Topic: Is it worth buying equipment for $5k or so? (Read 3931 times)

Your electricity is cheap enough you can make some money with used miners if you power is really USD $.0425/KWh.  Try to buy something with a decent efficiency and your good.  You could probably buy around 14 Antminer S3's with $1000 to try it out.  Should ROI in about 4 months, if you can handle the noise and the heat buy more miners till you trip your main breaker, then start replacing the older miners with newer ones to increase your hashrate with the same power.

Most of the units aren't profitable anymore and could potentially be damaged and may have a poor performance compared to the newest one on the market.

I would buy used EQ from ebay or similar instead to be sure that I get the right stuff.

Best way is to buy used and efficient miners for a cheaper price and faster shipping.

Some companies delay the shipment or don't ship at all. This can affect your ROI opportunity. Even if you have free electricity, if the company don't ship hardware or ship faulty ones, you won't be able to ROI.

Well some apartments have free electricity -- then it would be no discussion whatsoever, just set up the biggest fucking farm you can afford and move out

Unfourtonatley I live in an apartment so that will be hard. I like your thinking "Find some way to sabotage some large mines"

These people are all correct, entertainment, do it for the community, as a hobby, to learn more because you learn by doing.

At the price of BTC it is a losing proposition to pay retail for miners - over $400 for an S5 at 1100 G to be delivered. One miner.
$1000,00 power bills to consider depending on your actual rate.
If you are not doing it for the above reasons and have average pricing for power etc, you will not make a profit.

I do see some folks with their hands in every pie, rentals, etc who I believe are doing better, but their experience helps them. They have been using and doing longer, so rightfully so.

Buy the spondoolies mini farm, buy your 700w PSUs used on ebay. buy a few extra when they blow out.

Get an electrician to upgrade your house to support massive mining in your basement.

Make sure you live in the arctic or move there.

Plug them all in, and then find a way to sabotage some large mines in China so the hashrate stays stable for three months.

If all works you you will pay off in 90 days and sell your miners for 10 cents on the dollar.

well worth it for entertainment alone

Those who are mining are either optimistic about the future price of BTC and/or are trying to support the BTC network by processing everyone else's transactions.


Personally, I think you should only mine if you are truly trying to support the idea and not try to make a positive ROI

Given the last 12 months.

You have better odds walking into a casino, putting 5k on the craps table, and honestly nobody actually wins at craps or at  casinos.

At $5,000 you might have a chance at the $0.25 due to the sheer amount of attempts ( $20,000 ) you would get but nobody actually wins on those machines.

I am well aware of this. BTC has always been a gamble but now it's a bigger chance to lose. I think the price will go up though, but it always comes down to speculations.

if your really wanting to gamble on bitcoin (yes that's exactly what it is right now) I would simply buy coins and hold.  Anybody that tells you they know for a fact what bitcoin price will be x # if months from now is a liar and a fatmouth.  and absolutely do not invest more than you are willing to lose

$0.042525 per KWH in if I calculated it right. 0.35 swedish kronor.

How did you calculate that its 0.30kwh? Did you take your total amount due and divided it by the total kwh used?

Because there are normally services charges that are fixed on a power bill. You need to look at how much they charge per kwh.

It varies from month to month, it's usually cheaper in the summer. But I don't know maybe they measure different in Sweden than they do in your country?

If you're electricity is really 0.30 per KWH then forget about mining completely. Unless its a typo.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it is impossible to profit from mining but you need to have the right ingredients for it at current market conditions 
  For example dirt cheap  or next to free power (most essential element IMO), then getting a good deal on miners ( probably buying bulk or used ), also last but not the least, having a secure free space (possibly with free internet as well  if possible ) to place the miners without having to pay rent for it.

There are other variables you need to worry about but having the right key ingredients should alleviate the pain caused by changes in the price of coin or the difficulty and power outages,maintenance etc etc   

cloud mining is a different beast and more of a gamble, your only hope of real roi is to buy cheap hash and then dump it at higher prices if it ever recovers because your chances of roi by just buying hash and sit on it, is slim to non-existence. Beware if you decide to go this route because it's like catching a falling knife, you might get lucky but the flip side could cause a lot of pain and remorse.

heck you might get better returns and opportunities with just trading BTC straight up without having the worry of if/when cloud mining operation might shut down or how illiquid the sell market is 

Actually I am not eager at all to spend it, this is all theory. It's a hobby of mine to mine, that's why I still have my ASIC sticks running - I wanted to see if I can make a profit from this but from the replies in this thread it looks like fuck it I will invest or just buy BTC and wait for BTC to rise up again.

So what do you suggest then? Invest in a gambling site?

1. Make a profit? Probably not.
2. Whole shit a scam? Remains to be seen.
3. What will 5k give me today?  Not enough.
4. Wiser to invest in cloud mining?  He'll no! !

I don't understand why you're  so adamant to piss away your money so quick be it in real hardware or cloud? 

ask yourself, if you had a cloud mining operation that was profitable would you share it here with other people at cheap prices? unless you are in charity business  no one in the right mind would  !!

so you do the math behind the scene and quickly realize that the only way to profit from cloud mining, is to sell it to a greater fool... errr i meant customers  hence it becomes a game of passing hot potato to next person before it expires 

Honestly, none of the above really.  No hardware or cloud mining will be worth it for you at this point in time.  Currently, 1 TH/s of hash power earns just over 0.01 BTC a day or $2.

Think about it.  There's truly no way to recoup whatever investment you were planning to put money into.

If you're counting on BTC to spike in price, perhaps, but then it would easier to just buy BTC ten fold.

You are right, my apartment wont have enough power anyway to run that expensive EQ. How about $1k or so? Could that be worth it or should I just say fuck it I'll get cloud mining instead?

What would you experienced people who has payed and sold EQ earlier done?

Do you mean how much I use? 10KwH what? I pay ~$0.3 per kWh right now, last month I used 207 kWh. I know computers are cheap but I always have all my lamps on unless I sleep so that should also count into the energy usage.

Never for now. There is no way unless the price goes up, that you will get a positive ROI.
Also, halving happens next year , so things will get worse then.

Avoid mining right now. THe way difficulty is and the price of btc ROI is almsot impossible UNLESS your electricity rate is super cheap

I think this understates the actual costs. Assuming you want to run an SP20 at it's full speed, you will need a high quality 1300 Watt (or so) power supply. Just based on your previous experience, I'll bet you don't have a dozen 1300W power supplies just languishing in your closet waiting to be used. I would also mention that regardless of the actual costs, a dozen SP20's will be really loud based on other folks experience, particularly if you try and extract the maximum hashrate. What I have read is that the SP20 is really more like a 1500GH miner with 1700GH being a fairly reliable "overclock".  Spondoolies fully supports the 1700GH rate, it's just that it's power efficiency is poor at that rate, and expect at it's loudest (because the fan is at it's maximum).

There are lots of excellent threads here on the SP20 that can keep you informed. I think it's an excellent miner, possibly even for home use. Just make sure your eyes are open.

$5K will buy you about 12 SP20's:

12 x 1.7 GHs = 20.4 GHs @ 14.4 KW

If you're going to mine at home, don't bother. You won't have enough juice to run all 12 of them.

The difference in power cost in running a USB miner and a Bitmain S4/S5 or Spondoolies Tech SP20/SP35 is substantial.

You'd need to know your electrical rate k/WH.  If it's $0.06 k/WH or lower, then I'd consider mining.  If it's $0.10 k/WH or higher, I'd say forget about it.

Not only do you have to factor in this cost, you'll have to find out if your house or hosting center electrical circuit can handle the power requirements and total circuit load.  The SP35 requires a 208V power outlet.

If you pass these requirements, then probably no better deal than this mini farm:

http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/products/holiday-special-sp20-mini-farm-batch-2

Computers use very little power these days. How much do you pay per KWH. Check your bill. If its 10kwh or higher then forget about mining.

My electricity cost is very cheap, I have 1 regular computer running 24/7 and one laptop running 24/7. On top of that I have 5x ASIC 333 mh/s memories mining constantly, and they are in a USB-hub, I rarely turn off the lights but my electricity bill lands around $40 a month so that wont be a problem.

Yeah, that's what I did with the first ASIC sticks, I bought 15 of them, sold of 10 within 2 weeks and kept the rest. Made a nice profit on it, I am prepared to sell well in time as I know new stuff always comes around faster than you expect.

The $5k would be money I can afford to lose aka not ruining my life completely - but I wont do it unless I make a profit from it.

1. I know it quite well, been mining using CPU GPU and ASIC sticks, for several months now.
2. No, I've always used public pools but can't imagine it's too hard to set up.
3. I am going to sell off most of it, and after some time sell the hardware.
4. I have the ASIC 333 Mh/S sticks, the first hardware that came out on the market. That's the only one.
5. I never read about it, I follow the curve quite regulary but as of today I have no reason to read it so I don't. Please provide me with links if you have any

I'll add my two cents with a question. How bad will it impact you financially if you lose your entire $5K "investment"? Once you have than answer, you can decide how much to put into buying, and into mining. I would discourage you from just finding $5k of hardware to buy and hoping for the best. You will NOT get rich doing that. I didn't actually buy any Bitcoin, until long after I had been mining. That in my opinion was a mistake.

One other item I have discovered, is that your best path to making some money by mining, is to be prepared to sell some or most of the mining gear you purchased within 6 months. There comes a point during the life cycle of a specific mining hardware that it has produced something for you, and it's residual a value.  That peak "used" value is usually long before 6 months.

1) How well do you know Mining?
2) have you Tried Mining with different setups and pools along with your own local pool?
3) Do you plan on waiting on your return in your investment?
4) How many different Mining equipment have you had?
5) How well do you read the BTC Market?

those are questions and answers i would be asking myself before i would invest any amount ....

I think you answered your own question: "the whole shit is a scam and you always end up going negative profit when you buy hardware:

If I had $5k to blow I would just buy BTC with it. 

But I don't have a lot of extra space for mining and the price of electricity is quite high.   

If you buy BTC with your money you have a chance at making money OR losing money. 

If you buy mining equipment AND you have access to cheap electric you MIGHT make some money, on the flip side, you could lose money....

It's really up to you.... 

 

Will I make a profit on this? I am starting to give it serious consideration, but as far as I am concerned the whole shit is a scam and you always end up going negative profit when you buy hardware as new stuff is always around the corner. What will $5k give me today TH/s wise?

Would it be wiser to invest in a cloud mining service?