Topic: How profitable is GPU mining? Recovering hardware cost seems take a long time! (Read 1244 times)

i initialmined a few coins for low difficulties but found that to be cumbersome, and lots of times the potential for installing a trojan outweighs a coin's worth.

i mine as a business on top of multiple jobs and school.  i realize that a lot of people speculate and lots of money is made on daytrading.  however, I don't have the time to read the tea leaves and i don't daytrade.  I chose to mine rather than to buy cryptos with my money because i treat mining as a passive income generator:  if i build a stable system, and pick a stable pool, it makes me money without me having to do anything.  passive income buys me time, which i cherish more than the fruits of daytrading.

right now the only thing i'm holding earnestly is bitcoin.  i'm thinking longer term so i feel most of the other coins are too risky and will not survive.  e.g. all scryptcoins are/will be vulnerable to 51% attacks:  there are too many of them and scrypt resources have been spread thin.  bitcoin is displaying antifragility.  

for buying hardware, i only buy at prices with realistic break-evens.  i can't buy 280x for $400 (800khash btw, so reconsider splurging for 290).  i'll wait for a rainy day when someone needs cash to pay their rent.  

again, what is your investment strategy?  if you're looking at prices now, then are you selling for dollars immediately?  I have no idea what bitcoin will be worth in 2024; it could be lots or nothing.  but i think in 10 years, a few thousand dollars sunk into some computer hardware today won't have negatively affected my life.  

So, are you mining and "holding" the currencies you have mined? The fluctuations in currencies seem so high, when you sell/buy them makes big difference on the profit.

I actually started out mining using single 2-3 year old GPU I had for gaming in Jan. 2014. There was one point in Jan/Feb it seemed like I was making $5 to $7 in profit (after electricity cost) with that single GPU. Thats when I started to get really excited about possible GPU mining in the future. However, since then recent prices+difficulty is putting me at $0.60 in profit with same card I am hoping it will get better.

Difficulty of scrypt coins go up and down quite frequently, it's not an exponential rise like Bitcoin. LTC difficulty is around the same, or close to it, as I remember it 3 months ago.

The main thing that's changed is BTC value has went down, it was $800-900 back then, so break even was a lot sooner.

I'm guessing BTC value wil go up so you'll probably end up covering your costs much sooner than 240 days.  The nice thing about GPUs unlike ASICs is they aren't a paperweight if the entire market goes south, still worth at least 60-70% of the purchase price to gamers, and newer GPUs aren't coming until late 2014, early 2015. Very low risk I'd say.

electricity cost also have a bigger impact on short term investors than someone with a long term strategy, and how optimistic you are about the future value of cryptocurrencies. 

don't forget to account for electricity cost
if you live in a place with expensive electricity, fa' get about it

in january, GPU mining was profitable for me after 110 days.  

GPU mining in november when i started was profitable after 90 days.

you need to control your costs. buy your cards strategically and at better prices.

You also haven't discussed what your investment strategy will be.  I am looking to break even on hardware fast, and then hold for a long term (10+ year) investment.  my outlook is different from someone who would invest for short term profit.  your investment strategy changes how you interpret the breakeven point.

I think if i was just starting out, i wouldn't spend that much money with a 240-365 day breakeven.  in 365 days the market will be completely different than it is now.  hell, march doesn't even resemble january.  doing a cryptomarket forecast that looks a year in the future will need to account for new GPU tech, new currencies, new regulations, changing geopolitics and the emergence of ASIC miners.  that's just for starters.

however, everyone is in a different financial state and we all have different investment goals.  whether you should mine or not is dependent on a lot of factors.  honestly i would only use money i had in hand (i.e. no credit), and only use money i could afford to lose.  

So I have been seriously considering getting to a GPU mining rig for alternate currencies like DOGE, VERT, or LTC. Honestly, I know there a lot of ALT coin miner and I bet they wouldn't be mining unless they actually made some $$$.

I have running number and it seems like it would take at least 240 days to 365 days (1 year)+ to recoup the hardware costs. Seems like it would take till the 2nd year to actually start making any money. However, difficulty of all the coins should be going up by then and reducing profits?

How profitable is GPU mining? Are you guys making any money mining on Alt Currencies on GPUs?



Note for my calculations I was estimated 5,600 Kh/s with 7* R9 290 @ 800 kh/s with cost of $4,700 for hardware.

Reference:
http://bitcoinwisdom.com/litecoin/calculator
http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/dogecoin-mining-calculator/?h=5600&p=2500&pc=0.12&pf=0.00&d=1169.58745977&r=250000.00000000&er=0.00000162&btcer=686.05000000&hc=4700