Topic: I hear often that mining is not worth it anymore for newcomers, is this true? (Read 12023 times)

This is the classic "It isn't ROI unless it's ROI in Bitcoin". Since Bitcoin price has floundered in the last 6 months then the whole argument dissolves. Personally I calculate based on fiat. I don't see a resolution to the different views of ROI anytime soon, and the volatile Bitcoin price won't help.

this is  silly.  I have 2 s-3's mining at 2.4 cents a kwatt.  I paid 1.35 btc for them they have earned 2.66 btc.

so according to you I made roi.  well btc was 600usd so 600 x 1.35 = 810 usd  now btc is 240  so 240 x 2.66 = 638.40

so according to you I made roi as I am 1.31btc better off then when I started.

bumpy vump

More profitable spending my time trading at the moment than mining, prove it yourself

These figures are in terms of dollars not in terms of bitcoin. In order to make an accurate representation of your ROI you must calculate how you did in terms of bitcoin

the only time miners did well were during large price runups.  spring 2013  I earned more money in 60 days then the previous 9 months.


Same was true in nov- dec price jump of 2013  those 90 days were very good.

I rather enjoyed little historical perspective here - it appears folks struggled for efficiency and ROI back in the early years. Somehow I have always though that back then miners got it easy mining hundred of coins a day on their personal computers. In reality mining a quarter BTC a day (under $5 / day back in 2011) on $350 AMD HD 6950 pretty much similar to mining with $400 1TH ASIC now days. 

Thanks for resurrecting this old topic - it's educational to say the least :-)

BTC mining is basically dead for small ops, scrypt cloud is ok for now but risky. Honestly just buy, or mine random alt coins and hope you get lucky(x11-x43423423).
(im basically saying just buy)

This should answer it all, i could not say better.

There is no such thing as "online mining". Do you mean to say cloudmining?

There are several different algorithms for altcoins. Some altcoins (PPC, TRC, UNO, MZC, TIT) use SHA-256 just like bitcoin and are compatible with bitcoin mining ASICs.

Scrypt is the second most common algorithm used (Litecoin, Doge and many others). There are also ASICs for Scrypt mining but some (KNC Titan) are troublesome with fast coins. The other algorithms don't yet have ASIC mining but the KNC Titan is supposed to be able to mine ScryptN if they ever release the updated firmware.

And the other altcoin algos; Scrypt Jane, X11, X13, X15, etc., are mineable with CPUs and/or GPUs.

AND then you have your PoS (proof-of-stake) coins that aren't actually mineable although they may have been originally when they were in their PoW (proof-of-work) phase. The most common PoS coins are PRC, NXT and BC.

But the AltCoins mining uses a different miner than Bitcoin mining. Are you speaking about online mining?

There is still money to be made in mining, not only in Bitcoin mining, there's AltCoins too if you want to test your luck.

New miners need to realize that they have to make their hardware profit other ways than just mining.

They also have to realize that they will have to have a regular income.

Don't get into mining then sell all you coin to pay bills; that's the problem with the industry forcing a constant selling pressure.

Miners who leave the game are players who give up on pretty much any game they can't easily win at or whine themselves to victory. #MMOG's

It's no longer an easy game for most since the price and rewards are so low, it's a smart player's game.

Those who do good have free power, very close to or pay the power out of their own pocket and save the coin for future interest.

I got in mining a few months before Mt. Gox crashed and still mine profitably but I have a mining plan.

I also come from Gold mining so my experience on the field serves me well virtually.

For most new miners, I don't recommend it because they have zero relatable experience then complain when price tanks or hardware fails.

Experienced miners can adapt easily because they know what can happen and made provisions for such disasters.

(Look at the person's who's entire mine went up in smoke, he'll keep mining)

Smart miners see it coming and adapt before it does; you have to be at the helm daily and be don't waste time.

If you want to mine for fun then that's the way to look at it... if you're looking for profit, anything above $0.05 power is not really profitable with today's price; well, not by my standards.

I started with $2,500 about 2 years ago and my mine now makes BTC0.5 per week, growing monthly...

Pretty good ROI, all my hardware re-investment now pays for itself.

However, I don't just sit on my ass either, I work hard and constantly look for new opportunities; that's what mining is

The best recommendation I can give you is learn about Gold mining, look at the first season of Gold Rush: Alaska - You can expect similar problems.

It's that Gold Miner life experiences that serves me best in Bitcoin mining.

As long as you realize how much of an asset a Bitcoin miner is, an asset YOU control, you'll do fine...

After all, not many devices you can buy that you can plug in the wall and it starts making money for you 

Just realized after typing this how old the thread is.

Sometimes it's cheaper to buy the BTC, rather than the mining equipment, BTC price 4th July 2011 was just $12.80!!!

When we were mining on GPUs it was easy to make a profit but with ASIC it took me nearly a year to reach ROI, and you need to ask yourself, "is it worth the hassle of keeping it all running?"

I made about 10% on my ASIC investment so I'd have to say playing the rise and fall in BTC price is way easier than mining, these days, we just need the Fed to announce QE4 to see BTC rise again!

Dont do it, it will never ROI. The best way is really to buy BTC...

ohhh you guys were so wrong.

And the free game is Shogun Total War 2 . A good game that I planned to buy in the future anyway.

And as a greater incentive I think that my old video card is broken. I had this surprise an hour ago.

That's a good way to go. I upgraded my graphics card in January, and the one I got happened to be one a good mining card, and I didn't realize that at the time since I wasn't aware of bitcoin. I don't consider that a investment into bitcoin since my desktop is my gaming rig I've built over the last few years. Getting a free game is always great too.

well, you are half right.

Actually I decided to buy for now one 6950 for my gaming needs, but since most of the time I have to spend time on my laptop to study, I will use it for mining. I found a great offer of the 1GB version with a game present, so I think I will most certainly buy it, even if I won't make any profit from mining.

It's not quite over yet.  If someone releases an efficient FPGA design on an affordable board then power costs won't matter at all.  FPGAs consume a lot less power per Mhash than any graphics card available today.  I recall reading on another forum section that an 80Mhash/s design is available and consumes only 10 watts of power, but requires a $600 development board.  40 watts for 320Mhash/s handily beats my 6950 which is about as fast and requires over 200 watts per card.

This however assumes two things: that someone will make publicaly available a cheap FPGA board, and the software to make it work.  If someone gains a huge advantage by employing FPGAs to hash then I don't expect them to cheaply share their knowledge or design.

Well, I guess that my dreams of mining end here then .

Thank you all very much for saving me from taking a bad decision.

Indeed, the last 2 jump's it didn't increase but even dropped.

How long have you been mining? for the millionth time, PRICE DOES NOT MOVE IN RESPONSE TO DIFFICULTY, the only thing that determines the price of BTC, is the people's demand for it.

I've been mining for a while now, but am about to sell most of my hardware (6950s, etc).  Keeping the most efficient PC running as it has paid for itself.  The question for me in regards to whether or not to continue mining was that keeping $1200 of hardware pumping out $5 a day after costs didn't seem like a brilliant idea.  The hardware is likely to depreciate almost as fast as I'm making bitcoins.  Few gamers will care about a 6950 next year.  Counting on a bitcoin's value increasing some time in the future is risky.  Difficulty has increased over 100% in the last few weeks yet the price has actually fallen.

One of my dual 6950 PCs burns 300kWh per month.  Sure it's still profitable, but using so much power for so little return seems like such a waste of resources.

Cheap 6950s on eBay if anyone wants them :-)

Bottom line: I does worth it only if you have good equipment or unlimited free electricity...

To build a rig from scratch, you'll have to put down minimum $300 for peripherals (psu, mobo, ram, cpu, hdd) and then about $200-250 per 6950 (they net around 350mhash). So you're looking at an investment of $500 for 350mhash. That will produce a whopping .25 BTC per day right now. Assuming a steady difficulty and BTC price and free electricity, it would take 133 days to pay back your investment. And then you have price risk, and difficulty risk. In other words, if you want to play with BTC and don't already have the hardware, better to just buy them.

well my plan is to upgrade and build using little to no money. I have seen plenty people getting in a hole then they realise the return is not as good as they expected due to mining downtime. hardware failure etc.

yes I could of made a lot more but I like to limit my risks. Mining is good as long as you don't expect the return to pay for xyz. for any new miners I would say start small and expand for there and don't be greedy. I have seen plenty of people here mass buy then they are not able to make as much as they thought.

Or do not think of how damm hot your house gets when you have 4+ gpu's blowing out 90c around the house etc.

so is mining worth it YES. as long as you consider the above.

There won't be any "scarcity". The supply of bitcoins is almost constant.

And since there's a difficulty change every ~12 days, it will be a lot longer then 100 days. That calculator only uses the current difficulty and the estimated difficulty and uses it in the calculations like it will be the same estimate every time. Currently it's around 15% increase, but we've had enough 50-60% increases before.

Its buying time now.

So yeah for begninners its not an ideal time to start mining.
Buy when they are low and start mining when they are high (or/and the difficuly drops).

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately I have to pay 15 cents for power, that means its not worth it?

I planned to buy 2 cards hd 6970 and this calculator (http://98.200.247.249:81/btc_calc.php) shows that I might be able to still make some profit, even get the return of my investment in 100 days.

this is true if the current price of BTC holds ($15-16) but if the price moves up in response to scarcity resulting from higher difficulty, then BTC mining will be potentially as profitable as it has been up until now.  personally i believe btc are way undervalued.  but, if i am right, then it might be simpler at this time just to speculate by buying up btc.

No I don't think you are late. However, at this point you have to have good rig design + cheap electricity.

If your electricity is higher than 10c/kwh then definitely don't even bother mining. You'll probably want a rate around 6-7c/kwh.

You'll also have to do some research into which setup is able to convert electricity into hashes at a high efficiency. Also factoring in cost of equipment.

I just discovered Bitcoins a short while ago, and I would like to able to mine a little too.

I am not thinking about farms, just to upgrade my PC and mine, and try to earn back the money from my investment and maybe get a little profit. Is this realistic right now, or truly I am too late to start mining?