Topic: it mining worth it these days? - page 2. (Read 1594 times)

I know nothing about mining, but since the difficulty adjusts itself, the ROI on mining should be pretty stable throughout the course of time. Of course, naturally spikes in either direction are expected (as the time to find a block does the same), but the network kind of adjusts itself.

Your number one considerations should be competition with other miners. If you have ASIC and everyone has ASIC, you'll still have a block pumped out about once every 10 seconds and you get whatever portion of it. It's hardware power efficiency vs. price of power. Some miners have free power and you can't really compete with that. Some miners have access to high end hardware and you can't compete with that. Some have both. But in general, since the difficulty is adjusted to the hash rate, everything around will adjust itself so that ROI on mining is pretty constant, and probably as competitive as people can get (which in the case of free power/hardware is pretty tough).

Yes, the window of opportunity is sooner, not later indeed.  Unless you consider the possibility of a significant price drop, which I don't believe is out of the question.  There ARE multiple ASIC companies, and they are competing with each other.  It could result in price wars that drop the prices by half very quickly.

And yes, everyone is just sitting around waiting for their ASICs to get built at this point.  I imagine many more will order once people start receiving them.

The volatility of the Bitcoin price is also something to consider.  Earlier today, we were at $19/BTC.  Now we're at $16/BTC.  We've seen a drop from $32 to $2 in the past.  Basically, the income potential is there, but it is not 100% reliable either.

Also, some people say the ASIC companies are scams.  One of them already went bankrupt and is refunding everyone's money.  The next might fall without refunds, you never know.

All of this said, if I had more money, I would throw it down in a heartbeat on more BFL mining machines.  As it is, I have two of the SC Singles on order.

Na, it'll still be a lot more than 10 BTC a month for quite a while after ASICs are released.  Without a significant drop in ASIC prices, it'll take at least a year (though I'd say more likely three) for difficulty to creep up to the point where 60 GH/s only makes 10 BTC a month.

What SgtSpike said but I think it will be more like 10x to 20x in the short term and probably much much higher than that in the long run (100x to 200x is certainly not impossible).

Right now looking at difficulty (which is based on the economics of GPU cost, wattage, etc) and applying it to not yet produced ASICs is just as flawed as looking at CPU difficulty and assumming it would remain the same when GPU miners hit.  In July 2010 it is unlikely anyone was GPU mining.*  Difficulty was ~20 (no not 20 million, 20).  Six months later it was ~10,000. Six months after that it was ~10,000,000.  Will ASICs do the same thing?  Probably not to that magnitude (there were other factors which pumped difficulty up in late 2010) but it shows you the risk involved.

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png


* The first public release of a GPU miner was in Sept, 2010 although there are rumors that some were GPU mining in private.  The near vertical rise in difficulty from July to August would seem to suggest that is true.

Problems in your plan: 1)no one has an asic so far 2)once they will receive them, expect difficulty to skyrocket. 309BTC per month? Yeah sure more like 10 after asic hits the market.

so, the window of opp is sooner, not later.  Actually, even with 80% reduction (60 BTC's/mo), I would still make the same money as my current salary (I work in Argentina and get paid in pesos).  Although I was not aware that the ASICs were not even shipping. 

Are the people that preorder and pay for an ASIC just sitting around waiting for their ASIC to get built?  That would suck...  for me the bigger problem is getting that puppy into this country.

No one has ASICs yet, and the difficulty will be pumped up to at least 5x what it is now in a short period of time.  So take that 309 BTC and divide by 5, and you get an idea of what your earnings might be a few months from now when you actually receive an ASIC purchased right now.

Still a good deal IMO, but others have projected difficulty quickly going up much higher than this.  And because ASICs are so cheap to produce, the same machine you see selling for $1,300 right now could be sold for $50 next year, you never know.  If that happens, many more will buy, and each one will see that much lower of a return on investment.

The whole ASIC thing is goofy as fuck. I wouldn't plan anything by them, assuming they exist.

Hello all,

I am thinking of setting up a mining operation.

according to http://blockexplorer.com/q/getdifficulty the current difficulty is 2968775.3320751 and the rate is 18.08342 (MTGOX), and the butterfly BitForce Single 'SC' is 60 GH/s... so... according the calculator at http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator I could mine 309 BTCs /month

I know calculating these estimates is not totally accurate, but if this estimate is anywhere near realistic, it seems like a good idea.

I guess I am just double checking with y'all in  case I missed something obvious... I ma kind of new to BTC so there are some things I don't yet fully understand.

Thanks for your feedback, and apologies if this has already been asked and answered somewhere in this forum.