Topic: Why am I still mining? (Read 2795 times)

It's totally impossible to see the future. Right now you have to bet on Bitcoin increasing in value. Of course you could just buy the Bitcoins directly instead.

I find the current prices for the cost-effective mining units too high to stomach. I went into mining Litecoins last year using the GPUs I had been using for Bitcoin (and adding more). Because of the recent spike in AMD GPU prices I sold off almost all my cards at MORE than I paid for them (most of them were more than 12 months old). It was just more profitable to sell the cards.

Under current market conditions I think I'm done. There could be plenty more profit left in this, but I think there is a limit to what the market can bare long term. The price is going to crash and crash hard at some point and I don't want to be there holding the bag.

you are right, but this is a byproduct of the moral and ethical dilemma, the altruistic desire to provide everyone with a 'fair' deal versus the requirement for the company to provide profit for their investors.
Alas, profiteering is the nature of business... So in order to keep a seat at the table, all the manufacturers have to squeeze out all the profits they can. In an ideal world, we would see miners for sale with easy breakeven. But for now. We have to just mine and HODL, in the expectation that BTC will succeed and we will be rewarded as early adopters, supporters and evangelists.

Despite the need to keep it decentralised, we also have a requirement for these BIG farms to succeed and persist, as they are the future infrastructure that will support the global payment network.
As previously stated in this thread, everyone has an obligation to run a miner! Perhaps the governments of the world need to begin considering building 'National Mines', this will decentralise and ensure that each nation has a vested interest... Just a thought!

The problem with Bitcoin miners is that you can't rely on your estimated daily figure.  It goes down tremendously and continuously in a short time.  All ASIC Bitcoin miners are priced so the customer just barely breaks even after quite a few months, or not even at all.

With scrypt mining you can depend on a constant stream of generous cashflow.  ROI timeframe isn't as big of an issue (as long as it's reasonable) because income is consistent.  plus or minus here and there.  But lets not tell everyone this, the last thing we need are the bitcoin people buying millions of dollars of scrypt asics and assraping the altcoins.

Personally I think most of the Bitcoin ASIC maker companies mine with their equipment during most of that so called preorder time.  Then they dump the hardware to make back their build costs and at just the right time to fool people into thinking they can make profits so they can continue sales.  It's pretty fucked up if you ask me.  If I made miners I would mine with them too, but come sell time I wouldn't cheat the public, they already got rich.  All these bitcoin miners need to be priced much lower than they are.  And if any of you companies happen to come across this post, no 10,20,30% off aint gonna cut it.  More like half price and less, or current price but release them quickly and not months later when they are useless.

Thanks all, for your inputs... very interesting.

+1 for the hobby... with profit !

But that works out to take 100+ days at this difficulty... and it sure ain't gonna stay like this for long, if the last 6 months are any indication and never mind the rate that, new 'shovel manufacturers' are coming outta the woodwork. It seems that the last few steps to break even are becoming asymptotic, tangibly close but maddeningly unobtainable. have to come from flipping the h/w, but after so many h/w cycles, we seem to now be at the point where its: go big or go home time,

Here here!


Yes. you do speak the truth ckolivas! It's a shame that the current h/w explosion seem to tarnish the appeal somewhat. But yes, its an addiction, and certainly not boring ;->


*edit* formatting

No. There cant be a technology found, let say in the next 30 years, which is better as the bitcoin sha256. Altcoins are all just variations of the same, what bitcoin represents. sha256 (proof of work) is the simpliest answear for the question of a decenralised transactionsystem. An ecosystem for an altcoin, can be immediately transfered for the bitcoin, so they cant beat the bitcoin. In a competative free system, that actually wins the evolution there is always alot of energy getting lost for nothing, so proof of stake, is not really 'the' answear for performers.

And yes, since the beginn of mining, it was never profitable, it was for me a hobby i had to invest money in it. I have not had no friends which said, i will make money with my new hardware (what dont meant to be read, that i have no friends) i have in hands now. The only exception since middle 2011, when i started running hardware for mining in a tiny small stake, was November 2013 until February, because of KNC  Preorder. Cointerra and Hashfast was a completely loss, because of the wrong moment of bitcoin rising. The only thing, why serious miners having alot of money is, because they never sell their bitcoins. They run it as a hobby (what takes alot of time and money) and of course then, they are not cashing up their precious coins.

In short, buying a Miner a keep it running, first you are getting poorer but happier.

Move on to the next decent  sha coin. Bitcoin i think will always be king, but there will be alot of up and comers that will be easier to mine. Who knows one of em might actually overtake bitcoin too

In term of fiat maybe, but not in term of BTC.

If you accounted price soars in your fiat ROI then guess what? you must do the same to buy and hold BTC too.

Read what  ckolivas says in this thread and think it over again.

You're still a noob to me, and your registered date reflect that. I mined since early 2011 and guess what? had i just spend BTC investing in BTC startup or simply holding BTC i would have made 10x more in fiat.

The only ppl thats able to have ROI and profit in term of BTC is the Avalon batch 1 buyer. The only reason was Avalon priced their miner in expected of having  +500TH to the network by BFL. Little did we all know, BFL never intended to meet their shipping date. Avalon 2 and 3 were the result of "self adjustment" by Avalon team.

This dumbass miner ROIed all my BTC gear 8 times over so I will see if I can do it again.

So basically what you are saying is Scrypt mining with GPUs is dead right now, because it's more expense to mine with GPUs than it is with Gridseeds

Many dumbass miner got their ROI and profits due to heavily price roars that actually make them delusional about calculating an investment probably.

It sounds like Joe here is banking on a "scamcoin" being pumped in order to hit his expected ROI.

LOL you never know, maybe we will have Joeycoin that jump 1000% in BTC exchange rate!

You're incredibly stupid , you know that?

0.008 / 0.0266 = 0.3 LTC

And you based your calculation on a fcking pool variation + exchange rate fluctuation..... BRAVO

If it cost you $630 / Mhs which produce $4.8/day ( assume all your stupid variations .... constant ...wow)

How many days for you to recoup that $630 ? with all the electrical cost and operating cost? With a constant difficulty?

LOL

A proper calculation would not use pools payout variation (which heavily depends on luck) but the network difficulty for expected earning. Base on the current LTC network, 1 Mhs expected earning is 0.215 LTC/day

Even if you assume three times the return of just mining LTC, which I think is kind of absurd after my experience at scryptguild, a Antminer S1 is still a much better buy and earns 3-4 times as much per day for the same investment.

What kind of difficulty increases are you using in your estimates? I suspect that whatever you are using will end up being low. You haven't seen anything yet...

Agreed. 1 Mh of scrypt miners earns ~.213 LTC per day, or around $3.58 per day. It will take 6 months to ROI not including difficulty increases, power costs, power supply costs, and host computer costs. In my opinion, Gridseed miners are a TERRIBLE buy right now.

You may get a little bit more return by using something like scryptguild, but eventually that extra return will also dry up as other miners do the same thing. I've been using scryptguild for the past couple of weeks, and if you think the returns are that much better than just mining LTC directly you're kidding yourself. They aren't that good...

One Antminer S1 can be purchased for $630 and earns around .0225 BTC per day, or $14.20, making it a much better buy.

If you say LTC difficulty doesn't go up as fast as Bitcoin difficulty, I'll say you haven't seen anything yet. Scrypt coin difficulty is about to explode now that scrypt ASICs are here.

I still believe that the Antminer S1 is the only mining hardware you can purchase right now that will ROI in 3 months or less.

Well let me refer you here:

http://clevermining.com/

Per Mh you earn 0.00693 and 0.00930 per day.

Let's say for rounding purposes that's 0.008 BTC per day

Now you buy 50 Gridseeds which gives you 17Mh multiply that by 0.008 BTC a day
which is 0.136 BTC a day which is $85 a day (The upper average is $100 a day)

So my math says the $10k I spent on the Miners break even in 100-150 days.

If I have figured this wrong please point out the flaws in my math.

Which makes $3.7 /day (or 0.215 LTC/day) 

Yeah.... sound like you need to do your math

I'd like to see your work.

I can buy 1 Mh of Gridseed mining for $630

I could not disagree more with Joe's advice. I ran the numbers over and over again on the gridseed miners, and could not make the numbers work at all. All my calculations pointed to a 9-12 month ROI, and that doesn't even take into account the fact that scrypt coin difficulty is going to explode now that scrypt ASICs are here.

Personally, I think spending 10k on Antminers right now will ROI much faster than blowing it on scrypt ASICs, which are currently VERY OVERPRICED in my honest opinion.

Different strokes for different folks.

It is just like the stock market. People hope for a few % gain a year in a stock or CD. That is boring. I know the price of BTC is going to go up, and it can change +/- 30% a day. At least mining I have a say in my returns, not some asshole in a suit.

I think you didn't read this part of my post @joeventura

"People who buy miners and stay in the bitcoin economy help the bitcoin economy and community by creating velocity in the currency, and by not taking fiat out of the bitcoin ecosystem."

Let me know if there is still anything I need to clarify for you...

Mining is something you can always do or just buy BTC.
With the Antminer S2 shipping in just a couple weeks there are allot of options out there.
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/03/14/bitmain-new-antminer-s2-1ths-miner/

It is always a personal decision on what you want to do.
Personally I do both.  I mine and buy BTC when I can afford it when the prices dip from time to time.

Good luck and Happy Mining.

You need to take an economics class.

Just like money, the economy does not blossom unless people spend it and move it around.

That is like saying, I have a tree and I am going to carve it into toothpicks, and store them here, and because I am making toothpicks they will get more valuable.

If no one knows of your toothpicks and they have no perceived value then no one will think they are worth more than you spent making them.
If you have every Bitcoin you ever mined and you havent spent any of them, you are hurting the Bitcoin economy, not helping it. (for example)

Honestly, we need more hobbyist miners in it for the mindset of "isn't this cool?" rather than "I can't wait to convert all this straight to fiat woohoo!"

People who buy miners and stay in the bitcoin economy help the bitcoin economy and community by creating velocity in the currency, and by not taking fiat out of the bitcoin ecosystem.  Large businesses that dump their earnings on exchanges constantly are hurting the economy more than helping, because they are creating downward pressure on the BTC price AND making it harder for the decentralized mining process to be incentivized.

So buy your miners, buy them smart, because everytime you do, you are making people who think its a good idea to open up massive mining farms think twice.  Having a centralized mining effort across 3-4x datacenters would make BTC that easier to get hurt from centralized failure, government intervention, or natural disasters.

So if you want BTC to succeed, every holder in their mother should be hosting at LEAST 1 miner.

So think of it that way ;P

Happy to share,
50 Gridseed miners, pointed at a site like scrptyguild.com or clevermining.com

Mines the most profitable scrypt and pays in BTC

sell miners after three months

I find that it's better to purchase miners with fiat or buy with BTC when it is at a peak against the currency you use (USD/CAD/etc) so that you spend less BTC.

A lot of the profit calculators are wrong so don't put too much stock into them, they do a terrible job of trying to extrapolate pool payment results. You're probably looking at 2 months to get a return on your investment, less if BTC goes up. You also have to balance your investment strategy out and figure out why you want to invest and/or mine.  If you're looking to "mine to get rich" and mine $1M a month, expect to buy about 500TH/s, likely financed with a large debt to begin with as a high risk/high reward. Otherwise you might want to balance out mining with purchasing BTC as a speculative investment hoping that BTC will rise again by another large percentage.

Care to share your current setup? 

If you don't feel comfortable sharing in the forum, perhaps a PM so I can be better informed.   

If you are betting on buying in fiat and the value of BTC rising, you are always going to be better off just converting the fiat straight into BTC and be done with. But that's boring, and therein lies the answer as to why you're mining.

All not true.

What is I told you, you could spend $10k on miners, that would produce BTC0.15 each day ($100), use less than 500w of electricity, produce zero heat, zero noise and you would be guaranteed ROI in no more than 120 days.

And this scales so if you spend $5k you get BTC7.5 a day and if you spend $20k you get BTC0.30 a day

That is what I am doing.

This is a very good point.  Right now, mining is a losing proposition unless you have free or cheap electricity and/or data center hosting.  The difficulty jumps definitely don't help the steep price point of entry for these high end miners.

It's not even a race to ROI anymore.  It's a race to come close to even - electrical costs, then sell the miner while it's still in demand.  Only on the resale of the equipment would you maybe see some profit.

Like others have been saying, if you don't have a mining operation like the $8 million dollar a month miner(MBP?) in Washington, then mining is an expensive hobby.

If you crunch the numbers and use logic you will never find a profitable solution.

Only reason I do it now is just as a hobby.

OK...

Been mulling this over for a while and am curious to hear what folks think - It seems to me that there is no miners available at the moment that will actually make money if it is purchased with BTC. There will be a profit to be made if the purchases are done using Fiat, and the price of BTC increases (like we all hope it will).

So hypothetically, say I pay 6.15 BTC  for a 1TH/s miner, it will eventually make its cost back and a little more, but not much.

The numbers are as follows - from the lovely Coinplorer site https://coinplorer.com/Hardware/Simulate/532347f057ac900afc1d7224 

Outlay = 6.15 BTC ($3899) for miner + Import tax if applicable = total 4699
Operating costs = 650 approx for six months.
So total outlay = $ 5349 or 8.44357 BTC
In the first 6 months the miner will generate 8.931 BTC, less operating costs of 1.029 BTC = Profit of just 1.758 BTC using linear Difficulty jumps. (If you change it to exponential Diff jumps - nothing makes sense or profit)

Right now - I can buy 7.41869 BTC for $5349

Now I understand that there will possibly be some resale value on the miner - but not a lot on a 1TH box in September this year.

What am I missing here. If I use Fiat to purchase miners, it almost makes sense - but not if purchased with BTC.