Hi there,
I just joined as well.
I've been reading avidly on the forum for about two weeks which helped me a lot to get started with my 3x R9 280x rig and mining a few different coins: LTC, GDC and now DOGE (much wow!), both pool and solo.
I also purchased a 2TH/s sha256 rig from Black Arrow that should be delivered in late February, can't wait to get it and start mining bitcoin.
I am amazed at what is going on here, so much to explore, it's fascinating. I just wish I had heard about cryptocurrencies a lot earlier...
Good luck to you all
Arno
Wow! That's alot of power you're about to be wielding. Congrats on taking the plunge!
If you don't mind my asking I'm curious as to what got you into BTC mining? That's a pretty big leap of faith into the whole community for someone that seems to have little background with it. Have you done trading outside of crypto currencies before?
I've done a bit of conventional trading before but nothing major (actually made a few losses during the GFC...)
I heard about cryptos in the mainstream media when it got through the $1,000 mark. It got me curious and I have been working on it for the past three weeks.
I looked at how difficulty is going through the roof, actually at exponential rates. It seems like any gear currently available will become obsolete very soon once the new rigs from CoinTerra, KnCMining, Black Arrrow and others become widespread. My thinking is that these rigs have a good chance of being very profitable in the beginning even with a massive difficulty increase. My other assumption is that it will become increasingly difficult to improve performance (J/GH) and the cost per GH/s once this generation of rigs is released, or at least that the improvement won't be as tremendous as what we've seen from GPUs to FPGAs, first gen and second gen ASICs. So I made the plunge based on the combination of potentially good immediate returns with a chance of remaining relevant for a reasonable period of time.
So that's how I convince the responsible part of me that this was a good idea while honestly I think I dived right into it because it sounds like a lot of fun
I also built a scrypt rig because I couldn't wait to start playing. I've had great fun mining GrandCoins solo, it's a great feeling to see your first generated coins in your wallet. And it's interesting to look at the different pools and alt currencies, devising mining and trading strategies. Just love it