Topic: Still buying Hardware? (Read 7131 times)

I've bought myself an Antminer U3 for 117€ so yeah I'm an idiot.

But let's review:
- It's a good game (most good games cost 60€)
- There is still a little profit (altough if I subtract power consumption it's like 15 cent in 10 hours, for the moment! )
- It's very helpfull in teaching how cryptocurrencies work
- It's just a challange

In short it's just fun to do plus I swore to never buy new hardware unless it can be done with earned BTC.
I invested 117 euros (yeah I know, I've been sacked) and that's it.
The future will tell what's going to happen but hating the bitcoin is a little far catched.

I've calculated that in 1.5 years I have enough to by myself some new hardware if prices are the same by then.
The way I see it that's plenty enough time to teach myself more if it's worth or not.

Maybe the bitcoin isn't even around then anymore. Maybe another coin has taken over or maybe I'll be a millionair (sarcasm).

I don't really care, you know. I don't see my investment as a loss.
I've allready had more fun the last 3 days for this 117€ then I could have on a holliday in the sun

Peace,

Xump

you contradict yourself. first you say that people are idiots for mining when the price drops.. then you say the road to success is bumpy.
if all you have to retort with are personal attacks, you my friend are the idiot.

Somehow you relate this to the future of bitcoin?

Are you an idiot who invested into mining at lost? If so i salute you.

The road to sucess of bitcoin is bumpy, and certain over several hills of corpses of idiot "investors"

hahaha. this only shows how much confidence you have in the future of bitcoin.
anyone who mines to immediately exchange to fiat have ALWAYS been idiots.

bumpity

with the new price cut, i smell a nice wave of idiots coming again.


Hello dumbasses!

But it seems that I have to change the fans. Too noisy.

went from 2 to 4 to 10  s-3's  and I purchased 4 or 5 coins.

I pick off used s-3's for about 200 usd on ebay.

   comes to 600usd  for 1.4-1.5th


I plan to go to 14 in house. will heat my home with them and at 200 usd more or less I won't lose much.

These can under clock / under volt to   around .65 watts a gh. hashing at freq 200 giving 400gh at 260 watts.

my house needs heating in the winter. i'd rather have some kind of 'money back' on that, than none.
once a miner, always a miner 

That was the reason I bought 13 antminers cheap. They a already at betarigs giving me better profit the mining directly BTC and  my flat is hot now.

As soon as the first ASICs came in a year back, small scale mining was over. It is very difficult to get RoI, and the only who actually makes a profit are the hardware companies.

Initially they had a grand business model - build the latest model with advance payment, use it to mine till difficulty goes up, ship it and then use the next advance payments for the next upgrade.

Nope. Cheaper to buy BTC directly with fiat right now vs purchasing a miner to acquire the same amount.

I was tempted to buy a 1.4 TH Prisma @ ~ 1.4BTC, but I can't rationalize reinvesting my mined coins to purchase it right now as it will likely never generate the 1.4 BTC back over it's lifetime.

If I were to buy a miner priced in BTC, I wouldn't touch my stash; would head to Coinbase, buy some BTC with fiat for the purchase with USD.

Haven't even picked up an Antminer S4 as I can't rationalize that purchase either, given Bitmain's track-record lately

Feels like the entire mining landscape is in a funk right now.

Have my 12TH farm that I'll probably keep running until the components die or I get bored of things. Will always continue to run a full Bitcoin node.

Mining only makes sense at larger scales right now and with price being what it is, its thin margins at best. You have to be able to run at LEAST 10Ths as of this writing to even hope to make any kind of worthwhile returns. And even that is not much. Home mining is dead really. If you are going to mine it has to be an industrial mine. Best thing is plan for scale. But like any business growth will have to be managed and in the beginning returns will be very low. But like all things, most mining operations will fail due to lack of knowledge in one area or another. Now it must be a full fledged business to have a chance at working. And even that is not guaranteed. For those who want a quicker entry, buy/sell BTC is the better bet.

nopes ... with this btc price ... there is no hardware to make roi

Still buying? Not until something comes out that is significantly more efficient than 0.55 J/GHs at the wall. And that would depend on the price too.

for the record, i live in Douglas County Washington and pay $0.029 per kWh, or less, in theory the "daily fee" would be lower per kWh. thats all in, after taxes and fees are paid.

for the know it all that wanted to bash this area... Wenatchee, where Chelan and Douglas counties meet, is probably around 90k people, Microsoft, Blackrock and Yahoo have datacenters here, something like 300k sq/ft with plans for over a million sq ft. There isnt an incredible economy but it does exist. This area is quite beautiful and has been ranked in the top places to live in america a number of times. likewise leavenworth is right up the road and it has ranked on most beautiful places to live in the world. we have world class skiing, hiking, climbing, fishing and anything else you might want to do outside. Chelan, Douglas and Grant counties are also about 20% of the total acreage of washington, so not really a "small" place.

Agree, cause its like totally opposite for 1-4..

I got a slick set of Alan Wrenches for five bucks at a yard sale last Sunday.

If you sell cheap, then yes i do!

it is a hobby, for many of us, even with free electricity it is sometimes hard to get roi.

Selling.

For me unless there is a dramatic trend shift in the underlying factors such as:

1. Bitcoin price UP (a lot)
2. Difficulty DOWN
3. Global hash rate DOWN
4. Electricity price DOWN

Then home mining is mostly a 'hobby' and not financially viable anymore. Industrial scale mining farms is where its at...

I posted only yesterday about selling my miners https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoin-miner-now-going-to-focus-on-trading-instead-831095

hardware? of course not,i have use could mining now.

I'm selling.

I have an SP10 in an auction here, if you're interested:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9248128

Still buying hardware but mostly cloud mining

bump, because i believe some new idiots are coming our way. Read up dumbfck!

I haven't buy hardware.This fear can not return.

There shouldn't be a need for a ton of power because you only need enough to heat your home(or supplement the heating). If you have a massive home that needs a massive amount of heating I would guess you already have plenty of power already built in to the house.

The noise problem is entirely dependent on the hardware. Sure anything from Spondooliestech will not work but a BTCGarden miner or something equally quiet would have no problem going inside the house.

Last winter I used my gpu rig (2 x AMD 270x) to heat my room and it worked quite well in my experience.

I am not in disagreement that home mining is dead for the majority of people, I just think that there is still an opportunity for the few with cheap or free electricity.

There are a lot of things that make it difficult. Lack of energy circuit power, kids, lack of physical space, pets, wife, loud noise etc. Miners have lots of cables and need a big power circuit because you don't want your breaker to trip when you plug in your stove or washing machine or iron. And I would really like to see a bedroom heated by miners. I wonder how will the wife sleep with your new toys.

Using miners as a space heater is only available for a few miners. For the majority of them this is simply not doable.

Oh yeah it does.  I love the cold though.  Anyways i forget the normal rate but i found this

http://www.hydroquebec.com/residentiel/comprendre-la-facture/tarification/prix-de-l-electr-ici-et-ailleurs/

not buying any hardware at the moment.  difficulty toppled with low btc price makes it easier to just buy the coin for the time being. 

J'ai travaille en Montreal deux ans... it gets to -12 quite often in the winter

nan

Are you stupid? You sound like an idiot with fantasy about "mining secret". LOL what a joke.

Of course I still buy hardware but I am smarter than most miners... I come from Gold Mining, my secret advantage

Right now, someone who owes me a lot of cash that cannot pay me back in one shot, mines for me until debt is paid... Hint Hint?!?!

I did the same in Gold Mining...  put those deadbeats to work for free.

In the meantime, I buy mining hardware and solar on a 1:1 ratio; meaning I buy 1 Watt of Power per 1 GH/s.

I don't sell coin under $500, period, don't need to.

By the time the debt is paid, I'll have a solar plant able to run my mine for a few days without sun.

Most first world countries have government programs for businesses/companies to increase power efficiency or get a portion of it paid back.

You can also claim power as business expense and should!!

I mean, if you're too lazy to do your homework, learn some history then don't mine for profit, mining is a privilege, an opportunity, not a right.

Today, 99% of new miners will fail at profitable Bitcoin mining; your best bet is to mine an AltCoin and hope it gains 100x its Bitcoin value.

This way you mien for nothing but at least you know and have a chance at the "Overnight Superstar Altcoin" and make tones of cash from it.

Bitcoin mining seems to have a knack at luring lazy clueless people who just want money and do nothing for it; go read asic builder pages lol

On the other hand, we're in the the Great Bitcoin Rush, that in itself is humbling enough to want to mine at a loss no?

Price would have to go down to $100 for me to stop mining, when it gets too low, I put my chance on another coin and hold it.

I'll buy hardware until manufacturers are fed up of selling to me.  Right now, nothing of real value to buy with Bitcoin.

I heated my home with gpus's winter 2012-2013   well lowered my gas heating from 200 a month to 100 a month

I heated my home with gpu's winter of 2013-2014 well lowered my gas heating from 200 a month to 100 a month.  I mined scrypt.

I am going to run 6 s-3's and lower my heating from 200 to 150 this winter. 

I can say very simply mining at home is shrinking to less for many of us.

I will use only 1400 watts this winter.

Last 2 winters  I ran 3000 watts.

The idea of buying a ton of gear vs buying BTC for this winter  is not flying well.  So I am more with BTC then gear.

I'm not the one who thought of the idea. I didn't even know it was debatable until now.

What exactly do you find difficult about using a miner as a space heater?


Is there a reason it needs to be used for more than one winter?


So your magic crystal ball is telling you that the AM Prisma will make small profits yet you are still trying to sell hardware twice as expensive?

You and this nonsense again. Have you mined with more than 5 devices in your home? I would really like to see you using miners as space heating for a whole winter. It's easier said than done, but since you are not a miner you don't know this. And even if someone could use miners as space heaters. They can do this only one winter, because the next winter the equipment will be obsolete and since the profits are so small the miner will not have money to get new equipment so next winter he will freeze.


P.S. It's funny how you are trying to raise legitimate issue and people accuse you of shilling for AM. It's EXACTLY how it happened to me in the AM thread when I was trying to raise questions about the costs of deploying of 60PH/s of chips and all shareholders were complaining that I'm shilling for SP-Tech. I will call this instant karma. Enjoy it!

Jimmy, u're such a joker..... or a terrible shill. Did you sell all your AM shares yet?

I'm not sure how a 10% tax can increase the cost from ~$0.04 to 0.08/kwh but I'll take your word for it.


I really wouldn't suggest mining unless you already have a job and access to power.

I'd guess you would need at least 100TH/s now to survive on mining alone and that's being optimistic.


Is that including the ~$0.03/kwh savings from using the miners as heaters during winter?


I say it's awkwardly sized because it's too small to qualify for large scale industrial rates and it's too large to use for space heating.


Unfortunately no. I started mining more than a year ago but had to sell the last of my miners recently because my electricity rate is not competitive. ($0.15/kwh)

Well Jimmy in Chelan County they still have customers who use rotary phones, so no wonders they do not have their local tax schedule online, but part of my research was to call the fine lady's @ the county building. 6% tax on energy for the Local City/County and 3.873% for WA State. Likewise they DO NOT provide 3-phase power to residential accts. Also the fine county has at least 20 residences available, although a JOB would require a bit of a commute.

TO BE SURE: if you are only using 120V single phase power YOU WILL NEED A JOB.

Anyway WA is a great location, but regardless of jimmy's pipe dream power will cost you roughly 0.08/KWh(tax, title, tags, etc) unless you can use enough to qualify as an industrial entity, like AM.

I would think you would be thankful jimmy because my awkward setup includes AM's awkward ULTRA-HOT mining Tubes, for now anyway more selling off each day, Thank GOD!!!


http://www.cityofplattsburgh-ny.gov/Departments/MunicipalLighting ---  FYI this is for Municipal Lighting IE you provide outdoor lighting USED by others in community..  UGH!!

Do you even OWN a miner Jimmy?

Thanks for doing hours of research but you forget to include any links/references to these mystical taxes you worked so hard to find.

Don't forget that everyone in the northern hemisphere who pays <$0.08/kwh can effectively lower their rate by ~0.03/kwh by using the miners for space heating. (natural gas is $0.03-0.04/kwh most places)

Of course recycling heat will be of no use to your awkward scale mining operation but some people can take advantage of it.


That's really not my job. You asked where people pay less than $0.05/kwh not where you can have a 3 phase 220V pre-installed in an upscale neighborhood.

Here's a few more good non-Washington rates I found (disclaimer: I didn't do an extensive forensic analysis so there may be exorbitant fees I've missed)

http://www.rousespointny.com/the-village/electric-department.html

http://www.villageofarcade.org/departments/public-works/electric-department.html

http://www.cityofplattsburgh-ny.gov/Departments/MunicipalLighting

http://www.clatskaniepud.com/rate-schedules/

Ah nice 3 counties, Thanks now after I do the 3-4 hours of reading to collect ALL the facts and regs..  looks like 2 of them actually will deliver for under 0.05/KWh.. oh wait but then there are taxes, school levees, etc..  oh damn 0.08/KWH ugh.. why do you even respond?

I stand CORRECTED.. NOT!! and of course good luck finding a house there wired with 3 phase.. or grocery stores and forget about JOBS or a local ECONOMY.

ROFLMAO..  30PH a month huh, well hopefully you did not pay too much for those shares.

I don't appreciate you calling people retard.  The correct word is mentally-challenged.

Can you not count? Clearly I listed 3 separate counties making up a large part of Washington.

Washington is not the only place in the world with cheap electricity. You can find ~$0.05/kwh electricity all over if you look hard enough and using miners as space heaters can effectively reduce the electricity rate for most people. But clearly you don't actually care about mining, you just have some strange addiction to calling people retards.

I'm not here to promote AM hardware, I'm here to debate over speculation like everyone else. I hold so few AM shares that even if I was responsible for the sale of 1000 AM Prismas I doubt I would earn an entire dollar.

So you expect all miners to be in one tiny county?

Fcking retard, we all know you care so much about your shares, but at least make better BS to support your agenda.

its profitable if you get some cheap hardwares
you can get into bitcoin mining with low investment

http://www.douglaspud.org/pages/2013-rates-january-1-2013.aspx

http://www.chelanpud.org/rates.html

http://www.grantpud.org/customer-service/payments-billing/rates-and-fees

Well if you purchased 3 coins under 300 usd this weekend  and they are now 340 usd.

 you could argue buying 2 long tubes for heating works just as well as buying heaters. 

since the long tubes are 100% btc price.

  I can get 2 for 2.84 btc from canaryinthemine .

 so I can get about 3th for under 600 usd .  that is 20 cents a gh.



Here is the bottomline some miners can do a bit of home mining.
But home mining of btc will not ever be great as it was in NOV 2013.
I believe that if coins jump to 2000 diff will skyrocket because  Asicbuilders can add lots of hashpower quickly.

   

Um Yes Yes I have, building a 25KW farm there as I write AND AGAIN I say WHERE??

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a

Maybe he meant INDUSTRIAL energy price, which takes a MASSIVE LOAD to get pricing there, with monthly minimums that would fry a cat. Reading the AM report on trying to save their ship would NOT include RESIDENTIAL rates.

Jimmothy is a shill no doubt and a LIAR to boot. Dude why do you open your mouth so much when it is obvious you do not have 1 clue about mining, why not just go shill the Prism or Tube, the adults are trying to speak...

HELLO MASTER NOOB, COMMANDER OF NOOB ARMIES

Here is one variable you will never get, why pay to heat your house when you can mine to do it? WINTER IS COMING AND ITS FUCKING COLD.

If you live in a warm climate, then bitcoin mining may not be for you.

99% of people actually buy heaters for the basement, garage, house, etcetcetc.  For the same price or a little more, ill buy a miner and heat my house.  win-win-win-win.

That's a pretty interesting calculator... at least they attempt to handle the flaws of other calculators by including parameters for non-static difficulty jumps and BTC prices.  Definitely not a perfect model, but better than most.

Have you tried looking in Washington?


See there's your problem. $0.1/kwh is far from the cheapest electricity and the S4 is far from the cheapest miner.

Here's an example where miners could turn a profit using a reasonably priced miner: http://btcinvest.net/en/bitcoin-mining-profit-calculator.php?diff=35661425924&dcosts=550&diff_mincrease=10&blpbtc=25&dhsmhs=1480000&diff_mincreasedecrease=5&btcusd=320&dpowcon=1100&btcusd_mincrease=1&pcost=0.05&calcweeks=32&dleadtime=0&action=calc

This was making ROI for bitmain when they developed it. Now its just dust maker and portable heater.

From his ass...

Use 0.1/kwh and 3% difficulty increase (Yes 3%) on the current S4, it can not even ROI.


Btw, hes an ASICMINER shareholder...... the fcker doesnt mine but want suckers doing it.

PLEASE!!!  Tell me where on Earth you can get residential service for a nickel a KWh? I have my miners packed..

The fees on my electric bill are 0.03/KWh on top of the 0.08/KWh for the juice.

Is that not exactly what you're doing by preaching your estimations that all miners are unprofitable as a fact?

Seems like the only thing you ever post is about how unprofitable mining is or about how someone is much less intelligent than yourself.

Here's a fun fact: For over 9 months people have been repeating the same worn out mantra that mining will be unprofitable yet anyone who started mining more than 3 months ago was able to turn a profit. (provided they bought the best priced hardware at the time)

I think most of the people saying mining will not be profitable are naively putting 15% average increases into a calculator and basing their conclusion entirely on that.

People seem to have the idea that large scale mining operations are completely immune to the dropping btc exchange rate and increasing difficulty. Just like everyone else, their profit margins will suffer meaning less money to reinvest in hardware.

Whether you are aware of it or not, the difficulty is in fact slowing down and eventually the market will reach equilibrium (1-3% avg increases) at which point home miners with electricity rates below $0.05/kwh will easily turn a profit. (unless ultra cheap ~0.1w/gh hardware comes out within the next few months)



Home mining is not dead, it's only dead for people with uncompetitive electricity rates.

Even with current BTC price I am still mining @ a profit on most of my hardware. S1's were the dream buy well over 160% ROI with the electric paid. 

• S2 B2 is @ 157% ROI w/ bills paid - 199Days and still "banking" 0.015BTC/ day for the next 2 weeks anyhow
• S2 B3 are @ 82% - 134Days
• SP10 GB are @ 62% - 133Days
• S3 B2 @ 101% - 76Days
• Tubes are 47% - 37Days

   

The prices being asked for new equipment is not able to be supported by a small business or individual miner. Thankfully the price drop, which I feel has much to do with the Russian law being discussed, will cause the manufacturers who have chosen to compete in mining to begin to slow their sale of BTC and begin holding it. This will change them from the blood sucking vampires they now are into promoters and supporters of BTC so that their investments are safe and they can be rewarded by a strong and useful block chain.

Else watch the Cork suckers race to the bottom and watch for the fire sales...  HAHA, reminds me of 2011-2012 when everyone was shutting down their GPU's, man did I feel smart in Nov 2013

 

I shrink my farm from 6k watts to 1.1kwatts and in 60-75 days I turn it off.

LOL in your wet dream.

That may be true for a home miner with a couple of S3s. But what about a home miner with a relatively large farm? I certainly can't justify or afford to pay my $1700 electric bill every month if I'm not making any money in return.

you missed the point.  small home miners will mine coins as a hobby, forever, because they believe in the idea, just like before.  big miners shut down when they cant pay their bills.

Thats true, plus the fact that they got hardware at discount/cost.

They can manage the operating cost easily. Since their operating cost is already lower than any small/home miners, they're already ahead.

only works if they panic sell the gear.  If they just turn off the power it does not work as well.

BTW seriouscoin   we are in agreement on this  " Velocity of BTC can drive price up " 

If Paypal accepts BTC  we may get a decent fiat boost.

Reason i care is because when ppl lose money in "investments" (99% of noobs buying mining hardware see it as investment), they will become haters. The last thing i want is dumb haters that cause resistant to bitcoin adoption. So far this year i only see ppl come to bitcoin because of mining. Media did a great job spreading BS about mining revenue/profits.

Simple Economic dictates : Velocity.  Meaning more ppl using the currency.

As we know supply rate is fixed, the velocity has to go up for the price to rise.

Did you miss the points above completely? All the home/small miners close shop first.

Maybe not? Hoping the price dives under $100 for a while so the big guys have to close shop .

Depends...I buy used gear for BTC that with my free power makes more than I bought it for all the time. If you buy new stuff even with free power you lose. If I did not have free power there is no way I could get a positive ROI though. I know everyone likes to bash on people buying miners, but lets not forget it is good for the network. If we see months of decline in hashrate that is horrible for Bitcoin as a whole.

No current miner is profitable at the rate btc price is going. The money you can buy btc with will be at least double what you would be able to mine with that same dollar value. If you buy hardware for a profit you need to rethink your strategy quickly

LOL miners. Have fun with your worthless hardware 

Implosion.

What will mining hardware be worth when BTC goes sub $100USD?

yea, what should happen to bring prices up, paypal accepting for real BTC ?

So what is going to happen that causes the price of BTC to rise again?

What about those who got coins instead of miners? "Why mine when you can buy them?"

The Latest prices is 315.  I think it will go down to 250. 195 is the lowest I guess

Why do you care? To be right? To be thanked? To sound like an asshole every day?

Just curious why?

Correction: Its all just guessing, not estimating.

So whats the point really? when you're trying to "estimate" something with almost 50/50.  

Forget all this "difficulty estimation" Its alot simpler if you only look at what matters :

Capital cost and Operating cost. Which NONE of home miners have as advantages over big farms/manufacturers.

Capital cost = Cost of hardware is cheaper for these large farmers
Operating cost = they also have the lowest electrical rate.

You can estimate difficulty all you want, does not matter if difficulty goes up or down, you can never compete. Remember one thing: the bitcoin supply rate is fixed at 3600btc/day. Because of these, they will just expand to squeeze out all the small less efficient miners (customers/suckers)


When manufacturers sell their hardware, they also compete directly to their customers using the money paid upfront by the customers. Mean while the customers blindly use mining "calculation".

1-5cent/KwH advantage is enough to have 1+ MW facilities

my numbers are not perfect but since this is speculation thread area.

 guesses are allowed. since I have bothered to put numbers down. My estimates have been about 4 right and 3 wrong. 
in a few days I will be 5 right and 3 wrong
my overall prediction for 9-12% growth was for a 200 day period that started june 30th 2014.

diff from June 30th to Oct 4th has been pretty close to that number.

I never gave a lot on  BTC fiat price prediction and frankly> I can not believe it is under 330 usd.

To me noobs are ppl who see estimations as some concrete calculations (if the output is higher, then why not). Just like you, who keep saying " 0 -9%" over and over again, while pulling that number straight out of your ass. Each jump it was close to 15%. But you continue anyway.

Problem is greed blinds ppl so that they only fantasize their ROI. The fact that they use bitcoin price to justify it prove this (if bitcoin price jumps, i will get ROI and then some)
 

I dont buy hardware, however I do mine Bitcoin at cex.io. Well, for 6 months.. I have yet to earn my first dollar from it.. Anyway.. good luck!:)

dude you could use a time out.  no one on this thread is a newbie.   we have all been a round a while .  We have found our little spots to do some mining and we do it.

I do roi in fiat and in btc .  But I can not do this easily or at  a big scale.

I would love to see your "calculation"

LOL


Here is one variable you noobs never get : manufacturers can/will/do outmine you. But nope, you still use your dumb "percentile" anyway.

After calculation. If the output is bigger than input, Why not?

This week I bought
1x Antminer S4
1x SP20
3x used KNC Neptune
and today  "a little bit" BTC

Really unbelievable, I still buy the miners. BTC Mining is going on. We have to be a cold winter, and I have a big house.
   

Let me guess, you noobs think " why buy btc when you can mine for free ? ". Just spend $1.5k on a computer, and get btc forever right?


Awesome, keep buying.