@crypyonewbiemom

Helium mining update, 1 year in. Helium mining update, 1 Year in. By crypto newbie mom | A foray into crypto, A technophobes journey | 3 Aug 2022 https://www.publish0x.com/@crypto-newbie-mom https://www.publish0x.com/a-foray-into-crypto-a-technophobes-journey Good morning   I have been thinking about this post for a long time, there were days when i thought i could not be objective and did not want to just be negative about our Helium project and how it is doing. It was almost a year ago when our first miners arrived, so it is time for an update.   Since i posted my diary of us setting up our network of Helium miners so much has happened or changed with the network. In my opinion, not a lot of changes instigated by Helium have been of any benefit to the hotspot owners.   NOVA LABS ***Helium Inc., the corporate entity that we founded in 2013, has renamed to*** ***Nova Labs******.*** *With this name change, we aim to provide a clearer distinction between our corporate entity and the open-sourced Helium Network that is owned and operated by the people.* https://nova.xyz/   5G   When Helium announced that they were adding 5G to the network, they brought out new documentation detailing how they wanted to split the tokens you earn depending on whether you were  mining with the new 5G hotspots or the lorawan hotspots.   This documentation was completely above me and after reading it twice i was still none the wiser. It turns out i was not the only one, as when watching videos to try and understand if nobody could really put it into laymens terms as it was so complex.   Helium proposed for 5G miners to earn MOBILE tokens and lorawan miners to earn IOT tokens but the original HNT token will remain unchanged. These tokens will preserve their use and value even after the IOT and MOBILE tokens have been launched. This is due to happen in August this year. *MOBILE and IOT tokens can be swapped for HNT according to the holders’ preferences*. Helium said that this would be similar to exchanging fiat currencies like the US dollar for gold. However, this process will not work for those who want to swap the HNT back for MOBILE and IOT.   Now, there was going to be a vote for these changes. As the developers, validators and VC's have so many HNT ( votes are calculated on the HNT tokens you hold in your wallet!). That It seems to me  and many others (looking at comments on social media), to be a pointless exercise and many people i know do not even bother voting anymore. As you can see below, the average HNT from the people wanting to pass the proposal is 2,437 HNT and the average for each vote against was 211 HNT. With over 11 times HNT on each wallet, its impossible to have a fair vote. 5G HOTSPOTS   *The 5G-Ready Miner is the first omni-protocol miner for the Helium Network. It will mine HNT for providing LoRa® coverage, but is also expandable with a certified CBRS antenna (and later WiFi access points) to mine cellular traffic.*   Mining *MOBILE and providing 5G coverage requires a 5G Hotspot and one or more compatible CBRS Small Cell Radios. These components can be purchased as a bundle or separately. All 5G Hotspots must be online and registered in the SAS (Spectrum Access System) maintained by the FCC to earn MOBILE rewards.*   LIGHT HOTSPOTS   So before all these changes were brought in there was a massive update to the system due to the fact that Helium had also brought out light hotspots (These would only transfer data packets, not the proof of coverage and witnessing that the full hotspots do). The update would remove the need for hotspots to store blockchain data and therefore be more efficient.   This update took at least a month and in that time there were many days of the blockchain being halted, many days of miners just going offline for days and very little to no rewards. It is also fair to say that the rewards have now not improved. Proof of coverage rewards are less frequent and the production of blocks was reduced to lessen  the load on the blockchain ( a skeptical person would say it does not get boosted back).   MULTI MINING   At the moment a few hotspot manufacturers are looking at introducing software for the helium miners in order for them to mine additional tokens/coins.(not the ones we have though!) So people may be able to earn tokens such as Pre search tokens or Mysterium as well as the new IOT token, although i have seen any new news on this option yet.   HOW HAS THIS EFFECTED US?   Well as with everything else, the price of HNT has dropped from its all time high of $55.22 in November and down to this years all time low of $6.59, we have seen some improvement and it now hovers between $8 -$9. As we are in a bear market, the token has followed bitcoins general trend.     There were times where our earnings from the hotspots barely covered the host fees and this was a very worrying time for us, none of our set ups are just 'in a window' they all have antenna upgrades, cable upgrades to LMR 400, some are on towers and one is on top of a 200 mtr mountain (we did put the effort in). We are aware that if this decline contiues we may have to make a decision on reducing the number of our Helium hosts.    To try and reduce the losses and earn more tokens we started trading our HNT, buying low and selling high to gain a little, im not talking hundreds here though, we dabbled with just 15 HNT at a time. David has traded before so was more knowledgeable on the in's and out's, i had never traded before so i had yet again spent a lot of time researching. I do however follow the price action avidly so i was quite good (even if i do say so myself) at predicting the highs and lows for David to set up the buy and sells. (teamwork makes the dreamwork).   The price of HNT has risen a little at the moment so we are currently making a small profit month to month but we are down a good 50% on the amount of tokens we earned at the start of the project. (To be fair you could not buy a miner in Europe untill 6 months after the USA. This is also the case if we wanted to buy the 5G version, we will have to wait a further 6 months at least, by which time the rewards will have been reduced).   ROI   Have we made back our initial investment? Well the answer to this is NO. If we had still been receiving the same amount of HNT as we did when we started with, then a rough timeline for ROI would have been this September as it stands now it will be March if the amount of HNT we earn does not go down any more. I would like to think that the price of the token will go up in the future and therefore this senario will not look so bleak. I like to have in my head a worst case senario as well as a best case senario.   OveralI we are a little bit dissapointed in how things are going if i am honest, but we have a plan and we will have to wait and see how it plays out. We are HODLing at least  90% of our tokens and the rest have been used to invest in other projects. We have been very passionate about our little network of hotspots and it was really exciting watching it grow and hopefully it will all work out well. We hope in the future that it will rise up like a Helium balloon!   So i am sorry to say we are not Helium millionaires yet lol but still working on it ..............   As always, thank you for reading and feel free to comment.   Have a great day. Previously published on PublishOx

Is anonymity good? Good morning   So today my post is about anonymity in DeFi.     I am completely at odds with myself about this one, as i understand that a lot of what we do in crypto is about being anonymous. My Bitcoin wallet does not have my name on it and i like that. Our transactions on the blockchain are a string of letters and numbers, again good, but is it right that the developers of projects or protocols are anonymous?   I understand that these people also have a right to be anonymous for some good reasons, that some of them are genuine and just want privacy but that leaves us open to the ones that are anonymouse because their intentions are bad from the start. If i was smart enough and had no morals and set up a protocol that i knew i was going to rug pull, i would not use my real name either....   I find it hard when researching a project to often find the names of devs and all involved to see if there is anyone involved that is on my naughty list (yes i really do have this, but in my head it is called something quite different!) I am also struggling when it comes to contracts for protocols and wallets and following the money, that is why i try to research the people but often find nothing. If you research a person and find out that they have been in four projects that have been rug pulled, well you would probably not invest.   When some ones name is A.B or their profile picture is an NFT it is not easy to work out who they are, oh and AMA's where there are 3 people you can see and one you can't really annoys me. If it is an ask me anything, how about your real name with a real face.   I guess part of the reason i find this whole thing annoying is that my husband and i have had what i would call a shaky start in the world of DeFi as we had invested in:- SPHERE ..............................................................Simsala TITANO................................................................David PXT/ PXT2/ PXT/ now called HALLON..........Professor X (im guessing thats not his given birth name) I can actually hear you saying more fool you, but to be fair we only tested the waters with very small investments in these and i am not saying if i knew their full names and did thorough research on them i would not have invested, but now if someone from one of these is involved in another DeFi project i would steer clear, but hindsight is great. I also do follow  Coffeezilla and the DeFi army but they tell you about it after it has happened.   Also i am not sure if a team being doxxed makes that much difference, but i could be wrong. It is also true that some of the not so legitimate protocols have developers who are doxxed and are very public and show their faces.   I also think there should be a community blacklist of known scammers, but i also know that something like this could just end up like some sort of witch hunt and not be based on facts.   I would love to hear peoples thoughts on this so please feel free to comment,    As always thank you for reading.     I Image by<a href="https://pixabay.com. Previously published on PublishOx.

Good node, bad node, nobody nodes Good morning all.   So what did we do next?   Well we bought into a node project. I had been reading up on a lot of them, some were immediately dismissed on the purely scientific approach of i can't invest in something with a name like that.  There were many node projects available and i must have read about most of them but we had a shortlist. Some had entry points above what we were willing to spend (with hindsight that was a save as they are not doing so well now) as well as one we thought we would possibly invest in later on. (That did not happen, which is great as that is also not doing so well!)   Eventually we picked 'the one' so we have also had to research what token we need to buy the node, what network to use as well as gas fees and buy and sell taxes. I still find this whole process makes me a bit nervous, i check twice with everything. Eventually though it is done and we have a Project x node.    Our spreadsheet is done (we have one for all the projects we have invested in, for what it is worth) We have our estimated date of when we should be able to compound our node. This is the exciting bit and we watch and wait.   Well we can now fast forward a few months as i am still writing based on our diary of our crypto journey, so here goes i can actually list what we have invested in so far:- Sphere finance (luckily we just broke even) Titano finance (still in there but have given it up as a loss) Project x node (still in there and have made many more nodes that are not really worth much so looking at it as a loss) I know, i know but we are new and to be fair we only invested a really small amount in each of these.   On the plus side we have learnt a great deal.   We have learnt how to use the various DEX's as well as what chains to use and even swapping chains. We are more confident using metamask (our first transaction took us more than an hour!) We look at the projects social media and if all the comments look like they are bots or real people and if you ask questions, do you get a reply? There were a couple of things we looked into but decided against after not really getting answers even though on the surface they looked like viable projects.   I know that there is much more i need to research when looking at projects, white papers are not enough, i also need to look into contracts, spend more time looking at the people involved in the project. If i was really smart i would also look into the wallets and if one or two wallets hold all the tokens. I know that offering huge API's are not sustainable but i think we got caught up in the hype,  I guess it is easily done.   Well looking at this you can tell why i don't have to use the whole.......this is not financial advice bit, but it is not all doom and gloom, there is more to follow and as i said we are learning so i think we have made better choices. Regardless of win or loose we are enjoying the constant learning and the excitement of crypto as a whole.   As always, thank you for reading.

A newbie mistake in crypto A little about us, David and i.   Our first crypto adventure was hellium mining, i think that brought a whole lot of new people into crypto, our only regret is not getting into crypto a whole lot sooner. (this could change at somepoint i know, but at the moment its good).   All of my other posts were basically a diary i wrote abour our journey with hellium and some of the hurdles we encountered, the emotions we were going through and achievement in setting up our own little network in a rural Bulgarian village.I tried to write it so our parents could understand what we are doing, as they used to ask us 'how is your thing going'.   This diary sat on the coffee table for about a year untill a friend asked what it was and if she could read it, it was the first thing i had written that someone else had read.   Anyway we wanted to diversify a little of our earnings and try new things, i have read approximately 50 white papers on different things ( ii do like reading thankfully) I also know this is not thorough enough and i am trying to learn more about researching projects. A few were rejected straight away, a few are still being looked into but what we did do was dive into the defi finance sector. We made a newbie mistake as we watched a few you tube videos, got excited with the hype and went for it......    We watched the earnings grow, it was so exciting. Now me being the most risk adverse of us said ok take out our initial stake and leave the rest in, we did not invest a huge ammount just a bit to see how it goes but with the excitment we decided to wait just a bit longer.........so then what goes up........also goes down and it did......all the way.   So lesson learned, luckily though after a while it did climb back up and we were luck to not loose money but not make any either so i guess break even is not so bad for a newbie.   Our adventure in crypto continues.................

An enforced break from crypto! Good morning.   Still learning about crypto and this post probably shows that!   Other than our Helium miners we have a few other things going on but more about that later.   We had decided to have a weekend away and as we are in rural Bulgaria, Turkey is not too far away so a nice hotel booked and off we go. I know it is supposed to be a break, BUT i did still take my laptop as we like to be able to see what is going on as well as do all my daily check in's and my faucets, the things that don't take too long. I can do these if i wake up early or in a bit of spare time.   So then what suprised me when i went to do these things was i couldn't get on any sites, as you can tell from my earlier post, im not a tech wizz but i did check i was connected to wifi, the usual things and thought oh well, it is just me doing something wrong. Then David has a try. He can't get on any sites either and he thought it was strange.   A quick google later and we find out that crypto sites are banned in Turkey! So there it is if you really need to get away for a break and can't stop yourself from checking your portfolio or doing a few little crypto bits then thats the place to be. I know there are probably ways around this with a VPN or some other clever way, but as it was just a weekend it was not really necessary.    I know there are some Helium miners in the city we stayed in as we connect to them with our hotspots but it did make me think about the risk these people are taking and how they get around it. Also how lucky we are to not have to worry about that. We had a lovely weekend away regardless of being crypto free. I don't think i could manage a week though so a crypto newbie .........well yes but i have the bug now and im loving it. Blogging newbie............yes again and loving that also.   Thank you for reading.

Part 7, The Meeting $0.00 So after an anxious wait the day of the meeting has arrived. What we do next depends on this, if it goes well we carry on if it does not then we sell the rest of the miners. We have done our homework and know what we can pay this host if all goes well, we think we know the answers to any questions we may be asked. The meeting lasts a good couple of hours but it looks like we have a deal that everyone is happy with. We will supply the miners and the antenna upgrades with the cable and he will provide hosts and do the installations. The price is agreed and everything is good. We leave the meeting happy and a lot more optimistic and relieved. The next batch of miners arrive a week or so later, so we just drop them off. It feels very strange and for the next couple of days we are watching and waiting. We have gone through all the details for set up so just wait and be patient again.  Then we get the email....they are set up and running so that is great news, we are expecting another batch of miners anytime now (the delays are still getting longer). Once they arrive we drop them off again and it is all working well. We are really happy with the locations everyone is happy.   **THE ONE THAT BROKE**   We have been closely monitoring one of the miners as it looks to be not working and after trying all the usuall to get it going and a few discord messages, we go to pick the miner up to see what we can do. We connected the miner at home and still nothing so we had to contact support, first you have to fill out a long form and wait 7 days for them to contact you, then they ask you a ton of silly questions like is it plugged in! But after you go through all that you get an engineer answer you, they ask for you to send a video of it doing nothing so we did that and wait. Eventually they get back to us and say it’s a faulty unit (don’t forget we waited over 20 weeks for this). We package it up and go to both of the couriers in town and they both said no so we go home and Bobcat arrange a collection. This has taken 4 weeks! We are still waiting for the next deliver of 4 miners which is also behind schedule as are the antennas we have ordered.   After another brief blockchain halt, the next 4 miners arrive and we drop them off it’s like a well oiled machine now, we know where they are going, he does his magic and hey presto it’s done. He has made it much less stressful for us. We are now just waiting for the last 4 miners, when we ordered these it was still 16-20 weeks and the delay went up 4 weeks, then it went up another 2 weeks after that but finally after a 32 week wait they finally arrived, we had received 2 of the four antenna so off we go again  with 2 miners, again they go in without any problems. The following week the other antennas arrive so they then again get dropped off.   **FULL CIRCLE**   It has now been over 1 year since we first started researching this and the last 4 have just gone in, there were only 30’000 miners online then and now there are over 814’000. We see new clusters pop up all over the place, some even help us in our rural locations, some may not if they are placed too close, but we have no control over that so we watch and hope they do their research too. All we have to do now is watch, wait and be patient and hope this project works out. We have the crypto bug now too so guess what…….you got it………….more research on new projects!   So this was our Helium story, it started off as a diary really and sometimes rather basic as it was something for friends and family to read (they still don't really understand what we are doing). I had these notes in an envelope for almost the entire time growing week by week and one night while we were chatting to friends about this project, i mentioned i had written notes and she asked if she could read them so i said yes. I gave her a red pen and asked for critisism (she is far too nice and gave me the red pen back!)  This is the first time i have written a blog, so if you stuck with me thank you very much and please feel free to leave me any advice or blogging tips in the comments (good or bad). To be continued................

Part 6 Up's and down's **Another problem to be solved**.   So after a long wait for miners and antennas we have arranged a day to install Anita and Bob’s miner and arrange another day to do the antenna. The miner is set up within an hour and all seems good. The money earned without an antenna upgrade is not enough to cover the monthly host fees, so we hope to get an antenna up as soon as possible. Technically the antenna that comes as standard with the miner should work but it is not quite as easy as 1, 2, and 3 like it says on the box! We also have no other miners to connect to in our area apart from our own so getting them installed and working as a ‘team’ as soon as possible will help us earn something back as soon as possible too.  After a short time we have the antenna set up on the roof and just need to plug in the miner. No of course it would not be that easy, we do like a challenge! We had not thought to check the WIFI signal in the area where the miner was so it was not picking up a signal. OK plan B, plug it back in where it was and get a new router which should help with a broader coverage, we pre program it with all the same settings to try and keep any disruption to a minimum but still it does not work.  We ask if it is ok to run Ethernet cable instead and are given the go ahead so we arrange another day to install that. It really feels like we are taking 2 steps forward and 3 steps back and we are constantly busy and feel shattered, we wonder if we have made a mistake with this venture and start doubting ourselves. We carry on though and get the Ethernet cable installed the following week, trying at all times to do a good job as though every person’s home was our own. With trepidation we plug in the miner, yes it is working. Finally we have 2 in the same village so we have to wait and see how they perform.   **Lilly and Ken’s installation**   Lilly and Ken had the same internet service provider as George and Carole so we knew from the start we would have to change over, luckily that was done in no time and we had a new router ready to go so when the miner was plugged in it was quick and simple.  That was great as we have still been here, there and everywhere and still very busy but we felt good as we were beginning to see progress now. We arranged a day to do the antenna. It was a beautiful day when we arrived to do the antenna and everything was going really well, I say we but really I am just the ‘passer upper’ I do my best to try to help where I can. It was a very relaxed and enjoyable day though.   **Stuart and Eve**   So in between everything else we have managed to find another couple of friends who are willing to host, so we take the miner over and configure it. It looks to be a lovely spot on a balcony with a clear view so we hope it will work well. We hope to put an antenna there at a later date but we are still waiting on the next batch of antennas to arrive. After a few days the miner has stopped working and we have no idea why so we go over and check all the settings, it is all as it should be but still not working so we take it home to see if we can work out what the problem is. It seems to be fine so we take it back, we move the miner as we think it could be the WIFI and use an upgraded indoor antenna too, so we will see how that works.   **Feeling Down**   This is all a learning curve for us, with some trial and error thrown in too. At the moment it feels like a constant battle. There have been different issues with each location and so far and we only have 7 out of 17 in at the moment. We are still constantly researching and trying to learn whenever we have some spare time. We are juggling and trying to keep all the balls in the air. The earnings so far are not great but we don’t know what else to do. We pay the monthly internet for all of our hosts and at the moment our earnings don’t cover that. We feel that we are in so deep that we just have to keep going and hope for the best. As we had changed ISP for some of our hosts we go in to pay, hoping they may give us a discount on future installations as it is new clients for them. They know we are putting something in people’s homes as we have to call them every now and then to activate the new routers.   On the journey to the city we have a discussion on whether we should continue with this project or just try and sell the new miners that are due to arrive, we are so unsure as we are spending money constantly, The import tax alone is hundreds. We think we should just cut our losses stick with what we have and hope it improves. Some of the issues are out of our control, the helium network is still relatively new and has its own issues, where it can be down for a day or two so we can do nothing about that.   One of our host's has suggested someone to us thay may be interested in what we are doing. We arrange a meeting for the following week and have to wait and see what that brings.

Part 5, Delays and installations **DELAYS**   Well now that we actually have hosts ready and waiting, there has been a problem with the next batch of miners, we contacted the supplier in South Africa and they had actually forgotten to send out our delivery. To make matters worse they have no more in stock and it is going to be a while before they get more in stock. The antennas we ordered with 3 day delivery are also delayed. We spend the next few days sending emails back and forward, phoning South Africa to find out where our miners are and when they are likely to arrive.  We also have to contact the company sending the antennas as the tracking says they are nowhere! These delays are very frustrating and time consuming, but we need to keep on top of it.   **THE HALVING**   If some of our miners had arrived on time, we may have had some in before ‘The halving’. This is quite standard and it is done to control the amount of tokens in circulation and to help keep the token stable. When they do this, there is less to earn but the price per token should in theory rise. This is supposed to happen every 2 years. We had none in before the halving in the end so this will be another wait and see.   **INSTALATIONS**   Our first install in the next village was also delayed; we are juggling now, with installations, possible hosts, and possible delivery dates of more miners and trying to find days and times that suit hosts. After much research again we know how to set up the antennas on a pole, with a lightening arrestor and earthed to a stake in the ground. We know what cable to use and what connectors (even this was not easy to determine!) Setting up the miner takes about 1 hour but an antenna done properly is probably around 3 or 4 hours.   **George and Carole’s installation**   This seemed to go well, the antenna was up and all was looking good, we connect the miner, do all the usual and it did not seem to work, we followed the same procedures as before (I have it all written down step by step…….an idiot guide really). We are very conscious of taking up people’s time, and try to keep any disruption to a minimum. We clear up and leave the miner as it is and go home to see if we can work out what the problem is, sometimes they just need an hour or 2 to catch up with the entire network.   We spend the next few days back and forward trying to sort it out to no avail. Eventually David realises that there is no static IP address, which is strange as all the others have so we phone the hosts service provider to see if they could provide a static one, which we were prepared to pay for. At first the ISP was wary and evasive even though the host had given him the OK to do what was needed. We explained why we needed a static IP and what we were doing and he said it was complicated but he would walk David through it on the phone.  We arrange a day to do this, phone him and he is not there. We are all due to go to a party that evening too! Eventually though he is available and he tries to set it up but it still does not work. It seems like we have wasted everyone’s time, all the work setting up the antenna and digging a hole for the earthing stake (not soft ground in our area at all) and although these hosts have been great we are very aware that we have taken up a lot of their time.  We have also spent a lot of time on the phone with their ISP to try and sort it out but eventually he arranges a day to go to our friend’s house to sort it out. It is frustrating for us too as every day that the miner does not work, costs us money and we are constantly spending on more miners,  import tax, antennas, cables, routers and paying the hosts weather the miner is working or not. We realise that we have over stretched ourselves financially just enough to take us out of our comfort zone, so we have to make it work!  Finally though their ISP has told us that 5 people are sharing the same IP address and he would have to port forward all of them but he thinks it will work so again we wait. Another week passes and it still does not work so we decide our options are either take out the miner and dis- assemble the antenna or get a new internet supplier, luckily they allow us to change their internet supplier so we arrange a date for this to happen. Thankfully then it was simple and everything worked. Also good for them their internet is much better too! It has taken a month but everyone is happy.   **South Africa**   The miners that were supposed to be already here from South Africa have finally been sent after us being given at least 3 different delivery dates, constant calls and emails and some truly awful customer service. This time with UPS but we expect them to follow the same procedure regarding import tax as DHL but as of yet we have not received an email asking for any details. We email them and phone them and all they will tell us is that our delivery is in a secure location. We wait! We have sent more emails to South Africa to find out what is going on, they say they will get back to us, they don’t, we phone them, they still don’t know, we phone UPS they tell us they are still waiting for 3 more of our packages, the plane is due in today so they will let us know. 27 emails back and forth and we are still unsure where our parcel is! We phone South Africa again and they tell us that they put shipping labels on our 3 antennas and then attached that to the box with the miners in but covered over the shipping labels! UPS are thinking we still have 3 more packages for that consignment and are not allowed to separate the delivery! Again after a long wait this gets resolved and the package is finally released for delivery, we just have to go to the bank to pay the import tax as they no longer take visa! We go to every bank in town and they tell us we have to go to a specific bank in the city so off we go. We have finally managed to pay the tax and our miners should be here in a few days. Still to be continued......

Part 4 Finding hosts So to update we are at the stage of placing our miners with hosts, again not as easy as i thought it would be!   **Maria**    An amazing lady that used to be our neighbour, who has known us from the day we arrived here almost 15 years ago, who has fed our son, babysat for him and with whom we have had many fun times with over the years. She has never had much money but would give you her last slice of bread. We have helped her a lot over the years and she trusts us. We know she has no internet but we will put this in for her and pay for it, it will be a bonus when the grandchildren are there. We might be able to teach her so that she could video call her family that live abroad. She is fine with it and even jokes about doing online dating when she has internet! The only issue is that she will have to get the key to the top storey of the house from her son as that is the best place for the miner. We don’t see that as a problem as we would also like to place miners with him and his sister so we can help the whole family and not ‘play favourites’. A couple of days later we get a video call from the son who seems to be worried we are doing something dangerous or illegal (obviously it is neither), no amount of explaining would help, it was a NO from him and he would not let us put one in his or his mother’s house but it was ok to put one in his sisters. This completely threw us as we had this little triangle as a dead cert. 3 hosts had turned into 1 and one on its own won’t work. Our confidence had diminished and we quite literally felt sick. **Ethel**   Again this is another lady we have known for years, she is trustworthy and her grandson is a friend of our son from kindergarten, who I used to speak to daily. These miners are expensive so we have to be careful where they go. I take our son with me (we thought all 3 of us might seem intimidating) and pay her a visit. We talk, she reads the questions and answers, she asks questions and does not think we are crazy but what she does say, I have no answer for. She politely declines because she is in her 80’s and will probably die soon and does not want to waste our time! Not quite what I was expecting but not in a bad way and she was quite interested in what we were doing. **Fred**   Another good friend who we have always got along with, in the past we have helped them; they have helped us and have never had an issue. So we pop over but he is not in so I leave a message with his dad for him to call us or come over to the house. We wait, but hear nothing. We are nervous again, what if he says no. We give him a call and he says he will pop over later. We wait………… Well he turns up, we have a chat, explain what we are doing and within 10 minutes he says’ yes of course’’ do you want to put it in now? Our first “Yes”. So off they go and install the first miner (apart from the one in our house). While they are doing that Fred phones a friend and asks him if he would host one and he said yes. We try to pay Fred but he will not take any money so we decide to save it up for him. We have spent time learning how to set the miners up, they need to be port forwarded and have a static IP address set, so to see that now actually working feels like an achievement in itself. We have had to research the antennas, the cables we need to attach them to the miner, the connections for these and what lightning arrestors to use. We have watched videos and read many articles on how to do this and as it sometimes takes quite a while for deliveries to arrive, we want to get it right first time. Once all these parts arrive we will have antenna upgrades for better signal and coverage. **Reginald**   Host 4 is great, he didn’t have a router so we said not a problem we will get him one, he did not mind us putting an antenna up, he even offered to give us a key to his house! We did politely decline the offer of a key and arranged a day to put an antenna up but we now have a little triangle in the village so we are very happy. **Edward**   So again we thought this potential host would be simple, he is a well educated business man and more ‘with the times’. We were so wrong. At first he was really keen, we explained everything we would need to do but when it got to the part about internet he literally threw himself over his electronic cash register as though he was protecting it. The miners do not have the capability of reading or stealing his data, they would not even effect the cash register but we realised this was an absolute NO. His reaction left us really shocked we were so surprised by it and felt very down and disheartened as we were leaving. **SCOTT**   Scott is another business man, who has his finger in a number of pies so to speak, we arrange a meeting with him. He seems interested at first and even seemed to understand what we were talking about, but again it was another no, albeit a polite no. Trying to find the positives we know our little village network is working. But some of the potential locations we expected to put miners in were not materialising. That meant that our small network in the village would not be able to communicate with any other hotspots yet.   **Asking For Help**   At this point I was actually wondering what we were doing wrong, I expected these miners to be snapped up but we were definitely struggling so I made contact with a fellow helium miner called David Morefield, he runs a Face book page for Helium mining as well as media relating to other crypto related coins, tokens and security. He helps lots of people so I cautiously message him. He is really helpful and explains that he himself has even had these issues. I think to myself at least it is not just us! He gives us some tips but also encouragement….don’t give up, it WILL happen.  We are grateful for his advice and push on. A little nudge in the right direction sometimes is all you need.   **Anita and Bob**     We have had another miner delivered so we think it might help if we use it to show people exactly what it is, its small, shows that the energy consumption is minimal and we are really worried now that we won’t be able to get hosts, we will have 17 when all of them are here! So with miner in hand I go and visit a friend I have known for years. It was an easy conversation, although I was told my sales skills were not great (neither of us are really) it was a yes. Fantastic and I’m sure it was down to trust more than anything else. I feel over the moon and hope we will be able to again get a couple more in that location to form another triangle.   **Betty**   We are still trying to get hosts in our nearest town, as well as surrounding villages so I try a person who I know casually. She works hard and I thought a bit of extra money each month would help her out so we chat and I answer her questions, I send her a link to the site that explains what they are, we have nothing to hide, it is all above board. I was even asked if there was a secret camera in the miner, I guess in jest, but if people don’t know us that well I guess they are just being wary. After a while communication stopped so that was another no.   **Mavis and Sam**   Again these are people we have known a while but not seen regularly. Not that we had seen tons of people due to lockdown after lockdown. Anyway the conversation was easy enough but this time a lot of questions on the technical side, I try to simplify as it has taken us months of research to understand ourselves. I was quite surprised in how much of this new information I had retained and new all of the answers. They keep saying it sounds too good to be true! What is the catch? Well there isn’t one, we have taken all the risk, it just needs a power socket and a small portion of internet, they say they will get back to me, that they might like to talk to David and get a more technical overview which I said was not a problem. It feels like it may be a no but if nothing else I had a lovely afternoon. **Carole and George**   Well we are now meeting up with another couple who are friends; we always have a great time with them and have known them for years also. There were no real questions just a yes, they would be happy to host and even suggest people we had not even thought of that they know well in different villages. David even had a guided tour of everyone’s house and how close they are to each other. They couldn’t have been more helpful. Perhaps we can do this after all.   **Lilly and Ken**   We invite another couple who are friends, over for dinner. We have always enjoyed their company, but again have not seen them for a while. We were having a fantastic evening and I had made a huge steak pie, it was great catching up and we had not even mentioned the miners yet. Strangely though David was not eating his dinner, one of his favourites so I actually wondered if it was not nice! I decided we needed to bring up the miners, as they were intrigued to know what we were up to. They also seemed keen but there were a few things that needed to be sorted out first. In theory then, it was another yes and that would be great for us as it would pretty much cover that village as the miners need to be a minimum of 500 meters apart. I also asked David if he didn’t like dinner and he said he was so worried about asking them and ruining our evening or friendship that he just couldn’t eat it. To be continued.........

A tecnophobes story, part 3 **PAPERWORK DONE** So our next step on our Journey is to get an EIRO number so we can get our miners through customs and on one of the hottest days of the year (40 degrees plus) we meet up with the translator as we have no idea if this will be a difficult process or not. An hour later we have our form which was suprisingly easy for a change. Over a coffee our translator read through the Q and A's and contract and ammended where needed and email us a copy. Nervous and excited we continue onwards.   **THE FIRST MINERS ARRIVAL**   So we finally have our first miners, those beautiful boxes we have waited so long for, we are trembling with excitement, it is almost like you don’t want to touch them, we want to savour the moment but they need to be plugged in to work! We each open one with trembling hands. We follow the instructions on the box, they have to sync and I have read that this can take days to finish, so we literally sit there and watch them. Eventually the miners have their names, nothing to do with us, when they are made they are given an animal name and 2 descriptive words chosen at random. We let our teenage son pick one to be his, for him to be involved in what we are doing as well as a lesson really.   **HOSTS**   Well what we need to do now is find hosts, people who will be willing to plug one in to their home to help us form a network or coverage. The electricity costs are minimal, maybe 1 leva per month, but they will also need internet, either Ethernet connection or WIFI. While we were waiting for our deliveries we made a plan of where, when and who all based on delivery dates and areas to be covered, they need to be able to reach each other with a signal that we are unsure of how far it will reach. The plan is that this will also help our friends, people we know and trust because basically they will be getting paid for doing nothing. Neither of us are sales people but we think money for nothing should sell itself. We have our printed Q and A sheet in English and Bulgarian ready to go.

A technophopes story, part 2 As we are reading anything Helium related, we found out about new suppliers that have been authorised to sell the miners, a new brand called Sensecap. There are a few company’s selling them so we need to set up an account with all of them to even be in with a chance of buying one. There will be a sale on 1 day as there is very limited stock but one of the company’s say they take Visa, nice how easy is that. So we wait patiently for the day of the sale. The day arrives and we have laptops, phones and of course pen and paper at the ready, all I have to do is put the miners in the basket and click buy. I am normally quite good at that. There is a countdown on the screen until the site opens 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Go...... I get as far as inputting our address, the site crashes, David got slightly further he got to the payment screen (which is now most definitely not Visa). It is a bank transfer only but you need the address of the bank in South Africa to send the money too. The site crashes again. We send a Tweet......well not me I have no idea how to send a tweet! Has the order gone through? We don’t know so we wait, we try to phone to see if our order went through, no answer. We are watching the laptops, nothing. Then the news came that there were only 50 miners and they had gone in seconds! Thousands of people trying to buy them but this company only sold to the people in South Africa although no one knew that until after. They say they will have a sale for Europe customers in a couple of weeks. Wait and be patient. **The next sale** So the day comes again for another sale of miners, it was much the same as the last time, site crashes, payment details in site crashes, this time though the tweet pays off and our order has been manually processed. We finally have some miners that should arrive in weeks instead of months, just wait for an order confirmation. The fact that these miners are in stock is even more important now as the Bobcats we ordered earlier have now changed from 12- 20 weeks to 20+ weeks. Now only a few days later there are more sales of Sensecaps from different suppliers, they say they have learnt from other sales where sites have crashed from thousands of people logging in to buy a limited amount of miners, even though the maximum number you can order is 3. They have set up a system where you buy a voucher first, you can only buy the voucher with HNT, you then go to another site to order which you can only do if you have a voucher and pay the balance with PayPal     Well we are ready to try this new way of buying miners. The day before we do a small test to buy some HNT, that works and does not take too long so again we buy more to make up the amount we need to buy the voucher, this takes a lot longer and it only just goes through by the next morning, the morning of the sale.   We are ready, we are going to try from both companies, both sales start at the same time, 1 company is Seeed, and 1 is Officini. We have laptops ready, phones ready and of course I have pen and paper! As soon as 9 o’clock comes we click and we are in the queue for Seeed. We are number 0143 in line; we do the maths, if everyone orders the maximum of 3 there won’t be enough! They also tell you the waiting time is 50 minutes; we don’t take our eyes off the screen. At the same time I am scrawling my name, address, country and a love heart on a piece of paper, while saying get the camera ready,’ quick take a picture’. I could see the look of confusion on David’s face but do not want to waste time explaining that the Italian site wants a photograph of a handwritten note emailed to them to be in with a chance of buying just one of their miners. They only have 100 so it is 1 per person . Well the note has been emailed but we hear nothing. Back to Seeed, after more waiting we are in, we now have to buy the 3 vouchers. We have to scan the QR code that is on the phone, with the phone! Think, think, ok take a screenshot then scan that with the phone (note to self at that moment, I must get myself a modern phone!). You try to work fast knowing that time is against you yet again, but we have done it, we have 3 vouchers we must check at least 3 times that we do actually have them. Once you get the vouchers you have 4 hours to use them or you lose that money, so on to the next site to pay the balance.  It gets messy now. The site crashes again and again, the 4 hour time limit is going down and down, we are nervous again, sweaty palms again, we keep trying, still crashing. We look at tweets, some have managed to pay, but the tweets are coming in faster than I can read them. People are asking for help, what should they do? There has been no official comment from the company, people are worried they are going to loose their money, the hours pass and we now have 1 hour left. Finally something from the company they say they are having a meeting and that their servers are busy. We have heard nothing from the Italian site so we are resigned to the fact that we won’t get that one. Then some good news the 4 hour deadline for the vouchers to be used has been cancelled and they will honour all vouchers (huge sigh of relief from both of us) we are not panicking now so try again to pay, this time it actually goes through and we get a confirmation that we have paid. We have been at our laptops for 7 hours! We have done it though and these miners should be with us in weeks instead of months. So we carry on with the rest of our day and a few hours later when checking Emails I see one that asks me to type a number into a box, I read it 3 times before I realise it is from Italy and my little drawing has paid off, so we put the number in the box and pay by visa in just minutes. We were elated that we had managed to get just 1 from the 100 they had and that it was the easiest one to pay for.   It is July, we have now placed orders and paid for 17 miners and we are expecting our first delivery in August (hopefully before the halving, but more about that later) we have taken a huge risk but we are 100% committed and now broke. We have put everything we have into this our savings, our contingency cash fund, the lot. We are normally I would say risk adverse; I wonder if we are having a mid life crisis while I count the change pot to see how much is in it. Part 3 to follow..........................

A Technophobes Story To get an understanding of the irony of our new project, I will give you a bit of insight. I am a technophobe and I barely know how to use my mobile phone, David my partner is most definitely not. He learnt how to 'code' so he could turn our new build extension into a smart home; living in rural Bulgaria it's not just a case of going to the shop and buying these things. He has turned a basic wood burner into a touch screen and voice activated heating system. You may ask why this is relevant, well as he regularly buys electronic parts, and uses Arduino micro controllers and I.O.T (internet of things, I know a silly name) he gets a lot of those 'things that might interest you' notifications. One of these notifications was about Helium and mining a token called HNT. That is how this started, he liked the look of it and started researching, it took him 2 weeks before he told me about it, he wanted to be sure he understood and knew a bit about it before asking me what I thought. I also liked the sound of it but had to do my own research too, so I started reading everything I could find, we watched videos together about it and had many conversations about if it would be viable, in the mornings we would talk about what new things each of us had found out. We decided let’s do this. **What is the project?** Ok so the project is about building a network for IOT devices that will not cost as much to use as mobile networks do. There are many sensors that need a network to share data and this is what the Helium network (also known as the peoples network) aims to achieve. If people buy the miners or hotspots they create coverage and build a network for the transfer of data. The people that buy hotspots get rewarded by POC or proof of coverage in the form of a token (crypto currency) called HNT. For us in rural Bulgaria the data transfers will probably not get a lot of traffic but we are still going to give it a try. **Buying a miner** So you think this will be the easy bit. Well no, but this is where the fun begins. There were four manufactures available to us Rak, Nebra, Syncrobit or Bobcat and as we have done our research the ones that have good reviews and are delivering on time are Bobcat, so that’s the ones we will go for even though they are slightly more expensive. How do you even buy one of these, well not with a Visa card! So first things first, we need to open an account with Binance or an exchange that turns pounds (in the crypto world normal currency is known as FIAT) into a crypto currency. So we follow the steps, take a selfie whilst blinking......... I have never taken a selfie but I find the button on the phone and on we go and eventually the account is set up. Then we have to wait a few days to be verified and should be good to go. This is where 'wait and be patient' starts and will be a common theme throughout this project. Now we have to transfer our money into the new account, then convert it, then calculate the fees, then transfer it to the Bobcat account(wallet) and it has to be exact or you can lose the money completely! That makes us nervous to start with, we must have checked the maths at least 6 times my heart is pounding and my hands are sweaty. We have the order on one page; we switch tabs on the computer to pay on another. Then we have to have a crypto wallet to send the money to. We then check a QR code with a long string of letters and numbers that has to be exact also. This is all new to us but we press send anyway. We now have to wait for a confirmation email that can take up to an hour. We don’t move we just anxiously wait, looking at the screen in front of us, it seems to take an eternity, but then it arrives and it all looks good. I then write down the order number and details on a piece of paper obviously! We now have a 12 - 20 week wait for our 2 miners to arrive. Wait and be patient again.