Coinmine One: Waste of Money or Bitcoin Mining Innovation?

We took apart a Coinmine One and talked to CEO Farbood Nivi to get an insider look at the mining gadget taking the cryptocurrency world by storm.

“The whole point of crypto is that there is no guaranteed money anywhere.”                                                                                                                         – Farbood Nivi

Coinmine is led by Farbood Nivi, CEO and founder, and is based out of Los Angeles. The company is backed by some of the most prominent companies in crypto, including Coinbase Ventures, Social Leverage Capital Fund, and Morgan Creek Digital (Anthony Pompliano’s fund).

The Coinmine One is a do-it-yourself home mining console, similar in size to an Xbox or a desktop computer. The device is designed for the average person to be able to participate in cryptocurrency mining with minimal technical know-how. All you need is the device, a smartphone, and a wi-fi connection. In an exclusive interview with Crypto Briefing, Nivi said of Coinmine:

“We think there are a lot of people who want to participate in crypto beyond just trading. The only semi user-friendly experience has been exchanges, such as Coinbase or Robinhood. We think that part of what has been holding back crypto ⁠— and participation in it ⁠—  is simply the amount of time and difficulty in building crypto hardware.”

Receiving the Coinmine One was much like getting any new tech gadget. The designers clearly took a page from the playbooks of leading marketing gurus. In fact, the Coinmine One comes in two colors, black or white, and comes in Apple-esque white on black packaging.

The inscription on the cover reads “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” This line refers to the text included in the code of the initial block ⁠(or genesis block ) on the Bitcoin blockchain. Clearly, Coinmine wants the user to experience the excitement and mystique surrounding Bitcoin, its creator Satoshi Nakamoto, and the potential for blockchain (and the average citizen ) to disrupt the established financial system.

Setup could not have been easier. The only thing included with the device is a power cord and an instruction card⁠, which was actually unnecessary, as all that is needed is the ID number to power on and then (after having downloaded the app) press “mine.”

The Coinmine One touts itself as an “all-in-one crypto device” that is available to anyone, regardless of their technical ability or crypto knowledge. Nivi explained:

“The purpose of Coinmine is to take the hundreds of hours ⁠— literally hundreds of hours ⁠— to build and maintain your hardware, software, and wallets for the rest of your life, and make it zero hours. Coinmine is the lowest total cost of ownership by far out there because you have to take your time into calculation.”

The only requirements are a smartphone and Wi-Fi. The Coinmine mines a limited number of cryptocurrencies (for the time being) and stores it in your smartphone app wallet. 

Since its launch in Nov. 2018, Coinmine has had a lot of support. A couple of examples are:

Plug, play ,earn, chill. What's not to like?! #coinmine https://t.co/TONOk9m9W4

— Countergrind (@Countergrind) December 7, 2019

Just set up my new @coinmine & I was mining @grinMW within seconds. Pretty cool to be running a blockchain & participating in the decentralized economy (not just speculating on it ; ). Great work @farbood & team (lucky to be an investor)! pic.twitter.com/Hmsmauj7sQ

— Dustin Rosen (@du_ro) July 2, 2019

There is, however, a lot of negative feedback, especially concerning ROI. When we took on reviewing the Coinmine, much like many in the crypto and blockchain space, we were skeptical. From a break-even standpoint the Coinmine One, with increasing hash rate difficulty and rapidly improving mining technology, may never pay itself back when electricity is taken into account. 

Futurism.com published an article stating, “[it might be beautifully-designed — but in practice, without a red-hot crypto market, the Coinmine One is an over-engineered space heater.”

This sentiment can be seen in social media as well:

Do the Math!
Coinmine- $700USD
Mining 4000 satoshis (.28c) per day.

There's 100,000,000 Satoshis in 1BTC.
How many years would it take to get your $700USD back?

No thanks