Give Your Idle Computing Power a Crypto Side Hustle

Widespread adoption of blockchain tech and its associated cryptocurrencies requires much more than mere speculation.

You and I are fully aware of our prized digital assets’ revolutionary potential. But until they serve a real-world purpose, they’ll continue to wear the nametag of ‘Fake Internet Money’ bestowed upon them by doubtful Debbie in the accounting dept.

If our baby birds are to leave their nests and take flight — if our coins and tokens are to someday don space helmets, they must first mature by providing the world with actual value.

Decentralized fog-computing blockchain project — Sonm — enables just that. How so, you might ask?

Well, if you own at least one mining rig or computer with enough horsepower under the hood, the Sonm platform allows you to extract even more value than what your hardware may currently provide.

And before I get into further details, I’ll be upfront with you…

Disclaimer: This is not investment or financial advice. I’m not a financial expert by any stretch of the imagination. Information within this article is primarily personal opinion.

I may or may not receive a small allocation of tokens for creating this content. That said, I do my best to remain unbiased and fair. I try to avoid all FOMO and FUD and don’t wish to evoke those emotions in my fellow crypto-heads.

Maintaining Hardware Value

The joys of insane profits from mining crypto have temporarily faded. No longer can you just set up a rig and collect handsome rewards.

The crypto industry’s currently soul-crushing bear market has seen mining rigs power-down in droves. Once-profitable operations have taken such a massive blow to the bottom line that it doesn’t make financial sense to keep machines running.

Unless you’re a firm believer and long-term HODLer willing to operate at a loss in the hopes of future upswings, there’s no reason to keep processing.

But Sonm wants to turn that concept upside down.

The Sonm network gives crypto miners and owners of powerful computing hardware the ability to rent idle resources in exchange for ERC20 tokens.

So, rather than give your mining rig a vacation during this crypto winter, you can connect to the Sonm network and claim rewards. Don’t tuck your hardware away in a closet or offer it for sale on eBay — put those machines to work!

Minimal Effort

Crypto miners already know the joys of earning while they sleep. As they drift off and dream of hashrates, their rigs put blocks on chains while earning crypto in the process.

The Sonm platform operates on the same principle.

Allowing businesses to rent your computing power for their own needs saves them money over the likes of Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and other cloud-computing service providers.

By fully utilizing CPU, GPU, RAM, plus disks and server resources, Sonm extracts the most value from any given setup.

Providers of resources get paid in the project’s $SNM utility token. And since the Sonm project is well beyond the ICO phase and running on MainNet, you can trade $SNM tokens on major exchanges including Binance and KuCoin.

So, rather than directly mine for crypto, you can indirectly mine by giving companies a discount on necessary services.

The more powerful the rig, the more profitable its side gig

Calculating the Probability of Profitability

They say there are no guarantees in life, but I’m 99.99% sure that the price of Ethereum right now — one ETH = $137.59 as I write this — won’t be the same as the figure I just gave you.

Whether you have a dedicated mining rig or a PC that also likes to play videogames, several factors are at work when deciding if a digital side hustle is worth the effort.

A machine’s harvesting capabilities must outweigh the current market price of the mined coin or token, minus the cost of electricity.

Cheap energy is a miner’s best friend. I hope you don’t have to deduct much for juice consumption when using Sonm’s profitability calculator. And if the rumors are true, in the case of BTC anyhow, the majority of the world’s nodes are using sustainable green power.

Now, I already ran some numbers on your behalf. Your rig probably falls within the middle ground, but I found a peak and valley for you:

The low end for a single machine

But let’s crank the hashrate way up. After all, especially if you’re mining or 3D rendering or designing graphics, you’ve built your machine accordingly.

Stronger machines nearly triple the potential for profits

Booting Up

Extracting additional value from your machinery begins with installing the Sonm operating system.

Clicking this link downloads the SONM OS onto your machine.

Important:

Installing the OS will erase existing computer data. Installation is recommended for dedicated hardware or virtual machines.

Now, rather than tell you what to do with the file, I’ll let the Sonm team show you:

The entire installation takes less than 10 minutes. But if you get stuck along the way, simply reach out to Sonm Support to get the help you need.

Final thoughts…

The current crypto bear market doesn’t need to be entirely unprofitable. If the price of ETH or BTC is too low for you to fire up your rig, you might be better off putting your miners to work for Sonm.

It’s certainly comforting to know an alternative exists. Reviving the use case for dedicated mining rigs can be a savior for certain companies and individuals.

Bitmain, for example, may have prevented the axing of half their workforce.

It doesn’t take much effort to calculate the double-agent potential of dedicated mining machines. When a mined crypto red-candles its way below pre-determined fair market value, it’s officially Sonm season.

Sonm is breathing a second life into a financially struggling industry. Which, ironically, is a shining example of how 2018 is the year of #BUIDL.

A cost-reducing, customer-having, real-world-problem-solving project continues to sink with the rest of the market. Logic dictates projects like Sonm increase in value, but the crypto market runs on neither logic nor reason.

The good news lies in what’s to come. Projects like Sonm are (perhaps too) quietly building platforms that people want and need and will actually use. Current prices fail to capture inbuilt future potential.

Are you starting to smell the decentralized principles in here? It’s palpable for 3 reasons:

1. Truly Distributed Network. Independent machines acting akin to nodes operate all over the globe. Transactions take place P2P.
2. Trimmed Costs. These ‘nodes’ come with far less overhead than their centralized counterparts.
3. Reroutes Resources from Technological Monopolies. C’mon, Google, you’re wealthy enough. We can tokenize some of the fiat headed for your overstuffed coffers and stash it in our digital wallets.

And those reasons, my friends, embody why I‘m so enamored with crypto and blockchain tech. The space continually challenges the status quo, and no industry is immune to scrutiny.

Sonm is doing its part to spread blockchain adoption by providing real-world value to a thriving and growing cloud-computing industry. The project delivers a win-win scenario across the (mother)board.

If your personal or corporate mining efforts are feeling bearish, the Sonm platform may very well release the bulls.

DYOR

It’s always a good idea to do your own investigating before getting involved with a blockchain project.

I encourage you to dig a little deeper into this one if you think you may want to participate.

Here are some Sonm resources to get you going:

Website| Documentation | Profitability Calculator

👇 Get Social with the Sonm Team 👇

Bitcointalk | Facebook | GitHub | Reddit | Telegram | Twitter

By the way…

If you like what you just read and want help getting your crypto message to the masses, I’d love to hear about your project.

Even if you just want to chat about crypto or your favorite blockchain innovations, you can find me here: blockchainauthor at Gmail

Give Your Idle Computing Power a Crypto Side Hustle was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.