Topic: Was mining always this difficult to get into? (Read 906 times)

Limited availability on the 14/16nm node mining gear HAS made it quite a bit harder to get into mining than prior to that generation.
There are no "price wars" any more, like the S5/SP20 price war that helped drive Spondoolies towards bankruptcy.

I don't see this changing anytime soon unless prices collapse a LOT harder than the current "back down to ballpark November" range.

BTC isn't even CLOSE to catching up on network hashrate vs price climb since it hit it's last lows in the $200 range, the capacity to MAKE enough ASIC chips to make enough miners with just hasn't been there, and as miner builders start moving to the 7/10 nm node that's going to get worse.

At some point something has to give. If BTC stays at its current price level and difficulty continues to rise each month. There has to be a tipping point. Difficulty can’t continue to rise every two weeks without the price following and money is still made. You might as well unplug and buy BTC for whatever your monthly mining cost are. The affects of low price and high difficulty are already starting to show. Unless Bitmain is trying to dump every S9 they have. This is the first time in a while that you have had the opportunity to place an order for days without them being sold out.

I agree its great to be ahead of the game. This is a very common thought. However, experience from 2017 showed a side effect from that exact development.

With a rising crypto/Bitcoin price, more newbies consider mining. With more HW getting into mining the difficulty goes up. if you add the rising media coverage the growth feeds on itself.

Summary:  Crypto bull cycles = exponential rise in hashrate difficulty

I think it affects the big farms too. Imagine these big data centers running 50+Ph/s. With the price of BTC not increasing. Difficulty adjustments mean losing big money. Big money needed for big overhead. Unless your Bitmain who doesn’t have to buy millions of dollars worth of miners,  but instead sells millions worth.

One thing I’ve discovered about mining is if you want to do it and make anything then you need to stay on top of it. Just buying one miner and walking away isn’t going to do much for you. You need to get your first one and start looking for your next one. Have dedicated space to set them up. 220v power and the ability to deal with heat and noise. You will need to add miners as difficulty increases to maintain your crypto income and upgrade when new miners come out. It’s a never ending thing. It’s fun though. I love it. My wife thinks I’m nuts. I added a 100 amp sub panel in my basement with dedicated breakers and outlets strictly for mining. If I find a deal on a miner I grab it up. It can be a pain at times but it’s mostly fun. Don’t worry about the btc price. Just keep mining and keep buying. In theory the price of btc should rise with difficulty. So even though your crypto income would reduce. Your USD value would be about the same. Unfortunately this has not be the case so far this past month. Now is the time to get in though because when the price comes back. Equipment prices will rise again. Don’t overpay for equipment.

Valid point. With the recent drop in BTC price. I could easily buy more BTC instead of more miners.

Hey.

Here's a brief lesson from personal experience. If you want to earn money read on. if your a mining enthusiast this doesn't apply.

I got into mining a year ago (Jan 2017).  I made a little profit in the beginning but global mining hardware development exploded so by the end of the year I earned less than 5% compared to the beginning of the year.  All my ROI calculations made in Jan 2017 were way off.

Conclusion
The difficulty rate is growing faster than moores law. MUCH faster!   If the aim is to make money I would be MUCH better off just buying the underlying asset, in this case BTC or DASH. 

If I had just bought BTC in Jan 2017 and kept for a year I would have more than 10x my money instead of just tripled my initial investment. In addition came all the work/noise and electric bills.

I first "stumbled" across  BTC while looking for a second HD 7950 in late 2014. As I researched more, I quickly liked
the idea of having a tech hobby that could generate a self sustainable income: Mining.  As I researched what I would
need to get started, I began to see I was too late in the game with my 7950's. In fact, one mining tech advancement,
had come and gone already: FPGA. It was just moments after, I learned ASIC mining was the Standard.

As I researched ASIC mining, I started to design my home mining setup. In early 2015, I joined this forum to gather
advice from people who had already been through the Rabbit Hole. Most of the advice I got was: TURN BACK NOW!
At that time BTC was hovering right around  $200usd. I purchased  $20 on a dip at $170, to learn transactions and
securing my wallet. I was very optimistic (still) about setting up to mine, even though most people said to stop
mining at home. The big companies at the time were shifting toward "server style" miners like the Spondoolies
SP 30/ and up series.

I was not discouraged by this, Bitmain was still making miners with a much smaller footprint. With a few of them
I could set out to do what I wanted to do: Have a self sustainable hobby. I wasn't interested in the " my set up is big"
race, that would eventually become a corporate monster. I was interested in the "community" of grassroots home
mining, where customer support was research and helpful advice from people, like SOME people here.

However, as I waited with money in hand for the 2015 Q1 release of what would be my new set up, my family and I
were struck with disaster: A mid winter House Fire. My hobbies took a back seat to some seriously major priorities.
As our home was being rebuilt, I continued to keep an eye on BTC, randomly watching the price.

I had a lot of "tests" in the last few years,  and I was teetering on the Idea of cashing out my $20 investment, which
had now grown considerably larger. BUT.....I could not let go of the idea of being involved in a community of people
who have a shared interest, and the idea of having a self sustainable hobby that ACTUALLY has a purpose. So, I did
what some would call crazy: I CASHED OUT!

I used my $20 investment to purchase 2 miners, that are going to be the foundation of what I set out to do: Mining.
There are still scammers, ponzi schemes, and worst of all: The Naysayers! The negative flow of their opinions can
easily be washed away with the TRUE members of this community! We will always have ups and downs, but at the
end of the day, help and a pleasant conversation is just a click away. Follow YOUR ideas, and enjoy the rewards!

It's not Difficult.......

As someone who just bought some miners this month, buying them is easier said than done, not even considering the prices.  They sell out incredibly fast.  With the Avalons, the sales are getting announced in advance which in some ways is nice but it makes it so everyone knows about it and they sell out in literally less than a second.  With Bitmain, a lot of their batches go on sale around 4 AM eastern standard time and they often only give about an hour of notice.  I had my phone alert me every time they sent out a tweet and had an alarm set every morning at 3:30 AM for over a week until I finally got lucky.  Even with that, they still sell out so fast it's hard to get one in your cart before they are gone.

I suspect this will die down a little if the market stays stagnant for a few months and the difficulty continues to climb.  However, as it is now, you can't just buy a miner like you can a normal item on the internet unless you want to pay a ridiculous amount of money on ebay for one.  I don't get why anyone wants to pay like $6k for miner, but I guess there's a lot of bitcoin rich people out there that think it would be cool to mine and aren't the best at math.

Also, GPUs aren't much better these days.  The ones that are good for mining are hard to come by, and have doubled in price since December with the rise of Ethereum.  They are either out of stock or insanely expensive.

i'm seeing gpu miners popping up in threads in forums completely unrelated to crypto so it looks like it's still pretty easy and it's kind of weird seeing mining go so mainstream.

and for bitcoin i was under the impression that the price was so high even older stuff could make a little in recent times. of course when it began in 2009 you could've done it on a $100 laptop. 

i'm trying to build a gaming rig right now and didn't realise how bad the gpu supply and price situation had gotten for people who actually want to game with them. it's crazy out there.

I guess its a gamble. If the price comes back to 20k plus. It would be nice to already have the equipment. IDK

I don't know, the stuff right now is still ridiculously overpriced. The Avalon's 821 price didnt surprise me but i mean, no point imo to buy >year ROI. There are better places to put your money in >.>

Well it seems with the current price hurdle we’re stuck at. Mining equipment may become more easily acquired temporarily until the price starts to climb again. Now is probably the time to buy.

Agreed.  Most of us got our start with GPUs.  Taking shortcuts rarely works out.  Answering the OP's question though, no.  We are in a crazy bubble and Bitcoin is all over the news around the world.  Of course that will raise the barrier of entry in the short term. 

I am speaking from the position of a company that is trying to be successful. If a business thinks like you it will fail rather quickly. The point of bringing a product to market is to sell as many as possible. This whole idea that companies should be altruistic and worry more about the ideals of individuals than making a profit is incredibly naive.

I must introduce you to the Feds

Because for some reason you like people and don't like big companies?

This will happen in any industry where you can make the kind of insane money you can with bitcoin. Why spend all that R&D time on some stupid little stick miner when you can sell companies big miners by the thousand? Bitmain even tried to make something you could run at home, yet they continue to get blamed for centralization when it was bound to happen anyway, even with more manufacturers on the market.

Big companies don't care about smaller players in the mining ecosystem. It's more profitable for them to ship bigger miners rather than smaller ones. There used to be a load of stickminers, but manufacturers like Bitmain and Avalon figured this out and stopped selling them.

I understand that ,but if 5 years ago what you could get for $500 then cost $3000 today then that makes it more difficult for newbies to start out. I’m not saying the prices should be lower for new people to be able to get in. I was just making conversation about the past vs today.

What exactly is difficult about buying a miner and plugging it in? Thats all it takes to get into mining.

Being too broke to get into mining is a personal problem, not a problem with the mining ecosystem.

"It takes money to make money." <---this has been true for as long as money has existed.

Obviously it wasn't difficult to "get into mining" at the outset. Originally folks were mining with CPU's. While I joined "late" (i.e. middle of 2013), CPU's weren't viable at that time. it's not hard to find the anecdote of someone buying a pizza for several Bitcoins (18 as I recall?).

I wonder whatever happened to those Bitcoins?

It just seems like with the level of difficulty these days the older machines won’t cut it anymore , and the newer machines are so expensive that it makes it hard for a guy with not much start up capital to get into it. I started with an S7. My electricity cost is .11kw/h. So it makes about $200/month at current prices but costs about $100 per month in electricity from what I calculated. Figuring 1300 Watts that’s 31.2 kw/h per month. I was recently able to pick up a 1 board and a 2 board s9. A little more hashing with less electricity consumption should help. Ill keep at it. Hopefully I can add more hashing power fast enough to keep up with the speed of rising difficulty.