Bitcoin Forum

Hi, when I got into bitcoins, people around me already told me mining is dead. BTC mining will not make you any money because the electricity fee used will be greater than the outcome. Is this true? And how can btc mining be easier again?

Here's the deal... I'm one of the last standing profitable home miners but I made sacrifices to get free power.
Unless you got free or extremely cheap power <$0.05 per KW.h then it's a losing game.
Alternatively, you can pay for power out of pocket and wallet all your mined coin.
Even at that, with free power, I got about 6TH.s right now and only make about $15 a day... and I'm being generous.
I make more than that but I sell hardware and hashing contracts.
With power costs I would be in the hole and be stuck paying for power out of pocket again.
Right now my pwoer bill is tiny, I only turn it on when renewable ran out.

If you pay for power and bank the coin, then you have the best chances for a ROI down the line.
Right now, there aren't any ROI's possible without free power.

I used to encourage new miners, now I discourage them because most have no idea of the task at hand.
They also think they're gonna go plug a few machines and make a killing...
Just like in Gold, people think they're gonna go dig a hole and get rich... well you can but not likely for a n00b.
Then same people get upset when "mining industry constants" get involved in crypto mining and they don't make as much...
I don't know how many people complain abotu incosistent earnings... well, the same is said in Gold mining.
At least in cryptos, you have a rough idea of what you're going to get.
In Gold, you only know once the gold is assayed.... you lose a lot via refining.

It's mining either on of offline, most who enter it go back home broke and become trolls.
Yeah, they exist in Gold mining too... but they're much sadder in Gold mining.

Another thing that serves me well is my knowledge of Gold mining and its history... I also mine Gold IRL.
If you don't have working capital (Around $5,000) and intend on selling coin to make ends meet, don't get into mining.
If you're the type of person who needs to have everything go perfectly smooth all the time, mining ain't for you.

Mining is taking a whole lot bunch of nothings and making 1 something work non-stop... if you don't get it, you won't get mining.
It's also jury rig things to get your ass back to coin generation and only accept minimal downtime.

On the other hand if you don't care about he money and just looking for education and a fun time, then mining might be for you.
Most successful miners will agree:  Mining is addictive but so much fun!

IE: I spent my morning replacing a power bar, I used a shitty extension cord to free an older powerbar.
That was my fuckup for not having a spare power bar.
However, I jury rigged something and I'm back mining full force.

Moral is, if you can't tackle adversity and bully your way through, then don't come up here...

that is true and there is not a posibility about easyness of mining since asics come out

If you have free electricity, no.  No miner is obsolete when it takes nothing to run and spits out BTC.  As GigaBit has said, it may be profitable if you have extremely cheap power, but if not, yes it is dead.  I pay 11 cents a kilowatt here so I only make a couple cents a day, but it's the fun I'm after, not just money.  It's also why I've been buying cheap solar panels to run some little USB miners solo mining.  It's like a free lottery (if you don't include the cost of the solar panels...).

yes, for you as a person it is true. problem is current (low price) of bitcoin and diff, so it might be easier again once price will somehow raise..

you can hope for something like 21 inc in the future, they are planning to make casual mining possible again, but the problem is that earning will always be abysmally low, and even more lower with the incoming block halving

the only two others option, are hosting in a cheap electricty zone and cloudmining, but search only for those where you can sell your contract at anytime

well it is true if you if you dont have cheap electricity, you should do your maths and check if for you it is profitable.


lets burn all those chinese farms!! :P, is just a joke...

it is not just about electricity. you have to secure place, where are you mining, take care about fire hazard, internet connectivity, dust, humidity, there is lot of waste heat so during summer is air conditioning almost must - another expenses. I mean - there are more aspect then price per kW.

I am a newbie but a tech and wanted to get into mining. I have read 200+ posts here and soooo many web pages during a slow week-and have recently moved into an office that supplies co-hosting at no cost, and the empty racks are numerous-and they are air conditioned.

I was looking at http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bitmain-Antminer-S4-2TH-ASIC-Bitcoin-Miner/201371305407?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D31729%26meid%3D9a5eb40d77db45228daa2880fa1e5c5e%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D251993468862&rt=nc

to start off with, or a similar machine-and considering that I have no cost of electricity (included in my rent) and my internet connection at 50GB down/10GB out is also included, would I be getting into something profitable-or should I invest my $$$ into a cloud service and start at 10TH/s?

No where do i see a cost analysis in a calculator like using http://www.cloudmining.website/calculator.php WITH the fees involved, to make a good decision. Can anyone provide me something meaningful, perhaps someone using a this or a comparable cloud service? Based on this link at 10TH/s I could theoretically net 3.03 BT per month.  What's the costs (I am sure that they erode the profits, but how significantly I do not know).

I do believe bitcoins are going up in price, slowly, from here on out.  I could be wrong, of course...

Thanks!
A

Almost all equipment is priced with a break-even 3-4 months based on current value. Forecasting ROI is pointless because BTC has too much variation in pricing.

not all lose if you have more capital not hard to get profit,
you can watch this short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8kua5B5K3I
you can learn more about problem bitcoin mining and how to fix it :)

Mining is not dead.  It is just being a zombie.

This summer has actually been very good to miners.  We have had a slow growth in BTC price, it seems to keep slowly going up (it does go up and down daily).

And maybe the biggest thing difficulty.  The difficulty we have received multiple negatives during summer, and low increases for most part. 

For a miner these two things are very good together.  I personally decided to mine through summer adding fans and a new area, and I'm happy I did it.

Don't bother. There's no money in mining Bitcoin anymore unless you have a lot to invest in hardware upfront.

Currently it isn't indeed. However, if the Bitcoin appears to be worth $1000 / $5000 next year, it appearently as profitable to mine now. However, you can also just buy the BTC now instead then, I think that's the better choice.

Electricity costs + initial costs to set up miners (including the actual buying of the devices ) in relation to the current income of BTC, makes it often not profitable to mine now. You might however, if your costs are very few.  Mining altcoins might be profitable as some of them appear to be very volatile; and new ones might become worth something later on.

However, this does not mean that "mining" is dead. If the mining was "dead" and thereby no one mines anymore, the Bitcoin itself would be dead as no transactions can be handled anymore.

it is better to buy now, because buy the time you will roi, you will lose a big opportunity to have more bitcoin in case the diff rise and your profit will be reduced

instead with buying you could have much faster the same amount of bitcoin, wasted for purchasing the miners

If you look at it that way - you're right indeed. That's indeed the reason why I suggest people to invest in BTC directly (by buying it) than indirectly by buying mining equiptment.

I think it's actually quite a good moment to buy-in now. The troubles with the EU // Greece might positively influence the value of Bitcoin. (I can understand that some Greece inhabitants are very happy now that they own BTC; as they currently can not take much cash out of an ATM they have atleast 1 method to pay; BITCOIN! Some inhabitants don't have any cash yet, and are unable to buy groceries, medicines etc etc.)

if you have free electric you can still make profit but not much at all

Is solo mining dead? The answer is yes and no.

If you're a normal person with normal power costs and normal ASIC hardware, the answer is yes. You should be in a pool unless you wipe your butt with $100 bills and would rather mine than buy BTC outright (cheaper).

If you're one of the lucky few with free electricity then solo mining is still 100% fun and profitable. Mine solo all you want. You can help Bitcoin by running a full node too.

Just pick your category and you can easily see what you should do. :)

i think mining is best left to the specialists, those with the money and hardware to run machines that spit out gigahashes per second

It is true. Your electricity cost and maintenance cost will actually give you negative profit. But if you have free or cheap electricity and if you can lower down your maintenance cost you might make profit but in small amounts.

It will even take time to ROI.

Better buy some low and try trading high for making profits. Or invest in alt coin which is much risker though.

Yep, because after a hard day of mining it's great to know you have 2000 shares of something you can't give away lol. :)

the best time for mine bitcoin is when the price rise, because the diff retarget is every two weeks, so in those time frame the network will actually produce more coins, and if you join it in those two week you can earn more

Ehh, what do you mean hodedowe?

Investing in altcoins is contains more risk than investing in BTC directly as;
- Altcoins are much more volatile
- Altcoins do have much less trading volume (which relates to the point mention just above)
- Rich people can buy suddently huge parts of all the mined altcoins (and thereby control the market)
- Altcoins are more likely to die as it has way less users
- Etc..

However. More volatility / more risk can also mean much more profit by investing in altcoins or short-term trading.

I think hes talking about pump/dump coins.  Their value can drop drastically. 

Mining is alive though :).  I personally would bet on BTC over the alts.   Just provides more stability.

Mining is not dead.
And bitcoin is up!  :D

mining is alive and should stay alive. At least for the time being.

especially with the price slowly creeping up :)

it was better few days ago, where with one  s5 could give to you 0.012, now is 0.011 again, the diff will make the price increase  useless as usual

You think it's better to mine BTC directly instead of mining altcoins? Or are you talking about the future of these kinds of cryptocurrency?

I guess mining altcoins still is the better / more profitable choice than mining BTC directly. BTC has already a huge total hashrate due to the many ASICS, Scrypt coins do have much less hashrate.

I'm thinking to buy r9 to mine

Really? Please use a calculator in order to calculate your costs and (way less) income. Buying brand new GPU's in order to start mining, or even buying GPU's to start mining, is not a smart decision as GPU-mining is not likely to be profitable anymore. Unfortunately..

Do ROI math but most don't even get electricity paid for when mining with GPU's.  And chances of ROI of GPU's is pretty much zero.  It is sad but it is what it is.

Look into asics.  Also what is your electricity price? This will have a lot to do with it.

Electricity still be done if it's free.
Bitcoin continuously falling in very bad condition now.

Even with free electricity I don't see a GPU making ROI.  Your talking about a decent investment.

And GPU just does not pull in what they once did.   Feel free to show some ROI math, but I dont see it recovering GPU cost anytime soon.

If you mine on new gpu centric coins with a gpu and constantly pump and dump and switch coins theres still a slim chance.. but more than likely will not ROI

Some people got stacks of (used) GPU's for different reasons. I know some people in my neightbourhood that use to buy used desktops from people. They use these (used) parts for fixing computers of other peoples (hard discs, power units, mo-bo's and sometimes also GPU's). However, in doing this, they got plenty of GPU's (as they obviously don't have to replace these parts as for examble mobo's, memory of power units).

Although these are old GPU's (with little hashrate), you still can build a decent hashrate grouping these GPU's. BUT, this is only profitable if you've got the electricity for free indeed (and even then, it's not really worth taking care of it.. or dealing with the heat).


That's true. In fact, you should be lucky enought to mine a very new coin which becomes popular later on. That's a way in which GPU mining still can be profitable (and that's the way how I succeed to cover the costs of buying almost a whole new desktop :) ).

Maybe is the eight time to buy cheap scrypt gblade?

I don't know if it is profitable for most, but looking at the hashrate still increasing over time mining certainly is not dead.

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

 https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator is the best calculator I've found to date, with a bit of manipulation it can be made to work with "cloud mining" type services in general (though it doesn't work well directly with Hashnest PACMIC contracts, where the "profit" isn't directly related to the hash rate).

it's because of the new s7, with better efficiency, as log as they cna milk on efficiency, the hashrate will always increase, but there will be a point where efficiency will be no longer a key factor, and thus the whole thing will be stuck

Now how do you know that the price will rise again.  I know it constantly fluctuates but who is to really say the price will reach over $300 again.  Any signs or models that show that it will?

at this point the only way is waiting for the halving, because every news is not doing anything on the price, they just want more exposure for themselves

No mining is not dead. Hashrate wouldn't be going up like crazy if it was dead. Many people that have resources and advantages (like cheap electricity) keep investing in mining a lot.

Unfortunately, mining is dead for the small people. Even worse for me is that mining becomes unprofitable for certain regions and only the regions with cheap electricity like China for example, are really profiting. We will where this brings us to, especially after the halving, if price stays the same then mining will become even more unprofitable for many people.

So mining isnt dead it just on vacation.

Mining is not dead, mining efficiency keeps going up. And if this remains that way I could see profit based mining surviving for even longer.

It's more accurate to say mining is a dead investment when you think about other investment options. You can earn more money by Bitcoin trading, opening a BTC exchange, offering forex trading services etc.
Mining could be profitable but the profit you get would probably be less than all other investments'.

It all depends you can also lose money trading, unless your talking about buying and holding.   Yes buying and holding likely is one of the safest bets.

But many of us enjoy mining.  It is not dead just a lot harder.   When it will be really hard is having, don't know what will happen there.

Like what? What beat Mining's 200% per Annum?  Are you saying you can ROI faster with trading, safely, with minimal time investment, whatever you put in Trading every 4 months?

I am not tracking here. You are suggesting that a mining enterprise produces a 200% per year return? You buy a $2000 S7 today, and you'll have $6000 at the end of one year (i.e. a 200% return)? I don't think even a Ponzi scheme will produce those kinds of returns.

+200% per year is not possible. You can only hope for a +150% bump in BTC price. Even the long fabled "Free Electricity" will not produce a +200% return in a year.

No i meant Break even in 4 months, then at least another 100% over the rest of the year + what the ASIC is worth at that time. Should be 150-200% total, yes. So maybe i should say "Break even every 4 months".

For ones holding loads of coins. How about lending?

I am curious about what assumptions you make to "Break Even" after 4 months in terms of original costs, electricity costs, and difficulty changes. You assuming the same BTC price at the end of 4 months?

Yes. Difficulty is easy to assume over 3-4 months. Its a bit harsher right now assuming 5%~ steps.

And if the BTC price is -20% then you would be 20% behind at marked time. Or you could be +20%. No point in speculating on that one. Specially if you count your ROI in BTC and not USD. And obviously cheap electricity is needed.

I would say mining is far from dead and gone past the point. All you need is good equipment like the newq s7. With each version that has come out energy and reduction of what it use to use has also dropped. I remember the days of s1 using 500watt and close to 600 when overclocked for 200GH. Now can use 1TH and use 1100 massive difference in power use. But still you need a good kw/h rate or going to be gobbled up and never make a RIO. So long as you have cheap energy or even better free energy you have a chance at making RIO or very close to and be also able to mine other sha coins that come out and have a double chance getting more back.

there is the possibility of being scammed, you need a very good collateral, if you want to lend a high amount

but maybe it can be more profitable than mining for some people

 -- Removed --

If that is fact for an s7 18 to 24 months never going to RIO unless price of BTC goes up and can recover that way else BTC paid for machine and energy cost and diff factors it not going to cut it. Even gaining 200% RIO is impossable unless you got free energy and time on your hands to produce the coin and even then a big mining cluster could come on line and change it to never brake even.

I never ever said "mining with an S7 is 200% ROI". The S7 is ridiculously overpriced. You can get twice the GH/$ with other miners. The S7 is the last miner i would invest in at the moment. I'd get a bunch of S3's long before i get a S7 at current prices.

My miner of choice at the moment is the S5. The S4/+ also work. And underclocked S1 to an extent (but probably not for long, but i ROI'd them in 2 months and they are still profitable at the moment).
Then lastly S3 do very well, and eventually underclocked as difficulty increase, as it will be same or better than stock S5 but less space efficient.

Realistically, for ANY miner to achive RoI at this point needs 2 of the 3 following factors

 (1) VERY cheap purchace price
 (2) VERY cheap or free electric
 (3) Bitcoing price to start going up at the same or very close to the same rate as Diff increases

 *AND*

 The miner must be profitable for some months at your electric cost.


 Based on current trends, I doubt that ANY miner currently available at current pricing is going to RoI unless your electric rate is 5 cents / KWH or less, or you get the miner for a very few cents on the dollar of what it originally cost when new.
 I also doubt that any current miner will be profitable past the halfing, unless Bitcoin price jumps quite a bit before that, or the diff increase rate of the last couple months flattens back out to LESS than we saw on average during the first 7 months or so of 2015.


 I suspect that the early part of 2015 is going to be seen, 3-4 years from now, as the "silver" period of Bitcoin mining (the gold period being the timeframe before Bitcoin exceeded $1000).

%200 per annum? You can't ROI faster than 220-240 days with any of the mining equipments in market. Even if your electricity is free it's not less than 200 days. Now imagine what happens 200 days later? When you need to start to profit from mining, you can't, because new hardwares have been already come and difficulty will be a lot more than today's.

Says who? What are you buying? Overpriced units from Ebay? I ROI all the stuff i buy in 60-120 days. If it take longer, getting good profit is probably out of the question. As such, i get 150-250% per annum. Because the miner doesn't go out in smoke, it is still worth something after your 100% profit. At that point you can sell the miner which is purely more profit.

Personally i can't support any more of such deals but what do happen if you get an Antminer S1 for 10$ each? Suddenly 2 months ROI happen. 15$? 3 Months~. 20$? 4 Months~

its not dead.  People are still soloing.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1132914.0;topicseen

he probably has cheap electricity, but aside from this i find it pointless, better to play the lottery trust me, you have a better chance to win and buy bitcoin with those money

maybe mining is not dead but the profit is very limited to a group of privileged elitist

It's eliteist to live in an area with cheap electric?
It's elitest to have gotten machines very cheaply, or to have gotten them back when Bitmain and Spondoolies were having their price war?

 What an INTERESTING misdefinition....


 I do grant that most of the folks making good profits are larger farms, but large groups making more money than small is nothing new to any profitable activity, especially as a given "market" matures....

Now is dead, but could be the right time to invest in mining hardwar.
Bitcoin will come back to 500 usd. Don't know when,but sure will do.

If mining was dead then nobody would be mining. At Eligius there is 14,730 Th/s of mining going on at the moment. Somebody is still mining.

https://i.imgur.com/ldq3QcUl.png (http://imgur.com/ldq3QcU)

Mining will never be deal.  This is true, as many people such as me are addicted.  Even if a tad loss I will always have a machine (If I was losing it would be just 1 machine not multiple like i have now trying to ROI).  It is a hobby I enjoy I get so much fun out of it.  I could say I'm trying to save the network and keep decentralized but fact is I just love to mine.

But even in these times peopl still can ROI. Some will take selling the miner to do it in the end.  But i think a lot would be surprised how many do ROI.

It is not true, there are still a lot of people mining for bitcoins, and there are still someone making mining machines for better
productivity, If you are a newbie in mining you need to research a bit, and try reading bitcoins for beginners guide.
or if you know someone who has experience in mining then ask him if where to start, what machine that is best to fit for
you and I think you can achieve your desired ROI. ;D 

Although mining is far from dead, just look at the steady increase in the network Hash Rate, it is getting progressively more difficult for the Home Miner with an Electricity cost greater than 10 Cents (Mine is 15 Cents) to stay in the game as the Difficulty increases and with Bitcoin halving next Year.

Putting aside ROI and just thinking about making more money than the electricity cost (Which as a latecomer is my objective) I am ok at the moment with a standard S5. By undervolting and reducing the frequency I can still make money up to the Halving. At that point even an S7 will need electricity under 12 Cents to make money.

So it makes life a lot easier if you have under 5 Cents electricity. If not you have to work hard at when to buy, when to sell and how to modify for best efficiency to stay in the game.  :)

Rich

There are some that love to go around and say mining is dead.  They enjoy spreading it.  But with right conditions you can still ROI.

Winter is coming up some even use miners to heat rooms.  You can find a way to ROI in most cases (as long as difficulty does not have huge jump).    If 10 cents or under and decently new gear you will do ok.

Mining will be profitable again when btc halve on 2016. I hope.  ;)
Cause i hope price will rise.

it's the opposite, there is more chances that mining will be even more dead if the price of btc will not double at least

how the halving can even help the miners is beyond me, the reward will be halved not doubled

We are seeing a slow build up on price right now.  It really depends on price of BTC.  If it goes up considerable yes happy days, all miners continue.

But if not most likely miners will be looking for lower powered machines.  I'm sure more and more efficient miners are to come.

That price run up is the annual holiday eggnog special. It will drop once the booze wears off :P

Well miners keep being developed with more th inside and less energy consumer ,without free or solar energy or wind this investment  will be harder to achieve at the current price ,mine and pay the eletricity bill is insane if you have free power well is 50% faster to be able to roi only mining.At Brazil they charge around 50 to 70% fee from exported product making this being almost impossible to try it withouy free energy that some people has,but well the cost is very high compared to others countries.

With the slow buildup I have a little more hope in it.  Were less than on year away from having.    We are not seeing huge bumps/jumps.

I think a slow nice buildup might just stay.   I'm hoping we have this trend stay.  I think it is here to stay for a bit, long term I'm not sure.

Well although electricity has a high risk for expenses in mining, you can still calculate it's cost rate, and for that it is not impossible to ROI, and now that the winter is coming it is good to mine in weather conditions like these! ;D

Well im sure not all people that keep mining are soo lucky as these but well i needed to share a sucess history to who his trying dont give up maybe the lucky one day knock your doors  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1132914.new#new.And yes some people still earn and able to roi .

We can say mining is a kind off dead now as now most of the btc dont want to invest money on. Asiic miners and waste money on bills... So slowly slowly miners are packing up from mining

Hello,

Really! Mining is not profitable. Same they say to me. Its nice hobby but nothing else.  :-[

Mining is not one size fit's all.  With things such as electricity and Vat.  It's just very different for each person.

In my case I am able to mine profitable.   I consider myself a "hobby miner"   not a "home miner".  I think its in between home and full out living from BTC.    But it really is not dead and has lots of life currently.

Not worth it IMO, You will likely not make a profit, and maybe not even break even because of the difficulty rises

How can you say that? in mining difficulty always comes first, before you profit in these industry you will face lots of hardships before obtaining the BTC that you desire! many miner now a days is very persistent and has a no surrender attitude, and has earn lots and lots in mining, I don't believe that mining is dead.

Minning isn't dead. But you will not make money with an usb miner at your home. You can be minning some satoshis at your home but as a hobby.
Minning now is more professional, big minning companies with lot of new designed miners and small electricity prices. If you want to be successful in mining against these big groups you will need a lot of money to invest buying the best miners and you will need a very few electricity price.

It is far from dead but USB stick miners have a cost that will not ROI in most cases.  It just costs quite a bit to produce it and they have smaller hashing speed then a bigger unit.

You need decent electricity but yes many can still mine.  Heck price has even been going up so its easier for some.

The big fact is who were at bitcoin mining on the start made some good income and most had roi on that time,nowadays the roi is hard to achieve but,not impossible as bitcoin keeps getting more value,and well it should keep growing slowly.Soo mine now can be a small profir or return montly,but on the next months or years it can turn into the roi thats why bitcoin has soo many interest on it.

Keep in mind selling rig in the end.  A lot don't consider this in ROI.  So technically if you get enough to pay off rig and sell you get a decent profit most of time.  But yest it takes certain electricity pricing.

Mining is far from dead though.

Well most miners has just turned off their miners,they dont wanna to sell them ,are waiting a bigger value of bitcoin to return ,soo they only consider btc spend on the equipment,i had spent 10btc on a rig and i had earned 4 btc till the moment,just and example.I dont know how easy is to sell a miner to other person,did you sold some equipment or know someone doing it?

For most miners I think you are wrong on just turning off on big miners.  People are selling to gain more money.... there is a entire sub thread to selling hardware on this forum.  Or look at ebay on completed auctions.

Most miners sell when it no longer makes sense to mine with it.   Depending on miner some hold a pretty good value even 2nd hand.  I have been doing it since my GPU day's.  Sold GPU's went into asics.  Have sold every asic when I feel it makes more off of sale then me running it.   I do lots of math to see what is best. 

Honestly look into it on ebay on sold miners you will be surprised the number that are being sold.  It is very common at this point.

Individual distributed miners yes.  The conglomerates are continuing to amass given the 50% growth we've seen over the past couple of months.

I'm earning just fine, the key is just having cheap electricity, under 0.04$/kWh really make it a completely different games for home miners.

Of course the biggest growth will be in data centers, but also home miners that decide to man up and get into this new thing called "Bitcoin" when they realize they could make bank because they pay 0.02-0.04$/kWh.

It is also done with pretty smart investing by some people.   The top few datacenters we have seen pictures of they knew what they are doing.  It is high risk and high reward.

We have all seen pictures of that one center full of SP gear after fire.   So we can't say all were as smart or as lucky.  I can't fault these big companies.

But home mining and hobby mining are still alive.  I'm still doing it.  Some with high electricity or rediclous vat have been pushed out... but there is not much you can do with a free market to prevent that.  And there is always data centers for some.

Im one of the new people entering this game, at this time im really just playing around with the technology and learning about btc.  But mining is far from dead and many people can make a few extra bucks if their smart enough.  Trading your mined btc to individuals can net a decent profit which for people with higher rates can offset the electricity rates.  Mining is the easy part, it brings btc into your wallet with basically no effort, its what you do with those credits that further determines how successful this currency can be for you.

if they culd provide a cheap cloud , more cheap that hashnest, many miners could actually join the network, but with the maintanance fee their result is above 0.05, it's like you pay 0.1

because if it were 0.05 the roi would be 6 months

I'm hoping having brings some of the hosting centers down a little.   Not sure if they will but I will keep hoping on it.

Not sure what will happen at having really.  Will be interesting.

They could provide for cloud, but i don't really get it. I'd rather just mine it myself, if i have that much cheap electricity, having to deal with customers, questions, configuration, shipping out miners, egh, sound like a pain.

I'd just grab all the S3's i could and sometimes S5's and enjoy the high turnover and short ROI.

The way cloud mining is setup, it sound like they just make their ToS into a miner trap. Like Bitmain's 50$ per unit handling of the unit + shipping, tend to make people leave their units there and no claim them.

Look at the prices of S3.

I would rather mine with hardware as I enjoy playing with it myself.  But if someone would hit my magic number .05 cents I might send them some miners to host for me (assuming it is well known data center).

But it would take me a that number and no vat.  And I would try it slowly.  Not jump in all at once there.  As testing out is big.

In my opinion, Mining bitcoin? yes it is dead unless you are a millionaire want to find something interesting to do in your free time by buying some huge machines for mining bitcoin. However mining altcoin is not dead yet and it will never be. There are a bunch of new coin everyday try to mine some and be the first one to dump it. This way you will be the winner. On the other hand, If you don't really want to mine alternate coin, try to sell contracts or get some customers on miningrentals... You may able to get some easily I think

Alt coin mining is a hard game so much puump/dump.   I also think less people rent MRR then they use to.  A lot tend to use nicehash which pay is low a lot of the time. 

You need to look into BTC mining more.   It is far from dead, and only dead if high electricity or high vat.

It was dead...since I am mining with my U2 mining is alive again.
No seriously...
I am searchinf co-miners mining for me as worker...
of course only if you are a mittle miner who reach with difficulties the minimum payout.

Except some coins which have good potential, all others is just about pump and dump. However if you really want to make money I think alternate is the best as bitcoin is for the big guys so what chances are left for the small miners? Alt coin is just about time. If you got in at the right time then you will surely struck gold. BTW while I was writing this all I could thought of was Mining rentals so I wrote it down LOL Nicehash is fine to I think.

Alt coins are more risky then BTC.  It no doubt can make you more money if you get lucky or had some great strategy.  When your talking about coins worth a few dollars... a 50 cent raise might be a big margin for it as BTC 50 cent is not much at all.

The problem is gear to mine.  Most alt coins that are worth mining are Scrypt.  There is just a bunch of old asics besides a few SF100's that made it to public.  Compare that to where BTC has a constant stream of new miners being made and developed it is a huge difference in mining.

I'm not sure to many "small" miners will be better off with scrypt gear.  What scrypt gear are you mining with you suggest "small" miners use instead of BTC asics?

I just suggest in general that mining alternate coin may be a good idea. There are still many SHA256 coins that can be mined like Trinity or you can used multipool to mine the coins. That's also fine I think. On the other hand, Yes there are some risks when playing with alternate coin but with steady project like BURST, NXT, HYPER,... (don't mention about mining here just want to show some examples about stable coins) I think it's totally worth.

I thing the value one coin doesn't really say anything. If you got that much mining power, you can probably ( just probably) make equal to the amount of bitcoin you mine or even more. In some cases, solo mining can give you even more income while solo mining bitcoins is quite impossible unless you got a really really really big farm

Show me a SHA256 coin that is constantly better to mine then BTC.  I think you either are not a miner, or possibly doing something wrong.  Mining SHA altcoins... just does not make sense for almost all.  You would be better off mining BTC and buying alt's ins most cases.   But I still think BTC is best sha coin long term.

Can you show profits personally from constant mining of alt coins in sha?  And you mention some I'm pretty sure you did not try.... burst I looked into mining my HD on 2 TB's a month leaving a big computer on it ran at a loss and made a few bucks a month.  You throw out coins but I don't think you have done the ROI or done it personally.  But I could be wrong.  Please show us your past trading that made it better then BTC on mining.

Yep I stop mining for a quite a long time when I think that it's no longer profitable. And about BURST, like I said if you decide to get in early you will find it profitable, and I jumped in from the beginning and yes, I have done the ROI but I don't have the habit of staying one coin very long so my past trading of it is quite long ago. However I just say that this all is my own opinion so it may be not really correct and I admit that nowadays SHA256 coins that are better to mine than BTC no longer exists but I remember mining one or two coins just what I think was better.

You really are a bit out of dated of your mining to be honest, that is nicest way I can say it.  You should be able to back up things you say with facts not just a general feeling.

Mining BTC on SHA256 asics is most profitable way to do it anymore.  If a new coin launches yes it might change.... but there are few coins that are not pump/dump.  BTC has the long term profitability.  Mining changes so much you really need to stay part of it to have good information to share.  Look at nicehash for example.. they are renting at negative 10 percent currently.  That shows no great altcoin is currently being mined.

Most altcoins that are worth something are in scypt area which is very hard to mine now day's after LTC having.  I could be wrong but look at even 1 month burst it is going down - https://poloniex.com/exchange#btc_burst .   I mean a few bucks to mine all month on multi TB drive is horrible and a loss when mining.  It's looking like pump/dump.

Cloud companys are balancing their income with their fees,and always readjusting it up,till the moment you wont receive any ammount what had happened with genesis mining.If a new cloud shows off it would be great to have a small fee and we all being able to roi ,this will make more investment and more hash could be bought easy to upgrade.

You can't make a whole sector blanket statment based off one.   One of my things I do not invest is if a company say's lifetime, or forever.  Which genesis mining does.  Some might invest as I have seen a few go there.

But lifetime mining is just to good to be true.  All machines have a lifetime when they earn, and eventually they stop making money.  So  it is never lifetime.

Doesnt need to be lifetime ,as i said some kind of contract ,saying you will get 5% or 10% in 1 year of your investment,but well at bitcoin is impossible to someone offer such thing knowing difficult is raising ,and would turn into scam too fast.

True cloud mining or even hardware mining comes with no guarantee of ROI, or espically tell a percent earned per year.  You just cannot predict this with accuracy when talking about a timeline like you said a year, which would include having in one so long at this point.

Avoid anything that guarantees ROI/Profit, or lifetime.  I suggest everyone to research it but those are common signs of scams that a legit cloud mining place would not do or guarantee anything sounding like that.

The most scammer projects like hyip offers something like 20% or more montly,soo is a good way to stay away from scammer following these advice.One thing that should be done by cloud companies is say: we dont know how many time you will roi and if you will be able,we will keep paying as long as we get some income.But we all know no one will say hey dont invest more at me im here to be honest and help you to not invest at me.

If anyone promises X percent per any time chances are you should not invest.  You really cannot guarantee even ROI on most things if your honest.  People can make it if doing smart investments and right timing.

But with difficulty changes, price changes, promising X back in anytime frame is pretty much impossible.  Only way would be if other side is willing to pay if you did not make it, which is not a sustainable business method if they lose money. 

I have an Antminer S3+ left with 450GH/s on free power.

Gives me about 20$ a month which will ROI in about 7 months (of which I still have 4 or so left) as I bought it with the power supply for roughly $150.

I use it for two reasons:

 1) to have a nice daily look at the eligius.st charts
 2) as a motivational and affirmative tool how much the BTC price is undervalued


Rico

Regarding point 1 I used to do the same: I loved to check my nice old 62 GH/s doing some good work.
I actually miss it.

IMO, mining is still live, perhaps laptop mining is dead. Because of difficulty and electricity. isn't it?

Laptop mining was never really a thing.  Even during CPU/GPU day's running a laptop 24x7 on high intensity was a bad idea.  Most built desktops for the mining.

But yes GPU/CPU is dead.  It brings in very little you would need "free" electricity to not loose money.  And even then I don't think you will ROI on a GPU card at this point.

the big farms can be alive but single users are ready to drop by the few.
well maybe you can get low cost eletrecity and some good miners like 2013 but its a good risk

Mining keeps being unprofitable for the most,but there is some that can be able to roi on the next months and keep the miner active,when bitcoin reach above values,sure there is new miners and solo miners still trying to mine btc as they can afford it.

Yup! That is why bitcoin is going up $300 ATM, this is a sign that mining is still alive and it is great that when I hear mining enthusiast and changing their thoughts about mining ;D

And this is HUGE for miners I was profitable at 230.... so I was not hurting to bad during then.  Bring it up to 300 a coin... and I'm doing and feeling pretty good right now.

Mining is far from dead.   I think it's a pretty good period for it during this change.

Yep, my only regret right now is, it has gotten harder to get good deals since people that were on the verge of selling their S5's are mostly keeping them for the time being.
Still some deals are about but many aren't pressed to sell unless they need room for better miners, right now.

It is a good time to be a miner right now.

Mining is not dead.  It may not be so profitable right now but things change. 
Mining for profit and income you will need to invest some dough if you didn't get in early.
But for me it can only be a hobby right now, you have to overcome the power to profit in order to expand.  A Hobby/obsession but I digress. 

There is a flip side to it though.  It means the miners you currently have will do better at keeping value with BTC prices going up.   Which having them worth something someday when I sell and switch miners which is nice bump in ROI's.

But for some one trying to acquire miners yes it would suck for sure.

Yup! I also believe in that, mining is not dead at all, I wish bitcoin can keep the pace up, and youre saying at 230 that is profitable then how well is your profit now that it is in 300? ;D

Indeed, at 230 i was considering getting rid of my S1 one way or another, as the theoretical costs vs profitability was almost nullifying one another. However now they became profitable again, and thus i'm considering retiring my Zeus X3 first instead, since Scrypt has been going down the drain steadily since the LTC halving.

It look like i will be solely mining BTC from now on.

If there is no mining then there will not exist bitcoin, right?
I think that mining will not get dead as soon as new hardware are in the market.
When July comes then we will see how many devices will die because of no profit.

As long as BTC live, mining will never be dead "dead". When people say "damnit mining is dead" they are talking about themselves, in their conditions. Mining is not dead for people with better conditions than that person and that will remain true as long as Bitcoin lives.

Its a definite fact because if something very bad happen and BTC lose 70% of its value, mining will "die" for many, but it will normalize on 30% of its remaining value after the difficulty drop.

That's the point if there is no mining i think that bitcoin will disappear.
Mining itself will continue and i think that the new technology hardware will make it easier.
At least more profitable than the old mining rigs which for now and from July will not worth using them.

New technology doesn't help mining, it just make previous generations obsolete. Mining will ever end, and can never kill Bitcoin, it is the other way around. As long as BTC hold value, there will be mining. Because as long as BTC has value, mining has value.

As long as there is value, people will do it.

Its just a matter of perspective. For instance last months before the BTC raise, people were complaining/sadly saying they already were nearly breaking even by mining with a S5.

Meanwhile for many, it is still profitable to mine with S3 or even S1 or perhaps even worse ASICs.

For those who pay electricity it does help on new miners as they normally have better efficiency.  And there becomes a time a miner when paying electricity is not bringing in enough, or some not at all.   This is when you sell and upgrade generations.

Without new efficiency and difficulty going up eventually no one but cheap or free could mine.   So there is a purpose new gear serves for most miners as electricity costs money.

There is, but the reason difficulty go up in the first place, is because more hardware is being produced in the first place.

If no hardware was ever more efficient than 0.5J/GH, then we would eventually hit a cap, where it would only be more profitable to invest in even more of these miners if the price of BTC raise.

Basically, now we're also fighting over who gets the most efficient hardware, if that was removed from the equation, it would probably be better off for miners.

If they did not have new chips they would just make the same miners with same efficiency.  Having old technology would not stop companies from making miners, as a lot pay very little on big data centers.  So difficulty would still go up.

Difficulty is not going to sit still, this just wot happen no matter what situation is.  It can move slower upwards.... but not remain the same (assuming BTC does not crash or something hugely go wrong)

As someone who pay's electricity I can tell you new miners are a good thing overall.  Only way I can see people not thinking so is "free" miners or extremely cheap electricity miners.

Yes, like people in china, and it does not matter if the companies would continue let say, make S5 forever if there is nothing better.
In a world where more people online S5 when the hashrate network would already be saturated with S5, this means someone found cheaper electricity than others, and thus will knock off other people with less cheap electricity.

The diff will go up a smidgen and will then normalize. The only time more S5 will be onlined if the whole world was running S5 is if its still profitable, and it is only so in that case.

Hence the difficulty would pretty much stagnate. Albeit slowly upward as people setup their next Farm in a more profitable farm.

Hence the only reason you and i want more efficient hardware, is to stay competitive with the difficulty going up, which is going up because huge data center of hardware is being onlined somewhere they pay 10 to 100 times less than us.

I don't think you can say it will "normalize".   With cheap electricity and if it is profitable even if they were not researching new gear, they would pump out the same gear and expand mining in many places.  So difficulty keeps going up really no matter what happens.

Only thing I see that could hurt difficulty is having.  If at having it makes it where a lot have to drop off... who knows what will happen.  It's just not something we can predict.  But it's actually looking not to bad if BTC value keeps going up.

Thats not really possible (to keep on buying), it will "normalize" to the electricity price. For instance if people keep buying and putting hardware on 0.01$/kWh, thats going to lower the profitability by raising the difficulty, eventually it will not be profitable to get more hardware run on 0.01$/kWh.

The only way to get more profit would be to run it on less than 0.01$/kWh.

For the halving... i think this one is going to be more chaotic than the first one, but we'll have to wait and see what it does to the home miners.

I agree, this halving will be dramatic. Here in Reno, Nevada electricity rates recently dropped to $0.08/KWHr but that is still no where near the $0.01 or $0.001 the non-"green" countries can produce.

I guess I might not be doing a good job of explaining my thoughts.  I would think coin prices would still go up.  They would not find a price and stay or normalize there.

With BTC going up in price they could continue to  make gear and make profit (in a lot of cases not all).   To normalize as you put it to be at a point where btc price stays in same place and difficulty I just don't think this would ever happen in real life.  You might be able to come up with a fictional thing were it does this.  But from past we have never really ever seen this.

Even now in past weeks look at BTC price it show's it does not stay the same and can be hard predict BTC prices over time.

 Too many factors involved for that statement to be 100% accurate.

 Litecoin mining for folks that already own Titans was a little MORE profitable last summer than Bitcoin mining with S5/SP20 already owned gear. Alcheminer/clone and A2 based gear could argue the point.


 The current rapid rise in Bitcoin pricing is also largely being reflected in Litecoin pricing, but Litecoin difficulty hasn't (yet) been going up to match. Both have gotten a LOT more profitable in the last week, and if the current price rise holds up, it might manage to make buying S7/Avalon6/BEleven gear able to achieve RoI with non-super-cheap electric.


 Then again, the price could start collapsing again tomorrow, and this prove to be just a BIG pump-and-dump.


 I suspect the price will stay up and probably keep climbing for a while, though - the economic news out of China the last week has NOT been good, and the current escalating "push-back" on China's South China Sea push isn't helping the uncertainty in the region.

Part of it is litecoin has halved and it was main coin for most to mine.   And some gear is getting pretty dated.  BTC gear it seems a few machines a year at least.    But with scrypt only new one in a long while was SFards which disappeared.  So they are mining with more and more dated gear.

With the newer efficient BTC gear and recent higher value on BTC I think it is better in most cases of mining. 

If the BTC price would still go up, then more miners would get onlined, but profitability per miner would remain the same. More miners would mine Bitcoin until it is no longer profitable to add more at the 0.01$/kWh. Then when BTC go down, people would probably still mine at a loss and just sell when it go back up.

So difficulty would not change much or at least, not quickly.

Diff up and diff down would probably become speculative on the BTC trending price.

But you can't say how much BTC price would go up.   You are making a fictional situation that will not happen.  BTC price remaining same or going up same amount, and difficulty remaing same where people don't make new gear... its far fetched.

Look at price on BTC it went up 100 dollars each on value pretty recent.   You just cannot predict all factors and there will not be a normalization where all asic makers stop making gear.   Your idea about what would happen if we didn't have new gear is again fictional, BTC companies are in a arms race and will continue to make more and more efficient gear.

Mining is more alive than ever. I'm patiently waiting my S7's to come. It's so exciting for me because I haven't mined coins for a long time. I made my calculations, found cheap electricity deals, everything is ready, only miners are missing. :D
I'll probably get them in Monday or Tuesday.

I'm not talking about predicting or a fictional future in a impossible scenario. Its an example for what i'm saying to make more sense;

It does not matter if the price goes up or down, the rule still apply, no matter what.

All i been saying is that the only reason we need to get more efficient hardware is because others have more efficient setup. If there was no such thing, then we would not need to "arm race" in the first place.

On the bright side, at one point we'll have reached the technological edge and the "arm race" will happen at a much slower speed since productions cost will outweight the benefits.

now that the price is rising, with your cheap electricty, it's obviously profitable, but not everyone can say the same, for the majority certinly it isn't

if the price increase even more, fast enough it may be profitable for many other...

mining can not die.
mining is regulated by the market...
as soon it is less profitable...less people will mine...
and then profit will increase...
and then more people will mine...etc...etc

The mining game's pretty bad currently.

But I think bitcoin mining will die even more when the halving comes. The coinbase is halved? Jesus, miners will leave in droves!

ok...but when halving they are less bitcoins created and this can help that the bitcoin price grows or falls down less...

Some will leave, but we can do without them. Currently we have enormous amount of the hashrate and to be honest, we don't need this much. So even if we lose let's say 30%, not a big deal.

Then again, look at the price. If we get to $500 before the halving and halving happens, it's like nothing has happened really. And looking at today's price, $500 is more than possible.

We will never lose 30 percent of hashrate.  Espically if price keeps going up this jump was huge on making miners profitable that were marginal.

One day we will lose a bunch of A1's .... but I suspect a lot of them will be replaced with newer gear as I think they are in China datacenters on a  lot of them.   But time will tell. 

The only way we will loose a lot of hash will be if price takes a dump or if price remains steady halving comes and everyone is on a thin margin resulting in lost profit and hash will reduce.  I don't see alot of lost hash anytime in the future only more and prices are there to support it for it.  Difficulty will catch up and bring things back to the old levels, keeping things balanced.  A likely possibility is that prices could soar pass what hash can currently do, in that case we win big until halving makes us normal again.

The biggest threat is how thin of a profit will everyone will mine at and if you can continue to mine at that level.  Look at when prices were low a little bit ago and some of the cloud miners had to stop.  If you could mine at home and make a gain even if it was very small then it is likely you can withstand market conditions.  I also feel as this is a good time to get started in mining as decent gains can be made on last gen hardware that can be sold later for new hardware when those margins become too thin for your resources or you have enough btc stocked up to help future proof and make better gains.

At some point gear is obsolete though.  Look at like BFL minrig... that thing even "free" I would be surprised if many are still running.   One day A1's have to hit a obsolete point even at cheap electricity.

So far I think there are a ton in china running at cheap electricity.  But the recent price raise for sure put more life into A1's.

Yes! I think A1's now has a purpose to play in mining and I think bitcoin will still increase up to Nov. 5 I wish, hehe it is good to mine this time stock more and more bitcoin in the coming halving and wish it will increase ;D

This increase no doubt kept the A1's mining.  With cheap electricity gear stay's on the network a long time.  And in china I think there are sizable amounts of A1's still mining away in some data centers.

Having it's hard to say what will happen.  I'm just happy for how its doing now

As long as the energy is cheap (or even free somethimes), it is even profitable to keep those miners running. Especially now the value of the BTC is increasing and increasing.

Remind that mining with A1's for some people might not seem to be profitable nowadays (due to electricity costs), but if the value of BTC keeps increasing, it might turn out that mining nowadays was profitable though. (Yes, they could also spent the money directly on BTC instead of electricity in this case).

Well there is and will be always someone supporting the bitcoin,the first adopters sure the most of them roi and keep their farmers active and some had made their mine projects and keep mining,even more now that bitcoin achieved the 400 dollars value.

The thing is mining equipment loses value so darn quick I don't like sitting on equipment Im at a loss.  I sold all my A1's and bought more efficient gear.

It is possible more people are profitable now. As a general rule thought I would not unplug a miner and just let it sit there.  I would sell it.

It would be best to mine with it at a lost and hold, then sell when BTC is at an acceptable price for profit. A bit rough if you need to cash out BTC to cover the month's budget but if not this work well, assuming you're not mining at a lost simply because your electricity rate is too crazy.

If that is the case then, definitively sell, dont sit on hardware.

Depends on how much you are losing.   If you have a large electricity bill mining at a loss is not really the best thing.  Counting on it being worth more in the future is not really safest bet.

I would sell and get more efficient gear.  I like running at a profit.  Keeping gear your losing money mining is not good long term.

If you're not really earning(by a small margin) because BTC is at 220$ then you would still profit fully if you profit well at 300$.

If you're losing significantly, this probably mean your electricity costs are too high and you should look into better setups. You could break even S1's on miner hosting, when the price was in the 200s, if you never sold until 300-400 then you would be pretty far ahead.

But i think selling the miners like you said and buying BTC would be a better choice since it is safer and you will profit with it under the same condition as running miners at a loss.

Well the miners can mine unlimited bitcoin,converting them into fiat will restrict your ammount of bitcoins,and with the current value maybe there is a way to earn something with it,but well the electricity price will affect your income,usually people who mine has something like 0.02dollars as fee....

Mining isn't dead. Mining for gaining profits for persons and small mining operations is close to death:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1209056.msg12913379#msg12913379

Every mining company let you believe the price is right so you can get ROI, but factors that are hard to understand for the most people (difficulty) and a factor that can't be predicted (BTC price), makes it unprofitable in the long run.

You say unprofitable for who?The cloud companys makes some payments at begining then they raise their fee and well your income will stop,mining at home being solo or at some pool with cheap electricity keep being profitable for some.

People like to say how hard it is on mining.  But recently we got a big jump in value.  It's actually lot's easier then it was.

Difficulty will continue to rise, nothing we can do about that.  But the push in value seems to be holding at 380+ which is pretty good considering how quick it happened.

Well said, there are to many factors you can't predict

I think people just don't know what they are talking about. For example that post. Sure the S7, at least at 230$BTC price was ridiculously overpriced, and now its a bit disappointing that the last batch has less hashrate but the same price, but think about it;

If a current gen overpriced unit can ROI in 4 months. How fast you think you would ROI if you purchase the right hardware for you? A S5 can have twice the GH/$, in the post's case, this would be time to ROI in half, which seem pretty safe.

The S7's first batch were indeed icky because many people would not ROI before the halving, but not, it is not the case. As such mining is amazing now, at least for people that got hardware before it became so expensive ;)