Hi everyone,
I'm new here. My name is Michael and I'm from New Zealand.
I've been reading this thread with great interest as I'm also keen on the idea of starting mining for coin.
I should point out that I have only a rudimentary knowledge of cryptocurrencies, so please excuse me if I make a dumb remark or ask a question others all know the answers too.
Am I right in thinking the following ...
There are two basic types of coin, SHA256 and scrypt ?
The hardware used to mine SHA256 coins cannot be used to mine scrypt coins ? Antminer etc
The hardware used to mine scrypt coins can also be used to mine SHA256 coins ? GPU's
Living down here in the South Pacific, it can be difficult to get hold of hardware at reasonable prices. For example I see prices quoted for GPU's in USD that I can only dream about. The newer more powerful cards are marketed as gamer cards and are sold at premium prices ... a Radeon R9 290X 5GB card sells here for USD$720 !
I've watched a number of how to videos and read a few too. It seems to me that a 4 x R9 280X rig with a 1200 watt PSU should be mining around 1 litecoin per day or 0.02 bitcoin ... does that sound correct ?
I could assemble a rig like that for around USD$2800 ... power is about USD$0.20 per kilowatt hour. If the prices I'm seeing for litecoin at USD$18.50 and bitcoin at USD$716.00 are correct, then mining can be profitable over the course of a year.
Am I correct or barking up the wrong tree ?
All thoughts and comments appreciated
MichaelNZ
Welcome Michael.
Apart from SHA256 and scrypt based coins, they are many others like SHA3, PoS (Proof-of-stake), PoW (Proof of burn), etc.
You can use CPU/GPU to mine SHA256 and scrypt based coins.
ASIC is used to describe those specially designed hardware for mining.
The Antminer or other existing ASICs are specially designed to do SHA256 computations.
We will have some scrypt ASICs as well soon.
For example:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/lightningasic-la100m100mhs-scrypt-miner-usd1999-la1ths-usd1750shipped-out-421921Don't forget to take the difficulty adjustment into your profit calculation.
Bitcoin Profit calculator:
http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculatorLitecoin Profit calculator:
http://bitcoinwisdom.com/litecoin/calculator