Back in November I decided to try out mining XYO using the Coin app on an old Nexus 5X that I reappropriated for the purpose.
Now it's February, and I think I'm about done with the whole thing.
To be candid, the main reason is that my sentinel went through the wash, and while it looked like a fresh battery would fix it back up, the new batteries don't seem to last more than a couple weeks. As such, I'm out $12.95 for the sentinel and $7 for a set of replacement batteries. In the same amount of time, I've earned about 8,000 COIN, which, if I could convert them to XYO (that option doesn't start until 10,000), would be worth...
31 cents.
I'll probably throw a few other posts about the various aspects of the COIN app and geomining, but for now here are my main takeaways:
Great for Truckers
Perusing the Reddits, the one group of people who seem to get a decent-ish return from geomining are truckers, who spend literally all their time cruising from tile to tile. I'd wager that Uber drivers fit this description as well, though truckers have the advantage that they can geoclaim gobs of regions every cycle. Truckers, who pass from cell to cell quickly and thus need a rapid recharge cycle, are probably the only group who benefit from Pro accounts as well.
And Nobody Else
As an ordinary schlub who works in an office and either drives to work or takes a train, there's simply no return to be had. Five miles of walking net about 100 COIN, which isn't a whole lot greater than just sitting around refreshing the tile periodically while I work from my desk. Geoclaiming isn't an option either, since the two regions I can claim (work and home) are both chronically oversubscribed, making the a losing proposition for everyone involved.
It's a shame, really. The premise of geomining, as outlined on an XYO Medium post, ain't bad. Using a fleet of smartphone-armed passers-by to determine whether packages arrived is clever, and I really do hope they figure out a way to make it work. For now, though, it's just another GPS device attached to yet another freight truck.
