Selling Bitcoin to "test the waters," waking up every day to earn a five-figure income

Author: Jaleel Jia Liu, BlockBeats

Complaints in a bull market are more numerous than in a bear market.

Those playing with meme coins are left hanging on the mountaintop, project teams lament the poor market conditions, yield farming studios are being counter-farmed, and VCs are trapped with no exit opportunities. The inability to make money seems to be the root of all evil. The harsh reality is that despite the chorus of complaints, there are always people making money in the market.

For instance, just selling "testing water" on Bitcoin can earn you ten thousand dollars a day. It is these "small business people," often looked down upon by many "elitists," who always manage to find flexible new money-making opportunities in the crypto space.

From "Selling Water" to "Renting Miners," the Money-Making Philosophy of Small Businesses

Now it's the end of August, and with the arrival of "Golden September and Silver October," various financial sectors are about to shake off the liquidity crunch of summer. The crypto space is no exception, and some signs of recovery are already emerging. Bitcoin has firmly established itself above the sixty thousand dollar mark, revitalizing the entire Bitcoin ecosystem.

Among them, the scaling solution Fractal Bitcoin launched by Unisat is particularly hot. This solution, based on the native code of Bitcoin Core and integrated with the op_cat application, is still in the testing phase but has already attracted over 6 million addresses to participate in testing as of the time of writing this article.

In a mid-August exclusive interview with BlockBeats, they also mentioned that users who contribute feedback during various tests will receive corresponding rewards.

This statement sparked a strong reaction in the community and was widely disseminated, to some extent stimulating everyone's motivation to participate in the testnet. After the article was published, the number of addresses participating in the testnet surged by a million in just one day.

However, the amount of test coins provided by the official testnet faucet is limited, with only 0.02 FBTC available per claim, and you can only claim once every 6 hours, which restricts some users who want to create multiple addresses.

Thus, a new business opportunity arose—selling FBTC test coins, commonly referred to as "selling water." (In the early days, platforms acted like faucets that could "flow out" test coins, hence the term "faucet," and test coins became colloquially known as "water.")

This is not a first in the crypto space, and FBTC is not the first test coin to be sold.

Before the launch of Ethereum's Sepolia testnet last year, Goerli TestNet was the most mainstream testnet for Ethereum. Several channels providing faucet services only allowed users to claim a limited number of coins daily and required completing a series of cumbersome "social verifications." Against the backdrop of some projects hinting that participation in the testnet might bring "blessings," Goerli ETH test tokens became scarce, with each GETH selling for as much as 3U at one point.

The Secrets Behind Trading Test Coins

In contrast, the current price of FBTC is relatively affordable, around 0.4 dollars each. Coupled with some rumors about testing rewards, market demand remains persistent. Some studios are even purchasing large quantities of test coins to create hundreds or thousands of addresses to increase their chances of receiving potential airdrops.

"Most of the people buying water now are looking to create multiple accounts. If one account is prepared to brush 1 FBTC's TX, then 100 accounts would need 100 FBTC, which requires a significant amount. Currently, there are 7 million test addresses, and these people are all hoping for airdrop expectations," Yan Sanxiu (@practice_y11) told BlockBeats.

Since the code for the fractal network first went live on the testnet, Yan Sanxiu's team has been closely collaborating with Unisat, from understanding mining operations to now running very stably. Therefore, their next focus is to attract more free miners to build a mining pool called MoonX.

Yan Sanxiu also explained the mining mechanism of the fractal network: the network adopts the same proof-of-work (POW) mechanism as the Bitcoin mainnet while introducing an innovative Cadence Mining method aimed at balancing large mining pools and free mining. Ignoring the growth of block difficulty for rough calculations, the fractal network can produce about 72,000 FBTC daily, with 33% coming from joint mining and 66% from free mining.

Currently, the top miner in free mining occupies 66.91% of the hash rate, theoretically able to mine about 30,000 FBTC daily.

At the current conservative market price of 0.3 dollars each, assuming all these "goods" can be sold, daily income would reach around ten thousand dollars.

The Changing Landscape for "Gold Miners" in the Crypto Space

However, when there are too many fish, they become worthless.

"Sell FBTC, large quantities at low prices," some OTC dealers selling FBTC are calling out. As more and more miners join, the sales of FBTC have become sluggish, with the price of FBTC dropping from an initial 1.5 dollars to around 0.4 dollars now, and daily trading volume has also decreased.

There are even rumors in the market that some channel vendors are artificially raising the GAS fees on the testnet to promote the sales of FBTC.

However, Yan Sanxiu believes this is possible but difficult to implement: "The fractal network has a block time of 30 seconds, which is too fast. Even if the fees for the previous blocks rise to 30, all transactions will be packed two blocks later, and the Gas will drop. Unless someone can truly control the hash rate of the fractal network to keep mining empty blocks, but even if they keep mining empty blocks, after 90 seconds, the blocks from joint mining will still be packed, so this rumor is somewhat unrealistic."

With the supply of test coins exceeding demand, the fractal network also plans to activate the mainnet on September 1, which means the demand for test coins may further decrease. The small business of selling FBTC test coins may not be profitable for long, as once a business can be "written out," it is no longer that profitable.

But for these miners, crises often give rise to new opportunities. With the launch of the mainnet, new business models are brewing, such as renting hash power.

BlockBeats has learned from the market that the current price for renting hash power on the fractal network is 12U/t per month, with a minimum rental of 200T, meaning a monthly income of 2400 dollars from one user. Moreover, as of now, there seems to be a strong demand in the market for renting hash power on the fractal network.

"Indeed, many community friends have been asking me if they can rent hash power. We'll see how the market goes; our mining pool may also consider adding this service later," Yan Sanxiu revealed to BlockBeats.

When there is market demand, act the next day; when the market loses interest, immediately adjust direction.

Today it may be "selling water," tomorrow it may be "renting miners," and the day after it may be an entirely new business. Doing some flexible small businesses in the crypto space, quickly adjusting according to market demand, and being adaptable is indeed a good way to secure one's livelihood.

After all, there are many businesses that can make money in this world, but very few that can make money forever, and the crypto space is particularly volatile.