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Topic: Buying mining hardware will never pay off now. (Read 4941 times)

newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
Difficulty is based on how meany nodes are on the network, correct? Growth will slow when miners realize it is unprofitable to mine, at the same time the value of the Bitcoin will go up thanks to increased scarcity.

It seems to me that the Bitcoin was not designed for stability. Oh well, just means you can make a ton of money real fast... but also lose it.

"Never assume malice when it can be explained by incompetence" Heinlein

I doubt if it was "designed" to do any such thing - such are the hazards of exploring unknown territory!

HUGE profits and HUGE losses!
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
My experience with ATI cards is limited, I found Nvidia to be more stable. Obviously I'm going with ATI (Or AMD as it is now) for profit mining and my next upgrade, but those parts won't arrive until sometime next week. Until then all I have is the Nvida cards (3x9800gtx+SLI), so when I'm not playing games I'm letting it hash out.

On a related note, do you think a Bit Miner based on CUDA would boost the Hashrate of Nvidia cards? Or is AMD bitmining the only way?
NVidia is missing a left shift instruction in their shaders which ATI has, so they are 3 or more times slower than ATI.  There won't be any way around that with a different API.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
My experience with ATI cards is limited, I found Nvidia to be more stable. Obviously I'm going with ATI (Or AMD as it is now) for profit mining and my next upgrade, but those parts won't arrive until sometime next week. Until then all I have is the Nvida cards (3x9800gtx+SLI), so when I'm not playing games I'm letting it hash out.

On a related note, do you think a Bit Miner based on CUDA would boost the Hashrate of Nvidia cards? Or is AMD bitmining the only way?

Its all about the cores and shaders...ATI is physically better.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 1
My experience with ATI cards is limited, I found Nvidia to be more stable. Obviously I'm going with ATI (Or AMD as it is now) for profit mining and my next upgrade, but those parts won't arrive until sometime next week. Until then all I have is the Nvida cards (3x9800gtx+SLI), so when I'm not playing games I'm letting it hash out.

On a related note, do you think a Bit Miner based on CUDA would boost the Hashrate of Nvidia cards? Or is AMD bitmining the only way?
full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 100
why kinds nvida cards are you using? nvida sucks compared to ati, i learned this personally. In my personal pc has an nvidia card that cost me 250 bucks i got for gaming before i ever heard the word bitcoin, but only gets 68mhashs when i comes to doing bitcoin mining. ati > nvidia
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
Well, right now I'm running the bit coin miner getting about 100mh/s on 3 Nvida cards. I'm not too concerned about losing money at this point (I'm not responsible for electricity), I'm more interested in getting Bitcoins. When the parts come this week, I'll be up in the 400 to 500 MH/s range using a bitcoin miner that is more economically friendly: but probably still won't be very profitable.

That's not what's important to me, what's impotent to me right now is helping to establish a currency that is something other then the dollar.
The best way to do that is to do business with people that accept bitcoins.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 1
Well, right now I'm running the bit coin miner getting about 100mh/s on 3 Nvida cards. I'm not too concerned about losing money at this point (I'm not responsible for electricity), I'm more interested in getting Bitcoins. When the parts come this week, I'll be up in the 400 to 500 MH/s range using a bitcoin miner that is more economically friendly: but probably still won't be very profitable.

That's not what's important to me, what's impotent to me right now is helping to establish a currency that is something other then the dollar.
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
Being a miner is like being part owner of the Federal Reserve, you just keep taking little sips off the top and eventually you have a fortune.

However unlike the Fed with Bitcoin, all you need is a graphics card and you are part owner of it's Globule Reserve system. It's not quit equality for all, but it's a lot closer.
To make the analogy complete, you have to say that the number of owners of the Fed are doubling every 18 days, as a parallel to the difficulty increase.  So your share of the sip halves every 18 days.  That becomes nothing in about 90 days.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 1
Being a miner is like being part owner of the Federal Reserve, you just keep taking little sips off the top and eventually you have a fortune.

However unlike the Fed with Bitcoin, all you need is a graphics card and you are part owner of it's Globule Reserve system. It's not quit equality for all, but it's a lot closer.
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
Being a recently introduced into the world of Bitcoins, I have no delusions that mining, certainly at this point in the game, will have a short-lived period of profits.  People who do their research and buy "equipment", if you will, appropriately will stand to make some positive gain as long as they are vigilant.  But again, the peak has been reached for mining.


As others have mentioned, this is profitable for all of us because more people are being introduced to Bitcoin and thusly, the bitcoin economy has a better chance of expanding and being adopted (which is already becoming more apparent as the days go by).
Right.  The profitability is greater speculating on bitcoins than mining right now.  I do belive that bitcoins will continue to take off, which is why I bought a bunch of them on the market.  I did buy a miner rig, but before I took into consideration the difficulty growth.
full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 100
Being a recently introduced into the world of Bitcoins, I have no delusions that mining, certainly at this point in the game, will have a short-lived period of profits.  People who do their research and buy "equipment", if you will, appropriately will stand to make some positive gain as long as they are vigilant.  But again, the peak has been reached for mining.


As others have mentioned, this is profitable for all of us because more people are being introduced to Bitcoin and thusly, the bitcoin economy has a better chance of expanding and being adopted (which is already becoming more apparent as the days go by).
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
Difficulty is based on how meany nodes are on the network, correct? Growth will slow when miners realize it is unprofitable to mine, at the same time the value of the Bitcoin will go up thanks to increased scarcity.

It seems to me that the Bitcoin was not designed for stability. Oh well, just means you can make a ton of money real fast... but also lose it.
Difficulty is the nodes multiplied by the average horsepower of the nodes. 

In a perfectly rational market what you say would be true.  But it already isn't profitable, and people are still joining.  I just joined because I bought hardware based upon a bitcoin calculator.  Anyway, will be a long time before every gamer that already has a system has joined the network.  And for them it is free.

It won't be unprofitable to mine in terms of electricity for another 60 days or so (assuming $20/bitcoin, which could go up or down).

So the gamers will still be piling on for at least that long.

All of this assumes that more and more people will be interested in using bitcoins, which seems to be true so far.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 1
Difficulty is based on how meany nodes are on the network, correct? Growth will slow when miners realize it is unprofitable to mine, at the same time the value of the Bitcoin will go up thanks to increased scarcity.

It seems to me that the Bitcoin was not designed for stability. Oh well, just means you can make a ton of money real fast... but also lose it.
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
The rate of growth is getting pretty ridiculous at this point.
Which is the whole problem.  It doubles every 18 days.  Which means your output halves every 18 days.
member
Activity: 300
Merit: 10
The rate of growth is getting pretty ridiculous at this point.
sr. member
Activity: 700
Merit: 250
i wrote in another thread "mining days are over" and still have that opinion,

but look how enthusiastic i was on june 4th:



It's been a wild ride for me these last days since i've learned about bitcoins
I've tried https://www.virwox.com/ but cannot recommend them because their commissions are outrageous

call me crazy but i'd like to try mining with an acer aspire 7552g laptop
with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850

on btcguild

if i make 1btc/day the investment should pay of in about 70 days (not calculating energy)

until the cia prohibits it we are part of something really amazing

good luck again
and have nice day
 Grin
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
I think that people really overstate expenses and understate earnings potential when talking about mining not being profitable

They never take into account these things

#1 not everyone pays as much for power as they do. You pay .25 a kwh for electric, that sucks. A lot of US citizens pay .04 to .08c a kwh

#2 Money spent on equipment isn't "thrown out the window", but instead its a tangible asset that can be resold. Its resell value must be deducted from your initial cost analysis, and deducted from how much you have to make to "break even"

#3 They dont take into consideration "scale". Is buying one video card going to let you retire? No absolutely not. Will 1000? Yeah probably.

#4 They assume the bitcoin market is stagnant to inflationary, meaning the bitcoin will stay the same or go down. This is not a fact. Its not false, but its also not a fact. If u really know where the bitcoins going, then quit with bitcoins and work the stock market with your same magic, because you have a crystal ball the devil gave u when he was clearing out his garage. Wish i did.





Exactly, then they start multiple threads stating the same thing when people discredit them.
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
I think that people really overstate expenses and understate earnings potential when talking about mining not being profitable

They never take into account these things

#1 not everyone pays as much for power as they do. You pay .25 a kwh for electric, that sucks. A lot of US citizens pay .04 to .08c a kwh

#2 Money spent on equipment isn't "thrown out the window", but instead its a tangible asset that can be resold. Its resell value must be deducted from your initial cost analysis, and deducted from how much you have to make to "break even"

#3 They dont take into consideration "scale". Is buying one video card going to let you retire? No absolutely not. Will 1000? Yeah probably.

#4 They assume the bitcoin market is stagnant to inflationary, meaning the bitcoin will stay the same or go down. This is not a fact. Its not false, but its also not a fact. If u really know where the bitcoins going, then quit with bitcoins and work the stock market with your same magic, because you have a crystal ball the devil gave u when he was clearing out his garage. Wish i did.




#1, the power is only about 10% of the cost right now, so that isn't very important.
#2, I assume you can sell for about half the new cost.  Maybe that is too pessimistic.
#3, Scale doesn't matter when talking about profitability, only percent growth matters.  You can just multiply your scalar by the growth factor.  I am saying that the growth is negative.  In which case, a larger scale just means bigger losses.
#4, If bitcoins go up, you will get a better return on just buying them and taking the gain.  Ironically, if bitcoins go way down, miner hardware is a better investment because at least you have some hardware you can sell on ebay.
full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 100
I think that people really overstate expenses and understate earnings potential when talking about mining not being profitable

They never take into account these things

#1 not everyone pays as much for power as they do. You pay .25 a kwh for electric, that sucks. A lot of US citizens pay .04 to .08c a kwh

#2 Money spent on equipment isn't "thrown out the window", but instead its a tangible asset that can be resold. Its resell value must be deducted from your initial cost analysis, and deducted from how much you have to make to "break even"

#3 They dont take into consideration "scale". Is buying one video card going to let you retire? No absolutely not. Will 1000? Yeah probably.

#4 They assume the bitcoin market is stagnant to inflationary, meaning the bitcoin will stay the same or go down. This is not a fact. Its not false, but its also not a fact. If u really know where the bitcoins going, then quit with bitcoins and work the stock market with your same magic, because you have a crystal ball the devil gave u when he was clearing out his garage. Wish i did.



newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
I think the appeal right now, as has been alluded to, is to gamers. I myself was running this rig before I knew about bitcoins. I'm a Radeon fan and already had a 5850 installed, so when I saw I might be able to make a few e-dollars by using it, I gave it a shot. I just ordered a 5830 I'm going to use to mine. So I've only got a $100 investment in mining. If I make that back (which I will, easily) then everything else is pure profit.

I dont think it makes sense for an average joe to buy mining equipment now, but for gamers it's a win-win. We buy the hardware and push it to its limits anyway, so if theres a way to re-coup some of that cost, that's where the appeal is right now.

This is very true, Bitcoin just got a huge surge of newcomers. People like me; right at the point where we are thinking about upgrading our gaming hardware. Looks like my next upgrade is gonna go to ATI this round. I probably will be mining at a loss just to accumulate some Bitcoins for a few months.

Anyone who decided to start mining now to make cash is going to be mining at a loss until the market balances.

I think they'll stay at a loss period. I think "market balance" is a lot lower than it is right now. But thats wild speculation on my part. Not even an educated guess. Of course, I dont think anyone can make a real educated guess since we have no historical reference for something like this.
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