Topic: New To Mining - Various Questions. (Read 1073 times)

I agree with this to a point. The best bet is to jump in on Ninja launches, and hope it bodes well.

The other method is slow consolidation of a major stake within any given market; which takes time and patience, and the right software. Once you own and control the coin supply; my rule of thumb is own 60% of the currency - some may say 51% - you can place the price using software and trading patterns.

It is a brutal environment. Expect losses before gains. The only way you will really learn is by being down in the trenches and taking some shrapnel. If you survive; you may just have a chance.

Strato

I won't tell you which coins (you need to do your research), but there are some coins who have very volatile difficulty rates that are extremely profitable to mine when the difficulty dips to a low level. When the difficulty drops sufficiently, use a site like Nicehash for your mining. Most sites that lease rigs lease for a fixed period of time. Nice hash doesn't. With Nicehash, you can stop mining if the difficulty spikes. This will prevent you from wasting your time mining after the coin has become unprofitable.

This is how I do it and I do quite well. Good luck.

In every domain you have that learning curve. At first you get burned, then you learn and you can make profit. Mining on low budget can not be profitable. You need to invest big to win big. If not, this is just another money consumer hobby!

The only way I could possibly see cloud mining as profitable would be to use spot instances on Amazon AWS.

Mining CPU only coins, like XMR (Gpu has marginal if no advantage), spot rent 32 core linux systems in the cheapest geographic locations.  Set your spot price point well bellow market price/current fill rate... Then wait.

If enough instances become free, your spot order would be filled.

Next, AWS will not charge you if your Spot rental is terminated under the 1 hour mark. So you can gamble on 1.) your spot price being so low ball that it gets outbid before the hour mark = no charge.

2.) They also dont charge for partial hours, so if you get outbid at 1 hour 43 minutes you are only charged for 1 hour.

Doing this however, you would need to first set up your spot rental, and code it to auto boot, and auto mine on start. Because you would never know when it would be filled. Then clone the instance. Or output it and run it across multiple rental types (16 core, 8 core etc)

Honestly though, unless you were able to do A LOT of these, your gains if any would be slim.

Strato

I urge you to think about the economics here.

Cloud mining operations own their equipment. They'ed have to, otherwise how could they rent it out, right?

well, even that's not a given, there have been lots of scams in the cloud mining space, but ideally, that's the situation. The only reason for them to rent it out to you is if they can earn more money from you than they would from mining. So, just to pull a number out of thin air, let's say a gigahash can generate $10 of btc per week at current difficulties (which it won't, it'll earn far far less). Why would they rent it to you for anything less than that? 

Ok, maybe especially now, with Bitcoin trading at very low (per recent history) values against the dollar, many operations are operating on razor thin margins. You're paying a proportionate share of the hardware cost, electricity (probably cheaper than your own), and a "maintenance fee", and then you have to realize that difficulty will adjust. If coin prices rise...

Forget it, I'm rambling 

Point is, cloud mining is only a way for hardware owners to earn more from their rigs than they'ed earn operating it themselves. There's risks of theft (amhash), ponzi, etc. if you want to get your hands on bitcoins, your best bet is to either buy your mining hear yourself (though, you'll be disadvantaged buying 1 unit rather than benefitting from economies of scale, plus you'll pay retail prices for power), or simply devote the same amount of money towards small, regular purchases at an exchange. The later being the best bet right now.

I mean, you could invest $100 in clod mining contracts and hope to earn back $100 worth of coin by the time they expire (not very likely, most will say) or just buy $100 of coin and not have to worry about Time to ROI, etc.

FYI, Im using your faucets (in your sig link) so you can earn some referral coinage. Good idea using Wix. I didnt even think of that. I may do something similar. Get ready for some friendly competition!

This is a hard topic/idea to begin to address. The main reason is because there is no real good way of investing a small amount and getting a good return without luck. (You can get a small return and I explain below) Let me explain...

As someone who has participated in countless high interest BTC "investments" they all, in the end, turn out to be Ponzi style scams. Its only a matter of time before they pack up, take all the money, and disappear. Im not going to list them all here. But the last one, and arguably the most cunning yet, was Our Beks (ourbeks.com). And it was so good at scamming everyone because it didnt make the typical huge promises that most scam sites do. They offered a very low daily interest rate (starting at 1.5% daily), ability to withdraw at any time, and like any seemingly legit service, had a fee for withdrawing principal. It was equal to about 5-6 days of what you would earn in interest. So you had to keep your money in for about a week before you actually started to really earn anything.

They had claimed that they were a fund that moved with BTC's (and other crypto's) price fluctuation and also included other Forex currencies in the fund (to offset the days when BTC's price didnt fluctuate a ton). I put .25 BTC in at first to test it out. I went a month earning on that deposit. Think about it, At 1.5% daily it takes less than 90 days to double your BTC. I withdrew my profits daily. Then after a month, I dropped 1.15 BTC into my account. I earned on that just long enough to break even. And I got lucky. Because they clsoed up shop and disappeared with everyones money

It started when I went to withdraw the daily earnings on the last larger deposit one day and I got an error message saying "That only 4 withdraws per month were allowed" At first, I didnt think much of it. Most funds try to discourage you from withdrawing daily. It doesnt give them any time to really make your $$. I figured it was a new policy. I waited. I waited into the next month. Still got the same message. At this point I knew they didnt have the money and would be gone any day.

No replies to my emails asking if I had to wait 30 days from my last withdraw or if it reset when the calendar month reset.

Then, the site wasnt there. Gone.

Like I said, I got lucky. How many people deposited BTC after I did and didnt get the chance to break even?

So,

1) you can invest a small amount in the newest ponzi scheme and hope you get lucky

2) you can buy BTC when the price dips and then sell it when it goes back up

3) you can invest in the official (and regulated) Bitcoin Investment Trust which was just recently cleared by the FCC and SEC.

Small, more trusted way to get a return

1) Loan your BTC via BTCjam.com

I have been doing that for quite some time. Since the loans are crowdfunded you can invest a very small amount into a loan. I have had two people default on their loans. And I have a wide array of complaints with how the site works and the level of sophistication of the staff (basically, they clueless and have no business trying to run a site like that). But of the borrowers have an established history and an ok credit rating, then you will most likely get your money back plus interest. You should really try that out. After successfully getting your money back plus interest your wife may even give you some more play money

Thank you all very much for your time and advise. So Cloud mining is out...
I do hope in the future to buy a couple antminers or zues miners and just have my own equipment,
( But that's already a battle in itself trying to explain what mining is to my wife. )

Any tips on where to invest small amounts of BTC ( 20 - 50$ )  and get a ROI + Profit in a short time?

Check link in my signature

Always stay away from "Cloud Mining" -- they all end up scamming you in the end.

cloud mining has nothing to do with virtual currency, most of them are just ponzi....
and regarding making back your "liquid asset"... well if it isn't profitable, don't expect to sell back your "liquid asset" high... (some people should really stop telling that sort of bs...)

Most of them are just ponzi, meaning you'll find around lucky guys who were able to make their money back and more because they joined early however most of the people are usually losing money...

and if you are new to crypto, best advice: Don't trust anyone especially people who will tell you it is possible to double or triple your investment (as well as the people who back these scheme...)   ... well it is possible though through mining but may take a while and 20$ isn't really enough to buy any hardware
Welcome to far west... 

I half agree.

Cex are ok to mine with as you can sell your GH/s when ever you want, and the price per GH is pretty low at the moment, however I know GHash ( Their mining pool ) has taken a huge hit from Antpool and has lost some where in the region of 25-30 PH/s so finding blocks is a lot slower now, making there maintenance fee's higher per found block.

Its a chance really but I would guess if you bought $20 worth of power you would make some profit as your GH's is a liquid asset that can be sold back at anytime, hopefully for a little more than you paid for it.

And welcome to the crazy world of virtual currency, its fun !

First off cloud mining in most cases is not a great idea.  You are lucky to get initial investment back.  And a lot are ponzi schemes. Do some ROI math but with fees I don't see you making 50 dollars in profit a month cloud mining.  You own nothing with cloud mining.  With mining with actual gear at end you own the gear to sell or keep using.

As far as investing 20 dollars I would guess just buying BTC.  It's not enough to buy miners.   Only option to mine is rent or cloud either I personally don't think will make you money.

But to turn 20 dollars into 50-100 a  month I do not see anytime soon.  You are talking over 200 percent profit.  That is a huge profit margin.

So i've been dipping my feet into cloud mining. So far i've been breaking even nearly every time ( at least for these past 2 weeks )

When i first started i made about 2$ profit.

Now it seems like im just only breaking even.


Here are my questions :


What are the best/easiest alt coins to mine for?
I've checked out coinwarz and other coin sites like that to get more info...but the charts and figures are like gibberish to me.

What kind of miner ( Sha/ Scrypt / x11 ) Should i use and why?

Any professional tips for a new cloud miner?

Any recommended cloud mining sites? Currently i use Betarigs cause they have cheap prices.

What does BTC/ghs/day ratio mean?




Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

My goal isn't to get rich, but maybe make an extra 50-100$ a month if possible?



What would be the best way to invest 20$ in bitcoin?