nothing. After the 2014 crash, everyone was saying "I told you so!" and I had some bills to pay. Jokes on them, I had a blast.
I really love what blockchain can do for consensus. I love that ETH can be used for address resolution outside of DNS. I love what is happening with IPFS. There is so much growing out of this that is good.
A partner in my mine got me on a call a year and a half ago with a friend of his from Bloomberg. The call was (from my perspective) supposed to be about my AR GIS platform. It turned out the dude was specifically a crypto journalist and had a stake in a Puerto Rico "Crypto Hedge Fund". Whatever that is. To his surprise, I had no opinions on hot coins!
Unlike the internet, the first "killer app" for this was about literally printing money. It's not a fair comparison. The real work that is happening with decentralized systems around this stuff is happening quietly. How many of you are listening to podcasts about DNS? People want to get rich quick. Sharks love to eat people that want that. It's a shame people got shucked.
Last year when people decided to give me calls about it, especially friends and family, my response was "How much do you know about cryptography? How much do you think you understand this stuff? I barely understand it. In my opinion, no one really understands what we are doing or what we are capable of with it. That doesn't make it an investment. Stick your money in an index fund."