Topic: Bitcoin Arms Race Anxiety... (Read 1521 times)

It is better not to mine if your electricity is over $0.1/kWh. The big miners have electricity less than 0.05/kWh, so you cannot compete with them.

Bitcoin could get addictive ,no doubt about it, but we need to secure our bitcoins for now.

See most bitcoins are owned by some oligarchs or the miners, and are stashed in cold wallets.

We need to earn some too, because we move the economy, by doing transactions and building bitcoin businesses.

OP, I think that your are over the head with all of this. If I was you, I wouldn't invest a penny more into the mining gear. Mining is highly unpredictable and I understand that it gives you an anxiety, that's normal.

So mine until you can and until it gives you profits, but try to get out of it slowly and in the way that you will get the most of it. If this means selling your rigs at the moment, I would sell them.

I think that you were also very ambitious. 100 BTCs was a big number. But you are finding that out by yourself, since you got only to 10 btcs in 18 months.

Good luck to you anyways!

Maybe you can still sell your miners for a decent return? Probably best to do it before the halving though.

Then use the money to buy bitcoins, as this might get you closer to your 100 btc goal much faster!

the difference is , after you reach roi, the miners will generate more bitcoin, in comparison to simply buy them, where unless you invest again you won't have more bitcoin then your initial investment

and eventually something like an S7 is bound to reach roi, with its good efficiency, assuming you have a good electricity too

I see, i think that's too much to find any deals that will ROI in 2-3 months and any longer than that, especially at these electricity cost, you're looking at marginal return after you resell the hardware, which would be critical.

In this case if you bank on the S7 not devaluing, you could mine with it for a bit and then resell it before it lose too much value, but 0.1$+ kWh is really eating into any actual profit.

our rate is somewhat reasonable @ .08 pkh but most machines will push the pkh price to .14 (for higher usage)
Your offer is much appreciated.

Depending on your electricity costs and location, it might be possible to find a miner that could suit your needs. If you need a sounding board to throw ideas back and forth, let me know.

Yes your link and the one above were what I was referring to. Used to have Bitcoin Wisdoms price graph up 24/7.

I just wouldn't mine and call it an investment right now, considering my costs + the stepped up cost after a certain level of usage.
I lucked out with mining, didn't make a bunch of coin but didn't lose money either.
Have been missing it and lurking to see if there are any worthwhile machines.

This one that was linked/referenced several time before on this page
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

Just make sure to edit the difficulty increment value to your estimates and remember that in 9 months~ the reward will be halved, which is not counted on the calculator.

I was hoping someone would post a good link to a btc mining calculator, it's been months since I checked and we all know how long that is in bitcoin years ;-)
Difficulty rises will get ya and where are you planning to plug in 50 miners?
Not in any average home.
You will require some serious access to power or you WILL be burning things down :-(

The first mistake would be looking into S7. Then it would be getting S3 at 200$. Try 50$ per. I'd recommend S5, it would be a good middle ground, S7 are way too expensive. Your electricity cost are actually decent, its not dirty cheap so you still need to be careful but thats better than many around here.

The S5 at the moment can be obtained for fairly cheap, anything over 300$ per is a rip off imo. Try for 200-250$/per.

No 20% difficulty increment is just default from old time. Look here;
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

You could run 2% for a good case scenario, 5% for a worse case scenario, don't forget there's BTC halving happening in 9 months;
http://bitcoinclock.com/

Feel free to run more ideas/numbers by me/us but this should get you started in the right mindset.

Hmm... So, because I'm such a noob (not sarcastic, I really am), can someone give me the straight up figures on why I should buy instead of mine, assuming my electricity rate is .06 per KW/h, and assume that I was going to invest $10k into mining, perhaps Antminer S7's?

I did some calculations assuming I put 10k into S3's... I figured $200 a piece for S3, and the PSU to power it, but this may be slightly on the high end. And I would never be able to run that many, but just for the sake of science...

10k buys me 50x S3's... At 455GH/s x 50 units is 22,750 GH/S with a Power Consumption of about 18,200 KW/H. That's a lotta power, bruh.

So... That's about 5.65 BTC per month... At current difficulty. The only thing I don't know, is a legit number for difficulty increment... But profit-wise, it seems that if you were strictly mining for profit, you'd only be at about $674 first month... But it seems that since the middle of august, difficulty has went from 50 to about 61... So is that 20% difficulty increment on BTCwisdom accurate?

But if you put that same 10k into BTC, and current market value... That's about 40 BTC... Could you ever catch up by mining? An accurate increment percentage seems to be what I'm missing here... My guess is no, or it would take a long time... For those of you who are smarter than me (most of you ) am I going about it the right way? Would mining ever catch up to buying BTC? I increased difficulty from 60 to 80 in the calc, which would probably only take about 3 months... Monthly payout was down to about $300+ a month. It was still 4.24 BTC per month, but if mining for actual profit...

I'm still not wrapping my head around this. Perhaps I just need someone to articulate it better for me. :/

It seems like you could catch up my mining in BTC, then sell your remaining hardware when caught up and make a crap ton of profit... But maybe I'm not seeing something here... I went up to 100 difficulty, estimating that would take about 6 months. Payout was still at monthly 3.4 BTC/month... Like I said, it still seems plausible as far as straight up BTC goes.

I did it. Start few months back with a S3 and got a bunch of S1. Kept reinvesting and getting more and more miners with what it was earning + the little i could put into getting more miners. Now i got a couples of THs worth of old gen miners.

If you're poor and you respect #2, it can be very easy to get into and very lucrative.

I enjoyed mining and was disappointed when my S3s were no longer profitable.
And of course I had to fight the urge not to continue "the arms race" by continually moding/upgrading:
I usually compare that experience with hot-rodding or the first computer I ever built (which ended up being a monster at the time ;-).
I am happy to just be buying them at this point but would like a machine again in the future to tinker with.

If this is not a hobby and you are thinking "pure investment" then sell your machines and buy coin with the proceeds.  

Wow good luck with this OP! 

I looked briefly into mining well over a couple of years ago and ran away screaming. GPU era and before yes, any time after that, hell no. I wonder what the landscape will look like in another five years.

You can probably sell off all of those S3's and make 10 or more BTC from just selling off the equipment. I think it would be more worthwhile to take the money you spend on electricity and spend that to buy some Bitcoin every month. That will probably be better for both you and your mom.

well, you can't mine if you're poor ... because you need to PAY the device (and the electrical bill).
i prefer PAY for bitcoins.  







because i understand this curve : http://bitcoin.sipa.be/
and i have used this calculator : https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Being 'poor' in this case is very subjective term. Op is still far more wealthy that majority of earth's population, he is just not 'wealthy' by US standards.
That is a difference. Currently you can mine only if :
1. You are already rich, and can afford costly equipment.
2. You have free electricity.
3. You don't care about reward and want to try it for fun.