Author: Jaleel Plus Six, BlockBeats

There are more complaints in the bull market than in the bear market.

Those who play with altcoins are stuck at the top of the mountain, project teams lament the poor market conditions, and the "fleecing" studios are being countered, while VCs are trapped without an exit opportunity. Not being able to make money seems to be the root of all evil. And the cruel reality is that even though complaints are heard one after another, the market never lacks people who make money.

For example, just by selling "test water" on Bitcoin, one can earn $10,000 a day. It is these "small business people" who are often looked down upon by many "elitists" but always manage to find flexible new money-making opportunities in the cryptocurrency world.

From "selling water" to "renting mining", the money-making philosophy of small businesses

It is now the end of August, and with the arrival of "Golden September and Silver October", various financial sectors are about to break free from the summer liquidity crunch. The cryptocurrency market is no exception, and signs of recovery have already emerged. Bitcoin has firmly stood at the high ground of $60,000, and the entire Bitcoin ecosystem is thriving.

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

In mid-August, in an exclusive interview with Unisat by BlockBeats, they also mentioned that users who provide feedback and contribute to various tests will be rewarded accordingly.

This statement has caused a strong reaction in the community and has been widely spread, to some extent, it has also stimulated everyone's motivation to participate in the test network. After the article was published, the number of addresses participating in the test network increased by millions in just one day.

However, the official test network's distribution of test coins is limited, and can only be claimed 0.02 FBTC each time, with a 6-hour interval between claims, which limits some users who want to have multiple addresses.

As a result, a new business opportunity emerged - selling FBTC test coins, commonly known as "selling water" (due to the early platforms being able to "flow out" test coins like a faucet, hence the name "faucet", and test coins are commonly referred to as "water").

This is not the first time in the cryptocurrency world, and FBTC is not the first test coin to be sold.

Before the launch of the Sepolia test network of Ethereum last year, the Goerli TestNet was the most mainstream test network of Ethereum. Several channels that provided faucet services only allowed users to claim a certain amount per day and required them to complete a series of cumbersome "social verifications". With some projects hinting that participating in the test network might bring "blessings", the Goerli ETH test tokens were also in short supply, and at that time, each GETH could be sold for 3U.

The tricks behind trading test coins

In comparison, the current price of FBTC is relatively affordable, at around $0.4 each. Coupled with rumors about test rewards, there is a sustained market demand. Some studios even buy a large amount of test coins to create hundreds or thousands of addresses in order to increase the chance of potential airdrops.

"Most of the people buying water now are looking to get airdrops. For example, if an account is planning to send 1 FBTC TX, then 100 accounts will need 100 FBTC, so the demand is quite large. Currently, there are 7 million test addresses, and these people are all expecting airdrops." Yan, a freelance miner (@practice_y11), told BlockBeats.

Since the first launch of the Fractal Network's code on the test network, Yan's team has been working closely with Unisat, from understanding mining operations to the current stable operation, and their next focus is to attract more freelance miners and build a mining pool called MoonX.

Yan also explained the mining mechanism of the Fractal Network: the network adopts the same Proof of Work (POW) mechanism as the Bitcoin mainnet, and introduces the innovative Cadence Mining mining method, aiming to balance large mining pools and freelance mining. Roughly calculated ignoring the growth of block difficulty, the Fractal Network can produce about 72,000 FBTC per day, with 33% coming from joint mining and 66% from freelance mining.

Currently, the top-ranked miner in freelance mining occupies 66.91% of the computing power, theoretically being able to mine about 30,000 FBTC per day.

Based on the current conservative selling price of $0.3 per unit, assuming all of these "goods" can be sold, the daily income would reach around $10,000.

Changes in the cryptocurrency market call for survival

However, when there are too many fish, they become less valuable.

"Some OTC merchants selling FBTC are shouting, 'Large quantity for sale, cheap price'." As more and more miners join, the sales of FBTC have become sluggish, and the price of FBTC has dropped from the initial $1.5 to the current $0.4, and the daily trading volume has also decreased.

There are even rumors in the market that channel merchants artificially raise the GAS fees of the test network to promote the sales of FBTC.

However, Yan believes that this may be possible, but it is relatively difficult to implement from a practical perspective: "The Fractal Network has a block every 30 seconds, which is too fast. Even if the fees for the previous blocks are raised to 30, all transactions will be packaged after two blocks, and the Gas will go down. Unless someone can really control the computing power of the Fractal Network to continuously mine empty blocks, but even if empty blocks are continuously mined, after 90 seconds, the blocks will still be packaged by joint mining, so this rumor is somewhat unrealistic."

With the supply of test coins exceeding demand, and the Fractal Network planning to activate the mainnet on September 1, this means that the demand for test coins may further decrease. The small business of selling FBTC test coins may not make money for long, after all, when a business can be "written out", it is no longer as profitable.

However, for these mining players, crises often breed new opportunities. With the launch of the mainnet, new business models are brewing, such as renting computing power.

BlockBeats has learned from the market that the current price for renting computing power from the Fractal Network is 12u/t per month, with a minimum rental of 200T, which means a monthly income of $2,400 from a single user. And at present, there is still a considerable demand in the market for renting computing power from the Fractal Network.

"Indeed, many community friends have asked me if they can rent computing power. Let's see how the market goes, our mining pool may also consider adding this business in the future." Yan told BlockBeats.

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

Today it may be "selling water", tomorrow it may be "renting mining", and the day after tomorrow it may be a completely new business. Doing some flexible small business in the cryptocurrency world, making quick adjustments based on market demand, and being flexible in response, is also a good way to make a living.

After all, there are many businesses that make money in this world, but there are not many businesses that always make money, and the cryptocurrency world is ever-changing.

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