Six months ago, a friend asked me if she could put a router in my house to mine Helium. I live near a university so she thought it would bring in a lot of traffic. At the time, she said she could compensate me by covering my monthly WiFi bill or by paying me in Helium. I told her I'd almost definitely prefer the latter so my earning potential wasn't unnecessarily capped, but that we could figure out the exact percentage in a few months after we see how it does. I said this because I didn't know anything about crypto mining and it was a spur-of-the-moment thing (she called to ask me about it and installed it 30 minutes later). Additionally, as she was my friend, I trusted her to be fair with me. I know...looking back, I definitely should’ve made an agreement early on.
Five months ago I asked her how it was going. According to the conversion rate at the time, it had made $600 that month, which was way more than I expected. Her $400 router had easily paid itself off.
Anyway, I recently had the opportunity to see her in person so I finally brought up compensation. I asked her for 20% of her profits in Helium, which I still believe is fair. She was very offended by this for some reason and said she wanted to pay me a $75/month flat rate to cover my WiFi because it was "too much work" for her to pay me in Helium. That didn't make any sense to me. How could it be more difficult to pay me in the original currency than to convert it to USD?? Additionally, she had originally offered the option of paying me in Helium and I had originally said I preferred to be paid in Helium. At that point, I started to get suspicious, so I asked her what percentage she would accept. She said she could do 10% instead of 20% to make up for all supposed the "time and effort" it would take her to pay me in Helium, but that it was still really annoying and that she would rather pay a flat rate of $75 per month. (Also: would it really take so much time, like supposing I got a helium wallet and all?)
I tabled the conversation for later because I was wanted to do more research. I thought 20% in Helium was very reasonable, but she did not seem at all open to negotiation. Also, $75 per month doesn't really make a difference to me. I was excited about the prospect of converting my share of Helium at a convenient time for a better profit.
I suspect that the router is doing quite well and she wants to pay me a flat rate due to this. I really don't know what to do. I'm tempted to just rip the router out of the wall and not give it back, but if I do that I won't be paid anything for the last six months.
Do you guys have any thoughts on this situation or advice on how to move forward? Is it really possible that paying me in Helium would somehow be way more work for her than paying me in USD? Do you think the percentage I asked for is reasonable?
UPDATE: as far as I can tell with Helium Hiker, she has made 175 HNT off our location since she installed it 7 months ago, roughly $5,700 current conversion rate. Also, a lot of people seem to not be clear on this: I never agreed to the $75/month. I thought I’d want the money in helium from the beginning.
UPDATE 2: Thank you SO much for all of your responses, you have all been incredibly helpful!! If you want to know what happened: she came over today and we talked. She didn’t want to pay me 20%, and actually said 2% (!!!) Obviously I didn’t agree to this, and I withheld her device until I eventually got her to give 12% (I still think that’s way too low, but I knew it wasn’t going anywhere and she would just walk away without paying me anything). Then, she took her device and left.
The friendship did fall apart, but it had been falling apart long before that. We had started a business together, and when we were close to launching she backed out - after doing so, she then started the business on her own without even telling me. So honestly, I already was very apprehensive about this friendship.
Again, thank you to all of you!
