stopped mining gpu/fpga coins when eth went pos. sold that shit for corn. i do miss the hum haha.
but i did i mined btc on gpu/fpga in 2011/2012 and even continued at a slight loss. guess what, those btc coins i mined at a slight loss are where probably 60 percent of my stack today came from. because i kept mining. wasnt worrying about the money, btc was cool thats all i needed.
of course i did folding at home which where multi gpu rigs just for funziesi for free so i was used to power bills and such.
Biggest mistake of my life -- not mining back in the day. Total anonymity and tons of fresh, untainted coins to be had for practically nothing. I did some F@H at the time, GPUs number-crunching @ 100*C, not regretting it, always nice to contribute to science. I remember I did try to set up a Bitcoin miner back in 2010/11, but it was a complex (for me) Linux setup process and I wasn't so good at it back then. Gave up. Should have tried harder...
even with experience running folding@home multi gpu setups, that only helped hardware wise (dual psu multi gpu and mobos that didnt like to share slots and such). it took me several days to figure it out. downloading the core wallet was the easiest part lol. the separated wallet, miners and pools were all new to me. but of course thats what makes bitcoin bitcoin.
and i agree with you. while it would be nice to be super dooper rich but im a simple man, and i am content with myself and my station in life. and while i certainly would not turn down any btc that finds it way to me, if it doesnt im fine with that too.
lot of money seem to come super lot of problems.