The main issue with Litecoin is that it keeps slowly having it's price erode vs. Bitcoin, occasional SMALL jumps but nothing noticeable.
The big UP side is that difficulty has been fairly stable for quite a while - but I suspect the Innosilicon A4 and (if they get it into production) the second-generation Alcheminer chip are going to shake things up for a while.
Ignore the Sfards SF100 - they seem like they've pulled it from the market, and based on a couple reports from larger farm operators it had some major board-level design failures anyway (think Gridseed "blade", which is totally appropriate given SFards was formed out of a merger between Gridseed and WiiBox).
The whole "dual-mining" concept has always been a failure - the SHA256 (Bitcoin) side of their chips VERY QUICKLY get outdated leaving you with a seriously overpriced and wastefull Scrypt (Litecoin/Doge/etc) chip.
If your electric is cheap enough, some of the current miners should stay profitable for quite a while - there's a large amount of "slack" in the hashrate to soak quite a bit of "next gen" mining gear while leaving room for folks with 3c/KWH electric to run Alcheminers, A2s, and especially (when they're still alive) Titans at a profit.
Innosilicon has also mentioned the possibility of an A2 "upgrade" of some sort - probably just selling bare A4 boards using the existing heat sinks/chassis/controller/etc hardware.
Seems likely, as their A1 and A2 were able to use the SAME boards/etc with nothing more than software driver changes.
Topic: The Ins and Outs of Litecoin Mining Today... (Read 399 times)
Interesting thoughts. Anyway, for Litecoin the same is valid as for Bitcoin: It's dominated by huge farms with mostly low-priced (maybe even free) energy. Until you want to mine 0.00x LTC per day with low hashrate devices, it might probably be better to mine other altcoins and either sell them immediately (for BTC, buying LTC with them) or keep them and sell at better prices. Even if, due to certain factors, the price won't increase in general for some time, there are still pumpers who will play the pump & dump game.
So I have been mining Scrypt coins for some time on my rather humble, but reasonable when it comes to power consumption, little 20MH Astro minner. (This thing operates at 452 Watts with three fans running, according to my last metering, it probably could be lowered even further when disabling the center fan during the colder season -- anyone experience with that specifically?)
Anyway, after more or less successful operation even in light of developments over the lifespan of that miner (which have, of course, made it upfront "unprofitable" by now), I did some re-thinking of my overall mining strategy.
Having mined Dogecoin, Earthcoin, Fastcoin, plus a few others, I tried to stick with the "reasonable" and sustainable ones only. So far, I haven't been disappointed when it comes to that point. Particularly Earthcoin has turned out very durable and steady, has gained some kind of "tacit" widespread acceptance -- particularly among the Chinese, it seems -- and even came up with two (so far) significant price jumps that appeared to have taken place on the back of stock market drops in China and with people jumping on to "alternative" ways of placing their money. (Quite interesting but a bit off-topic here).
That said, with the significant recovery in Bitcoin-to-dollar prices of the latter months in 2015, chances of other coins increasing in value have become a lot more likely again. Peercoin, Dogecoin, Namecoin -- to name just a few -- have already proven so and increased in dollar-equivalent value significantly.
All this makes Litecoin particularly interesting again. Frequently referred to as "Crypto silver", Litecoin has a lot going for itself and its dollar-equivalent price when it comes to renewed Bitcoin price increases (irrespective of any short-term setbacks like the Cryptsy-induced drop to the $360 range this weekend).
Similar to the precious metals sector -- where silver bullion prices always lag behind gold increases but later get some kind of a jump start and increase significantly faster, percentage-wise, than gold bullion itself -- Litecoin seems to have similar attributes in the wider Bitcoin sector. Remember, that litecoins traded at up to $40 in late 2013 when Bitcoin hit its own high. Percentage-wise, this is a much more significant increase than is likely for Bitcoin itself, at least in the medium-term: going to $30+ would be roughly a nine-fold increase for litecoins! (Compared to this, how likely is it that Bitcoin reaches $3500 this year or next -- I'm not saying it's impossible, just not highly likely medium-term whereas Litecoin around $5 to $15 seems closer to reality and would mean four to five times today's price.)
Calculations -- or rather speculation! -- like that makes mining litecoins appear less "unreasonable", maybe even potentially profitable if mined litecoins are held until the right moment for taking profits. I remember reading a very long article from an early-days miner who set up a rather large Litecoin mining rig in Australia along very similar lines of thinking. He wrote, that he would "hit it big", if Litecoin only went to $5 or $6 -- would be interesting to hear if he managed liquidating his holdings when the time was right in early 2014...
I would be curious to hear if anyone here (still) has similar thoughts or if this "earlier wisdom" (like that from Down Under, of all wisdom pockets) has entirely been lost in the years after the 2013 Bitcoin hayday? Are there still significant number of others who feel similar and operate in a similar way?
Would be really great to hear some comments and your own views here!
Anyway, after more or less successful operation even in light of developments over the lifespan of that miner (which have, of course, made it upfront "unprofitable" by now), I did some re-thinking of my overall mining strategy.
Having mined Dogecoin, Earthcoin, Fastcoin, plus a few others, I tried to stick with the "reasonable" and sustainable ones only. So far, I haven't been disappointed when it comes to that point. Particularly Earthcoin has turned out very durable and steady, has gained some kind of "tacit" widespread acceptance -- particularly among the Chinese, it seems -- and even came up with two (so far) significant price jumps that appeared to have taken place on the back of stock market drops in China and with people jumping on to "alternative" ways of placing their money. (Quite interesting but a bit off-topic here).
That said, with the significant recovery in Bitcoin-to-dollar prices of the latter months in 2015, chances of other coins increasing in value have become a lot more likely again. Peercoin, Dogecoin, Namecoin -- to name just a few -- have already proven so and increased in dollar-equivalent value significantly.
All this makes Litecoin particularly interesting again. Frequently referred to as "Crypto silver", Litecoin has a lot going for itself and its dollar-equivalent price when it comes to renewed Bitcoin price increases (irrespective of any short-term setbacks like the Cryptsy-induced drop to the $360 range this weekend).
Similar to the precious metals sector -- where silver bullion prices always lag behind gold increases but later get some kind of a jump start and increase significantly faster, percentage-wise, than gold bullion itself -- Litecoin seems to have similar attributes in the wider Bitcoin sector. Remember, that litecoins traded at up to $40 in late 2013 when Bitcoin hit its own high. Percentage-wise, this is a much more significant increase than is likely for Bitcoin itself, at least in the medium-term: going to $30+ would be roughly a nine-fold increase for litecoins! (Compared to this, how likely is it that Bitcoin reaches $3500 this year or next -- I'm not saying it's impossible, just not highly likely medium-term whereas Litecoin around $5 to $15 seems closer to reality and would mean four to five times today's price.)
Calculations -- or rather speculation! -- like that makes mining litecoins appear less "unreasonable", maybe even potentially profitable if mined litecoins are held until the right moment for taking profits. I remember reading a very long article from an early-days miner who set up a rather large Litecoin mining rig in Australia along very similar lines of thinking. He wrote, that he would "hit it big", if Litecoin only went to $5 or $6 -- would be interesting to hear if he managed liquidating his holdings when the time was right in early 2014...
I would be curious to hear if anyone here (still) has similar thoughts or if this "earlier wisdom" (like that from Down Under, of all wisdom pockets) has entirely been lost in the years after the 2013 Bitcoin hayday? Are there still significant number of others who feel similar and operate in a similar way?
Would be really great to hear some comments and your own views here!
Jump to: