Topic: Mining still worth it? (Read 11177 times)

I'm pulling around 3 kilowatt for my ~4 gh/s setup. At 10 cents per KW/hr in Missouri that works out to be ~$220 per month in electricity. Then add in about $50 or so for extra air conditioning and I am at a little under $300 per month in electricity. Will take a while before mining is un-profitable for me.

I just dived into this full bore about a week ago. Hardware investment totals ~$2100. Made ~$800 back in selling BTC the first week. If the exchange rate holds at around $20 then it should take me about 20 more days to pay off the hardware.

I do wish it was winter time here. Having all these rigs heating my basement would be a big benefit in the winter.

I have a 1200sq. ft. shop with 20ft ceilings...I think I will run out of space and/or no longer be able to control the heat before I run out of power...I ran a 6ga 70A 240V line from my breaker box that is dedicated to the computers...running them on 240v takes half the current, so I should be good for about 15 computers before I have to add a second line...3 of them heat my shop to 70deg f, better than the 2 rigs heating my friends apartment to almost 80deg f.  Plus, at his place the power couldn't handle 2kw safely.

Nope.  Mining is no longer profitable.  Turn off your mining rig, disassemble it, and sell the parts.  PM me if you have any 5870s, 5970s, or 5850s.  Thanks!

LOL.  I can say I'll be around probably as long as well.  I have free utils so as long as the noise doesn't bother anyone it's free money.   

Unfortunately I don't have unlimited amp-age.  I will trip my circuits way before I run outta room to place machines.   

I pay less than $.05/kwh...thanks pacific northwest (industrial rating).  So I guess it will take quite a bit to make my machines not profitable by power...I will probably be one of the last miners...no sense in bailing because the difficulty is going up.  Not to mention I have a 200A 3phase power line so I won't be hitting a power limit on my building anytime soon, just a matter of reinvesting a percentage in hardware to attempt to keep up with difficulty.  Plus, I started this as a supplemental not a primary income.

Anyone who is bailing...I am sure the community will be happy enough to buy your hardware.

Yep, as I said before, Bitcoin is coming out of "puberty."

We saw her grow tits, now we just have to wait for her to get knocked up and deliver the baby to see if it will suckle...

I think there is enough solid answers to the question in the topic, but I will add I more.   A simple one.

Up until today's move to 850000 difficulty, mining was ALWAYS profitable, at whatever point in time vs US$. From this point forward everyone adding new computing power solely for mining, they will have to HOPE that eventually bitcoins will be worth more in the future.

In other words they could simply just buy coins at the current price on the exchange and HOPE they will be worth more in the future. Buying and holding is way simpler then taking care of your miners with the same HOPE/CHANCE of profit in the future.


EASY SURE PROFIT is about to end in a few minutes.

Yeah. Get out! All of you! Stop mining immediately!

Makes my rig more profitable.

Sure it's gonna be difficult, I pay 0.22 € per KWh, that's $0.31. But the hardware sale is one factor to count on, even if you give a 50% discount on the original price because it's used. That's how car rental companies make their profit. So my investment is not $750, it's more like $400. And that should be covered in 3 to 4 months, even with difficulty ever-increasing. And even if I should not be able to sell it at all, I still had a fun time and learning experience.

Another point... I'd rather wait a couple of months to see if the high rate continues or if all the script kiddies that thought it would be fun to make money with their computer drop out soon once they realize it's not gonna make them millionaires in a matter of days.

However, I second the opinion that starting now to order parts for your rig is a pretty bad idea. Especially if you invest $2,000 or more to "get more out". You should be able to not lose sleep / housing / relationship over your sunk costs.

It's my opinion that mining was worth it right up to this last difficulty re-target. Meaning, if you bought in, and got all your hardware online before the LAST re-target, and mined all the way through the last difficulty, you should be able to break even on hardware by the end of the current difficulty (567,358).

For anyone that just came online during 567,358 or is about to come online or is thinking of coming online, they are in for a rude surprise when they don't even end up breaking even.

Now, for some of the new miners, even just getting a discount on their hardware might be enough for them.

But mining profitability is done and gone for anyone that isn't already totally paid off their hardware already.

Anyone buying purpose built mining rigs from here on out is just a fool...

I'm paying .26cents a kilowat.  Stupid Hawaii.

I'll probably bow out in 2 difficulties.   Get ready for a massive liquidation sale!

7 series won't be coming for a while so you can forget about that idea. 6 series was just released not too long ago so the earliest we will see 7 series will be in the fall. Absolute latest would be Q1 of next year but realistically it's most likely going to happen in the winter around christmas time.

It's important to look beyond the cost of power when considering a mining rig.  It has to be cooled.  Where I am it's winter right now, so the waste heat is being put to good use.  But come summer time and 35C weather I will definately not be mining.  Don't forget air conditioning costs.

People keep looking at the current difficulty level and make calculations based on that.

$40/day at 567,000 is $26/day when difficulty resets today.  So far the difficulty rate is on a long exponential upward trend.  Inefficient miners will bail out but efficient rigs will stay and even increase.  Someone who mail ordered hardware is likely to receive it and start mining in the next difficulty bracket.  Then come the FPGAs.  Difficulty is resetting every 10 days or so.

In 20 days time you'll make $17.  In 30 days $11.  In 40 days $7/day, etc.  Maybe BTC's price will keep rising to compensate (and make the people hoarding $1 BTCs smile ear to ear as they dump).  Maybe the difficulty rate won't climb so quickly as people see it's pointless making a $1000 investment that might possibly pay for itself within 3 months if everything goes very well.

Nothing grows exponentially over the long term.  Either difficulty will taper off, or the BTC/USD exchange rate will.  Don't bet on both climbing hand-in-hand just because they have done so over the last couple of months.

Unless you mine with an old card or have massively high power costs, you must be stupid. Right now electricity is about $1.70 per BTC assuming 750w system, 565 Mhash/s (1btc/day) and energy costs of $.10/kWh. The difficulty would have to increase to about 4-5 million for it to be unprofitable to an existing dual 5830 miner.

Seriously, how much you guys are paying for electricity? I calculated that at the moment I make about $18.69/day with 600 M/hash speed. See:

Current difficulty: Next difficulty: 861328.82 Difficulty increase in: 0.77 days

Exchange Rate ($/฿): Your MH/s: Power price ($/KW):
Time frame   BTC           Dollars   Electricity cost   Final
Per hour   ฿0.04           $0.87    $0.1                   $0.78
Per day   ฿1.06        $21           $2.3                   $18.69
Per month   ฿31.91   $629.92   $69.12           $560.8
Per year   ฿388.25   $7664.04   $840.96           $6823.08


Am I living in right country with cheap electricity because it seems that mining will be very much worth it for some time at least.

Unless the 7 series comes soon, this next difficulty bump is pretty much going to make it impossible to break even on electricity.

Hahahaha.

Seriously.

if that is a 100% rise and the next one a 100% rise it STILL is a good investment, especially if you can wait for the BTC to pop up

Bnks give me x% for my money, with x  being low single digit. Stocks are mostly very dead at the moment. The ROI of a mining rig is nice. If you scale up.

After the next difficulty rise, bitcoins will need to be in the 30-40 dollar range to attract new miners.  If it stays in the 20 dollar range, the idea of making a giant profit off of mining is pretty much gone.  If you wanted to buy a new computer anyway and use mining to help pay off what you were already going to buy, that would still be a valid use for mining.

it will only net 3 coins/day for the next 12 hours... after that it's closer to 2

and difficulty follows price, not the other way around

whenever someone says the word ASIC i think of juniper routers. you know, like a m10, m40, mx80, etc...
they are really really expensive but fast as all heck. it is the expensive part i am thinking of.

ASICs always seem expensive because they never seem to be truly mass produced in enough
quantity to drive prices down to a level that seems affordable for mere mortals.

so GPUs, which are made in quantities that are huge, are very cost effective for the price.

how long will it take for ASICs to overtake GPUs when it comes to that line of thinking?
i would guess years (several) and maybe never. Also one cannot assume the AMD will just
be sitting there on their rears with the same tech. In a couple of years their cards will probably
be 2-3 times faster. I say never because it has to make sense financially to really produce these
things in any quantity. Would you bet the farm right now?

fpgas are not going to cut it over GPUs.. i think the same will be true with ASICs. the cost for them
just does not make sense. It will take too long to recover the investment.

just rambling. i am not an expert in any of these fields. i can be wrong and probably am. but that
is how i feel about it.

GPUs are current for mining.
ASICs are next.