Topic: Is Mining REALLY worth it? (Read 4526 times)

THIS THIS THIS!

The people who got in earlier, who were there when difficulty was low, were able to make bitcoins pretty fast. Now that difficulty is rising, and seems to go up exponentially faster than it used to, we won't be able to make 30 bitcoins, unless we have some serious graphic power on a whole farm of computers. That isn't to say mining isn't worth it... just that its not as profitable as it once was.

Right now, things to think about for mining. Is your graphics card used for something else... AKA, are you actively using it for gaming, or even looking at your computer screen. If so, then you can count it as half paid off, or all paid off, and consider anything else you make with mining as profit. If you intend to purchase a new one to replace your primary one, use this same reasoning.
Mining right now, with a "average" video card like I have (a 6870, a $190 card when I got it middle of June) gets about 310-315 MH/s on it. The online calculators show that as about $6/day. You're not getting tons of money, unless you run multiple computers each with multiple cards, and at that, NOT using them for anything except mining. No video games, nothing.

Eventually, that $6 will shrink to $4.50, to $3, to $1.75... there will come a point when it still makes you money, but when you look at it, its just maybe a dollar a day. Then, that will be the point when electricity costs come into mind. (Note... if you use AC or fans to cool your room the computer is in, add that into your operating costs too... unless they too are being used to cool something, or someone, else, in which case you can either split the cost or nullify it altogether.)

Long story short... right now, mining is so-so. The age of big deals is gone. Now, its the equivalent of you going to California and panning for gold. All the big nuggets are gone, you aren't going to be able to find huge rocks all over the place... but you still might find a sliver every day or two worth a few bucks. The better place to get to is trading, but thats a totally different state of mind.

I bought my 6990 to mine with and for a better cards for the occasional gaming I do. I consider this a sunk cost from wanting a better GPU and it's in a PC I already own, so I don't consider that an expense. In just over a month of mining, I earned enough to purchase additional cas fans, a riser cable and a 5830 to use as a second card.

Personally, I anticipate mining bitcoins and slowly addding additional hardware from profits and seeing where that goes.

I think that it's pretty hard right now to make money by building dedicated mining rigs.   On the other hand, if you already have a decent gaming machine and that you already leave it open 24/24 why not put to work?

I thought about building a rig but the price of a new MOBO and PSU are what make it not really worth it for me.

The first time I mined a few bitcoins.. they were worth 70 cents. A friend of mine was was considering paying $500 for a used high end video card to mine faster... I kind of scoffed at the idea, showing it would cost much more to generate than they were worth, and on top of that it was difficult to get the $ back from selling them in Candada.

Needless to say, if we had just taken $500 each and bought the roughly 700 btc each ... we would have been sitting on around $20,000 at around $28-29 USD per btc.  Hindsight is always 20/20... and yeah, I already kicked myself in the nuts a few times since.

So, I guess what I'm saying is yes... you could have bought 5830's last month and paid them off by the time the last difficulty increase came...  A whole mining rig though, no. And now? forget it Just wait till they drop a bit and buy your way into the market. Unless the difficulty drops again, its not really worth it to mine unless you already own the equipment. (my opinion only.)

I think the profit will raise and we will be miljonairs /sarcasm.

No, but I do think it will raise.

I have made a calculator which will estimate how much net profit you will make. It calculated how many BTC you will mine, how much you will spend on electricity, your gross profit, and net profit.
You could also use this calculator's mining estimate and compare it to how many BTC you could buy for the price of your hardware, don't forget to consider you may sell your hardware for a bit after you mine as well.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=27550

"Creative Delegation" - 

I can only mine at 12mh =[. Kinda not worth it for me

Now I’ve been doing it for only 1 week. So based on my little experience and from what I have researched, it is pretty much over for someone without a stable financial background or mining less than 1 Gh/s that is not a pool owner.  You need to be able to pour some large sums of cash into it; you will be able to stay in the game. It's a constant uphill battle that I have to keep growing my equipment weekly or bi-weekly in order to stay up with the growth of the market.

If I can stay up with it consistently, I can see myself making some good BTC’s by the end of 2012, because the value of BTC will be higher, and finding a block and getting a reward of 25 may be the same value (or higher) as what you’d pay for 50 BTC’s today.

Thank everyone who has replied, and I hope all of the miners out there are having a great journey as I am.

Lol, well a youtube infomercial with a little over 1k views isn't quite what I had in mind, so it may not be game over yet.

Not worth it anymore. Sorry 

I hear about BitCoin on CNN, isn't that mainstream??

I can't imagine what would happen to mining if BTCs get coverage on mainstream media. Perhaps the already-flooded mining community will flood even more?

Here is the infomercial selling rigs and mining power to the general public...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb3sCcDkKcE



Game Over??

Mining for profit is and always has been a highly speculative venture. The only miners *guaranteed* a profit are those who have already payed off their rigs and are selling their mined BCs at current prices. As with any highly speculative venture, you shouldn't do it if you can't take the risk. Mining is riskier now than it was even a few months ago, but nobody knows for sure when it will be "too late" to get in. A few months from now BC could be selling for $60 or more and people will be saying how they wished they had started a few months back when it was still profitable, and going on to say that they wouldn't start now because of the difficulty level and the surely unsustainable BC price. We could go through several cycles like this before mining finally is a bust. If I ever see infomercials selling BC mining rigs to the general public at inflated prices, I will take this as a sure sign that the game is finally up. But my instinct from trading stocks tells me that the dumb money hasn't arrived yet, and if so, there may be profit left in this for a little while yet (I could be wrong of course). I'm just mining as a fun side hobby, and if I end up with some profit, that will be a nice plus. Those who started mining BCs from the start probably had similar motivations, since it didn't look like a profitable venture then either.

ppssshhh...  My GPUs won't handle mining, so I am on a pool and was THRILLED to get 3mh/s!  I am destined to be BCP (bitcoin poor) for life.  As the real world leads, it looks as though my digital world shall follow... 

Comes down to your power usage+video card.
You have to find a balance between the 2 to get a good profit.

Hi bitebitebite,


Since the OP is about mining my answer also is about mining and not about trading.
What I mean is that a standard home PC will never make you happy when used for mining. Only dedicated bitcoin rigs will earn you some money.

In the past with ever rising exchange rates trading surely was an easy way to make BC. But I do not like the volatile nature of markets in general. Bitcoin mining is "just" a nerd thing and a gamble for me. With mining there is no need to monitor exchange rates all the time. After the break-even I can go ahead making profit. The mining rigs on Linux run super stable. Setup and forget more or less.
I think the days of the big gold rush in BC are over. It's more of a longterm thing now. If it would be only for the money I would probably invest in something else than bitcoins.

Greetz,
NathanEO

I guess it's worth it long term, next year at this time, we will see what really happens, and that will be able to determine if it's really worth it.

I would imagine only the large operation farm's will be successful in the future.