Bitcoin Forum

Hello I'm pretty new to the Bitcoin scene. I decided to get involved after realizing that I could mine without worries of an electricity bill. So my question is for a person I my situation just starting and not having an excess of money what hardware/software would I need to get set up. I browsed multiple sites online and they all point to having some expensive hardware specifically designed for mining bitcoins. My limitation at this point is funds. So how would I start out and work my way up?  Thank you for your time and consideration.

Don't immediately go all in. Try it out first with what you have and see how it plays out, then make the decision after talking to even more experienced miners.

Well, then you are lucky if your bills are free, any decent hardware miner will do, eventually you should move to Antminers, they are nice in size and you could start stacking it up.

http://www.rigwarz.com/


The more you make the more you will make. It will be like playing Bitcoin Billonaire. Go to mining section for a more specific reply tho.
 

You should not invest in mining bitcoins because it is not profitable even without electricity expenses

I remember someone posting here that he uses solar energy for his mining farm.
Not sure if its possible because of the huge panels you need for a single rig not sure if its worth it.

That's what he is doing now.

Mining rig is better than investing because in mining you can mine on your own base, but it have also a cost of electricity.So which you think is better, choose that :) :)

he's right.  not very profitable.  do some basic calculations before you buy any gear.  determine how much hash power you have compared with the network hash rate, and then multiply that percentage by the number of bitcoins being awarded and multiply that by the dollar per Bitcoin.  that will tell you how much money you will earn per day, per week, per month (assuming the difficulty stays constant)

No he's not right. Without power costs, you will recoup the costs of the miner in a few months. An AntMiner S5 costs about $400, or about 1.3 BTC, and currently generates about 0.33 BTC per month. Of course, with the rising difficulty, you will never get rich from hobby mining.

On the other hand, one thing that newbie miners overlook is the heat and noise generated by the equipment. It might be a mistake to believe that you can mine in your bedroom or your apartment.

well for a starter , I assume you own at least a desktop and not a laptop , and also hope you have an AMD graphic cards as their more profitable than Nvidia cards , then you could try eobot for starters , its very user friendly , you will not earn much with current difficulty but it might help you to understand the system a bit , and same time while your mining , you could read the threads here and get involved if you can until you rank up your forum account and then join a signature campaign here and start maximizing your earning until you have enough money at your balance til you could buy some special hardware's for mining

I would leave mining alone.. Too much risk never to make ROI or get scammed by the companies when they don't deliver..

Safest bet is to just buy into bitcoin with the money you wanted to spend on the mining equipment. Fastest way to get your coins at current rate.

I have a related question, guys.

Would it be profitable to mine here in the US (southern state) if on your property you had access to free natural gas? The gas is piped and you'll have unlimited usage. I'm thinking, of course, that the gas would be converted to electricity and low-end warehouses would still need to be built, and I don't believe internet access would be an issue.

Also, you would have to purchase the place (not that expensive), but once you're done mining, you'll be able to resell it for probably no less than what you'll pay for it.

Profitable, given the above parameters?

isn't the process of converting the gas to electricity , is going to be expensive? in terms of profit , how much hardware your going to buy to make this project complete? a lot could come in conclusion if your ROI would be within how many months , and since your going to purchase the place , the ROI will even be longer I guess

It is called minting/staking/pos

If you have no worries about electricity bill, and your biggest problem is the funding for the miners, you should seriously consider offering renting out
your hosting for mining purpuses to others. That way you don't have to buy anything, just take other peoples miners and maintain their mining operation.

Be carefull tho, normal house el. circuit can draw only so much, don't connect too many miners. When i was mining with my rigs , i was careful not
to overstep 2 kW per phase, and even then there were some issues.

cheers

I hope you not a student in your parents house, because someone will have to pay for that extra usage. Sticking your parents with that bill and taking the profits will just be wrong. The same goes for the people who mine from their workplace, without their employer knowing it.

The free electricity definitely gives you the edge over other miners out there, so you should reach ROI so much quicker than where you had to pay for the electricity. Would you care to explain to us, how you get FREE electricity? I would move their tomorrow, because my electricity bill takes a huge chuck out of my earnings.

ok yeah if get it immediately and you run it for 4+ months and nothing breaks and the difficulty doesn't go up then you can recoup your investment (without electricty costs).
You are right sir.  Still the OP should work out the math for himself.

antminer s3 can go for like 100 dollars which isnt too much to pay, if electricity isnt an issue then an s1 might be pretty appealing i have seen one go for 30 dollars or so
:)

yes their price is cheap compared to others but their daily income is also a lot lesser than other expensive miners so its parallel on that matter , I wanted to order an s3 before but did calculation and came up with the conclusion that is not worth it with the current difficulty

which is a very likely scenario, because if the price will not move soo much the diff will stay there for a while until new tech like 16/14nm kick in

so the op can try this route but he should hurry, i'm sure it won't last forever, until we can see a furious increase of the diff

with no power cost an s3 will roi in around 100 days which isnt bad :/

yes that is true but I meant in terms of overall value over time , with the calculation I did , with current difficulty an Antminer s3 will only earn you 0.0006 daily ( 0.17 $ ) if its on 24/7 which even using a faucets for two hours daily will give you more earning than it and faucets are considered just extra cents compared to signature campaigns so that's why I change my mind before in buying this miner

are these calculations after the block having? also if btc doesnt work out there are a few a other sha coins which wouldn't hurt :)

this the calculation last week , it's before the block halfing happens so it would be even harder to earn ... yes that's the last best alternative way I guess to mine other coins and perhaps trade them to bitcoin :)

I'm in the military living on a nuclear-powered base.

Then you should also know that miners make a lot of noise and heat, and are also not 100% safe to be left unmonitored for a long period of time, and since you say that youre in military,
im guessing you cant keep an eye on them fair amount of time.
imho, i dont think its a good idea for you to even start with mining; it could get you more problems than profits, but your call tho

cheers

Please, please don't push the idea that mining with free electricity makes it profitable. It doesn't. In most cases, the hardware itself is going to die before it ROIs (meaning free electricity or not, you've still lost). The only way you're going to make money mining, in most cases, is to have enough to buy high-powered machines or buy in bulk.

Nobody has free internet. Maybe you are a child living with your parents... then your parents will find out and be unhappy.

Maybe you are a student. Then your high power consumption will be find out and you will lose your flat.

Maybe you live in a country where it's usual to steal power. Then chances are that the power company is investigating where all the power is vanishing.

The idea of "free electricity" is based on all-bills-paid apartments and student housing. In these, the resident doesn't pay regardless, so it's "free" in the sense that it costs them the same to mine as it does not to.

That's so wrong. Mining is very profitable if you have less than 10 cents per kWh electricity.
There is no free electricity, even if you don't pay bills, somebody else have to pay.

Its only free if you dont pay for it entirely.

And last time I checked everyone pays for it, unless youre in a poverish country and it doesnt matter at all.

guess what? not really profitable unless the difficulty suddenly decreased by at least 20% within the next re-targeting, and/or the price of bitcoin suddenly skyrocketed, otherwise bitcoin mining would not be as profitable as normal even if electricity was free.
block reward is halving every 210000 blocks, that is one of the reason mining is not profitable as well.

Price of bitcoin in the future is irrelevant. You guys really need to apply basic economics instead of throwing out random ideas. Look:

You pay $1000 for a mining rig when BTC is $100 each.
After 5 years, it's mined 5 BTC and BTC is worth $1000 each. Nice, you've made $5000-1000=4000, right?
If you had bought BTC instead of the rig, not only would you have had LESS RISK and wasted less time keeping it running, but you'd have 10 BTC instead of just 5, or a profit of 10000-1000=9000, over twice as much. Instead, you essentially wasted $5k just to run a rig.

Quit looking at the future price of BTC and trying to use that to justify why mining is worth it.

So that is where your free power comes from? Surely a good idea. ::)

I mean where do you host it? Have others access to the miners to that they could vanish?

Next thing... military? Strange data activity detected... and you get a visit.

And why do you think they are ok with you drawing their power? They could sue you for stealing if they want.

Block halving shouldn't matter much as it is one year away. The only factor is the difficulty increase and the coin pricing. Many people bought hardware when the price started to steadily increase. As soon as it drops, the profitability also drops as well. Alt coins are generally quite volatile and can affect your ROI percentage.

Pricing should be affected once we get closer to the halving, though, due to speculation. It's going to decrease new coins on the market, which means miners either earn more or they quit mining. It's going to be interesting to see how it pans out.