Review: Six Months Using a Helium (HNT) Crypto Miner

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The Helium Network has had a crazy time of it over the past year, with the number of hotspots growing exponentially across the globe.

I took delivery of my Nebra Helium (HNT) hotspot cryptocurrency miner in September 2021 after a five month wait and later wrote a review of my experiences using it for a month.

Now the miner has been running for six months I thought I’d give an update as to how it’s going, what to expect and to give you an idea if it’s still worth the investment of buying a miner.

Is buying a Helium miner still worth the investment?

The costs of HNT miners has increased over the past few months, driven partly by a chip shortage, but also by the huge popularity of the devices.

If you’re not familiar with the Helium network is or what a hotpot does, here’s a quick recap:

Helium is a peer-to-peer global wireless network designed to provide bandwidth for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Individuals join this ‘People’s Network’ by setting up either an indoor or outdoor miner and running a node which helps power the Helium blockchain.

In return for the miner’s work, you earn cryptocurrency in the form of HNT tokens.

HNT tokens are tradeable on several large exchanges, including Binance, KuCoin and Crypto.com. You can also stake HNT to earn around 7% interest.

Work includes witnessing challenges and feeding them into the network, sending proof of coverage beacons and transferring data packets.

The network exploded in popularity in 2021 which meant hundreds of thousands of new nodes being added to the network.

At the time of writing there were more than 630,000 hotspots around the globe – a huge leap from the 14,000 or so at the start of 2021.

In August 2021 there was ‘halving’ event which saw the amount of HNT minted per month fall to 2.5million.

These two factors have dramatically cut earnings and certainly that’s been my experience.

When I first set up my miner using the supplied indoor aerial I was earning pennies a day, but when I installed a 5.8dbi glass fibre antenna on my roof this changed dramatically, initially anyway.

For a while my miner was making in the region of 10 HNT a month, the value of which was at one point hovering around the £38 ($50) mark per coin.

However, this didn’t last, the price fell back down to around £16 ($21) per coin and my earnings were also a hit by the unreliability of the miner and/or network itself.

For the past six months I’ve spent more hours than I’m comfortable admitting troubleshooting, tweaking and generally fretting about the little black box in the corner of my study!

To be fair, having scoured numerous discussion groups for advice when the miner has been playing up, many of the problems I’ve experienced are related to the network and not the hardware I bought.

But if the Helium network is to have a long term future, these problems need to be ironed out or people will desert the project.

Also, if my current earnings are anything to go by, it will take anyone buying a miner now a long time to paid off their initial outlay and start making a profit, especially since the cost of the miners has increased significantly as I’ve said.

I reckon that on an average day I’m currently making around £1.75 ($2.30) in HNT rewards.

There are better antennas that I could buy and other tweaks I could make to improve my setup which may increase my earnings, but I’m not confident it would be enough to cover the cost of the upgrade.

How much does a Helium (HNT) miner cost?

I ordered my Nebra back in March 2021 at which time it cost me £350 ($460) including delivery.

I spend another £100 or so on a new antenna, cable and fitting but I’ve been fortunate to make this back and a small profit.

However, buying a miner from Nebra will now cost you £594 (inc VAT) or $776 (£100 more for the outdoor version) – which is quite an increase.

Admittedly, you won’t be buying the same miner as I did. Due to issues with component suppliers, Nebra moved away from the Raspberry Pi based model due to supply shortages to a new ROCK Pi Version.

To be fair, it’s a more powerful model with improved components and storage, but how much difference this will make out in the wild remains to be seen.

Increasing saturation is only going to force rewards even lower, yet the price point puts the Nebra miner – and other models – out of reach for many.

How can I increase my Helium (HNT) earnings?

As I’ve said, I probably could increase my earnings by buying a better antenna, raising it higher, using better quality cable and a host of other things.

I probably would do this if I knew the effort would be worth it, but until the network stabilises and the number of outages are reduced I can’t see myself spending any more money on the project.

Location is very important, but given where I am and the number of miners around me, I feel I’m fairly well suited to be at the higher end of the earnings chart.

The good thing is that running costs are extremely low, with the electricity costs running at about £1 a month.

Nebra is not the only Helium hotspot manufacturer. Some of the other big names in the market include Rak, SyncroB.it and Bobcat.

Helium (HNT) price prediction

Like all cryptos, HNT is subject to wild price swings.

It’s also affected by the overall direction of the market, soaring when everyone’s bullish and tumbling back down when FUD creeps back in.

I’ve done a fair bit of research into the Helium project and it’s definitely one of the more worthy crypto enterprises out there.

The use case is valid and the potential for some huge multinational companies to get engaged and tap into the network is a possibility (see below for more on this).

As a result, most HNT price predictions are pretty optimistic, with some commentators even suggesting it could go as high as $1000 a coin in a couple of years.

This may be on the high side but it’s clear that if all goes to plan with the project, the Helium token could see healthy growth.

If you believe this will happen, it would certainly be worth grabbing a miner now and hodling your HNT in anticipation of it going to the moon.

Also, there will only ever be 223,000,000 HNT minted which is a relatively small number compared to some other cryptos.

Related link: Helium’s use case and investment potential

Earn free HNT by becoming a Helium host

If you haven’t got the cash to splurge on a miner, or the technical know-how to get one set up, there is another option.

In the UK a number of enterprising companies are offering to supply free hotspots including setup if you become a Helium host.

In return they will pay you up to 30% of the profits in HNT each month (or a smaller amount in GBP).

It’s a novel idea which offers risk-free way of getting involved in the Helium project.

You could give it a go to see what the earnings are like in your area and if they’re good, simple cancel the agreement, give the equipment back and set up your own.

Helium rebrands to Nova Labs

In March 2022 Helium, the company responsible for the Helium network, rebranded as Nova Labs after securing £200 million of series D funding.

This cash injection caught the eye of Goodyear Ventures, part of the US tyre company Goodyear, which is planning to make use of the network at some point.

The network will continue to be know as Helium and the token will stay as HNT.