Mining communities across all social platforms are growing at a record pace, but Telegram is home to some of the most active cloisters of hobbyist and professional miners chatting and educating others about all things mining.
Some mining Telegram communities are private, and only invite new members on ad hoc and infrequent bases. Other public Telegram groups are managed by companies trying to create communities around their brands. But lots of independent public mining chat rooms are available to miners with all levels of experience, and even the corporate communities offer educational, informative discussion.
This article gives a brief overview of what types of public mining Telegram groups are active and where miners can find them.
Independent Mining Groups
Home Mining Wizards
Started in September 2021, Home Mining Wizards (HMW) was created by Steve Barbour, CEO of Upstream Data, and a handful of other independent home miners to serve as a chatroom for novice miners to get advice and tips from more experienced friends on how to start mining. Now with nearly 2,000 miners, the HMW group offers a non-stop stream of troubleshooting tips, mining industry updates, at-home mining pictures and videos, and a friendly forum for any home miner to share ideas and seek advice.
Sustainable Bitcoin Mining
Miners looking for a place to discuss renewable energies, “green” mining strategies and anything else related to eco-friendly mining should join the group founded by Alejandro De La Torre in January 2022. The Sustainable Bitcoin Mining group is a public chat room whose membership ranges from mining executives of top companies to novice retail miners. Even though the group is smaller than most public mining channels, the community offers a great forum for discussing Bitcoin mining with solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal or any other non-fossil fuel energy source.
Drivechain Talk
Unlike any other mining Telegram group, Drivechain Talk is a public community focused on discussing Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 300, a controversial change titled “Hashrate Escrows.” Paul Sztorc, one of the most outspoken proponents of this BIP, started the group in September 2018 as a forum for debating the various changes and perceived vulnerabilities affected by this proposed Bitcoin update.
Conversation in Sztorc’s group ranges from extremely technical deep dives into Bitcoin sidechains and drivechain — a tool for using sidechains — to general-purpose discussion about processing transactions on the Bitcoin network versus mining for other independent blockchains. Miners looking for robust technical and esoteric discussions about niche mining topics and other theoretical aspects of cryptocurrency mining will benefit from reading and joining in the drivechain group.
Other Public Mining Channels
Beyond the independent mining groups, almost every mining company maintains a customer-facing public chatroom. Most of Telegram’s public mining groups are in fact created and moderated by mining companies. Even though these groups tend to focus on the teams’ products and services, the conversation is regularly very helpful for all sorts of general mining information and ideas.
Here are a few examples of Telegram groups serving different sectors of mining.
Mining Hardware
Telegram is home to dozens of active mining hardware channels. These groups and channels are almost always owned and moderated by a hardware reselling company with one broadcast-only channel for updated machine listings, pricing information and other sales posts paired with a public chat group for all miners to discuss the company’s listings in addition to hardware market trends, future price expectations, delivery delays and other topics.
Telegram users should be warned that lots of scammy and fraudulent mining hardware channels exist. But a good example of high-quality hardware groups is Miners Peak, a public chat room with thousands of miners discussing all things mining hardware. The group is public and was created as a companion group to a separate mining marketplace group that offers a constant stream of mining hardware listings and pricing information.
Mining Pools
Almost every top mining pool also maintains at least one active Telegram community, with most usually moderating several groups for different languages. Even if a miner doesn’t send their hash rate to a particular pool, passively monitoring the conversation in these communities can still be beneficial since the discussion rarely focuses exclusively on the pool’s products and services.
Some mining pool groups, like the Braiins Mining channel, are set up to be broadcast-only by the group owners with comment sections enabled under each post. This format offers more controlled, readable conversation while allowing for public engagement in a channel for mining news, analysis and general updates.
Immersion Mining
DCX Immersion Cooling is a public Telegram group owned and moderated by DCX, a company building immersion mining products. The conversation ranges from specific questions about DCX products and services to pictures of immersion mining setups, questions about troubleshooting malfunctioning machines and other general immersion discussion. DCX’s group is a good example of a company’s public chat room that also offers general topical conversation even for miners that don’t use the company’s products.
Networking With Bitcoin Miners Is Easy
The mining community, like most other sectors of Bitcoin, is full of generous, good-natured people willing to network and chat with almost anyone who shares a genuine interest in their work. Public mining communities on Telegram are full of these opportunities.
Outside of Telegram, Twitter is always full of Spaces focused on mining with speakers and listeners across all levels of experience listening to and chatting with each other. Miners looking for more online connections and communities should also regularly listen to mining Spaces and occasionally send direct messages to hosts and guests. And the conversation on Spaces almost always continues in tandem with the discussions happening in mining Telegram chat rooms.
Connecting with other Bitcoin miners online isn’t difficult. Telegram has several large, active and public mining communities full of miners eager to chat. Any miner looking to engage in fun, educational, constructive conversation can easily find groups of other miners to chat with.
This is a guest post by Zack Voell. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.