From Crypto Clueless to Crypto Coach

It’s been quite the experience for me taking on a position as a public facing member of a cryptocurrency mining pool’s team. First of all, I only vaguely knew of cryptocurrency’s existence a year ago. I knew it was some kind of money, but the extent of my awareness came from tv series that would feature a episodes about hospitals being taken hostage with ransom demands in crypto. I had no understanding of how it worked or how it was brought into existence or that there’s such an expansive, legitimate market.

Growing into someone who could answer questions about cryptomining required quite a bit of training on the part of my coworkers and bosses, as well as asking some humbling questions of some awesomely knowledgeable miners in the PROHASHING community. It took some amount of “shaking it off” to get past the fact that I was seeking knowledge and support from the community I was brought on to eventually help educate and support. However, if there’s one thing I learned from 13 years in the education field, it’s to never be surprised or embarrassed to learn something from my students, and if there’s one thing that crypto taught me fairly early on, it’s that I’m pretty certain no one person can ever truly know everything there is to know about crypto.

Crypto Concepts:

For my training, we started out with understanding what a hash even is and why mining equipment is necessary. I learned through doing.  My first mining experience was running Random X on my company laptop. Then, I moved on to Ethash on the same laptop, which had a dedicated GPU. It was enough to learn and experiment, discover how to configure mining files, and understand the importance of factoring electricity costs into whether running the algorithm was profitable or not.

I learned the concept of blockchain. Then I discovered I had understood it incorrectly and had to relearn it. My favorite phrase in the early months, when Steve would ask me what I needed explained, was, “I don’t even know yet what I don’t know.” Probably the biggest challenge for me has been the fact that I can’t simply gain a “good enough” understanding of most mining concepts I’m learning. I have to learn them well enough to be able to explain them to someone else. This also became a bit of a blessing in disguise, however, as I was able to identify when I had misunderstood something like the process our payouts go through between us and the customer’s wallet by attempting to explain the process in writing or in a video and then having my work checked before it hit the public.

Learning the hardware:

Once I got to a certain point, I reached the step many cryptominers dread where I was limited by the technology in my possession. At that point, I was lucky enough to have bosses who saw the logic in my concerns and the potential benefits of expanding on both the hardware I was working with and my knowledge of that hardware. They decided that, rather than ordering a computer with the GPU I needed, they would order the parts, and Chris would teach me how to build the computer myself. I detailed this process in a previous post, "Newbie PC Building 101: Sarah Style". This hands-on lesson was valuable because I’m able to visualize what’s going on a lot better, I understand more of what I’m reading online, and I don’t freak out every time there’s a minor issue. For example, a fan in the case stopped moving at one point early on. In the past, that would have been a huge source of stress, but after building the computer myself I was able to realize how small a deal that was and identify and correct the problem.

Time to grow:

While it has, admittedly, taken me longer than it might have to get a good grasp on some things mining because I was also simultaneously learning the ropes in a new company and a new position, I’m at the point where I’m comprehending more complex ideas related to cryptomining, and when I read conversations in chats or forums, I don’t feel as much like I’m reading a foreign language. My goal is to delve into topics such as overclocking and power limiting and expand my limited knowledge of individual algorithms. I’m looking forward to learning more and having more meaningful conversations with customers as I grow as a miner, and I’m super grateful for the patience and grace many of them have shown me thus far. That being said, if you have suggestions on rabbit holes you think I would benefit from jumping down, please throw them in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!