Topic: it mining worth it these days? (Read 1594 times)

I have been watching various ASICs and their development notes in the last couple months. I think Butterfly Labs has been pushing their release date pretty much every other month. I'm almost thinking that it's a scam. Don't give them money. They aren't really entitled to do anything for you if the company "Goes out of Business". You would be fighting some crazy legal battle to get your money back. I'm not entirely sure that what ASICs claim they can do is even possible from my research. I have been video card mining when my computer is on and I'm doing really low impact browsing and I make about  ฿0.04 a day. I would take Bitcoin as a hobby instead of a money making plan or investment.

It won't be worth mining when ACIS rigs come out which as of now will be sometime in february.

It's a pleasure to read such a well-reasoned arguement. I suppose the only real aruguement about ASIC's eventually being produced is
the capital risk involved.

There are a few reasons I wouldn't be so quick to say ASICs will never happen.

1. It seems like most of the companies offering ASICs NOW, previously produced and sold FPGA clusters and are no longer doing so. I suppose it would be more profitable in the short term to sell something that doesn't exist vs the profit of selling something that does, but still it just doesn't make sense to me.

2. There's no reason ASIC's could not be made for this purpose. More or less, if you can do it with an FPGA, it can be done with an ASIC. That's not to say that the companies trying to sell them now have without a doubt actually manufactured, or even developed any, but it can be done.

IF Avalon doesn,t deliver as promised and turns out to be a fraud, add up bAsic..i am almost certain there will be no Asic hitting the chain very soon..so al the theories are pretty worthless just like talking about it..

how hard is it to just;

turn on a camera
tape an ASIC devices hanging on a computer or standalone device
showing some hashrate onscreen with cgminer or whatever software thats freely availabel
post the proof over here like you are posting pictures of your minigrig
show the hell off..
take the camera again and film the factory making real devices let some trusted by the community really fly over to inspect.

Untill this has happend they can al scream en talk whatever they want...



If you or I would work at AMD the hell yeah i would ask them if could test 500 new hd7990  for them 
OO but i ll also need a nuckplant to power them al up and keep the rigs running it is also a lot of work..al lot of..and offcourse you must understand the setup features ..the risk they would have to  take with those 500 x $1000 a pcs. gpu,s would be too big for them.....
 

This has been rehashed many times here already, but it always boils down to this:  It is more profitable to sell miners than to attempt to mine yourself without letting anyone catch on to the fact that you are mining yourself.  Because if they do, everyone would lose confidence in Bitcoin, the price would drop to the floor, and mining by yourself would be utterly useless.

Yeah I'm new too... and I was wondering the same thing. But then again, for some ppl, especially if you already have a business or other stuff to do, it might be better to focus on what you do best. Plus, afaik, they all (except asicminer) want to be payed in "conventional" currencies rather than bitcoin. So maybe there's also some kind of lack of trust with btc? I dunno, newb talking...

This uncertainty is exactly what makes it very interesting for everyone, I guess... IF the asics will arrive, the lucky ones who got the first batch will earn like crazy for two weaks and as usual afterwards, while the rest will have to sell their GPUs quite soon.
IF the asics are further delayed, miners who invested their hundreds/thousands of whatever currency in FGPA/GPUs will have an advantage cause their funds haven't been stuck.
At least, that's what I guess will be the case. I'm both glad and sad at the same time that I'm not gonna be a part of it...

Maybe it's just the newbie in me, but I'm suspicious of anyone selling mining rigs. If they are so good, why aren't you using them to mine for yourself? You can then cash in the coins and make your money that way?

OK, fine, you're not a mining company, you're a hardware company. Is it really that hard to form another company or partner?

ASIC are making new potential miners scared..to invest and join the game..

1) they will just wait..wait wait ..read read read wait wait...
2) or are stupid enough to pre-order one before any proof is given,
( bAsic is fraud, my guess Avalon is fraud to, we will know very soon, BFL well just read some Inaba/Josh posts and you now who you are dealing with   )

.. this is why the current hashrate vs diff. is still the same and stabel for months now.. this is a very good point for big gpu investers (see point 1 and 2) who have (almost) no new competion coming into the gpu/fpga game (its a hard comp. already so) i am still buying gpu,s and expanding al long as there are no ASIC,s on the chain..(resell everything very easily when they do hit the markets but not before the next halving day is my guess..)

ASIC keep delaying and the gpu/fpga miners are keep getting a better ROI...maybe the so called ASIC vendor own big gpu/fpga farms themselves and want U noobs to stay out, and take ur money throu pre-orders...who nows..

It may sounds weird and i also use some sarcasm here but donn,t forget this is a niche world only based on trust, and keep one thing in mind also in real life, when it,s about money there few you really can trust,( let alone behind a comp. screen) people do strange things for the thing called money...

Cheerzzzz...     (forget my bad English)

1)So far no ASIC has been delivered.  It seems someone shipped ASIC but so far no one received anything.
2)If they will be really delivered then it will be the only way to mine. Fpga or gpu will be useless, exactly like cpu is useless today. So if in the future you will want to mine, it will be asic mining. (wich is a good thing btw...)
3)Do not expect to become rich! Everyone will buy them, difficulty will skyrocket and profit will be more or less like today. 10 BTC per month is too few you say? For something wich cost 1300$? How many BTC can you mine today in a month if you spend 1300$?

For someone who has no or almost no experience with serious mining (like me for example), I would be very careful. But it might help you to start calculating a bit. The numbers that are out so far are very vague and the ones concerning asics have to be looked at very skeptically. Might be different for ppl who have connections to the producers or other insider info. But still, you could start calculating your costs (fix and running) and the possible income (best/worst cases) for the next years.
Cause it's not gonna pay of - if ever - within a couple of months. That's my opinion and I'm very new, but consider one thing: With the high values of bitcoins (atm), and the years bc already exists, miners have constantly improved their knowledge and skills and have professionalised. So getting into mining you will have extremely strong competition.

Before sending anyone any cash please remember every deliver deadline has been missed and no-one has ever seen a working ASIC. Then bear in mind that any company selling ASICs rather than mining with them is an economically dubious strategy.

Quite an interesting quote to ponder while you're handing cash over pre-order: "A fool and his money are soon parted".

So would ordering an ASIC be a good idea? Avalon is getting ready for a second batch and Butterfly Labs is scheduled to ship in mid-February.

If ASICs continue to be more profitable than FPGAs then more people will buy, pushing the difficulty up until ASICs are not more profitable than FPGAs.

It's a speculation game / race to the bottom to try to get one before everyone else.

Yes, as difficulty will adjust. Seriously, I would be very careful to invest in mining. Once the asics arrive, mining will only be viable for ppl who have invested in them. And as prices for asics are high atm, I'm not sure it will be worth your money.

No, you wouldn't have blocks pumped out about once every 10 seconds.  Every 10 minutes, yes.

This. Assuming ASIC's come out at all this year.

I found this link from BFL interesting - Get Right Quick?  Not So Fast.

In some other threads around these forums, I have heard people discussing the same topic and come to the conclusion that a 'Single' from BFL could pay for itself after 6 months, and then produce diminishing amounts of BTC after that.

If you invested $1299 and it paid off after 6 months, and then you made, lets say, $60/month every month at a declining rate of -$10/month, would you consider that $1299 a good investment? If so, then mining could be OK.

The first in line for the ASICs will get most of the benefit. You stand to lose the most if you pre-order one now. Why? Because if you pre-order from BFL now, in my humble opinion, it will be a long time before you receive it. Then you've lost the $1299 opportunity costs and by the time you receive your ASIC, the difficulty would have gone up, and those people who received the first generation ASIC are probably pre-ordering the 2nd gen ASIC with double the power.

tl;dr: Consensus seems to be that you could make a small amount of money with ASIC mining, but don't expect that much unless you are one of the first batch.

I'd honestly recommend saving up and making a Bitcoin business instead, I think there are too many miners in the market now and it's only going to get more difficult for casual or newbie miners to get in and make money.