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Topic: If mining BTC isn't profitable like people say -- how are OTHER people doing it? - page 2. (Read 2306 times)

legendary
Activity: 4172
Merit: 8075
'The right to privacy matters'
power cost = king

3 cent power = s-3's make money


s-3's are cheap.

here are my 4 s-3's  using 3 cent power

so I get about 1750gh-1800gh  with 1400 watts but at 3 cents been doing it for 1 year.

so scale it for 100 s-3's at 3 cents or 1000 s-3's at 3 cents

My power max is about 1500 or 1600 watts so I am done adding gear here.

legendary
Activity: 1344
Merit: 1023
Mine at Jonny's Pool
As has been stated, your power costs are the key factor to consider when thinking about purchasing mining hardware.  Even at $0.10 per kWh, you're going to struggle to find a profit (an S5 would expect to net you about $1.80 a day currently).

The ones who make it are the ones who've got access to lots of very cheap power, buy bulk hardware direct from the manufacturer at a discount, pay very little for space, etc.  In other words, the farms.

Home and hobby miners are squeezed out more and more.  For example, last week you could get an S5 directly from Bitmain for about $375 plus shipping.  Today, that same S5 will cost you $400 plus shipping.  If we assume the numbers I used above remain constant (which they don't), that new S5 would take you 222 days of mining to pay for itself.
legendary
Activity: 1456
Merit: 1000
It can be done a lot of the profitable ones are ones who have believed in it and have been buying gear for a while.  All the gear we bought we got a good amount more mining out of it then we thought.  The summer has been low difficulty changes and with BTC on the rise, it's actually quite a good time for miners.

If just starting all going to come down to 2 main things.  One is your electricity price, this can make or break you.  Second is if you have a big import tax/vat this also can just kill some ROI.

But yes it still can be done by what I consider hobby miners.
legendary
Activity: 1036
Merit: 1000
/dev/null
they had direct contact to HW manufacturers, receiving discounts because of bulk orders and mainly bloody cheap electricity and space for rent.

in Europe is almost impossible to start something similar these days legally (paying for electricity), because of this, majority of big operations are in China/US. and even if mining will not be profitable, they can't stop it simply as some small miner with few boxes can..
legendary
Activity: 1414
Merit: 1077
Investing in solar panels? Creating the chips themself?

Why even buy a btc miner if you could actually be losing money -- breaking even I can KINDA understand.. But even then you start to lose money very soon. (unless BTC pops up of course)

The most important aspect to be profitable is cheap electricity and bitcoin price.

Here in the UK for example standard home electricity is about $0.2 - $0.25 kw/h which makes even the Antminer S5 (one of the most efficient miners on the market) unprofitable to run with bitcoin at current price.

In some parts of the world electricity can be as cheap as -$0.05 kw/h in which case its still profitable.

EDIT: You obviously have to factor hardware cost into the equation too.
legendary
Activity: 3206
Merit: 1069
for some is profitable this is obvious, especially for big farm because they have good contract which make their bills very cheap, usually you should look at 0.05 per KW/h to have a good profit, and zero electricity is something abusive..

the only strategy that may work for a random miners with a slightly bad electricity like 0.09 or something, it's selling your gear at some point, before the roi so you can achieve it early and do some profit, than re-buy again and keep the cycle active
hero member
Activity: 532
Merit: 500
Investing in solar panels? Creating the chips themself?

Why even buy a btc miner if you could actually be losing money -- breaking even I can KINDA understand.. But even then you start to lose money very soon. (unless BTC pops up of course)
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