I am prepared to invest my time and plenty of money in buying a mining PC, and maybe buy some coins, but I want to make sure that there is a chance I might get the money back from my investment, and the best way to make sure is to ask if you personally held some dollars or euros in your hand after changing some BTC's obtained from mining.
I already asked a similar question in the newbie zone, and I got a yes answer, but I am still not totally convinced. I want to be sure that some people won something before placing my orders.
In fact, it's quite easy to sell BTC mined by yourself, since most who believe in Bitcoin think buying is better choice than mining.
You're about to invest your money ('real' currency), then you'd better think for a while about risks you'll take.
I'm currently running dozens of rigs (equipped with HD 6990) which were assembled last month, and I think my advices are useful to you:
1. Do not buy cheap hardwares to save money. If your hardware get damaged, what's you lose will not only be the price of your damaged hardware, but also that of opportunity (your mining rig is broken, so you have no BTC income before you repair your rig(s)...)
2. Do not calculate your possible 'profit' by peak performance of rig's GPU. A discount of 10% is almost certain.
3. Do not forget to think about accelerating difficulty. Your rigs might well mine only 0.5 BTC next month while they can mine 1 BTC right now.
4. Do not undermine the difficulty and troublesome of fulfilling the need of electricity ... 10 Rigs perhaps need a power of 12,000w!
5. Do not use Windows as mining platform. Windows is vulnerable and unstable.
6. Do not forecast BTC exchange rate too optimistically, remember, pessimism sometimes protects you.
7. Do not expect mining pools are stable, they are in fact unstable; so do not naively assume they are stable and do not calculate your future profit based on false fact.
8. Do not assume your wallets are safe... Once you have more than 10 BTC, you'll face entire different situation than you only have 0.01 BTC in your wallet.
9. Do not forget you're merely a human being, you need rest, sleep, you cannot be alert all the time, you'll make mistaks... which might well have a huge impact on your future income...
10. Do not sell BTC too soon or too late. This last advice is ambiguous but useful, since the decision depends on your faith on Bitcoin system.
Good luck.
You can contact me on gtalk:
[email protected]Nakowa [1CaqVVrkoPetMVQJivBs14JKqdX8w2rBHG