Topic: Need advice (Read 201 times)

Depends on what kind of risk you refer to.
From your example, if the bear market starts, what happens to his investment? Will he be able to make his ROI back, ever?

As I said in the previous reply, when investing in hardware, at worst, he still has a hardware that can be resold (with a lower price, of course).
When investing in a market, especially in some highly speculative asset, he can literally be left with nothing. So, yeah. I still think investing, without prior research, is far more risky than mining.

If OP is not good in hand skills: set up rigs, clean them regularly, check and fix small technical problems, mining will be a nightmare. When you run your mining rigs, you can not take a drive and bring them back and forth between your home or mining farm and Customer service or Maintenance center. It is terrible adventure.

So the alternative is invest or trade. In this market, bullish, invest is good and easy. Trade is not for newbies because they will fall into the leverage trades that will kill them with account liquidations.

Invest is best if you compare it with trading or mining.

Both have risk attach and both are profitable but do not go any of these without doing proper research, people are losing on mining and investing because they do not know how to proceed, continue and sustain, yes you can afford both but it's not what you can afford but what you can sustain and continue to do, and where you can have the passion, find where your passion is and what you can explore better and profit will come.   

Who told you that mining have no risk? That's wrong information, imagine buying a rtx3070 for 1400$ for mining today and tomorrow or probably two weeks later bear market starts you won't be to make your ROI back, oh yes probably in 1000 days later and that's even if your electricity is free

Mining is more pressure than investment.

When you invest and use a non-custodial wallet to store your crypto, you have them in your wallets, your hands. If you invest into a good cryptocurrency, without pumps and dumps, price will rally to the price you buy it or give you higher price to take profit.

When you buy mining rigs (GPUs or ASICs), you have to set them up, manage the operations, maintenance and over time, your rigs will be outdated. So if you can not manage to get your capital back and liquid your rigs in time, you will get big loss when you sale off your outdated rigs. With me, mining is more risky than investment.

You're saying that you are a newbie and you are asking this.

Mining has many factors like the electricity price in your country, the place, the coin that you want to mine etc. but you said that you can afford to build a mining farm so its possible that mining can be good for you. You just need to do a bit of research, watch videos that might help you in your mining journey.

When it comes to investing, you just need money, knowledge, and patience because you can only get profit on investing thru capital appreciation and maybe staking rewards if you chose staking coins like ADA, DOT etc.

Overall, being knowledgeable will help you in either mining of investing. For a newbie like you, investing would be a better choice compare to mining. Mining and investing has advantages and disadvantages. I suggest to gather information that might help you then you will be the one to decide which best suits for you . Good luck.

I suppose a crypto newbie means you have a very limited knowledge on crypto. So I guess the better choice is the one less complicated. Where things are not complicated, risks are lower.

Plain crypto investing is very easy. Prepare a reliable wallet, buy Bitcoin, that's all. Unlike mining, you don't have to study each available coin in the market. You are a newbie, buy Bitcoin. You don't have to compare rigs, coins to mine, cost analysis, and so on.

But, of course, a crypto newbie's first step before anything else is to learn and understand the basics of crypto.

There are too many factors to consider before we can give advice to the OP.  Op didn't give full information regarding his life status of where OP's live.

For Bitcoin mining, if you live in a cold place and has cheap electricity bill cost, mining is good for you.  Because everything depended on the energy consumption cost while you have a plan to have a crypto mining business, you should calculate first the mining facility cost and other expenses while operating mining.  Remember that mining had higher investment and monthly cost, from buying machine until it will operate you also need to prepare fund for the maintenance costs depending on the energy use of the Bitcoin miner.  However, this might help you and I saw this before, the Bitcoin network energy estimator.

For investing in Bitcoin, I think a lower risk than mining.  Because you need to do is to invest while the Bitcoin market is low and wait until your profit was there and sell, the only problem is when you can't wait to sell your Bitcoin or become panic and sell and accept your losses.  But if you can wait for the potential growth, you always have a profit than a loss.

Both of them have pros and cons, do proper research first before taking any action.

Investing has the lowest risk for you but that doesn't mean that the entire risk for being an investor is also lessened, there's still a big risk for investors but if you just buy bitcoin and hold it, you won't be thinking about it. Mining will cost you from starting it but it's rewarding if the coin you mine shoots up its price but, what about when the price drops? operational cost and other maintenance stuff unlike investing, you don't worry about those.

You're not yet ready to have your own mining farm as a newbie because you need to study about it first. But no one stops you from doing it if you have gained enough knowledge and you think you're prepared for it.

If you ignore first about profit, then mining has a lower risk.
In fact, you can estimate the amount of your loss in advance based on your monthly bill if the coins you have mined have no value. While the investment risk is 100% loss even in just one minute due to various factors.

I wrote my statement assuming nothing about OP besides being a crypto newbie as he said himself. Even if you are familiar with computer hardware, from that to entering the world of mining is a long way to go.

Purchasing hardware and plugging it in isn't something I'd recommend, if I'm being honest. You can't just purchase a random GPU off Craigslist and plug it into your PC hoping to make money. That's not how it works. You have to calculate whether the investment is worth it. You have to know that once in a while, you'll have to replenish your mining rigs or add more power to them. That means you might lose more money in the long run by investing in mining rigs, which is honestly useless if you're only seeking profit. You need more space, some knowledge about mining and components, math, making sure the room doesn't get overheated etc.

Well, if as a newbie you put all your life savings into a new coin then no offense but you pretty much should stay away from crypto at all until you get to know more about it. Someone who has some knowledge about hardware components has to be quite silly to put their money in something unknown or too new. It's mostly common sense.. When you hear about crypto, you hear about Bitcoin. That's what everyone should start off with imo. As long as you get how BTC works, you can go on and keep researching to expand your knowledge range.

Short term or not, investing is as simple as finding a local ATM, scanning a QR code and entering some banknotes in the machine. At least investing gives you the opportunity to invest for the short term too - mining doesn't. I think there is nothing easier than purchasing a coin and waiting..

If you start mining then you will have to sell your coins along the way to make back the money you spent on building your mining operation. If the market becomes bearish then you might end up losing more money than you are making.

Investing in coins is clearly the better option. You can just buy the most popular coins and the odds are that they will increase in value over time. Just don't go too heavy on random shitcoins.

I've always viewed mining as a no go area for me not even to talk of newbies. At first, it was more about the cost for me but later on when i found out that the cost was way higher than i thought and the fact that, the reward from mining decreases down the line as more and more coins are mined plus the fact that, the steps becomes difficult after each successful mine, i just knew mining isn't a thing for me, likewise newbies.
There is always going to be more to this than we know now but, i won't advise anyone newbie to go into mining. Its way too much resource!

OP did not give us anything about himself. We don't know whether they had any knowledge or skills. Is it familiar with computer hardware or any other hardware. and that is very important if it enters the world of mining.
I find many hardware/mining resellers (in my country) where newbies after buying hardware, just need to plugin miner to grid and add his ETH address. And voila, they are in the mining industry.

About investment, OP also has no give us information, do they need to get some profit in the short or in the long term. and there is a difference whether it is to hold or buy/sell strategy.
Of course, there is always the possibility to invest in a new Defi project and expect some returns from there, but you must agree, a new project (whether or not it is defi, ico ieo..) requires some prior knowledge, research and it's certainly not for beginners.

I disagree. Mining is a way more complicated process than investing is. Mining isn't as simple as purchasing equipment and launching a software. Sometimes you don't even get to earn a profit from mining, especially as a new miner.

I've tried both, and it depends on what your beliefs are. For example, to some people it's worth it to mine since it's one of the best ways to earn coins with high privacy. It also helps the security of the blockchain. But for me, it's too much of a hassle and even if I earn BTC through mining, at one point the government might wonder why the hell my electricity bill suddenly went up multiple times.

Investing =/= trading. You can invest without trading. You could simply purchase and hold.. and I think it's much, much easier for a newbie than starting to mine.

A newbie to cryptocurrency should probably be more focused on gaining knowledge about it, before going for a means of making profits. To make an informed decision one would need to understand the pros and cons associated with mining as well as investing.
• An investor who jumps into the market would be unprepared for the changes that comes with it and would likely sell at a loss
• Mining also has it's risks and peculiarities (location, choice of crypto to mine etc) one would need to understand before venturing into it.

I'll.advice you hang around this forum +particularly those boards that will be of interest to you, read up helpful post and make inquiries anywhere you need assistance.

currently, Ethereum mining is quite profitable, even with a slightly higher price of electricity.
Beginners -> investing  what can go wrong?

I guess OP had some money for the initial start. So mining is maybe better for the beginner, through it they will learn some basic things, he will have something tangible ^{mining hardware} in his hands. and the potential mining reward will be able to invest if he wants.

A win-win situation is if they can to have both options. For example, if he starts to trade it will surely happen to buy deep and they must wait for the price back. In such moments it is good if extra income comes from mining.

Forget about mining unless you live in a country with extremely low electricity costs. But there are only a few of them worldwide. Otherwise, investing is clearly the better option for beginners.

Mining would really depend on a lot of factors. It's not just about affording to set up a mining farm but other costs along the way such as electricity bills. So you have to first figure out how long it will take to get returns from your mining farm. The fluctuations in the prices of the coin you are mining and the hashrate will also affect your revenue.

Investing on the other hand seems easier for me. Just wait when the market plummets to very low prices (bearish market) and then buy the dips. HODL the coins and wait for 2-3 years for a bullish trend to realize your profits (sometimes you can even easily achieve x10 within a couple of years if you entered the market at bargain prices). In the investing part, I would suggest you go for solid coins that won't just disappear overnight such Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, DASH etc and avoid shitcoins.

Mining or investing? Mining has no risk but the cost-effectiveness is questionable. Investing, however, is risky.
Investing in your own hardware has many benefits, including full control over the mining operation. And if all else fails, you're always left with hardware that you can resell (depending on the type of hardware).