Like many others I'm sure, I've been lurking for a couple of weeks but never actually posted any messages. My journey is probably similar to most in that I heard about crypto-currencies but had no interest in getting involved.
Then I read a fateful article on an news site that talked about dogecoin. Now I wasn't even familiar with the meme that it was supposed to be based on, but it caught my attention because there appeared to be some real attempt at marketing in a humorous way. That just wasn't anything I saw with the other crypto-currencies I had seen headlines about.
So that caused me to do some reading and start mining and essentially lit a fire because now I've got the parts for 3 mining rigs being shipped to me and a two year commitment that will probably get me killed by my wife. Suddenly I found myself looking at graphics card optimization and how to squeeze what I could out of the three computers I already had in the house. Needless to say my wife wasn't too happy when I ordered three more.
What finally got me to the point of posting was that it appears crypto-currencies are very much like what I would imagine the wild wild west to be like in the USA some time ago. It just seems to be chaotic and you are constantly running into things that will essentially attempt to steal what you have done.
The first pool I used to mine dogecoins had a very high auto payment threshold that would have taken me a week or more to hit based on the limited hardware I had in the house at the time. But off I went and after a few days I started reading messages on this board that the pool wasn't paying so I stopped my workers and initiated a manual payout and of course never received the funds which I requested a week ago as well as dozens of other people. Now the main thread for that pool has over 56 pages and I wanted to post in it.
Consequently this post is a requirement so I can.
In any event, to anyone new all I can say is be very very careful. You are almost always dealing with an individual and there is no way to know what their motives are. Keep your auto payments low and if a pool keeps raising them just find another pool.
I've made a commitment to get into this for two years and I have already found that I enjoy it far more than I should. On the downside I feel like I'm walking in a minefield.