Bitcoin Forum

I've seen a few rather reasonably priced 675GH/s and above ASICs for bitcoin and wondering if it's still something worth investing in? I can't go for the high TH/s ASICs as I don't have that much money to put forward. I calculated my break even point would be about 9-11 months at CURRENT BTC prices.

Is this still something I can make a little profit from? Baring in mind I can set it up at work so I'm not paying for electricity.

I don't even have to invest in a BTC ASIC if you feel like a Scrypt ASIC would be more profitable. I'm open to all suggestions.

I think investing is such a broad word, are you investing just because of curiosity, hobby or passive income?
Are ASICS still worth, yes I think they are still, specially the new Bitmains.
If you're planning to invest on a small hash rate as a hobby and just to satisfy your curiosity, then go for it but don't expect great rewards for it.

I think that not only ASIC-s but all the process of mining for the single person is not profitable. There are to many (continues) costs and for more is even the difficulty of mining which go high every two weeks.

I was wanting to get one or 2 just to run in the background while I get on with my day to day life, and just make a small monthly profit. But long term I need to know if I'll continue to make profit or if I'll be spending more on ASICs before I actually have a chance to break even.

With the BTC volatility right now, ugh ugh nope maybe break even would be 11 to 12 months.
I think BTC is good for the early starters, those who have establish them selves, big investors, all of them have ROI already, so adding up a new miner is no problem.

Invest only the amount which you are comfortable, don't spend money you can't afford to lost.

BTC
I would suggest the following TOY as the only legit ..low cost option out there...it does not mine very much but it is a cute little BTC Toy imho :)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1126705.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1126705.0)


what the heck as you can see from the lights and such it is a cute little beastie :) Soothing :)

The price is 25 bucks total plus 6 bucks shipping. I got two for 56 usd bucks with shipping...so you can't beat that!

anyway besides an over priced Bitmain 5+ which probably for the price you also won't ROI if you have to have a product for home miner addiction this is what I'd get

(me I need a cheap asic withdrawal device for when my home miners go to doorstop stage..the horror...also got a bitseed v2 node just to feel useful after this
whole asic miner at home stuff goes poof! (so sad so addicted)

my KNC Shrine to Titan Miners below :) Man I drank too much of the kool aid back in the day :)

http://lostgonzo.imgur.com/ (http://lostgonzo.imgur.com/)



https://i.imgur.com/eZeNXeJ.jpg

Good Luck :)

As a toy, this is a good candidate.

You can decide for yourself if it's a worthwhile investment, here is one of the better tools: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

Just do some reading on predicted difficulty rating over the coming months, your own assumptions on the price of bitcoin, and your electricity rates.

Unless you have pretty cheap electric (I'd say under 8 cents a KWH, and might need to be closer to 6) don't get anything available now unless you can get it cheap. I'd wait ballpark a month for the release of the S7 and start buying those.

 It's looking like the Sfards SF100 is going to be crazy high priced (they VASTLY overestimate the value of the dual mining on that unit IMO), and it doesn't look like Innosilicon / Lktec (probably using Innosilicon A3 chips) will have any miner units for sale before about December - at which point competition rears it's LOVELY (for us miners) head....

A lot is not known it is a risky investment.  This is the year before having so what happens at having?  We will see.

If coin values go up at having or around it those investing now will see an even bigger profit if they hold onto coins.  If it tanks we will see more loss's.  You would need to be able to see the future to really tell how investments will be in a year.

^All I can add to that is hindsight is always 20/20.  It's up to the individual to determine what level of risk and speculation they are comfortable with, the rest is a crap shoot.

It is a high risk investment for sure.  Do no put what you cannot afford to lose in this game.  It can give high returns, and high losses.

I'm excited to see the future of it all.  But honestly when we get year, 5 year it's hard to tell.  Traditional investment we have in some company's many many years of history.  This entire section of digital money is really pretty new concept overall.

If your break even is 10-11 months you should be looking at where you think the overall network will be in 10-11 months.  If you're barely making a profit right now and the network grows you'll never make your money back.  People always try to assume no network growth but that's simply not the case if you look at the history.

Regards,
Yan

 -- Removed --

^Buyer beware, if it seems too good to be true, it almost ALWAYS is.  Negative trust left until any tangible evidence can be supplied that it is not a ponzi.

I would recommend finding deals that you can break under 5 months including everything. You must include the PSU required if you do not have one, the shipping, the import fee, the time delays, the wiring and cooling. You must also include difficulty increase in that.

If its more than that, your electricity cost is probably too high and thus sound risky but not impossible. Got to keep in mind a block halving is happening next year as well.

If you give me/us more information on your situation, i/we may be able to better help you, OP.

 Because most cloud mining "contracts" have been nothing but unprofitable ripoffs with zero percent chance at ROI much less a profit for the buyer, and the rest are mostly unprofitable at best?

 Oh yeah, LOGIC, most "promoters" hate logic....

100 Gh for four years so i pay you $37 and get what $5 at the end of that 4 years yea right... Ill pass!

Indeed, beside the fact that most people would advise against joining shifty random unknown company's cloud mining services, even the best one, though will not rip you off per see, will merely bring you to a break even point before giving you very little actual ROI on your investment after a long time.
And in the mining industry, if you haven't broke evened after 6 months, you're at high risk of losses or barely breaking even without having received any profit.

And then there's the BTC volatility issue that means the BTC profit you might get back can be worth more than it was at your investment point... or less.

I dare say, if your electricity cost is too expensive at home, then simply buy hardware and get it hosted someone it is cheap, because for certain cloud hosting services are there to make money off you, not make money for you.

see with the rising electricity prices i dont think investing in asic miner is worth now.....rising electricty prices is covering up the block reward now.. so its hard now.....however if block reward is increased then it may work...

Could you explain what you mean by "rising electricity prices"? Prices here are not rising at all and at a good electricity rate, the current difficulty with current gen hardware is not much of an impact on income.

Thus beside the overpriced unit that is the S7, there is no problem at all with home mining unless you can't have your hardware placed somewhere with a good price for your electricity consumption.

well my elec bill shows like 8c kwh when i figure out the bill from kwh's used and the $$$ paid it is always between 13.1c to 13.7c kwh (it varies) there is always some kinda
adjustment to taxes/fees/seasonal adjustments and what have you ..always in the upward direction...so best I can figure my price per kwh has gone up between 1.5c to 1.7c
kwh just since jan 2015

so it is misleading to say the least

just saying

Ah i see, the prices here have been pretty static, then again its Government owned. But now that you say you pay 13.1c to 13.7c, i'm afraid to agree that it would be hard for you to see ROI with pretty much any hardware at all.

Even cloud mining's overpriced 0.08/kWh would be better for you, and those generally barely break even, so i think mining at home is not for you =/

Where i live (Venezuela) electricity is so cheap that it's better to just buy a bunch of S5 instead of S7. In my case efficiency doesn't matter that much. Of course, if you live anywhere else, it's the main factor to take into account when you buy a miner.

it depend if you pay less with s5 as a initial investment, 5 x 350 is around the same of s7, but with a worst efficiency, and more space needed, personally i would go with the s7

or better i would wait for a mini s7 if you can't afford one

 Must be a local to you thing, Electric prices most places are pretty stable with a VERY SLOW (usually small single digit %) increase every year or two.

 Some places probably have been DROPPING the last few months as oil got a lot cheaper, though not a lot of places use oil as their primary electric generation fuel (most of them being OPEC members, small islands, or pretty remote areas).

Mhmm. The price here did raise marginally here so it was inaccurate of me to say they don't at all, but they have been simply keeping up with the inflation rate, so i have to say Hydro here is a very good source of cheap electricity and its the sole reason i'm doing so well with mining.

I mean even my S1 are still earning a bit of profit... But next difficulty increase or maybe two, they will not earn anything anymore over what i pay. =/

For the most experienced miners like you, I see mining still as profitable. But for the new people that are looking to get into mining, I don't know. It is very risky. It will work if your electricity costs are very low. OP if you are somewhere on the margin, I wouldn't get into all of this. You are better off buying coins directly as an investment.

This is at least what I have decided the last time I looked into mining.

If you are going to invest on high end asiic miners then sure it will be profitable... Mining has only one criteria.... Huge investment high returns... Low investment low profit or maybe loss...

You don't need high end ASIC, not to be confused with ascii.  Mining has only one true criteria imo and that is your electricity price. For instance if you have electricity for near free, like some country or some people that have some deals, you could buy 10000 Antminer S1 for like 100k and make total bank.

Of course it would be a silly endeavor since there would be more manageable investment, but it show in concept what the true common denominator is.

There are actually 3 criteria.

 Electricicy cost
 Efficiency of miner / power supply setup
 Cost of miner + needed power suppl(ies)y

 I would call electric cost the single most important factor but they ALL matter.


 If you invest badly, "high investment" can lose HIGH amounts, it's not a guarentee at ALL that more invested = more profit.

 Amount invested has pretty much ZERO effect on profitability - just affects how MUCH you're going to make or lose.

I guess that if you are completely oblivious to the mining scene, you'd have to add that as a requirement before mining.
You will need to know what's the going $/gh rate. Knowing this is such a fundamental that it doesn't come to mind as a criteria to me.

If you know what you are doing, then the only mechanical requirement that is up to you is electricity cost. If your electricity is free, you can grab a bunch of S1 for dirt cheap and ROI like mad, if you went and paid 500$ per S1, then you will still profit but you're horrible at investment.

Its your electricity cost that dictate what you can pay, so it all revolve around it. If you start adding caveats, then you'd also need to add BTC having a price as a requirement, difficulty to not go up like crazy as another requirement. That the world won't end. Etc.

Quint, I agree on all points but the last.  Amount invested does impact profitability because of purchasing power.  More so on the used equipment market than purchasing new (Bitmain requires upwards of 200K in sales to consider price breaks!), but buying in volume decreases the amount you spend on shipping, decreases unit cost, etc for both miners and PSU's. Same goes for infrastructure, having an electrician come in to install 1 240V circuit as opposed to wiring a whole building, you are getting better value for volume, and lowering your overall costs.  Same can be said for electricity rates, call the LDC about rates for your home farm as opposed to a 1mW facility, and you'll find much better rates by investing more in the infrastructure. 

Whether or not these costs can be re-couped in a reasonable amount of time, however, is not always a given. Bigger may not always be better in the long run, which is why everyone has to come up with some reasonable models and understand their own tolerance to risk to determine how much to invest in the most efficient way possible. There is no yes or no answer, newbies need to educate themselves in how to make these decisions for themselves, given their own circumstances.

 Sometimes, when you CAN get a volume break, you can save a little on cost through bulk buys.
 I doubt it would be make the difference between making RoI and not though, unless someone was right on the edge already.


 I did say that amount invested has "pretty much", no "no" effect on profitability after all.
 At most it's a very minor consideration compared to the other 3 - and is largely covered by my criteria 3 when it comes to the bulk purchace aspect anyway.

you forgot big loss in the case your huge investment fail, i remember a guy that go allin with gpu mining for altcoin, and in the end if failed to do roi and was forced to do a big discount on his big gpu farm, with a loss that was not indifferent

i would simply invest what you can afford to lose and i would try to not have a roi that is above 6-12 months, otherwise leave it

You can get small volume breaks too by picking up deals from local people wanting to hand off their miners easy, quick and cheap. I got a S4 for 425$ that way, a S5 and looking at a couple more right now.

The amount of good deals are very limited, so only suited to someone with time but only a small miner capacity.

yeah if you have elec costs on the low side you can make a killing by getting used equip ...in the midwest usa where I'm at the elec rate is fixed at around 13.5c kwh (xcel) this of course includes all fees/taxes. you only can get a better rate (and it an't much maybe 3c) if you use over 3.5kw a month (I have 2 titans plus house currently using 2.55kwh)

so i suspect their is a great movement EAST to Oregon and China etc of a lot of used scrypt and sha-256 equip

the circle of asic life....chip to doorstop with space heater as a side effect :)