Topic: Mining when it costs more in power than payout. (Read 2657 times)

Just adding
Even with small income, some people buy another machines for more pasive income, but not thinking for ROI (Say they got 250 USD with 200 USD electricity). Furthermore some people preordering machines with the same price/performance but halved the electricity, still it not even close to ROI except pasive income for a couple months. They dont want to buy BTC because its gambling, but I think its the same with mining.

I think not mining doesnt mean they not supporting bitcoin, as long as they buy bitcoin. Balancing buy and sell with difficulty and hash rate would be perfect. Some people already refund they preorder after seeing char past 1-2 months, and 2-3 more difficulty update some people would start do more refund...

Sorry too much some people >.<

I wonder how many miners here are mining despite knowing it's not profitable while telling others not to

Well where I'm from electricity's pretty cheap, so it's still doable. I'm not too concerned with profitability frankly, I just want to be able to still mine btc while I still can. Used to be getting few btcs a day, then down to one, then 75%, then 2%, now only 0.01 btc a day, but will still hash on!

Mining will never die.

There are too many variables.

There are more sha coins to mine other than BTC.

There will be more sha coins - mining will never die.

Cultures have reified, i.e. named certain sized groups when that made sense to make conversation more concise. For example when I say a herd of cattle or a flock of birds, or a school of fish, you have a commonsense shared notion of how many individuals are in the group. Likewise, when I say a stack of dollars or a ton of gold, these group noun phrases suggest a certain quantity.

Given that the value of bitcoin is not yet stable, I think that it is premature to look for the sort of collective crypto noun phrases you mention. However, I would like to have a phrase that encompasses what is vulgarly called Fuck You Money - which is the quantity of money that allows one the freedom to live without working for a boss.

"shitload of coin"
"lot of coin"
"enough coin"
"frozen cold wallet of coin"
"Satoshi's lost stash of coin"
... etc.

If and when my power costs exceed my GPU rig leasing profits, then I will power off and buy coins with the the new found fiat that I would have otherwise spent on power.

I was hoping we could use another word for the collective noun, like a "crypto" of bitcoins or a "hash" of bitcoins. You know if you suspect another bubble in the future you should keep mining now.

Bitcoin is stuff-like, like gold, in that any piece of bitcoin may be subdivided and the portions are still bitcoin. This argues for the collective noun of Bitcoin to be Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin is also a currency unit, such as the Euro or Dollar or Peso, and unlike gold. In the context of currency units, the collective noun of bitcoin is bitcoins.

I go either way depending upon context. When I say I am going to buy some coin, I mean some under-specified amount of bitcoin that likely is a fraction of a BTC.

Satoshi Nakamoto reasoned that miners would self-regulate in that when rewards were likely miners would add capacity, and when rewards were unlikely compared to costs, then miners would subtract capacity. I shut my GPU rigs off in 2011 in the face of ASICs and climbing difficulty and turned them back with additional capacity in December 2013. I may have to turn off my rigs again if profits continue to diminish - while waiting for the next bitcoin bubble.

If everyone buys coin and switches of their rigs, then the last guy/girl mining will make a a lot of coin and also control bitcoin. What is the collective noun for bitcoin BTW?

Exactly as illustrated in SlipperySlope's example, if you believe bitcoin price will rise a lot, you should simply buy bitcoin now when it is cheap. 

Its better to buy rather than to invest in mining equipment.

Perhaps an example can illustrate the widely held truth about unprofitable mining. Suppose bitcoin cost $500 each and your power bill is $2000 per month. Suppose that mining at a certain difficultly yields 1 bitcoin earned per month.

Then yes the 1 bitcoin earned per month will be very valuable at the peak of the next bubble - say $6000 per coin. By running the mining farm in this manner, you pay $1000 in electric cost, and earn 1 bitcoin currently worth $500. If you cash in at the peak of the bubble you net $6000 revenue minus cost of $1000 equals net profit of $5000 .

But suppose you instead shut down the unprofitable rig and spend the $1000 of newly available funds on purchasing two bitcoin for $1000. If you cash these in at the peak of the bubble you net $12000 revenue minus the cost of coin of $1000 equals a net profit of $11000.

This is why I always understand anyone who turns off their rigs.

The best case for running an unprofitable mining rig is if circumstances prevent you from otherwise buying bitcoin on an exchange. This is exactly the situation in China where the government, seeking to control the value of Yuan, limits the transfer of funds outside of China by its citizens to only $50000 per year. This law may be circumvented by someone purchasing say $200000 worth of mining gear - which may not as easily be monitored by authorities, and running it even though unprofitable, in order to create bitcoin valued in excess of the legal limit that can be sent out of China via the Bitcoin network.

Its very natural for mining to become redundant though.  To mine regardless I think is misplaced loyalty.  

   In a normal system of work, inefficiency is destroyed and this is a positive thing or we'd all be out in the fields mining potatoes.    Instead we progress and find cheaper ways to do repetitive tasks.    You can go all the way back to Adam Smith on this, the dude foretold the end of gpu mining on btc, a book based on logic beats Nostradamus every time 
Comparitive advantage might give us to further speculate mining will become specialised maybe even localised to certain parts of the world, where energy is cheap in excess and this super light data 'product' is no trouble to ship out.  Some Japanese islands on the ring of fire have geothermal power ?  Thing is, change is a positive and price being lower is part of that force is my guess, either btc can adapt or its in trouble:

This is why I never understand anyone who turns off their rigs. They may eat the loss on electricity for a while, until the price rises again and all that coin you mined while "unprofitable" suddenly makes it very profitable.

There is an emotional benefit to mining. So some people will mine even if they are making a loss.

These are people who genuinely believe in Bitcoin so they are taking an enlightened self interest approach.

Also if I want to buy bitcoins with minimal risk I have to use a trusted trader who charges largish commission and only accepts payment via cash deposit at a bank. Which is a hassle.

I make enough Fiat my power bill does not concern me.. I guess I should of mentioned that.  I honestly don't care if it's a couple bills a month.

In this thread he went from 'ruin' to 'death'

If you mine for profit, you should be reinvesting some of your profits back into upgrading your mining equipment.  Consider looking at your mining equipment differently, it weakens over time (difficulty), so think of them as drill bits as opposed to a drill.

Mining and speculating are separate business activities. If you're not making money on mining at current prices, you shouldn't be doing it.

I disagree.

First, the size of your mine does not matter. The cost of the power used per Gh/s is a better measure. All the size of your farm does is increase your total gain or loss. You still are either gaining or losing.

There is no correlation between difficulty and BTC price. Any that people see is very loose and probably rationalized.

Whether or not BTCs are bought and sold on exchanges is irrelevant unless you are looking at your mining as a fiat making endeavor. If your are, then yeah, turn off your machines and leave Bitcoin to the bitcoiners.

We are not anywhere near the death of bitcoin. There will always be Hobbyist who will keep it on life support. As people who believe what you say turn off their machines, difficulty will go down.

Bitcoin is only dieing to the people trying to get rich off it.

At this point BTC price going the wrong way and power consumption and cooling costs adding up, alot of miners will be forced to shutdown.

Fortunately, I have some free hosting(for now) so I'll keep mining until I can't or if it doesn't make sense anymore.  Or I'll sell them at some point.

Mining at home could be dead very soon.

Meh I can't wear my bitcoin miner shirt if I'm not mining, lmao.

You are an idiot.

Take that money you would have spent on electricity to power your miners and buy bitcoins with it instead.

You'll get more bitcoins that way.

If difficulty drops or the price of bitcoins goes up and you would turn a profit again, turn your miners back on.

The issue's that you can get it cheaper by purchasing right on an exchange if you're bullish. This ignores many benefits, though, not the least of which is that you don't have to deal with an exchange and bank to buy coins.

Well this is kinda risky but nice support for Bitcoin!

I will continue to mine when this happeneds to my miners, why?

Well if/when BTC jumps in price again.. all that "unprofitable" mining becomes widly profitable.