Topic: If you're thinking buying mining hardware, read this first - page 13. (Read 92715 times)

I think Bitcoin will be more of a niche, like Esperanto. A hundred years ago, many people thought that Esperanto might one day be used by most of the world's people. However, it ended up being of the order of a million fluent speakers.

Suppose there are a million people using Bitcoin. That's an average of 21 coins each. They won't be using Bitcoin for all their purchases. Let's say they turn over 10% of their coins each week, and buy $100 worth of stuff using those 2.1 coins. That values each bitcoin at $47.62.

One thing is for sure though: five years from now, each bitcoin will either be worth much more than now, or will be worth nothing.

If the goal is to up the GDP, then hardware is the way to go.
And s/he'll still be rich if a coin goes up to a few hundred thousand dollars each, perhaps not as rich as he could be by buying coins instead, but rich none the less.

21 million bitcoins. 7 billion people. We'll all be doing business in pico-bitcoins and one coin will be a fortune.

Unless you believe there's a realistic chance that BTC value could significantly drop, and you want something that will retain some value left over if BTC value does significantly drop.

Even if this was true, you'd still be better off trading your USD for BTC directly rather than investing in mining hardware that will just depreciate on you.

Hundred thousand dollar per bitcoin?! Dang..I dunno I guess that is possible but I have some doubts it will get that high in my life time..I pray that I am proven wrong.

Well, concidering a single bitcoin will be worth thousands, or even hundred of thousands of dollars in the future I think you should buy all the rigs you can find and mine as much as possible.
Best case scenario you'll be rich.
Worst case, you'll be poor, but you'll help the GDP of your current country. 

Yup. Though I'm meaning something very different to what you mean. Regardless, any chance we could have the "Vladimir is the Wizard of Oz, pulling all the strings" thread in one place?

I agree, in my opinion he's more hot air than anything close to what he's trying to project to the community. Jus like his random posts of capacity and selling out quickly. If it was that easy
others with the resources would have been flocking here much sooner. But point is, it annoys the hell out of me to see these type of figures polluting the community with disinformation or pulling things out of their context.

I very much doubt Vladimir is "that big" or that he can really discourage the majority of new wannabee miners.

Also, to people who aren't running your dedicated rigs in a large space with open airflow and/or in a climate controlled space.

You're going to experience instances of hardware failure that are higher than average.

Worst case scenario (in my experience with hardware) the Power Supply gets affected by the heat first and dosen't just die in one fell swoop, but slowly starts to fluctuate voltage outputs high and low where it shouldn't be.

Not only can this be incredibly difficult to diagnose, but it can slowly degrade your video card to the point where even when you pull it out and put it in a new system, it'll still have rendering errors.

If you're going to go (past a certain point), go all out. IMHO

Meh... I don't think it matters.  If we get more miners, great.  If we don't, mining will be profitable and established players will expand their capacity.  Either way, the network is secured.

I don't think the post was to completely say its pointless to mine, in fact this is the wrong message to send as the network needs miners to work, just don't run down the shops thinking these cards will get you rich quick or at all but the return on investment will be slow or not at all depending on operational costs. But if you have some mining capable hardware why not mine while its on contributing to the network and getting a little something out of it.  

I think there is a magic formula to calculate price per mhash based on power consumption / initial purchase cost and each person should do so before raiding the electronics store.

imo buying the 5870/5970/6990 and running it even in a college dorm/office leaves you with 2 problems ignoring the cost of electricity

1) heat
2) noise these things can get bloody noisy, and in fact can become an audible pain in the butt. i'm sure my work colleagues would not appreciate a mining rig under my desk running all day.

However for the more extreme of us and where this blurs between passion and hobby, I'm currently looking at mining using oil based cooling solution, however that ain't cheap either in fact to have a real benefit to offset cooling costs you need to have a large number of cards immersed in the same solution, but is supposedly more efficient than air based cooling although to mine through a hot summer you will still need a good radiator/heat exchanger.

The ultimate goal, is low watt, high hash, low noise, low temps, i have yet to see the solution for all these components.

If ~350W is really the full system draw at the socket then at standard US rates you're looking at ~$60/month.

Wrong. 5970 system shows for me ~350W power consumption cause I tried to be the smart half in the relationship between electricity bill-my wallet.

Depends on your electricity costs.  At full load a 5970 system will probably end up pulling ~500W from the socket (remember that PSUs are not 100% efficient).  During the summer, and taking into account home AC and the second watt problem, at $0.12/kWh you're looking at $86 a month.

As a college student, I pay no electricity bills living on campus, therefore all of those points are moot. Over the past month I have broken even on my two 5870s, which I can easily sell back on eBay if I need the cash. From here on out running my PC 24/7 is pure profit for me, regardless of if I make 1 BTC per day or 10 BTC per day.

Bitcoin mining should NEVER be seen as a viable source of income, but if you can make it slightly profitable, it might pay for your lunch once a week. That's good enough for me, but people with grand schemes of making tons of money mining have missed the boat completely at this point. Personally I believe the BTC/USD bubble will pop soon as well, as soon as people realize that there aren't that many advantages to using this currency.

if 5870 costs 20$ than 5970 would cost 60$, but nowhere near 100.

Sure.  I had a 5970 or 6990 in mind when I wrote that and I was taking into account the second watt problem that vlad mentioned.

There are plenty of places in the US where running a machine with a single 5870 at full tilt 24/7 will only cost you $20/month.