Topic: Is it too late to get in the game? (Read 1820 times)

Awesome setup, very impressive indeed

It's too late too start mining. Don't waste your money! By the time you get your mining machines the hash rate will be so high that it wouldn't be profitable to mine.Look up the chart for how fast the hash rate is increasing http://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate

no its never too late to get in the game. The price will fluctuate a little but soon the price will be going up because there will be less and less bitcoins coming into circulation.
now is probably the best time to get in the game.

Hello 5atthebeach,

Like many others I just started with all this about the end of may. Mining Litecoins at a pool with my single hd 6970 was producing about 0.75 Litecoins (LTC) per day. During the next week I read as much as I could and went from the single HD 6970 to 2 dedicated GPU mining rigs consisting of 6 HD 7950's total, running headless (no monitor) on BAMT (specialized free operating system for coin mining). This modest 2 rig setup mines scrypt coins like LTC at about 4mh/s. Each of the 6 hd 7950's also came with game bundles as a promotion, which I sold on eBay (all but 1 that I kept for myself.) The game promotion is coming to and end but it can significantly reduce the cost of the cards if sold.

I have yet to mine a single Bitcoin but I have traded other coins for Bitcoin on the exchanges. If I were to trade all the other coins I have mined in the last month for Bitcoin today, they would be worth about 8 Bitcoin. In other words my first full month has (theoretically) made about 22% ROI not counting the ~$60.00 increase to my power bill. I am fortunate to have cheap power here @ $.05kw/h.

As mentioned in the 1st reply to this thread, ALT coins can be a great way to get into BTC while learning about the different coins and how the exchanges work along the way.

Only having low to moderate computer knowledge made it a bit of a challenge along the way and I would have never succeeded if it weren't for the excellent guides readily provided by others. That being said I'll try and post some links that I found/find useful.

Consolidated Litecoin Mining Guide for 5xxx, 6xxx, and 7xxx GPUs:   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=1f8c11f1558f2829cd4d6d71220b2f9d&topic=117221.0

Bitcoin Mining Rigs | How to Build a Litecoin or Bitcoin Mining Rig:    http://www.coinminingrigs.com/

Litecoin BAMT - Easy USB bootable mining Linux distro:    https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,2924.0.html

Manotechnology: CGWatcher, a GUI/monitor for CGMiner and BFGMiner:    http://manotechnology.blogspot.com/p/cgwatcher.html

http://coinmarketcap.com

http://www.coinchoose.com

http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

https://btc-e.com

https://www.cryptsy.com

https://coinbase.com

Anyway hope that is of some help. It's definitely not too late.

OK that's my first post, hopefully it will qualify me for parole in a few hours

very nice set-up up there ^ 

Very nice one!!

Trading BTC and LTC...how and where do you buy/sell the currency/stock?

When you see anyone selling their ASIC or FPGA or Jalapeno USB miner, you must ask yourself WHY they are selling it.

If they were making any type of reasonable profit they'd let it ride.

I'm kinda late to the Crypto-currency game, but I was able to work eBay for some really good deals on GPUs.

CGminer has been an EXTREME pain in the butt for me and it still won't work right, and I have stopped mining BitCoins because of the difficulty.  It is NOT easy to set up and get running!  The only miner I have ever seen work right is BitMinter, and that's for BTC only.

I'm looking at going one of 2 ways:

1. Mine altcoins and trade for BTC and sell them to exchanges and get $CASH$ for them.

2. Stop mining altogether, build myself an awesome gaming PC from some of the parts, sell the rest on eBay, and currency trade various coins as an investment.  I have played the stock market a little, and I notice that crypto-currency trading is quite arbitrary, the prices seem to rise and fall with few outside factors influencing them.  Although I know that in the past few weeks alone I could have made some nice money just buying and selling LiteCoins.

Indeed I believe you are a little bit late to earn anything from a home project, regardless there is an abundance of things you could do for a bit of fun whilst earning a small amount

So I am wondering the same thing being new to the game... Some of the best advice I have is to diversify... meaning buy some coins as well as purchase a rig. Because I am not 100% confident in building my own, I am leaning towards getting the Mercury from KnC... BFL has a seriously bad rap here on the forum, and even though they claim they are sending out 300+ a day, it just doesn't seem to be trickling down here. My two cents...

That is one badass usb mining rig.

spend at least two months learning before spending any money.

you will learn a LOT and wind up making a lot of cash.

be frugal and be cautious.

Anything but Bitcoin is an alternative crypto currency. Altcoin is a portmanteau of alternative coin.

They all derived from Bitcoin so everything else is an altcoin.

Litecoin just happens to have better traction so is therefore referred to as Litecoin bit it is also an altcoin.

I'm just wondering why bitcoin & litecoin are always referred as bitcoin & litecoin and everything else is called an "altcoin".

Also, I looked at that list on coinchoose and clicked through to one of the new altcoins. I then clicked a link to do with the block number (or something) and it took me through to the litecoin blockchain.

So it looked like it was piggy-backing off litecoin tech?

Litecoin is more of an spinoff than Altcoins like PPCoin or Primecoin that try to add a real advantage.
Okey Litecoin has scrypt, at least ot's not a 100% copy.

There is no true or not-true crypto currencies. There is just differences that make you prefer one or another.

So are Bitcoin & Litecoin the only true crypto currencies right now and everything else is a spin-off?

If you aim to make a GPU mining rig, here are some useful links :

http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/
It is always good to know the evolution of the price of bitcoin. You can estimate the time for buying or selling them.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
It contain all the data concerning the hardware. The mining Hash Rate (speed) is in Mhash/s for SHA256 while the scrypt is in Khash/s. The numbers for scrypt are about the same (a bit less) as SHA256 so if it say 200 Mhash/s, you can convert to 180-200 Khash/s. Only GPU can do all algorithm.

http://coinchoose.com/
The best comparator for altcoins. As you can see, some altcoins can be 4 times more profitable than bitcoins but only for a while.

https://www.cryptsy.com/
On this place you can easily exchange all altcoins for bitcoins or litecoins.

https://inputs.io/wallet
An online wallet for bitcoins.

https://just-dice.com/
Gamble your bitcoins for immediate profit or invest them in the bankroll.

Have fun.

I would be very pessimistic about the future value you can extract from any mining rig, even an ASIC one - you can't just linearly extrapolate.

Given that you want a father-son project I recommend building a computer with a GPU that can be used for gaming and mining with it when it is not gaming.  It won't make you rich, in fact it could end up costing you after power, but unlike an asic miner it has alternative utility.  Join a mining pool and you will start collecting a small pile of btc.

My son is looking for a computer right now for gaming...maybe we should consider this when buying a computer...what should I look for in a PC other than what he will be already looking for in a gaming PC?