Topic: new to mining (i know nothing sorry) (Read 1993 times)

1. Do not buy pre-order mining rigs, such as BFL.
2. Go big or go home. $20K will buy about 8 THs worth of mining hardware. Currently, it's nothing to sneeze at; however, the rising diff factor will quickly eat into your profit margin and make your THs obsolete very quickly.

Anyone who is contemplating getting into crypto mining at this point in time needs to have his head examined.

$20K is A LOT MONEY to lose. I said it. You will likely never see your $20K again.

If I had $20K, I'd buy 43 bitcoins and store them in a cold wallet for a year or two.

Consider this to invest here too:

http://bitenergi.com/

+1.
It is better to simply buy bitcoin directly, less work, less risk.

Whatever you do, do not buy Cryptsy's mining contracts unless they completely hit rock bottom in price. I feel sorry for all those people who originally bought MN2 at 0.180 - 0.185btc.

Just buy BTC, you'll never mine 44 Bitcoins back no matter what hardware you buy.

Yes, please please educate yourself before you drop that sort of coin!

Thanks for the advise. But I think I know better than that. When it comes to an investment on Bitcoin whether it's trading, mining, or barter, most important question of all is that "Will Bitcoin be widely accepted as USD, Euro, or gold?" It seems to me your answer to this question is no. If anyone answers 'no' to this question, they are wasting time in the forum. If anyone has extra bucks to play with, it would be better to buy some stocks like Tesla or ServiceNow. Because dealing with Bitcoin is at least ten time riskier than buying some stocks.

I've been known Bitcoin since 2009. But I didn't bother with it. When I tell people about it, they says I should jumped in right away. They may be right. I could be a millionaire by now. But it was wise decision not to jump in right away because I couldn't afford such risk (or wasting of time). I decided to dive in now, because I can (finally) afford calculated risk as Bitcoin itself is becoming more stable, and less risky, not because Bobby says so.
 
Many people in this forum need to see in long term(20 years or longer) with bigger picture of Bitcoin in a relation to world economy. We are only 2nd reward era out of 34. Bitcoin is still in very infant stage. It's true that current Bitcoin price has some bubble. But future is bright if you can answer yes to the question. I identified few things impossible that Bitcoin can make them possible. It's like living in early 90s all over again as internet was started to get adopted. And yes, I'm that old. I still remember the days without computer.

And you believe Bobby Lee and ignore everyone else? That's called "distorted decision making" amongst many other phrases. You should take a basket of opinions, not just the highest, especially if he is trying to pump the price to get his customers to send more money to his bank account

It's not a dream. It's educated estimate by Bobby Lee, CEO of BTC China Exchange.
Watch Stanford Seminar - BTC: Bitcoin, a New Value Chain in China(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piasa1WgHjA)
 
My wet dream would be 10M USD/BTC

I agree. 20K is a lot of money to be investing in something you don't fully understand. Moreover,it's gonna take a lot of time and effort to research mining,the programs,dealing with hardware issues yada yada...on the other hand,you have exchanges not responding for months with all your money in their hands. So,unless you're absolutely sure you can afford to lose this 20K and have lots and lots of free time,don't invest all of it.

But your dream of bitcoin going to $400,000 or a million dollars is just a dream.

The network is quite secure as it is. It doesn't need more miners piling in, especially if they are going to lose money

Sure, do as your will, but $20K is a lot of money to risk, especially for a new miner. Learn the ropes first. Don't invest all $20K in mining equipment. But whatever, he must follow his own path.

First of all, I guess it's personal preference. I'm more like DIY type. I cut my own hair. Of course my hair looks messy all the time. But I'm proud of it.
The most important reason is that bitcoin must be circulated. If I compare shares of stocks that I have and bitcoin, bitcoin is at least ten times more risky (in my baseless opinion). In order for bitcoin to be as stable as other means of transactions like cash, checks, and/or credit cards, many people must use it like cash, but must not keep it as gold. That's why I try to encourage others to mine it and use it, but do not keep it.
Many people believe mining is at loss with current difficulty level. That may be true, but not only half true. Either they are lying or don't have bigger picture. For short time(one to five years), buying and keeping bitcoins will be more secure way to profit from it. But if you look at long term like 30 years or more, I believe mining is better option.
Also, mining is not wasting of time, money, and/or electricity. By contributing your computing power with mining, you are actually making each bitcoin transaction secure and safe. This is good thing for bitcoin network. If you want to make bitcoin successful, therefore, making money with it, all of us need to mine.
Many people wait bitcoin price to go up like $2000 or more. That's too short sighted. Can you imagine when each bitcoin become worth $400,000 or even a million dollars?

Very nice detailed post. But actually a good advert for why you should just buy BTC with $20K and not mine at all. The stress, the heat, the risk, the difficult decisions, and not even mentioning lying to the wife

I wish you the best of luck with your mining ..... but clearly its not for everyone.

With $20,000, you can get some serious machines, around 4-5TH/s. That's five tera hash per second, baby!!!
Setting up a mining rig is easy. If you know how to setup a home router, you are good to go.
But there are several things you have to consider.

• Preorder/delay: You just can't get them right now. Pay now and wait another six months. Can you do that? Can you trust the vendor? These are big questions that no one has clear answer to.
• Power consumption: 5TH/s, that's two machines, each consuming about 2000W, maybe more. Can your outlet handle it?
• Noise: These beasts do not belong to living room. Do you have a spare room in your home or office?
• Heat: Again, these beasts breath fire!! It will be a cozy high tech heater during winter. I like that. But during summer??? I'm not sure.
• Utility bill: Your electricity bill will be more than what you paid in your whole life, well, maybe not.
• Investment: Remember that. Are you willing to loose everything? Spreading out investment is always a good idea.
• Read everything in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin including all links and white papers before anything else.
• Review your investment strategy at http://www.investopedia.com/ Read everything in there.

In my case, as an example,

• I already lost 1.8 bitcoins to a scammer; blame my stupidity.
• I'm dumbest SRE(site reliability engineer) out there, so any technical issue is not an issue.
• I have about 59GH/s (cloudhashing) with cex.io
• Thinking about selling some stocks that I have, therefore, my budget is about 16K. Maybe I can throw another 4K to match you
• Thinking about ordering one or two of http://cointerra.com/product/terraminer-iv-2ths-networked-asic-miner-may-batch/
• If I live in Europe, I will consider https://www.kncminer.com/products/neptune-second-batch
• Thinking about more cex.io with leftover from preorder.
• But preorder makes me nervous; above two vendors are only reliable source; but still, bad reviews everywhere! Is it good move?
• I live in small one bedroom apartment, so my apt just can't afford two of them for sure.
• Going cloud is easy and clean, but they are about three times more expensive. Also are they trust worthy?
• Plus, the wisdom of the ages tells me, "do not put all your eggs in one basket."
• My estimate(wet dream) of ROI is about 3-4 months without considering increase of difficulty. In reality, it may take a year or even more
• Thinking about reinvesting BTC earned back to cex.io until 3Q of 2016. That's when 2nd reward era ends.(https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply)
• I have to lie to my wife about total amount of investment. Very bad move! I'm not sure if it's worth of taking such risk.
• I have to make a decision within 2-3 weeks; can't sleep at night(overly exaggerated); a sign of addiction which is not a good sign, weakening discipline, exposing to scammers and frauds.

Feedback is welcomed. But please don't tell me about alt coins. Thinking about bitcoin is already a big risk and I can't afford anything else.

 ,, wisdom speaks

Its not the "work" that is the problem the GPU(s) do most of that for you, its the fact you might well not make a profit. And since you already declared you know virtually nothing about mining, that ups the % chance of losing money considerably.

Why not spend $1K on a little mining rig and learn how to mine. Spend the other $19K on coins. Spending $20K on a rig for a newbie in the current environment is pretty bonkers.

Before buying any hardware, check the hashrate, difficulty history and plug those figures into a profit calculator.

IMHO, it would be better to simply buy the coins (btc or ltc) directly than buying mining hardware.

Maybe you should take a look to a list about different miner efficiency:https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
A calculator to calculate your profit:http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/
Just enter the numbers in the calculator.

I am not afraid of work, if the out pay is worth it. is mining a greater profit.??

Mining does not have to be as expensive or difficult as made out to be. You don't need soldering skills or electrical skills... one computer, maybe two, and a few GPU cards and a week to learn how to use pools and edit config. files will suffice.

For $20,000 you'd want a dedicated rig which WOULD require specific skills above and beyond a computer running a GPU.

I too would suggest investing in coins, less work in the end.