Topic: I want to jump on board! Just not sure which route is best to go? (Read 929 times)

For the time being BTC mining has left the hands of the basic man and migrated to the big commercial endeavors.  Hopefully by summer of 2014 there will be more reasonable equipment options where a normal person spending $300 or so could have some meaningful contribution and maybe a small profit.

LTC mining is profitable at this moment because LTC shot up from $2 to $34, but this was done on relatively small volume.  There are few people in the LTC who alone could have driven up that price (just from their BTC profits).  I mine LTC currently, but I do have an expectation that it could very easily fall back to $2 per coin or even less.  If you're tech capable then you can build a LTC rig and mine with it.  Problem is all the video cards world wide appear to be sold-out (not even joking about this).  It will be about 2-4 weeks before restocks and still the price will be high.  If you don't actively sell the LTC at the high price you might be holding a $2500 mining rig and 25 LTC worth $2.

Given these 2 constraints, I would just buy the coins.  You could always use the coins to purchase the mining equipment (oh my god, use the currency as....wait for it.... currency!) 

The ATM person is on here somewhere, selling shares for .5 btc, promised return of at least .01/week so 500 weeks to break even assuming they turn low profit. more if they turn more.
They are local to me so very nice venture for me to setup, buy 4-5 shares and forget about them for a while.

Invest/return in BTC is risky.. you may invest 2500usd worth of btc and it drops and you never make it back. or it could increase and you make 3-4X..

honestly the best you will get for 2k usd is a 2500kh scrypt mining rig use the relevant calculators to see how much that will get you a day if you need advice on anything shoot me a pm

That amount of money is not enough to get you any decent hardware. Just buy bitcoin.

BFL has a bad reputation, and their customer service is still cr@p.  3wks+ to respond to any support/warranty questions, 1day to respond to new sales questions.  Horrible.  Cost per gh is also pretty high, so you can probably forget about ROI.

IMO, ltc mining is the most profitable at your investment level right now, since the hardware is dual-use.

Some will say that at your stage, you're better off buying BTC, then spending time to learn more about cryptocurrencies.  When you're ready to jump into mining, your 1btc will still be 1btc, and you can use that to buy mining hardware.

takagari thanks for the feedback on your ventures! I need to look into something like that for myself!

I'm in the same boat as you, looking to invest the same 2000-2500 in the new year
Luckily a local place is taking investors on for an ATM, which I'm very seriously considering, local, meet them in person, etc, and returns could get rather large.

Every time I look into buying a mining rig, it seems by the time they launch/you get it, your out of money and barely break even.

Buying into cloud hasing etc. seems like a risk as well

Short answer.
You can't do anything with $2000 next to a diff so high!
1. Cex.io and buy Gh
2. Buy bitcoins and wait for value to go up
3. Save some more money and buy 2TH from Black arrows

Forget about bfl!
25gh or even 50gh can't earn you anything serius.

Diff is so high that withot 100gh for start, don't even think about trying to mine.

2Th black arrow late februar shipping is your best chance to get your ass on this ship!

I've read plenty on the BFL singles, they like to burn up, run hot, they came with shoddy power supplies, and a lot more than I could possibly recall or list in once place. There are good things about them too, but most people here won't ever mention that. If you read the forum for a while you might find that BFL is taboo here, so you really never know if you are getting an unbiased opinion or not.

You can't buy GPUs if you wanted to right now. Hopefully that tells you something, and maybe your particular situation is different than mine 

That's about the most truth I've heard on here so far! Thanks pontiac! Has anyone heard about the Butterfly Labs 25gh/s not performing at that rate? I'm leaning more towards putting about 3 video cards together. Thoughts?

You are wrong. There are only so many ways to mine, its on the same skill level as forwarding ports, setting up a ftp server, installing drivers... Basic stuff, as in I can get LMGTFY and really make you look lazy.

Now what you see are the hundreds of users so blind that they believe their way of mining is the only way, like philipma. That has nothing to do with the technological side of BTC, but more researching and finding what best to invest in. If someone finds something good, you think they will share it? No, you need to find it, otherwise you get nothing but spams from users trying to make a dollar a day (1gh/s = $1 day at current rates)

If you follow any advice make this it, never trust what anyone says and always do your own research.

you want to know the truth?

step 1) get a job
step 2) get a paycheck
step 3) go to localbitcoins.com
step 4) wait patiently until you either get rich or lose it all

Tech savy with your run of the mill computer... not connecting to a mass of computers to share your GPU for a chance at getting a percentage of shares for bitcoins. New to me. Everywhere you turn one person says this and one person says that. That's true of most forums but I haven't found any straightforward here's what you do to mine bitcoin. Just looking for some specifics on WHAT TO DO! A method of sorts. A decent setup...... Just gathering intel =)

And that is exactly why I say you'd be stupid to listen to any advice you get here.

Please realize that this is a long explanation and do not let people filled with anger such as  pontiacg5 sway you.

 

okay   do this slowly do not put in 2k.  

 join cex.io  

 just buy 1gh

 I get a free 3 % commission if you use the link below.

Why do I say this well I would make about 1 dollar a week.  btu that is not why as you can join them without using my referral link.

You need to understand BTC world with a cheap investment to start.  

 Not a big high end 2k 4k 5k move.

 1gh of hash at cex.io is not cheap  it is about 75 bucks .  but the value is very important. due to the extra benefits offered.  notice the attack on my carefully designed explanation done by the other member below.  see that he insulted my advice without waiting for the longer writing required to explain why you really want a small account in cex.io

okay if  you join cex.io spending about 75 usd in btc to get 1gh of hash.  you get the ability to use the largest pool in the world to mine

 BTC
NMC
DEV
ITX  coins.

DEV and ITX coins are not worth much but  if you let them sit for a month that do get bigger.
 NMC are about 1 usd  and cex.io  will let you directly trade your nmc into btc.

Let me explain  why you want to point your in house  miners at  big pool.  the bigger the pool the shorter the  bad luck streaks .  you earn consistent..  

  I have 6gh in purchased hash on cex.io  I have 1.4 referral hash from people that read  posts I write explaining the benefits of cex.io.  
Lastly I point 20 to 40 gh  from my in home miners at cex.io.  
the  fees are tiny I get bonus nmc and I can convert the nmc to btc right on the same site.  I then convert  the btc to more hash on the site

  my grand total of hash is 6 + 1.4 + 25 =  32.4 today..   once a month sell some of the on site hash for btc transfer to coinbase and convert to usd.

While I realize many will tell you mining is a gear thing it is not a gear thing.

   it is a larger game then my knc miner does 600gh hash  and spends just 600 watts to do it.   
 but if you can get a knc miner to do that for under 6k usd I will buy it.
if you can get better gear at good price points buy it.
many more important things then getting a good deal on a good piece of gear.
 1) get it fast
 2) trade up hash power and pull out some cash.
 3) all the gear gets out dated fast  so you need to be able to sell slower gear and buy better gear.
 4)



 

For someone so tech savy you are asking a lot of silly questions.

No, it is not feasible to mine both BTC and LTC with the same hardware any more. Nobody is going to tell you where to spend your money, and to be honest you'd be stupid to listen to that advice anyway. Your situation is unique, so you need to do your own research to decide if it's a worthwhile profitable venture or not.

So I'm a newbie and I'm looking into getting into bitcoining and litecoining. From what I've heard litecoin is more profitable since it's like bitcoin jr right now. (That's how I've heard it put) So with that being said I'm going to have a maximum of $2000 to invest at the first of the year and I'm curious which is the best way to go? First things first.... Do I need a dedicated machine for each bitcoin and litecoin mining? Or if I was to get a butterfly labs rig that could handle 25gh/s for $1249 could I share that between mining for each application? My guess is no! Please guide me in this direction. I'm basing my funds to use on current technology not what they may have next year. Also is it really that easy to hook a 25Gh/s bitcoin miner to a new computer and run the miner program connecting to a pool and let it do it's thing? Also another question I have is do you put all your nuts in one basket by only dedicating your computer to one pool or do you run multiple pools? I can do my research on who the best one's are I'm just curious on so many things. Please do your best to guide me on this subject as I'm very tech savy with pc's and hardware but with this mining is NEW to me!!! One other thought I've seen so many of these rigs where people are using multiple video cards to mine. Why is this the best way to mine? Or is this not all it's cracked up to be? Seems to me 3 or 6 or 9 video cards all running parallel at like 685Mh/s is nothing compared to a Butterfly labs 25Gh/s....... Clarity requested please!