Topic: Your opinion: Is mining still profitable? (Read 7096 times)

Its high risk to invest into alt-coin. It can crash anytime..

Arithmetic isn't subject to someone's opinion. It is hard to generate bottom-line profits with mining *in the short term*, and that's even if you're very good. You need very cheap electricity, and enough capital to invest in the best hardware. Mining might be profitable for some, and unprofitable for others.

But long-term, mining is an investment in the transaction volume of the bitcoin network, not in your machine's ability to out-pace the electricity/difficulty/hasrate trifecta. Difficulty could be 10x what it is now, but if transaction volume is 1000x higher, then even those old Antminer S1's might be profitable again.

scrypt - HBN, ULTC
x11 - EXCL, XC
sha256 - UNO, BTC

http://fuk.io/october-2014-report-best-altcoins-and-cryptos-to-mine-and-invest-in-for-high-profits/

Which coin you are talking about?

You will still get back more then if you buy a miner instead.. Many miner already hit break-even point when the price crash to $350..

What are you talking about, man? Bitcoin is consistently the most profitable SHA coin to mine. Take a look at multipool.us, they show which coins they've been mining.

if you choose right coins - it sure is!

Indeed they don't; as I said, "with no controls".  But if perchance they find out...

I am not exggerating. I am sure that most employers would not consider mining a "personal use", and would not tolerate it, as a matter of principle.

Technically true, however most companies are not going to be tracking supply usage this closely. Also companies are not going to be tracking the purpose of the taking of office supplies.
Your example involves someone who used millions of dollars worth of equipment that was supposed to be used exclusively for research purposes that was used explicitly for personal gain.

If you take action against an employee who "takes" a few dollars (or a few hundred dollars) worth of "company" electricity for somewhat personal use then you would essentially be rules with fear, which is a very poor way to manage your business. Any time you make an example out of someone you will be giving many other employees a reason to look for other work even if they are not breaking any rules as they will fear that the employer will find a reason to take action against them.
This is true, however it does not mean this cannot be exploited. Also if you live in a house this kind of limitation would probably not apply. Also if your apartment were to have a washer/dryer hookup that you are not using you would probably have an outlet that has the capacity of using a lot of electriciy

There was a story once, of a rather large grow op, in some secluded area. They got caught because they were stealing electricity and the electric company tracked them down to the grow house. I think it's actually fairly common, after doing a search.

Another man was busted for running a mining op, and the cops thought he was growing. (Because he used to.)

Mining is not "personal use", but a commercial activity.

Most companies would not mind if the employee uses their printers/copies for occasional  personal use, but would be very unhappy if someone uses them to make money on the side.

Most places I worked, public and private, would leave at least some supplies for employees in a self-serve cabinet, with no controls.  Taking a stapler home and letting kids use it at school would be a petty violation.  Taking any supplies to sell them, or to use them in a private business, would be grounds for dismissal.


It is not safe to assume that... On the contrary, the company would probably want to make an example of the employee, to deter all the others  from doing the same.  I am pretty sure that the companies I worked for would do that.  The other employees would not see that as an injustice.

You must have seen the news about that prof who used a cluster at his university to mine bitcoins.  I don't know how it ended, but the univ wanted to fire him, and the govt agency that paid for the cluster wanted to sue him.


One must read the contract carefully, it may have limits on usage, or it may forbid commercial activities. Besides, each apartment surely has a separate circuit breaker box that limits the power consumption to a few kW.  One must also worry whether the wiring of the power outlets will support the load. 

This is not necessarily true. Many employers often have policies that allow employees to use their electricity for their personal electronic devices (for example for charging them). Even though using a miner would not fall under the spirit of this, it would likely still qualify as being within policy. Also if the employee's electric usage really does only make a small impact on the company then it would likely not be advisable for the company to take action against the employee as this would hurt employee morale as they would be seen as going after employees over very small/petty violations.

I would also argue that many situations when a person has "free" electricity is when they are leasing an apartment or a house that is paid by the landlord and that the estimated price of electricity is factored into the rent. This is really a viable option if the landloard has many tenants they can "spread" the electric usage around.

"Free electricity" often means mining at one's workplace, with one's employer paying the bill.  That is definitely theft from the company (or from its shareholders).  The extra drain from the miner may be small compared to the company's normal consumption, and the chances of it being detected may be very small; but if the theft is discovered, the employee will probably be fired, and perhaps criminally charged.

acckkkkk 10000 KW hours this month. $620 bill

Most of the time, free electricity come from parents paying them.. So nah...

free electricity for sure but you have to buy miners and it's still gona take time to break even.

I hope Venezuela government stop subsidy electricity charges then we would see difficulty from all crypto to drop at least 10%...

Now left only to believe in price rise

you can be still profitable, if you find the way not to pay for electricity.

What about import tax?  I don't think you can get around that part, unfortunately.

Steps to hit ROI

1) Live in Venezuela, electricity is $0.005/kwh.
2) Acquire S1's for 0.1BTC.
3) Turn them on, wait 2 months.
4) Profit

 

I'm sorry... but this is math-FUD.

If, at the time, buying at 600$ was cheaper than mining, then those people are still better off today than those who mined coins at a cost higher than 600$.

What do you tell all those people who bought coin at $600?  When will they "ROI"?

Buying the coin is better than mine it, I learned my lesson, I'll never make my ROI

still profitable for me

That's correct, no more mining for an unbelievable profit... btc price is finally coming back down to reality!

yes that is what i have been saying for months... hardware mining was expensive, but in nowadays it is too expensive plus it is a total loss..

In long term, you'll be losing more money.  Sorry to be a realist, but belief won't pay for electric bills or make the BTC price rise up.

If you're mining banking on the price to skyrocket to the moon, you'd be better off buying the coin ten times out of ten.

Mining is a losing game, only one that profits are the manufacturers that fabricate the asics and sell them off to us chumps, after they've mined on them.

In long term I think it is always profitable, but you need to pay for electricity and believe in Bitcoin

yeah, still super profitable.
Buy in hardware now

with new difficulty levels and btc prices, these brand new s4 antminers, will turn of in 2-3 months, and ofcourse it will not mine $1450 to that day, and wait for it, you are very lucky if it mines $500.


So,
Is mining still profitable? NO, and it hadnt been for one year..

329,20$ / 279,73€ - wow, -100€ in two weeks... I thought hashrate would drop, which would help me with my three S1's, but it keeps growing atm.
If I have luck, I can get all three miners into our office where me and my boss don't need to pay electricity (we have a small office in anoher company's building to store some computer parts). As they have very large industry machines, three miners would not even be noticed.

At 0,25€ per kWh at my home ich would pay min. 1/3 of my BTC ontop... I don't get why S1's are still at ~107€ per device in germany as they are not profitable other than free electricity.

I just searched for some scrypt miners but I just "invested" in three S1's for a total of 337€ which is more profitable under my circumstances as scrypt would.
IMO the whole asic thing has made bitcoin a lot less interesting... You invest, diff increases, hardware is too slow and finaly you have a device which just generates heat... GPUs could have been sold or used for gaming.

Currently I am thinking about what old miners could do for us. Encrypt data? Cracking Pws? No.

Right now? With this ridiculously low btc price? I think nothing is profitable anymore. Just my bitter words.

If you have a tons of hardware yes...if u only have ur pc no!

I'm trying! Its hard to convert brainwashed people back to reality!!!

Thank you! Keep fighting the ignorance. 

Correction, It isn't profitable to YOU & other miners like me... For mega farms, when the price of BTC is double digits they still make a profit. Do some research before you post!

It is not profitable at btc price of $300 and will break into $250 next week.  Save your money so you can buy btc next week.

If you don't have a few terrahashes at this point I know it's crunch time!

I turned off my S1s last week as well. They were running at a loss because of electricity cost in L.A. and low bitcoin price. Still running a few S3s for now.

If you believe in Bitcoin, then you don't need to mine to support the network.  You can serve as a node instead.

There's 250 PH/s worth of miners on the network, turning off your mining rigs won't do diddly squat, and the network will be just fine.

I turned off my S1's a few weeks ago because they were losing money with the cost of electricity here in the UK (£0.15 / $0.25 kwh).

It's even worse now because BTC has gone down more in value. Unless you've got cheap electricity and already own the equipment outright, mining is not profitable.

Pleople still mining just to support the network (the bitcoin network), they believe in the concept of cryptocurrency, bitcoin.
Btw, to much people are turning off their machines/asics... just check the next diff re-target :   -1.5% (in 7 days)

Very true!

As someone who has been mining the past few years, it NEVER has been profitable to mine except in a few rare cases which include:

- Getting lucky and being able to order a batch 1 Avalon
- Being a very early customer of KNC


Everything else was a big money loss.

Oh more scammers tied to BTC?? No kidding.......

Quite impressive, considering that Bitcoin is only 5 years old...

You should ask an air conditioning technician, I have no idea.  For one thing, even if your miners are turned off, the AC would have to pump some heat out, in order to keep the temperature inside lower than that outside.  That is the heat that seeps into the house through walls, roof, doors, windows, etc., driven by the temperature difference.

So i am good with three units the give me 72,000 BTU.

bash> units
Currency exchange rates from 2012-06-06 
2414 units, 68 prefixes, 64 nonlinear units

You have: 16.5 kW
You want: btu/hour
   * 56300.337
   / 1.7761883e-05

So your air conditioner will have to pump ~57'000 BTU/hour out of your house.  Here "btu" or BTU is British Thermal Unit, a unit for amount of heat (like the joule or the calorie) that is used in the air conditioning and heating industry.

I suppose that the capacity of an air conditioner depends on the temperature outside and the temperature that you want to keep inside the house.

I am going to buy about 15 chinese scrypt rig which produce about 510 MH/s with total power 16.5 Kw .

How many heat do you think those rigs can produce? Because i live in a very hot place .

3 cooler unit with the total of 24,000*3=72,000 i think will be good to deal with that amount o heat, right?

The total consume of rigs power and cooling power will be 10 USD for rigs power + 7.5 USD for cooling power = 17.5 USD per day.

Do you think this will still be very profitable?

Im from Germany.

I pay for a kWh 0.24 cents (euro cents € 0.24)
But i do it for fun:-)

If you are (or were) a miner, surely you won't use a normal heater in winter time?

Even the most inefficient miner is more efficient that a heater. Those things are literally 0 GH/s.

I'm thinking about getting some more efficient hardware for the short term because I miss the mining buzz. Even if it breaks even for a few months that will do me .

For me it's the same. It's not money... Sure, I want ROI for the hardware but I am not going to BTC/€ - maybe in exchange for goods or other digital things.

Uh.... that's a great electric rate.  Yes, you could get some good cheap GPU buys on ebay and probably make ROI very easily.

Do you think mining scrypt coins with 2.5 cents /kw is profitable.
I am going to buy many scrypt rigs and i am looking for more thoughts.

You're exactly right its the same across most of the developed world. There is no way to compete with $0.05. Nice if you've got that and live somewhere cold .

Add plenty of fun too! Ultimately, although it's been tough lately, it's the fun that sells it for me.

Profitable, no. Interesting, yes.

Don't feel badly done by.  It appears $0.15 to $0.25 USD per KWh is typical of not just the UK but most of the developed world.  At those prices bitcoin mining is no longer economic.

It is only the areas like Iceland, northern Sweden, Washington State in US or parts of China where bitcoin mining is profitable.  There is no way the rest of the world can compete with areas where electricity is around $0.05 per KWh.  Even $0.10 looks expensive when your competitors are paying half that.  

Interestingly the areas with cheap electricity are also some of the coldest inhabited areas on earth - good for cooling those racks of miners, especially if you are near the sea with nice stable temperatures.

Mining at home, no. Cloud scrypt, currently yes.

My electricity costs approx. £0.15 per kw/h ($0.25) + standing charge. This is domestic pricing and very similar price across all suppliers here in UK.

Just for interest what was your cost of electricity?

No mining is profitable IMHO be it sha256, scrypt or other algo's.

I've recently sold my sha256 mining gear and gpu's because I was barely breaking even with the cost of electricity and I already owned the gear outright. In fact some days depending on pool luck I was actually mining at a loss.

I'd be very surprised if anyone can invest in equipment either new or used and ROI at current difficulty and btc value. Perhaps with free electricity it might be possible.

I found that you can make more money by gambling. As in, roll the dice.

If you buy mining equipment today, that's essentially what you are doing. So go have fun while you lose your money, play poker or something. Your agony is shortened from 3 months to 3 minutes.

If you get lucky, cash out. If not, you had fun and paid for it.

Because of our greed, we gave our money for "FASTER" equipment WAYYY ahead of time & now we got killed because of that.
We gave our money away to companies who got even better miners to destroy us & our currency BTC

+1

The myth is perpetuated by the fact that many large mining farms have one or both of the advantages (miner cost or electricity cost) in play for them. Their hardware depreciates at the same rate as everybody else's.

That is a common myth. Mining returns scale perfectly linearly, so unless you can get a better deal on hardware by buying in bulk or have lower operating expenses, there is no advantage for the bigger miner.

Bitmain and Asicminer margins both look like they are razor thin at the moment, so I doubt many hardware manufacturers are offering bulk discounts.

Most of the time, the miner that has 10x the hash power also pays 10x as much for hardware, 10x as much in operating expenses, and earns 10x as much in return.

At the end of the day, either the little and big guy are both profitable, or they both lose money. The only way this can change is if one has a significant competitive advantage over the other, like a lower cost to acquire hardware or lower operating expenses.

These days it looks only profitable if you go by several tera hash per sec. Just saying, this month if you have 1th you'll make $200 USD, next month $175. The competition is going high, so you better brace up with the latest hardware out there.

all these shenanigans for 'ROI'..  I can go to the bank and deposit some money into a daily compounding interest bearing checking account and make ROI after one day.. though I suspect it'd be less than inflation

Mining can be quite profitable if you don't overpay for hardware and have access to cheap electricity.

When evaluating a miner purchase, don't try to fudge assumptions to try to make the numbers work. Use conservative estimates for difficulty increases and BTC price in your calculations, and don't look at things through rose colored glasses.

Having said that, right now I don't see much of anything at all worth buying, and the next difficulty jump looks brutal. It's hard to justify investing in new mining hardware with BTC at $400 and a 35B difficulty.

Something has to give, so either the value of BTC will go up or many miners will shut down in the near future, which should cause the difficulty to level off a bit.

The profitability picture for miners looks worse and worse by the day...

Not profitable at all, unless you can get real cheap per gh/s..

Mining isn't profitable for anybody at this point, especially with the price downswing.  Only way remotely to get close to ROI, would be "free electricity", but that be in most cases stealing, and if caught more severe punishments (Fired from job, fined, put in jail, etc).

Only entities profiting realistically from mining right now are the ASIC manufacturers.  Selling outdated, overpriced miners to customers, as well as, self mining on their massive private farms.

yeah bitmaintech does they build 5000-10000 s-4's  mine them and then sell them.   most likely at  low power and .5 watts  a gh they make a shitload of coin .

Mining may not be profitable for the person paying 15 cents or more per KWh, but someone has added over 30 petahash since the last difficulty change, that's over 2,000 terrahash of miners every day.  This is getting towards adding something close to the equivalent of 80,000 S3s in 2 weeks.   I don't think they are doing it for love.  

Someone certainly thinks mining is still profitable.

It never was. You're all dreaming.

Whether or not Bitcoin mining is still profitable depends largely on your electricity cost.  

So look at your electricity cost.

1) 25 cents per Kilowatt hour - it is not even economic to turn many miners on.  Definitely not economic to buy a new miner. Sell your miner.
2) 15 cents per Kilowatt hour - still economic to turn on miners purchased in the last 4 months.  Unlikely to be economic to buy a new miner.
3) 5 cents per Kilowatt hour - still economic to turn existing miner on and probably will get ROI if buy new current miner.

The above is based on mining returning about 28 cents per terrahash.  This is about to fall to 25 cents per terrahash with the next difficultly change.  A typical miner will use about one kilowatt hour of electricity to perform one terahash.    The newest miners are 20-30$ better than this but older were far worse.

If also paying for hosting you will need to add the hosting cost.

You forgot the part where they used their profits to build their own private farms to compete against their customers.

Congrats, all of us retail investors just got crushed by BTC because we gave money to evil companies who just gave discounts to huge mining farms & over charged us so our equipment is not not profitable. Good job.

I am in New Jersey 15 cents a kwatt.  It is just about impossible at 15 cents to make money.
I look for a deal here and there. It involves a lot of work and time.  It involves decent luck. I also have some miners at discounted power rates  2 antminer s-3's mining at 840gh and they pay only 2.4 cents a kwatt.  if I could run a lot at 2.4 cents  it would be easy.

This oct to march I will run  at least a kwatt in house even at 15 cents as they will give me heat and reduce my heating bill.

Why are people still mining? Some ideas...
1) To support the Bitcoin network (for people that believe in the concept over and above any mining income).
2) Speculative mining, in the hope that BTC to fiat value rises significantly in future.
3) Existing mining rigs that don't yet make sense to switch off.
4) Heating. (Parts of the Southern Hemisphere are still pretty cold right now)

The retail prices of miners makes it so it will generally be unprofitable for people buying miners "retail" as the prices are generally too high. You will generally need to invest a lot into miners (being able to command a large discount from miner manufacturers) in order to mine profitably.

Hi together,

since 2012 I am interested in bitcoin. My first tests with mining were when ASIC was not available (or in production), so I was mining with my Nvidia card.
I now got a chance to get some power for free, so I searched for the best GH/$ without import hassle. Currently the Antminer S1 is the cheapest device in this category.
OC'd I got them to work with 210 GH/s each, totaling 630 GH/s (stats from devices and btcguild).

With this mining-power, the ROI is somewhere in april - without power-costs! Calculating power-costs would make the whole thing unprofitable for me.

In my opinion, most people mine for cash - but how? Even with latest devices, the ROI is way to far. Are these people mining for a future price of 1,000$/btc?

For me, mining is fun, its the tech that makes me have fun with bitcoin. I don't need and I don't want to sell my bitcoins right away - maybe later.

I would love to see some responds with your opinions. Thanks.