Demand for hot spots in Lebanon surged , and the subsequent order backlog meant that some Lebanese customers had to wait up to a year to receive their machines. Secondhand hot spots, or those that enterprising importers had managed to bring in early, sold for several times their value. At God of Mining, Manih says that one of his clients was so desperate to start mining Helium she paid $6,000 for a hot spot from someone who had simply bought a few in Europe and brought them back in his luggage.
This did little to stop importation, and simply made hot spots more expensive. One importer, who wished to remain anonymous, told WIRED, “We get our machines through customs using other channels.” Those other channels tended to be expensive. In practice, it’s far more complicated. A quick look at any Helium Telegram group or Discord server reveals endless discussion of radio frequencies, IP addresses, firmware updates, and proper location of hot spots. These factors and more will all influence the amount of HNT that a hot spot will mine. “You can do everything perfectly, and it still seems like luck,” Manih says. “We tried different cables, IP addresses, types of connection. It’s impossible to know what this machine wants.
“Wi-Fi” 🤦♂️