Topic: What's more lucrative - mining or high rank signature campaign? (Read 5213 times)

I dont know about 25 btc, but obviously the off-set for signatures you`ll always be profit no matter what since theres no cost.

the only cost is your time, and instead of mining id buy at the same time. I`d also want to outsource most of those campaigns if I really wanted to make bitcoin from signatures.

I earn from both mining and this signature, way more from the former. The latter is OK though, I think the pay is pretty fair. Good luck, g

I would agree with doing both.  I know I am mining and doing signature campaign.  I know my mining makes me more. 

But the signature campaign is fun as I would be posting anyways.  So get a little btc for something I wold be doing no matter what.

What is wrong with doing both

http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator
Enter your miner data over here.

If you solo mine, I suppose you would pretty much never get your own block so doing a signature campaign would be the best. However there is nothing stopping you from ordering a few AntMiners or something and mining while doing a signature campaign (If you get cheap power).

Sure I consider mining smart only mining if it makes sense.  For example you need low electricity cost and most likely no vat.

If you have high electricity or a vat looking into a hosting contract might be the smart thing. 

Also owning hardware vs cloud mining.  Less chance of ponzi, and in the end you own something you can sell.

In 2015 without a shadow of a doubt, Signature Campaigns.

Requires less work, less overhead, no electrical costs, no entry fee, and you're always operating in the black.

yeah there's no free mining, we need capital for mining bitcoin
hard to reach profitable condition in my opinion, except we have free electricity.
cheap electricity still have the risk of loss, especially if difficulty increase like crazy (just like few months ago )
can you tell me how we can mine smart?
in other words, signature campaign almost have no risk. Biggest threat is getting banned from moderator because spammy post / non-constructive post. Even i saw someone reach ROI after two months joining signature campaign. He actually bought sr.member and make profit after two months passed. But we need more time and energy to make constructive post
do both thing is best chance to get profit, but we need both active and capital

It is true mining requires capital to start up.  You will not mine for free.  Mining is still profitable if the right conditions are there, big thing is electricity price.  You have to mine smart.

Signature campaigns do require time.  To get in a good one you need to spend time on the boards and other bitcoin sites, so you have posts that contribute.  If you did not spend the time your posts wont help much.   Also activity comes into play, as the higher rank the better the pay normally.

I still stick with my stance dont choose one.  You should do both if you can mine with a profit.

I choose signature campaign over mining at the moment. I gave up mining few months ago after high increase of difficulty and bitcoin rate was crashed 
Two bad things happened simultaneously make bitcoin mining is not profitable anymore for home scale mining. So i decided to sell all of my mining hardware to my friends, and start joining signature campaign.
But i think it's different with mining, signature campaign need more activities from us, we must make constructive post to get paid and it will become a problem if we don't have enough time to online.
Good thing is sig campaign don't need some capital at first (if our account is in good rank), it's different with mining which need money to setup mining hardware. 

 

The new company has a website that is an exchange to trade coins.

To get paid you join the exchange they give you a btc address and auto track your posts.  they pay 1 time per week.  This is my first week with them.

They provided the signature for me to use.  I am lucky in that I always was a poster 300 was a slow month for me a year before these campaigns ever appeared. So I don't deal with spam accusations because every body knows I post a lot.

1. You will get it from the thread in services, each signature campaign has their own thread there
2. It depends on the capmaign. Bit-x is pretty slick on it's automated bot that reads address and sends it.
3. Depend on campaign some might be in acccount settings, if it's one done manually it's normally one you post in their thread.

Not sure how this is done:
1. Do you get the html code from the site you want to advertize, or you write your own html code, then put it in the "signature" area.
2. How the payout is determined and how will they know where to send bitcoin to?
3. Are they sending to address which is indicated in account settings?

yeah I have been doing this sig deals for about 1 year.  I may have grabbed a total of 7 coins at it.  Helps a lot during the slow summer months.

I was surprised how nice a good signature campaign is.  It is a nice addition to my mining btc.   I like to do both personally. 

I would highly recommend full member and above get in one.  I wish I would have started earlier then I did.  I didn't start till hero, so waited way to long.    I like getting btc for post's I would be doing anyways.  And if you don't like btc I have done a few before for goods (2 different coin companies).  Worked out nice I have 2 pretty nice coins I would have been to cheap to buy.

  I post a lot 300 or more a month.
 I posted  a lot before signature campaigns existed.
I posted a lot on other sites.
I have done close to 6000 posts here
I have done 20,000 posts to online forums since 2006.

So if I really push I can do 750 posts per month. I won't push.

I usually do 500 posts per month on this site.

So at 0.0013 x 500 = 0.65 btc x 12 = 7.8 btc in 1 year  so say 6 to 8 btc in a year.

Now mining is a completely  different game prediction  of what I can earn is impossible in the long term.  I need to know price/diff

I can spend 10kwatts an hour in the winter.  at 10 cents a kwatt   that is 20 th

I can spend   2kwatts an hour in the summer. at 18 cents a kwatt  that is 4th

right now in the summer it is barely  worth mining

I also wonder this...
Mining would likely be the easier of the two.
However, to make any kind of money mining you need cheap or free power.
Even at that, your upfront investment would be quite significant.
Signature campaigns, I never really knew there was money in it but someone puts enough time could make some serious cash.
I'd have no qualms taking money from a casino or what not...
I make good $$ mining but not something I could live off of.
Good info to read in here...

sig campaign can make you much more than 1.4 in ten months(which seems very low actually), just post more, it is possible in theory to reach 3 btc month with sig campaign, better than any cloud mining or hw mining, but you need all day for that

mining is more relax i think and i like it more actually, sadly it isn't profitable anymore

Let's see, with the sig campaign I'm doing it would take ten months to earn 1.4 BTC, so ~150 months (12 years) to earn 25 btc. (Providing they continue to exist or pay out the same rate or I don't get drunk and shoot my mouth off and get b& lol.)
To mine 25 btc with one hardware purchase you would need around 100 TH/s to do it in a month and get a head on the diff increases. Maybe 50 TH/s might get you there if you run them longer, but it is the law of diminishing returns. I mean, if you had 1 TH/s it would earn ok for a month or two but it would be useless after six and you still wouldn't have anywhere near 25 btc

I just thought of the idea of posting 60x a month for 12 years, and now I need a drink!

I would not say can not.  Just that it takes a BIG investment.  25 BTC is a lot of money even at low price of BTC today.

Yup, 25 BTC you cannot earn anymore. You need to buy those or be very lucky with trading and speculations.

Well, this all depends on how you go about it right.

If you outsource your writing work to kids in india, paying them $2.50 set of xyz # of accounts.

But, this is based on if a signature even survives, most of them end up dieing out unless its a well known site like primedice etc.

In reality, wrong to both mining and sig campaigns.  This is the correct answer 11 times out of 10:




You cannot just say mining BTC to get to 25 BTC like you have unlimited budget to spend to throw at mining.  So that's 100% wrong to begin with.  You can't say I'll just eat a million dollar loss due to hosting, electrical, cooling and paying off mining partners/workers, but I'll mine a block in a day!

Quote from: Possum577 on March 11, 2015, 05:01:54 AM

What's going to get you to 25 BTC faster, mining or dedication to a signature campaign with a high rank (Sr Member or Hero)?

Maybe the better question is how long does it take for a miner to get their first block reward (of 25 BTC)? I can figure out the breakeven on the sig campaigns.






His question was not which makes more profit but which will get him to 25BTC faster. So mining is the only logical answer as a person can achieve that in a day or faster with a high enough hash rate. There is no sig campaign that will pay out 25BTC in a days ( or in a month)  time even if you could post enough.

So unless he wants to give more information and or refrase the question, mining is the correct answer.

excellent info, thanks

Unless you have this:



Mining is a suckers game at any tier or level, but especially if you don't have a good hosting/asic manufacturer bulk deal.

I'll take high rank sig campaign anyday....get paid a few bucks for typing a few intelligent lines, sign me up! 

This looks only good in your description, the reality is a bit different.
-The future of sig campaigns is uncertain. They could disappear just like that and your investment into accounts along with it.
-If you get caught buying a Sr. account you may get negative trust and this will automatically ban you from most campaigns.
-It's not that easy to join a well paid sig campaign with 3 accounts and some campaigns don't even allow it.
-To get that much from Dadice the user would have to write 300 constructive posts a week (1200 a month). You'd have to treat it like a full time job and chances of getting banned would be very high.
-A ban in this case can be compared to all your miners catching fire at the same time
-To get a weekly bonus you'd have to write at least 150 posts each week, so your monthly post count would grow by another 200.

I would not say it's all about luck.  Just that it takes time.  With activity level only changing on certain intervals it keeps someone from spamming to a high level.

It  does take years on some ranks.  I am almost to hit two year mark myself.

It hard to say!
Mining is long way, you should spend large money to buy mining machines and pay electricity.
While high rank signature campaign is all about lucky.
 

Briefly, what exactly is a signature campaign?  You have a signature space (size/features depending on rank).  You basically advertise for a company and make a little.
Not sure how that works, looks like you sell your user reputation here by allowing ads to be posted at the bottom of your forum comments? In your profile you will find a signature section you put txt/html in there.

Briefly, what exactly is a signature campaign?
Not sure how that works, looks like you sell your user reputation here by allowing
ads to be posted at the bottom of your forum comments?

I have some miners, I know how that works. 2 x Terraminer IV's running about
3-3.2 TH/s constantly over the course of the past year + 367 days has yielded around 32BTC.
Power is about 1850W each, so 3700W for the pair. Figure what you pay for that, plus
whatever you pay for internets. I think I calc'd  BTC needs to hit about $1500 or so USD in order
for me to break even.
On the other hand, its a certain amount of entertainment and does my part to help the cause.

I wish I had your cell phone bill then.  I do it for fun.  Having a signature provides money or items for a little fun.   I have done campaigns for coins was fun.  Now I'm doing for BTC.   

I can say my mining brings more yield.  But it is less now I will say I was around 12000 Watts + during winter of mining gear.  Worked out nice.  But campaigns have been fun too. 

Well, signature campaigns are much more profitable than cloud mining, because you'll just get scammed with cloud mining.

How can you compare that? of course it depends on too many factors like the miners you own, electricity, how many posts you make.

If you are paying a large amount for electricity then you are better off just posting. But either way its not alot of money. I make like $10 a week or so.

Pretty much pays my cell phone bill.

My answer that signature deals would probably be more profitable then running miners. If you take the S5 for example, it will cost you roughly 1.2btc based on what bitmain is charging right now (it will actually be a little bit more with shipping and taxes but we can stick with 1.2). In the roughly two months that I was mining with my two S5's (plus the S3 that I still have but we can add that to the calculation) I made roughly 1 BTC in mining revenue, note this is revenue and does not factor in the cost of electricity. It might have been a little bit higher but not very much so. So this means that two S5's would make roughly .5 Btc per month before electricity or roughly .25 btc per month per S5. Now you need to remember that the value of the S5 is going to decline over time as more efficient miners come to market and as the difficulty increases.

Consider the da dice signature campaign on the other hand. If you were to buy a senior account for .3 (there are few sellers that will sell for this little however if you lurk in the digital goods section long enough you will probably be able to find sellers who will sell at this price) then you could buy four low level senior accounts for the same 1.2 btc that you spent on the S5. With the da dice campaign paying .0013 per post up to 100 posts per week, you could make .13 per week per account, or ~.52 per month per senior account. Multiply that times four accounts and you could make roughly 2 btc per month for ~1600 posts. Not only that but you could earn an additional .6 btc per month by winning the most constructive posts contest of .15 per week so your total earnings potential would be 2.68 btc per month from a 1.2 btc investment. Not only that but the value of your accounts should increase over time as they accumulate activity points and potentially rank up to hero status. Your risk however is that making that many posts may result in the temptation to make a lot of shitty posts which would result in your accounts getting banned which would stop your signature campaign revenue. This also obviously does not take into account the value of your time that you spend posting, however if you are interested in bitcoin this might not matter.

Tl;dr signature campaigns.

It depends on person.  I still am making some of mining.  I realize it's harder now then when I started but with low electricity it still can be done.

It would depend on costs of a person can do both.  If lucky you can do both.  I do agree for some buying direct is best option.  And I admit I enjoy mining so if I make a little I'm happy.  It is a fun hobby for me.

With mining you have to watch it closely. For example during winter I can expand, and in summer i sell off some.  I cannot do the 12000 watt + I did in winter for summer mining.

Why though? Signature campaign is free money as it pays out for posting which one wouldve done anyway. Mining on the other hand costs a lot and is not sure to give profits. Any extra money would be better used to buy Bitcoin directly.

25 BTC is a lot for either.  It depends on how much mining equipment has and how much it makes in profit.

I would say do both personally.  Yes hero normally gets paid more then Sr.  But it is in your best interest to do both.

The answer to your question above in bold is mining.

Yes, and yes.
When LTC started skyrocketing to $40, I paid a gentleman to custom make 2 mining rigs for me. I (stupidly) was basing my break even and profits on rising projections....obviously, LTC had peaked and my hashing power wasn't anything special as the new asic scrypt miners were being introduced. So, accepted my losses, sold off equipment and moved on.

Were you mining at home?   Mind if i ask how the loss of thousands?

My answer: Neither

I used to mine, and currently participating in a signature campaign. Granted my mining was hobby mining the signature campaign I am in is not the highest paying ones, but in neither I can realistically see anyone unless its a big farm or multiple accounts getting to 25BTC.

If you have rephrased the question to 1BTC or even 2.5BTC then you would get some answer. In that case mine is signature campaign.

I've tried the mining route and lost thousands. The sig. campaign route creates a little folding money to keep. (Except when there's a UFC PPV, I tend to lose a bit to the books.)

I do both.  I get a fews coins a year  posting and a few coins a year mining.

Game is very hard right now.

well maybe 2 is too far stretched, but 1 btc is possible for sure, (i'm making more with bit-x right now), and with primedice also, i was making 1+ btc in some months

with mining you will barely roi..

Well even back when Primedice was around H@C didn't get to that level and he was and still is one busy posting machine
And also one flag it and tag it moderation device  

To tease him a bit H@C is a Staff Member earning 0.0013 a month from his PrimeDice Signature to earn 25 BTC he must post
25/0.0013 = 19,230 Posts
Assuming that he started when he was a new member to the forum and has been with Stunna ever since he's about half way to his goal including the lower rate he earned when he was still a member rank and before his November 2014 promotion to staff in other words keep chugging along H@C keep riding the Choo Choo train to Freedom XD

Now if he converted to the darkside and joined Bit-X on the other hand it would be 0.0014 so pop quiz how many posts less would it be to hit the 25 BTC goal from 0 kidding just teasing ya.

To sum it up with mining its near negative ROI factoring electricity unit cost and difficulty
With a signature the return is a pure return no other costs besides time to post included.

(Edit)
Well forgot to add moderation income from Theymos 5 BTC to go nice you should go buy some shiny things ^^
https://blockchain.info/address/1BxtA9j2qD9KZKnrihiuB7YmZT8rr6Rimh

I really doubt anybody is making 2BTC a month from a sig campaign. Maybe if you're posting in it and running it at the same time, or if you have 10 alts and are squeezing posts 24/7, but some people tried that and got bans on all their accounts. I read about a guy who was making like over over 100 posts a month for PD but got banned after a month or two.

At the moment if you're making over 1BTC a month you're probably spamming the shit out of this forum 

This one pays .035/week. It´s chicken feed but I´ll take it. Maybe there´ll be more lucrative alternatives later.

Good luck, g

I would agree 2 BTC a month would be a ton at this point per month.  I'm sure there are a select number getting it or higher but very very few.

Most have a limit much lower on pay.

there are not many signature campaigns at the 2 btc a month mark that can be signed up for as of today.  Used to be

with the right signature campaign, you can get much more than mining at the moment

with a senior in rank(you don't need hero, since they share the same rate) you can earn 1-2 bitcoin a month easily, maybe even more, so a block in less than a year

with mining unless you run a big farm and very cheap electricity and you also made roi or at least 1/2 of roi, you can't match that

I have earned about 4 coins in a year with signature campaign. I post like mad I did this before I ever signed up for a campaign .

I do not think 4 coins a year is easy but 3 via signature can be done.

As for mining.  Much harder to figure. But lets say you grabbed the sp-tech 15 miner farm for 5500usd.

 Lets say you run 10 at 1200gh and sold 5 for 450 usd each.

All of the above is possible but not likely.  this would mean the 10 you mine with cost you  3250 usd .  toss in 5 good psu's and you are 4000 out of pocket.

 you started jan 1 .  so you mined for  72 days so far.

your power = 10 x 600 x 24 a day that is 144 kwatts or 14.40 a day at 10 cents make it 15 bucks a day in 71 days you spent  1065 + 4000 = 5065

what did you earn? hash rate was about 44.4 for those 71 days and 12th earns .1358 btc x 71 = 9.6418 btc x 293 usd = 2825 usd against 5065 spent  so you are losing  2240 usd. next 71 days you spend the same 1065 on power   you are 3305 in the hole

lets say diff is slow grow and you get 9 coins lets say that coins go to 300 that us 2700.  so 142 days into this year you are 3305-2700 or 605 in the hole.

71 more days 1065 for power  so 605 + 1065 = 1670 in the hole earn 8 coins slow diff grow coins go up a little bit to 325  8 x 325 = 2600

so 2600 - 1670 =  930 ahead 213 days into 2015   which at 325 a coin = 2.861 coins at july 31st 2015.

all gear paid off 10 machines on hand

I'm saying the responses to it weren't bullshit. You got completely valid and fairly constructive responses to your question but for some reason you decided they were 'bullshit'. I'm more inclined to believe this thread/question is bullshit and was created for the same reasons you falsely decry of others. I honestly don't know what responses you expected here especially given the lack of specific info which would be needed to give you a detailed/satisfactory answer.

So you're saying my question was stupid/vague/bullshit so I should expect answers of the same caliber?

Apologies to everyone if I came off as an ass. I'll try to improve my attitude.

I appreciate you doing the math. This isn't really what I was looking for but only because I don't agree with your assumptions. I was just looking for one of two answers:

1) Mining, or
2) Sig Campaign

Thanks for entertaining the question everyone. I know very little about mining, which is why the question was rather vague. I completely understand that there different size mining machines and different scale operations. I wasn't concerned about profitability, just revenue generation.

Awesome OP.

"PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO BECOME RICH NOW THANK YOU"

"YOU DON'T ANSWER MY QUESTION, ALL OF YOUR ARE GARBAGE. PLEASE ANSWER MY QUESTION"

I feel like this is some sort of new age version of Blowing in the Wind.

So far, my two posts on here are nothing but constructive. They are relevant to the topic. I am a speed reader which is why I may tend to miss a few key points in your topic, but nonetheless, I try my very best to be relevant.

That's pretty ironic. I don't see what 'bullshit' responses you've gotten here so far but you keep seeming to make bullshit topics/posts just to get paid. I'd suggest not asking stupid questions especially if you don't like getting appropriate responses to them.

Sorry didn't even notice that you were trying to hit a target.


Let's see.

1 post at Senior Member (You should be Senior this week)

.0014

It would take 17857 posts.

Assuming you post every 2 minutes a very constructive post, it would take you 24 days total assuming you did it 24 hours straight.

If you wanted to split this up, here is how long it would take:

1 hour a day = 30 Constructive Posts = 12 bucks = Approx 607-608 days (.042 BTC)
2 hours a day = 60 Constructive Posts = 24 bucks = 608/2 = 304 days (.084 BTC)
3 hours a day = 90 Constructive Posts = 36 bucks = 304/1.5 = 202 days (.126 BTC)
4 hours a day = 120 Constructive Posts = 48 bucks = 608/4 = 152 days (.168 BTC)
5 hours a day = 150 Constructive Posts = 60 bucks = 608/5 = 121 days (.21 BTC)
6 hours a day = 180 Constructive Posts = 72 bucks = 608/6 = approx 101 days (.252 BTC)

I won't go any further since I doubt you'd have the time past that amount.

This is the information you wanted, right?

I edited the previous post added dogies guide for shopping and comparisons that you can use to figure it out
But it depends entirely on what miner your using, if its a 2TH unit or a 1TH unit etc.

Example Bitmain Antminer S4 would generate 2TH
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NWHT18A/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00NWHT18A&linkCode=as2&tag=psu03-20&linkId=SVWZ67JRKPJ43JEG

Retails at around 900-1749 dollars and pays out 0.64 BTC month at present!
Which is 189.31/month according to the calculator
(Assuming no difficulty increases break even is in 5 to 10 months at this Bitcoin price sooner if the price rises, and later if it drops)

Factoring in future difficulty you may not get to 25 BTC with just one unit before it's just a waste of energy to have it running
(Kind of like running an asicminer USB stick at 320 mh at the present difficulty)
Can't say how high difficuly will be in 10 months but its a diminishing marginal return.

Asking this is like asking how long a piece of string is. Also, it cannot be accurately answered because we don't know how much you are willing to spend on equipment. Willing to buy a mining farm? Then mining will get you 25btc quicker. Willing to spend money on a few miners? Then signature campaigns is more likely to get you it....eventually, but to get 25btc you would need many accounts on many high paying campaigns and a long long time so likely neither will get you 25btc so signature advertising is probably more profitable as you don't have to spend anything upfront (unless you are going to buy accounts).

If you are purely after BTC and you have a few thousands of dollars for a decent mining gear and not interested in the profitability of your mining operations (or you have free electricity) then you go for mining but probably you can get more BTC if you spend the price of the miners and the electricity on buying BTC directly.
With high spec sig campaigns like Bit-X you can make 5-6 BTC per year if your rank is high enough and you have enough time to make 4-500 meaningful posts per month. Pls don't forget that this is true at the current rates. If prices going up probably Marco will adjust (lower) his rates.

I use faucets 

Eternal, thank you!

I definitely realize my question was vague because a huge mining operation would get to 25 BTC faster than one machine in an apartment some where.

To use the calculator you shared I need some more education, what's an average hash rate? I have no idea.

Well your question wasn't clear enough on the amount of hashing power you had
If you could find a block because you had a lot of mining power then of course its easy to get 25 BTC
Here use this should be simple enough to get an estimate
https://alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator

Then choose a miner
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/guide-dogies-comprehensive-manufacturer-trustworthiness-guide-1st-feb-2016-456691

Speaking of mindless posts, yours is a great example.

I'm not trying to "hit a target" i'm trying to figure out how long it takes to mine 25 BTC.

THanks to the moderator for putting this thread in a section that may have people who know!

Guys, you're all missing the point. I'm not asking how to make money. (I HAVE AN AD IN MY SIGNATURE SPACE!)

I'm asking which would take longer, earning 25 BTC through mining or through a signature ad campaign as a Sr. or Hero Member?

If you don't know, don't respond.

P.S. CIYAM, if you're out there, i'm starting to see the frustration you see in people posting bullshit posts just to get paid...

There are no official limits via the campaign, but if the forum begins turning to garbage because of one person trying to make 25 BTC by mindless, constant posting- they will be suspended and make nothing...I've been around for a while, it is difficult to make 1-2 worthwhile posts in any given day.
Mining, even with low electricity costs becomes almost a certain loss unless the person is able to find themselves in the first batches of newest miners. Mines whatever possible for 2-3 weeks and SELLS the miner as fast as possible. If one cannot hit those spots, at this point in BTC time, they cannot make coin, most likely will have a negative ROI.

Best, easiest, fastest way to obtain 25 BTC...just BUY THEM and...that's it. Target hit.

If you have no money, join the Bit-X sig campaign. No limit to how many posts you make and payouts are weekly.

If you have money, you could try mining. The best money from mining comes from the lowest price of electricity.

Sheesh... I have tried mining and signature campaigns .... and not one of those options will get you to 25 BTC very quickly. {Combined you might take baby steps towards 1 or 2 BTC per year}

I would also suggest buying low and selling high... with the BTC you have now... and build on that to grow your BTC faster.

I also take part in other forums, where I gain some income and I get the odd income from ChangeTip and gambling referral income...

The best option, for me... is to buy small chunks of BTC with the leftover fiat money I have, after all debt is paid at the end of each month and then to wait for the price to rise and to sell it for some profit. I then wait for it to drop again, and I buy in again... so it grows slowly.. bit by bit...  

Thanks for the responses so far.

I'm still looking for the answer to my question.

More clearly, how long (on average...just an educated guess) does it take to achieve on blockchain award (of 25 BTC)?

Mining is now the least profitable and safe way to earn bitcoins, unless you have a mining farm in a country with really cheap electricity.
Home-scale mining will not let you earn as much as a good sig campaign with high rank at the moment, if you ever break even what I doubt.

...

Hi again, Possum577

I don't think there is ANY easy way to get large quantities (say, over 0.1 BTC) in a short time frame -- other than BUYING them.

The reading I do on the mining pools is mostly that the investment return is either negative or so small it takes a LONG time to get your investment back.

I think it is no longer realistically possible to mine BTC by yourself, the hashes/second are way too high to have even a 1% chance to win a block (25 BTC) in a week.  Even if you have a garage full of ASICs, cheap electricity and cooling...

So, this isn't a self serving question, just curiosity.

What's going to get you to 25 BTC faster, mining or dedication to a signature campaign with a high rank (Sr Member or Hero)?

Maybe the better question is how long does it take for a miner to get their first block reward (of 25 BTC)? I can figure out the breakeven on the sig campaigns.

Based on your timing guess, how much equipment investment is required?