A case study in entry-level mining | Bitcointalksearch.org

JohnnyBTC

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Quote from: snowcrawl on October 01, 2014, 02:10:22 PM

I am also out. I just turned off my S1 and 6 HEX16A2. I had a look at my BTC guild withdrawal stats and I only had 2 payouts for over the past 7 days, which doesn't cover the electrical costs. Especially with the current low value of BTC. At the moment I have no future plans to mine bitcoins.

don't give up buddy!

snowcrawl

sr. member

Activity: 377

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I am also out. I just turned off my S1 and 6 HEX16A2. I had a look at my BTC guild withdrawal stats and I only had 2 payouts for over the past 7 days, which doesn't cover the electrical costs. Especially with the current low value of BTC. At the moment I have no future plans to mine bitcoins.

fbarcelo

member

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As I understand the only way to get profit in BTC mining is buying with high volume discount prices and setting your installation in a place with low electricity costs.
That requires high investments, for small investors there are 2 ways associate in order to have enough capital to make a big investment or mine alt coins.

Cloudminning could be also a case, but involves a high scam risk.

Do anyone see other option?

ABitNut

hero member

Activity: 764

Merit: 500

I'm a cynic, I'm a quaint

Quote from: LogicalUnit on September 30, 2014, 09:21:03 PM

The Jig Is Up

After 5 months of continuous operation, someone finally noticed my Antminer S1 in the patch cupboard, and made an official complaint. I have nowhere else I can put it, so I'm afraid I have to switch it off.

This is perhaps fitting, as I am now generating only 0.001 BTC per day, which is currently worth approximately 0.44 AUD. My electricity costs are approximately 1.45 AUD per day, so I would be losing money to keep it running.

As for what to do next, I'm not really sure. I have 3 BTC in paper wallets stored in a safe. I have another 1 BTC stored in various offline and online wallets. BTC is trending downwards at the moment.

The Antminer S1 was my best effort yet, but I'm still struggling to achieve anything more than academic value out of my mining efforts. Academic is cool, and I'm pleased to be contributing to the network, but this hobby is getting expensive.

I guess you had a fair run with the S1. If factoring in electricity costs you would have probably taken it offline over a month ago. Am I right to assume you're not going to continue mining? Or do you have some future plans?

Cheers.

LogicalUnit

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Activity: 299

Merit: 250

The Jig Is Up

After 5 months of continuous operation, someone finally noticed my Antminer S1 in the patch cupboard, and made an official complaint. I have nowhere else I can put it, so I'm afraid I have to switch it off.

This is perhaps fitting, as I am now generating only 0.001 BTC per day, which is currently worth approximately 0.44 AUD. My electricity costs are approximately 1.45 AUD per day, so I would be losing money to keep it running.

As for what to do next, I'm not really sure. I have 3 BTC in paper wallets stored in a safe. I have another 1 BTC stored in various offline and online wallets. BTC is trending downwards at the moment.

The Antminer S1 was my best effort yet, but I'm still struggling to achieve anything more than academic value out of my mining efforts. Academic is cool, and I'm pleased to be contributing to the network, but this hobby is getting expensive.

Juan007

newbie

Activity: 11

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What does it mean your score in the table last shift? I have a power of 14 ghs and the value is 0.001%. Then, if you think the power of the pool increases, and my power is always the same gain for less?

ASICSPACE

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Feel free to contact me via email, skype or phone!

Quote from: Zawamiya on September 23, 2014, 09:24:37 AM

Quote from: ASICSPACE on September 21, 2014, 11:50:22 PM

Making ROI is all about electricity costs. Homeowners actually have some advantages over datacenters. They have pre-existing electrical and cooling infrastructure. Datacenters have to pay for that, but they have the luxury of being located in three cent electricity regions.

Let's say there's a 5 cent difference that a datacenter has over you. That means on a per kw basis, a datacenter earns $7.3/month. So as long as the cost for the datacenter to produce that kw is less than $87, then in one year the datacenter has an edge over the homeowner.

Not only that, because its datacenter you need to hire security guard and someone to look over it when server is down. More cost..

It really comes down often to how much you value peace and quiet in your home. Also, you really can't scale inside your house xD.

Zawamiya

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Quote from: ASICSPACE on September 21, 2014, 11:50:22 PM

Making ROI is all about electricity costs. Homeowners actually have some advantages over datacenters. They have pre-existing electrical and cooling infrastructure. Datacenters have to pay for that, but they have the luxury of being located in three cent electricity regions.

Let's say there's a 5 cent difference that a datacenter has over you. That means on a per kw basis, a datacenter earns $7.3/month. So as long as the cost for the datacenter to produce that kw is less than $87, then in one year the datacenter has an edge over the homeowner.

Not only that, because its datacenter you need to hire security guard and someone to look over it when server is down. More cost..

elgimpo

sr. member

Activity: 266

Merit: 250

Good read, great job on the free electricity. That cost is what keeps putting me off going back to hardware mining.

cryptomad

sr. member

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Very Informative Thanks For this I will have A good read up

Falkyire

newbie

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The value of sharing your experience which consists of your investment , time , method and setup is simply priceless which would benefit to the community as a whole

Even if we had a great setup, configuration is what unlock the hashing potential it seems , guess i have to study atleast half the forum before starting the mining but still skeptic about joining a mining pool

ASICSPACE

full member

Activity: 121

Merit: 100

Feel free to contact me via email, skype or phone!

Making ROI is all about electricity costs. Homeowners actually have some advantages over datacenters. They have pre-existing electrical and cooling infrastructure. Datacenters have to pay for that, but they have the luxury of being located in three cent electricity regions.

Let's say there's a 5 cent difference that a datacenter has over you. That means on a per kw basis, a datacenter earns $7.3/month. So as long as the cost for the datacenter to produce that kw is less than $87, then in one year the datacenter has an edge over the homeowner.

STT

legendary

Activity: 4102

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Its a business plan Ive heard of before. Like locally they have rigged up street lighting to trail electricity to a nearby manhole cover for a water mains and they placed a whole cannabis farm inside with high power lighting, full feed system. If BTC gear didnt become so old so quick I guess people might do the same, though a live internet link is a bit of a push

johnnyrocket

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Activity: 123

Merit: 104

Quote from: LogicalUnit on September 20, 2014, 11:30:09 PM

This significantly affects my profitability.

HOWEVER, my Antminer is placed in the patch cupboard in the hallway, which I believe is paid for by my apartment's body corporate ie I don't actually pay for it! Lips sealed

That's quite convenient, but probably doesn't scale up very well...

LogicalUnit

sr. member

Activity: 299

Merit: 250

Electricity Consumption

It has been correctly pointed out that I did not include energy costs in my ROI calculations. I have my latest power bill, and here are the details:

Firstly, I pay a supply fee of 75.79 Australian cents per day, tax included. This is fixed.
Secondly, I pay a usage rate of 18.304 Australian cents per kWh, tax included. This is variable.

According to this link an Antminer S1 consumes approximately 407 Watts of power. To be conservative, I'll use a figure of 420W or 0.420kW. My uptime is 150 days.

So to do the maths:

150 days * 24 hours/day * 0.420 kW * 0.18304 dollars/kWh = AUD$1.845/day, or AUD$276.75 total.

This significantly affects my profitability.

HOWEVER, my Antminer is placed in the patch cupboard in the hallway, which I believe is paid for by my apartment's body corporate ie I don't actually pay for it! Lips sealed

johnnyrocket

full member

Activity: 123

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I'm glad to see you earned a return on your S1, although with declining Bitcoin prices that may not be entirely accurate if you include the conversion to/from fiat at the time of purchase and after the returns were earned.

snowcrawl

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Activity: 377

Merit: 250

Home mining in general has been an incredible novelty for the person just getting in with their first piece of mining equipment. The sense of novelty is enough to distract us from the fact that breaking even, no matter how loosely you define it, is the exception to the rule. What you should congratulate yourself for is stopping yourself from buying more mining equipment to plug in. With a finite amount of resources, we simply can't compete with companies in the bitcoin space who are able to use the multiple tools at their disposal to maximize their profits. Since this is a losing game, if you scaled up the size of your investment you could really get yourself into financial trouble. What's needed is a better way to invest in what works. Home mining no longer works well for generating profit. If it ever did, it was for a very short period of time.

kabopar

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Quote from: iron man on September 17, 2014, 05:18:56 AM

how this gonna work?tell me more about it.

If you are asking about co-location, there are already various data centres in the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) that offer co-location services. I don't know how much they charge and if any of them accept Bitcoin miners. It's just a thought that someone could do the maths, rent some warehouse/office space and using the relatively lower electricity costs there for co-location of mining. There are probably places in the world with much lower electricity costs, but that would require shipping your miners to some other country, then retrieving them when the co-location contract runs out or is no longer profitable.

Cheers

iron man

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how this gonna work?tell me more about it.

kabopar

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Quote from: kabopar on September 17, 2014, 01:15:09 AM

Quote from: LogicalUnit on September 15, 2014, 10:26:52 PM

Return On Investment

As of right now, my Antminer S1 has been hashing nonstop for 147 days. It has generated a shade under 1 BTC. That's good enough for ROI!! This marks an important milestone for my case study, as it proves that money can indeed be made from entry-level mining. Hopefully my ROI timeframe will provide a useful yardstick for other investors, who want to know roughly when they will start turning a profit.

While I don't wish to discourage you, assuming that the electricity prices in the ACT are similar to NSW and that you have a 'time of use' meter, the S1 already consumes more in electricity during Peak and Shoulder times than it can theoretically make in BTC. Most of my S1's are gone and the remaining pair are awaiting their upgrade to S3+. Even the S3 is already in 'negative territory' during Peak electricity times (despite some compensation from solar panels). Looks like we need to either co-locate the hardware to some cheaper electricity place, or say goodbye to mining Sad

Cheers

Just looked up some ACT prices, and they are significantly lower than in NSW (Power companies don't want to upset the pollies?!), so you should be still in positive territory (but it may be worth factoring the electricity cost in future difficulty rises). (Maybe someone in the ACT should start a miner co-location business?!)

Cheers

Topic: A case study in entry-level mining (Read 53578 times)