The veterans on stage at Mining Disrupt Miami, July 26–28, 2022, had the stories to prove that Bitcoin mining was not born in clean rooms. Several of them started out mining at home, and more than one admitted to setting something on fire along the way.
The session, titled OG Miners Untold Stories, brought together people who have been mining since the GPU and early ASIC days. Marshall Long moderated, and the panelists included Philip Salter, CTO of Genesis Digital Assets, Gerald Wilkie of HMTech, Martin Caldera and Greg Ohanessian, with Jan Capek of Braiins also listed for the session. He said he had been mining since 2010 and was then working at Rhodium, which he said had 375 megawatts of immersion cooling running in Texas. Each panelist brought a machine from their past and talked through the good, the bad and the ugly of it.
The S1 Incident: How 150 Kilowatts Destroyed 20 Years of Records
One panelist, who said he is still under an NDA about the incident, recounted a deployment of first generation Bitmain S1 miners in a Phoenix data center. The team had about 150 kilowatts packed into about four racks, and the engineers said their system could handle the density. What nobody accounted for was the exhaust. It was venting into a tape backup storage system that held financial record archives for the last 20 years, and the miners were throwing about 120 to 130 degree heat onto those tapes. The tapes were destroyed, and the team was asked to leave after running there for about a month and a half.
Gerald Wilkie of HMTech said he started mining in 2012 and tried to burn down his house doing it. He held up a Bitmain S3. Before it he had run S1s at about 20 kilowatts, but with the S3s he pushed his home setup to about 40, melting the wires going to the meter. He beefed up the meter and the wiring, then melted the wires on the poles and set fire to the transformer. Eventually, he said, he got everything situated, stopped setting things on fire and ran about 70 kilowatts of the machines.
this was the first miner that caught fire to my house
Gerald Wilkie · 10:17
The Scam Economy of Bitcoin Talk and the Butterfly Labs Betrayal
The early days of ASIC mining were also defined by a lack of trust. One panelist described buying hardware on the Bitcoin Talk forums, where a stranger would post that he had ASICs for sale and ask for five grand. You would wire the money overseas, wait two, three or four weeks wondering what you had done, and then a nondescript cardboard box would show up. Another panelist remembered how many of those listings were fake, and how buyers learned to ask sellers to post a picture with their name and whether they accepted escrow. The most infamous story of the era belonged to Butterfly Labs.
One panelist said he got caught up in the Butterfly Labs deal, buying a batch of Monarchs when the company promised 600 gigahash at a time when typical machines did 150 to 200. The machines never arrived and he got only a partial refund. Instead of trying to satisfy customers, he said, the company mocked them at its own team meetings, and when the SEC raided its office, those materials were posted online.
their ceo bought these foam like stadium signs that were pitch forks and torches that said when minor when ship
A panelist · 44:05
Tinkering Culture: From ATX Cables to Raspberry Pi Controllers
Despite the risks, the early era was also a time of immense creativity. One panelist pointed out that nearly all miner software was based on OpenWRT, open source router firmware, and said it had not changed since 2014. Even the newer custom firmwares, the panel joked, have a nice interface with a hidden button that drops you back into the old WRT screen. Panelists remembered machines that ran on a Raspberry Pi, running a dozen or more USB miners off one Pi, and adding a second fan to beef up a machine.
One panelist remembered the old style ATX power supplies, saying he had calluses about a centimeter thick from popping cables on and off, and that the cables would melt and burn onto the pins, which he said was where about 90 percent of the fires occurred. The cabling, he said, was always an absolute disaster. Today, panelists noted, you just plug a miner in, enter the pool information and that is it.
The Pivot: Mining as a Tool for Grid Stability and Renewable Integration
Asked by the moderator where mining is going over the next five years, one panelist said he expects it to bleed into the power side, with more conversations already happening with power companies. In his view, mobile mining data centers could be used to bring old industries back to life. Another expected to see a standardization of hardware.
Asked about criticism of mining's energy use, one panelist said the better question is what positive impacts Bitcoin offers the grid. He pointed to Texas operators who, about two weeks before the panel, curtailed and put roughly a thousand megawatts back on the grid while it was under strain.
one is it stopped rolling black out to texas two is it prevented the power companies from re-firing coal
A panelist · 34:41
Community vs. Speculation: Why Passion Survives the Bear Market
The final topic was how veteran miners stay passionate through market swings. One panelist's answer was simple: keep having fun. If you hate a job and only do it for the money, he said, you should not stay in it, and that applies to mining like anything else.
Panelists also urged the audience not to get discouraged on dips, describing the down market as part of a natural cycle they have seen come and go many times. When this session was recorded, Bitcoin traded at $22,964; on October 13, 2026 it was $83,666.
i think the most important thing is to keep having fun at it
A panelist · 38:41