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Topic: Best advice for someone wanting to get serious about mining alt coins? (Read 2184 times)

legendary
Activity: 2506
Merit: 1010
I don't really have faith in scypt and litecoin yet

You don't have to ... as every litecoin can be converted to bitcoin (or fiat) after it is mined.

But it sounds more like you are interested in speculating (paying for the electricity out of pocket and holding the coins you mined) than you are in just whatever profit can come from selling the coins as they are mined and profiting from the revenue minus expenses just from that alone.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
I was actually looking at only SHA-based algorithms, because I don't really have faith in scypt and litecoin yet (too easy for botnets to significantly influence market). Hm, thank you for the information, both of you. I didn't really consider that if people move away from Bitcoin it's still as viable, and I had no clue about that profitability website. PPCoin has also caught my eye, I've been considering going that route too
legendary
Activity: 2352
Merit: 1064
Bitcoin is antisemitic
keep an eye here if you do it:
http://dustcoin.com/mining

Profitability changes hugely by the day
legendary
Activity: 2506
Merit: 1010
Worth it at all?

That's like asking what the S&P index will be next year.  Nobody knows.

Mining is a form of speculation.  A miner is speculating on the two unknowns -- the future exchange rate and the future difficulty level. The profitability can fluctuate but generally reverts to roughly break-even.  So most miners who see gains are those who mined and saved their proceeds and then after a run-up sell the coins at a nice profit   This really is not much different from speculating on the exchange rate.   In fact, those who simply bought coins instead of buying mining hardware end up with more coins at the end than the miners do -- in most circumstances.   If you are needing to pay electricity from your mining proceeds, then you won't have many coins left and if there is a rise in the exchange rate you will not really benefit much from that.

Now if the exchange rate drops, miners generally do better than coin speculators on a "per dollar invested" comparison.    But then again, that just means miners lost a lower amount (in USD terms) than did speculators of the coin.

But seriously, there are like tens of thousands of GPUs getting taken offline from Bitcoin mining.  Many of those will switch to Litecoin -- and since many of those rigs have already been fully paid off thanks to Bitcoin mining revenues, the operators would be happy to mine at a break-even level, or at a loss even with the anticipation that the exchange rate for the alt will rise in value.   In other words, if you are investing in hardware you are having to compete with others who essentially see their hardware investment cost as being "zero".     So you probably don't want to do anything unless you have some other purpose for the hardware you would be acquiring.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
I have enough bitcoins I mined a long time ago that I am OK with checking out some of the more interesting altcoins. I've traditionally used my workstation to mine, but I decided maybe it's better to invest in a dedicated rig.

What is your best advice for someone wanting to get into mining alt coins? Worth it at all? Any hardware recommendations? I know ASICs are coming out on the Bitcoin network, but I wonder if people will use them for altcoins much as well
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