Topic: State of mining - page 2. (Read 3843 times)

anyone know what the chinese farms are paying on average for electricity ?  this could get interesting....in north america...there are places with VERY cheap electricity...for example I pay 0.048...thats 0.036 US DOLLARS...When its over -12c outside.

+1 this

Home mining is for the most part basically dead unless you have free or near free electric.  And the situation is going to get quite a bit worse in < 6 months when the block reward drops from 25/BTC to 12.5/BTC (*)

(*) If bitcoin price isn't well over $420-$450 by around 07-24 of next year it's going to get really interesting (not in a good way) in the mining community...even for the larger farms running the most efficient gear currently available!  Particularly if bitcoin difficulty continues along it's current path.

The electricity price is most important of all. If you have free/low cost electricity, your miner is still profitable while others are out of money. You can also buy the very cheap old generation miners and still make money.

Actually I'm holding as I think it will go higher.... yes it's risky but I went into this as I enjoy it.  I never risk more then I can lose.  That being said I was profitable at 230... so I could sell at any point now and it's profit.  I just want more.

I had to get rid of some S4's I wish I would have kept as at 230 they were not making as much as compared to value.  I sold them for a good return... so it was a win but if i would have held them another 2 months I would have returned even more.

Having I don't know no one knows.... I'm talking now.  Now lots of miners are profiting if you are not your are missing out or doing it wrong.

right. the chinese miners will shut down their operations.there is no reason to "mine" if you get small rewards(money).

But that said by you, don't you need your complete BTC on hands to be sold at, while it jumps to 380 or above???
That's where the problem is, you have them invested in mining and you need to be lucky enough to get a genesis block which currently gives a BTC25 reward, which will be halved next year, and so I guess the mining operation earnings in BTC will also see a significant effect of the same...

This is a good point.   Mining is centralizing.  Input costs are not more important than ever if you want a real ROI.

It does not necessarly take free electricity.  But it does take fairly priced electricity.  With 230 priced btc many of us were doing ok at mining as long as we  use  current gear.  Jump up to 380ish.... and were doing a whole lot better.

Granted it always could change that is the nature of BTC.   But I do not see free as necessary, just a really big bonus.

You will need some serious investment that too with free electricity to gain something very high in % on your investments with mining, as next year halving will be taking place, and so rewards will halve though, so making BTC will be much harder than it currently is...
It totally depends mostly upon what price Bitcoin will possess during halving and ahead months...

Honestly, that's not earning that's wasting a time. No offense to anyone that's doing this, but I think there are better ways to spend your time.

For the OP, I would invest in mining equipment only if I had a free electricity. In all other cases, it's much better investing directly into bitcoins.

Solar is still quite expen$ive compared to most common alternatives, when you factor in the TOTAL cost.

 Also, it's not as "green" as some folks claim - MAKING the panels generates some quite nasty industrial waste, and eats quite a bit of power (mostly NOT green power).


 Wind power has the same issues, but is a bit less expensive at this time if you live in an area with fairly high average wind speeds.


 BOTH need some form of power backup, be it battery-backed or grid tie or some of both.



 About the only way to achieve RoI on any current miners is to have VERY LOW COST electric.


 AFAIK most major farms OWN their property, not lease it. On the other hand, it's sometimes cheaper to lease long-term.

 It also doesn't take much staff to run a large farm - IIRC MegaBigPower had a total staff of 10 for their large Washington farm.

You can avoid that with a grid tie inverter, so you switch to the regular power network when there is no sun.
Edit: Oh, that's what you meant by mains supply, didn't read properly

With solar mining, we need back up battery or mains supply to supply electricity when there is no sun shine. The battery is expensive. It is difficult to make profit long term if you consider the life time of the battery hence extra cost.

is still expensive,but right now it seems that common miners can try to do some profit from it, because if you combine the enw price with the great efficiency of the s7, you can come victorious

but you need a big initiali investments, to be honest they should reduce the price of the s7, because right now it kill the point of its efficiency...

Begging is NOT earning.

Edit:  Let me rephrase that.  Taking advantage of the charity of others is not earning.

Just out of curiosity, how much do you earn by doing that?
Can't be much, right...

I don't mine, I use faucets. Much easier.

you do know that a mining farm with 5000 units is the same as a pool of 5000 people with 1 unit each..

so average joe does not need thousands of units.. it just need a few units..

ill explain it this way
mining farm 5000 units.. solves block, receives 25btc. this divides up as 0.005btc per unit
mining pool 5000 units.. solves block, receives 25btc. this divides up as 0.005btc per unit

so reward per unit is the same..
the only difference is the cost of unit and cost of electric, housing, maintenance which dictates profitability..

and as the difficulty rises. it will be harder for FARMS to be profitable. and here are the reasons.
1. limit to total electric capacity to one warehouse
2. cost of warehouse, staff, expansion to second warehouse.

in short leasing a warehouse, staffing it and then getting electric companies to supply high voltage to the location would cost more per unit. then someone using their single unit in their own home.

at some point where mining bitcoin costs more electric then all of las vegas's electrical supply.. then its guaranteed that electric companies will begin to refuse supply to farms, purely to ensure that thousands of residents don't get blackout/brownouts.

meaning solo mining(farms) will become completely obsolete and it will become completely pool mining

Solar mining is a good thing... If you've already had your investment in solar equipment back. ROI on mining equipment is hard enough these days, let alone installing solar power + ASIC's and trying to ROI for both

They are were subsidized in the form of a tax break and you also sell back excess power, the state also subsidies that, so they pay you extra per kwh on top of what the energy company pays you.
Initial investment for me was around 15.000 euros, but I got a nice tax return 2 years later, might seem like a lot but nothing a small term loan couldn't solve.  

I remember back then, companies were even offering to place solar panels on your roof for free and let you use their excess power, if you were lucky enough to live at a certain location.