Topic: Reasons Mining Will NEVER Be Profitable (Read 6971 times)

Altcoin mining is more profitable than bitcoin mining since the electricity cost for most people is higher than 5cents/Kwh.

I understand you ltc argument
You can become profitable with cloud mining by selling the equal fiat amount you spent

Example i paid 20.00 usd for cloud mining (0.04 btc)
I sell at a later date when 20.00 usd is equal to 0.02 btc. I hope you get how im breaking even here. After I get my returned 20.00 usd I can let the cloud mining generate the rest which will be all profit.

in my opinion the mining is mot profitable because , its reaching newr the maximum amount of bitcoin to genrate . after second halving there is again very decrease of profit in mining because no more bitcoin will made .

My friend mining well over 800  bitcoin.
Some of them are "on hold"

His biggest loss was with cloud mining. Hashnest and antminer S5
Lost over 50 BTC

1. I've quite sure LTC will not die. But I sell my mined LTC every day. Over 600 LTC in month. Profit is greater as in BTC mining with S9 miners.
2. Cloudmining like Hashnest is never profitable in the long run. You can only make profit with a  purchase and sales, not with a long time mining.

We are talking about BITCOIN not alts LTC= no dev and mediterranean = unknown coin.

That being said, No wonder you have got the results you did. You need better research sources. I knew ltc was going to die. Mining BITCOIN is still inevitably profitalble if you mine and hold (even cloud mine). (By fiat standards).

Example= If I put in 20.00 usd worth of btc in cloud mining I will get 10 thousand sats per day (currently) 20 usd = 0.04btc (rounded)/10k sats= 400 days to break even 1 year 5 months. If you take usd into consideration 1 yr 5 mth 0.04 btc price could be 100 usd or 50 usd who knows.

Stupid idea. My friend mining and hold LTC. I mine too.
I sold 2014 mine when  the price was over 30USD = 1 LTC and sold last 1 LTC = 22USD

His few thousand LTC is still on hold.  How much is loss ?

We both mine MediterraneanCoin .  http://www.mediterraneancoin.org/
Both  about  the 1.5 million coins .
I sold mine all the time. Total over 18 BTC.  His 1,5 million is in wallet. With Todays price it is 7,35BTC
Today price is 0.00000490 BTC for 1 MED    https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/mediterraneancoin/

Just mine and hold and you will always be profitable, Imagine if you mine an held since 2011

I agree that it's the best way to get returns on investment and not have to wait for months/years

So basically people who mine now only do it to get the coins, not the value attached to them? Wouldn't it be more profitable to mine altcoins and sell those for bitcoins?

For now, any profit appears anywhere, hundreds of people will point their miners at it and mine the profit out of it. You have to just hope the coins you mine will increase in value, if they are good coins, that means doing research on the coins you mine.

Mining might not be profitable for new miners in the short term but perseverance yields result on the long run. Difficulty might reduce if developers successfully modify the bitcoin blockchain.

Yup, from my perspective...mining IS investing...might as well play the whole game.

Selling/buying to turn a larger profit just raises your ROI.

Your right, Im one of those with some profits. But you must do your math when it is best to resell the mining equipment. And the mining contain risks, as the future difficulty and resale value of the miner is not know, you just have to estimate and hope no catastrophic scenario happens. So its not for everyone, you must have some analytical skills if you dont have super cheap electricity, otherwise there is good chance you end up in the red numbers.

 3 and 4 aren't about mining, that's investing.

It depends a lot in what country do you live, in my country mining is a pain in the “*”

I feel like mining is extremely profitable on a conditional basis.

Here are a few conditions that push the bitcoin game into your favor:

1. low power cost
2. low miner cost
3. selling btc during price hikes
4. buying btc during price drops
5. proper upgrading and reselling of equipment
6. lots of legwork
7. motherf'ing intelligence
8. not being stupid
9. not being an idiot
10. not making bad decisions

I probably missed a few points, but who cares! ...right?

If you are extremely impulsive then you might have a hard time day trading. If you don't have patience then you shouldn't be making long term investments.

If you can't afford to take a loss then you probably can't afford to participate.

Stupidity is it's own reward.

No man, I was not talking about your post.    I'm sorry I did not quote the post I was referring to! I was not referring to you.

There was a post by some spammer which got deleted.

 

I can vouch on this sadly in the Midwest summers temp can very highly and a few really hot day's.   What I did was use lot's of CFM's during summer on fan's so the pushing of hot air out becomes very important.  I actually had to upgrade to a commercial duct exhust due to hot summer's a typical home one just did not keep up.  Also it depends on weather some are lucky and can do evaporation cooling which is cheapest option as far as cooling.

But low electricity will always remain king.  If you have that you can work most thing's, there are a few things such as electricity/internet not being reliable that can make even cheap electricity hard.   So there are other factors some politically are hard ... so lots of other items but overall electricity is what most are decided by in my experience.

 Even FREE equipment doesn't matter if your electric cost is too high.

 Equipment cost affects TIME to ROI though, and if it's too high you'll never ROI even with VERY VERY CHEAP electric.



 The OP had no clue what they're talking about though, as there are quite a few miners that HAVE in fact made money via mining - NOT just the "big farms" but some of us HOME miners have made substantial overall net profits.

Thats a bold statement.
Mining is still very profitable if you know how to work your gear or you have right pricing for power. For me it just sounds like you are pissed that you live in an area where power is too expensive or you didn't invest correctly in mining gear. For me mining is still very profitable and instead of using my hard earned BTC, I reinvest them in new better gear.
In the beginning I made 1 investment around 10k$ and mined the hell out of the gear for a year, then I replaced them with new gear, bought  the tripple amount of hash for the mined BTC and moved my gear from home to a cheaper platform. Now i'm close to be a PH farm owner and still with extra BTC in hand than I use on new gear.
If you find the right power pricing mining is still a very nice investment, so your statement is BS.

mining thread says never profitable

you said it is electric ..ie cheap electric

I pointed out my electric is expensive my equip is not

both would be better

the goal is both but it does not just have to be cheap electric

dumb luck is also involved for either

and again following the thread theme that is it NEVER profitable to mine...well at 2300 after elec per month and ROI in 5 months on the new stuff
even at 14c kwh ..er thread is wrong is what I'm saying...but dumb luck is needed that is for sure

if you were just referring to cold...it does not matter it is air flow....in my basement setup with 1450mh and probably 6000 watts it is AIR FLOW
ie if it is 80F outside and 88F in the  basement that is about as good as it is gonna get....I add 8F over the outside temp....air flow and fans moving
air through ..getting the heat out is the main deal.....some heat will happen as you heat up your mining area....can't avoid it (limestone basement
will and does keep 8F of heat above say outside temp of 80F...but moving air keeps it from getting too out of hand..if you find yourself too far
in the heat increase...you just need more frigging air flow (or so it has worked for 22 months)

and of course winter you heat the house for free

hope this clears up my thinking on what I think you meant

I tried really hard to understand the post which is above mine but I couldn't.
Can anybody encrypt this cryptic writing?
What the hell did he say (or at least tried to)?

The 2nd part to the above is equipment cost...anything is possible if you get the equip cost low enough....that requires almost lottery level luck thou.

I picked up 7 new Titans this year. A 300mh nov 2013 new unused unit on a corp blunder..never used...he lost to knc class action for $1825 with shipping. Ebay buy it now with paypal
no less

and 6 400mh KNC Titan5 cubes new in the box from the KNC Liquidation sale we stumbled into...BUT the equip all has to be repasted (wrong paste) was new
but put together by clueless temps....and shipped in crummy boxes....thus 20% damage rate w/o counting the full repaste re-do on the lot of 24 in that batch.

We figure we can get all but 5% back..sad seeing new equip toasted because no thermal pads on new boards due to knc being temp worker idiots and testing
such there at 400mh for 1/2 hr....sure it worked for a bit...charcoal brick thou dc/dc's when we got some ..fun times.

It was however knc so we expected no less them being evil and all (tm knc) they were 1900 a piece with shipping included.

I bring this up because with hosting etc it comes out to 14c kwh and I should ROI with PSU's etc in less than 5-6 months. (not just miners psu's/gen tarkin firmware etc etc)


But like any miner that has survived....it is a matter of luck ..if you have good location ( 3c kwh say) you need equip ... in my case got crummy electric
but scored on equipment..the real winners on all this is if you can manage to beat the 'fates' and get both

Electric is the easiest imho to control. (you can always host something elsewhere) but equip ..especially scrypt equip that pays to a point of ROI these days is

the real Unicorn hunt imho (If you are a home miner that is)

Cold isn't critical, low electric cost IS.

 Cold can HELP though.

 Best place to mine in the US is NOT a particularly cold area - but it's DRY around here making low-cost Evaporative cooling reasonable most of the time it DOES get hot.

I don't think you are quite correct. If mining was not profitable there would be no mining. Mining is always needed so will always be profitable. Maybe not for most people but it still is for those living in places that are cheap to run and cold and have easy access to miners rather then rely on online deliveries.

Depends on your purpose...

If you mine for profit... very possible... price per KW is the number you worry about along with btc price ask any miner they will tell you they look at their electrical cost before they look at btc price basically looking at how much its cost to generate 1 BTC...

I know some people will mine even if it breaks even so they can move money around easily without fiscal constraints.

some will mine even at a slight loss... "more of the illegal kind"

depends on your purpose... heck some mine to exchange their fiat currency for USD EUR Pounds etc... all depends on the purpose.

but to say not profitable.. its truth for some but not for all, and is truth for less people than you think.

It is a high risk/high reward type of investment.  You have to remember this as some of the mining profit's I've gotten over the years I NEVER could have gotten in a save traditional investment.  If you want safe there are other things like savings accounts that don't pay hardly anything but have FDIC insurance (if in us).   And there are bonds you can buy a AAA bond and have a pretty safe investment that has been graded by a legit firm.

We are all still really early adopter's so there is a chance of decent returns.  But yes you can lose to.    I don't see what has changed in mining it's always been high risk, but for some it will pay off.   And the post above mentions a machine for higher electricity, there is also Ether on GPU's.  So there are still chances for some, not all but a lot.

Again equip comes into play and the price you get it at.  I have Titans still doing fine at 14c kwh summer and 10c kwh winter (and heats the house for free kinda sorta)

the angle can be played both ways thou electric costs are the more stable bet.

I'll say what I'm going to say right here: Mining is like gambling since there are so many factors that can lead to negative roi or doubling your money. You have nearly no control over the price of BTC nor the difficulty. What I said usually does not apply for people with very cheap electricity, although there are circumstances where it also applies. Everyone has different opinions, but really, if a miner was priced too high by a manufacturer, nobody will get roi above, say, 5 cents. This makes mining impossible for most.  If difficulty goes up 10% more than expected, a miner will be thrown off the expected track quite a bit. What if price falls? What if? There are so many variables in mining that you have to accept this is a very risky proposition, and you might as well be gambling with around 70-30 odds for most people.

Remember what I said about electricity? Cheap electricity almost always means ROI, but it also depends on cooling costs. A tropical region with 3 cent electricity will often incur more electrical costs than a cool region with 5 cent electricity, as more electricity will be needed for cooling. Mining is an uncertainty most of the time for people with above 5-cent electrical costs.

Exactly it all comes down to cost.  In most cases electricity price makes or breaks you.   I will say mining has treated me well over the past few years... so to say it will never be profitable is false.   Maybe say "Never be profitable to some" then it could be true.  But some out there are still mining profitable.

Heck I even invested a little in GPU's to mine ether as it was a fun project to do again a chance to mess with GPU mining.   And it can be done at pretty  "normal" for lack of better term electricity rates.    And you can sell GPU's down the road.   

i think the opposite it's true, mining will be always profitable, but only for a certain group of people/big farm, that will in the end control the network

Er huh. 1035 a month Titan miners after Roi'd and electric. Now if just mean btc miners I 'll
Take more note of your position.

As soon as any profit appears anywhere, hundreds of people will point their miners at it and mine the profit out of it.
You have to just hope the coins you mine will increase in value, if they are good coins, that means doing research
on the coins you mine.

Mining is profitable, but you need to work at it constantly, upgrade your equipment at the right times, think outside the box, and control your fixed costs as much as possible. Cloud mining on the other hand will always be a loss in my opinion, the numbers just never make sense.

Of course brother, yeah.. i just noobs. We (Indonesian user), just enjoying about cryptocoin. I take respect for anyone's who experiences in here.. but, i just wondering too about my friends.


How can and it's free.. just with serious learning and have internet access, we (Indonesian user) can make it.

Unfortunately, nowadays.. many of dev's going for trapped (us) only and absolutely make sure about they're mission.

I take screenshot just for remember and take respect, how can so easier 2011-2013 for getting bitcoin. But, in case.. we (Indonesian user) still looking how to take profit in anyway (mining, bypass terms sites, trading and more).

If you're serious dev's i can give you great idea, how to make 100-1k BTC/month. Soon, if i didn't deal with one of dev's in around here.

You do realize that you joined the forums last month and xstr8guy has been on here for over 1.5 years.  If you knew anything about him you would know how much hardware he has bought in the past.  I'm pretty sure he knows how and when to make a profit, avoid scam sites, etc.

Do you want me suggest tips for you??

You can make profit from altcoin. Not with bitcoin and litecoin.

Join in my facebook groups. https://www.facebook.com/groups/cryptocoinindonesia/. I know, we came from Indonesian. But if you want to post questions, we are welcome.

We discuse about the problem and or anything like (avoid sites scam, suggest mining coin, pump-dump even, and more)

The above post made my head ache.

It depends what coin you want to be mined.

Of course, Bitcoin with high diff. won't friendly with among of users. But, we can mining a scrypt and or x11 coins..

Also, there a lot of dev's just shout they're mission (ANN: Spamcoin).

Unfortunately, someone just trapped to mine they're shitscoin. Yea.. while the dev's dump coins, you still mining.
--

Do you want profitable in mining?? try to survey first in market, nor mining pool. Then decide, if don't have rigs, calculate how many budget for rent rigs and profit minimun.

no I rather it all hashes.  But the op chose the never word  . Thus I can list hundreds of ways the never word would be wrong in his example.

Here is a peaceful one  world wide bank interest rates continue to suck.

 Thus a few big  investors decide to pump btc to the moon.

 3 people with about 250 million  each would be able to boost the price to the moon.

Little miners like myself  With 10  coins and a few th mining score nicely when coins go to 6000 usd. 

Sounds like the sept to dec 2013 runup all over again.  coins soared 10 fold.    that certainly make the never in the title pretty wrong.  And no violence

uh.... so...
mining is no no
and, lets switch to trading 

I don't think it was your intention but it sure seems like you're hoping for terror attacks, destructive war and devastating natural disasters to keep bitcoin mining marginally profitable for a few more months.

Maybe I'm a bit to "peace & love" to see death and destruction as a temporary cure to mining woes.

WORDS lol

So after a 3.08% jump does mining look better?

   Some More reasons  mining can become profitable:

 super mining centers may be  a victim of terror , earthquake, fire, flooding.

Too many eggs in a basket run big losses.

We all should remember what happened when WD hdd plant flooded.

Or right now as I type Israel and Gaza are tossing missiles back and forth.

God forbid one drops into the sp30 plant.

Or the next Tsunami hits and floods something in china.

Concentration of large power sucking btc mines is asking for a plant to be destroyed one way or another.

some big mines here at this link are all in 1 spot. 

http://blockchain.info/pools

there is a solo address with 5%

another solo address with 4%

 a third solo address with 1%


this trend will lead to a crash and burn of a big plant  it is just the way things work.

To say BTC mining will never be profitable is silly. 

To say BTC mining may be hard to make a profit is better.

But if you are in position like right now (next jump is 10 or more days) and coins jump overnight to 1200usd  you make a ton of money in the next 10 days or so.

reasons...
when BTC price dropped down to $1
BTC or miner will be just like trash

but if BTC price shoot thru ur roof ended up stable at $1000
then mining will be profitable for about 2months before everybody bulk buy miners and run them

This would not work because someone could simply dev an ASIC that "pretends" to be many different people thus increasing their odds of finding a block

All a bigger miner would have to do is run mutliple instances of their software and poof, the supposed equality is gone.

Other coins have concepts similar to this but they haven't been accepted anywhere near as widely as BTC.  Also this is a transient phase.  Sooner or later the growth will pull back and then when there is uncertainty the hardware vendors may go back to selling instead of mining.

mmmm, so how do we create a coin that the asic manufacturers can't muscle in on the little guy at home mining a few coins.            RandomCoin,    a coin that simply generates coins at Random maybe.

What about a coin, or Bitcoin protocol variation that looks at the network and says, because of the current difficulty, I'm only going to give you a 0.0001% chance of generating a Block.
That way, no matter how powerful your mining equipment, you have the same odds as someone CPU mining at home.

There is no conflict in my statement - I just didn't detail out all the logical assumptions.  You need to look at the fiat/BTC price to know when to stop mining - this makes the assumption you have a miner.  Once you are committed with hardware you can only sell it or mine. At the point where it costs more electricity than it mines in fiat it's time to dispose of it - or at least sideline it until prices rise (price rarely rises faster than difficulty).

If you have not committed to buying a miner, the fiat price is irrelevant.  The question then is will the device earn more coin than the initial outlay for the hardware?

There is a collision in you first sentence: why would you consider fiat/BTC value only to determinate when stop mining If you say this you must admit that if the exchange will spike, old hardware will turn online. Are you thinking that if one day BTC will be @ 10K, old miners will not come back only cause they had never ROI in BTC

I made a mistake too implying only fiat invested in mining. For me is too obvious that the risk spending fiat is much much lower than spending BTC, but maybe I wrong.

However spend BTC in mining is the simplest way to see that mining is a marginal o negative investment. Best investment in BTC is buy & hodl, if you want to help the network is spent fiat in mining (one day there maybe will be the need of people that don't watch only ROI )

Fiat price of BTC is irrelevant to mining other than determining when to stop mining.  If you bought the coins you could take advantage of a price spike BTW instead of holding hardware.

Mining will ALWAYS be profitable ONLY when there will be huge spikes in prices.
However next times will be different, now there is an immense silent old hardware switched off ready to come back online when conditions are met.

Out of price skyrockets condition, mining will be only marginally profitable, or at loss in the short time, as it was at firsts blocks: only those who believe in BTC will survive on the long run whitout getting burned.

Anyone with a calculator and basic math skills know that mining is not profitable. Here are some reasons why:

1. It is rational to solo mine if you are risk seeking. A slight chance of making 25 BTC is worthwhile if you have an appetite for risk.

2. Manufacturers don't give away hardware. If for some time there is low demand, the manufacturers will rather mine in-house.

3. There are enough clueless mining enthusiasts to make a bubble. The pricing at CEX.io is a clear example of this.

4. Heat is a desired by-product. Some will naturally be willing to mine at a loss if the value of the heat is greater is than the loss.

5. Some don't pay for electricity.

6. Mining is fun. Some waste their money on booze and/or hookers. Others on mining hardware.

Other reasons?