Bitcoin Forum

So another huge price jump today. I really really really wish I had not spent all the extra money in mining equip and just bought btc instead straight up early this year. The difference is painful to think about. Not to mention that each difficulty jump is another step towards the end of mining altogether.

This is just me spending my dollar on btc equipment for mining only also. Imagine if you cashed out and reinvested mined bitcoins to buy equipment along the way, you would have lost out on much bigger chunk of your profit and more.

I was making amends with my decisions in the past, but I'm thinking now that this mistake will someday be realized in millions lost 20 years down the line and maybe more. I'm also kickin myself in the ass for not buying when it was at $7 with everything I had liquid. I wish I did it when it was at $.5, but I didn't have the balls or the vision.

It's does makes me happy the price is up, but I know that the difficulty will jump and my equipment will be making that much less btc very shortly reducing it's effectiveness once again in btc production. Sure it might be bringing in same dollar amount if price goes up keeping it in the profit range a bit longer, but you will never make as many btc as you would have if you just bought outright at this pace. I would rather have more btc for my money for the long haul rather than get a trickles of it which still will amount to less at the end. Had I known that buying btc outright will net me more btc overall, I would have just purchased instead as btc is an investment for me anyways.


Ok I'm done ranting. I guess it sucks how I can't just be 100% happy about the price going up without knowing my mining equipment will become less effective proportionally because of it for btc production. YAY to breaking the $10, $15 barrier though!

I don't get it.

You're complaining at yourself for not knowing the future?

Bitcoin might aswell have had its peak at $5 and maybe it would've never risen above that. You could potentially have lost thousands of $'s.

Mining dying? No, mining can't really die, it can just get harder. Someone HAS to find the BTC's before they can be traded.

Was this a suicide note?

Hey you have to jup in sometime!

Wait, I've just started reading up on how Bitcoins work yesterday night so I'm probably wrong, but doesn't a higher BTC price mean you're making more money by mining them? If you can sell 1 BTC for 15 instead of 10 dollars, that's a good thing right?

if I had known...

oh the lottery... and that jackpot machine... that stock... forex...

ah well... congrats on whoever won the last one...

Com'on make peace with such thoughts and be glad you're working towards getting some equipments for free and possibly sell for 'some' profit. You saw an opportunity weighed the cost and decided on something. You can be glad if today you're not making a loss and are perhaps looking at surpluses. This is how investments works.

The amount I can sell btc higher is fine and all, but it only means that I will make less btc due to increasing difficulty following price hike. All I'm saying is that i would have higher total btc in my client right now had I bought instead of mined in the beginning when I first got introduced. And looking back at this fact, it does make me sick that I made the wrong choice hence my rant above. 

Difficulty isn't following price that much. I think your inversion in mining is the best you could have done. Just sell all those bitcoins if it ever goes down.

yeah I do need to make peace for sure. But thinking about it in a long term perspective and knowing that this could be realized in millions lost possibly in 20 years.... it does make me want to voice my frustration a bit.

I am very thankful I am involved in btc nontheless of course. And I am investing now and have stopping adding mining capacity since around $4+ with my spare cash. Happy to be part of this great chance in the economic arena. Just wished that I made the better decision to just buy outright early when they were cheap. And $17 is still cheap though.. just neeed cash! ;D

Keep your hopes up, kid.

"The road may be long and winding, but the journey is the incentive"

I totally agree with you. However, I'll still be getting my capacity up and investing into hardware just course I hasn't deem this whole bitcoin thing a 'stable thing' yet. And the market might just crash at this point where so many people are focusing on 'investing forex' while the real demand should come as people transacting for products and services. I just still have my own doubts and it'll be awhile before I start trading in bitcoins. Owning the hardwares 'feels' much more real to me as of now.

I read about Bitcoins around the price of $5~$6, went out and loaned 2 grand to build my first rig. I regretted not trading then and earning 3x what I borrowed and still does since I'm still halfway through breaking even. However, I'm happy that I'm getting a new rig at half the price as of this instance. I do not blame myself as my analysis of the opportunity cost still applies, the trading bubble may burst anytime imo, my rig is something physical in front of me and this is what I'm comfortable with.

If not enough substantial products and services are up for grasp people will realize this whole trading and price of BTC are just a farce and theres no where to spent these coins, essentially selling to each other hoping that the price would go up. In my eyes this is not true demand and the price of BTC is built on a false foundation.

This was almost exactly like my thoughts in the beginning that I considered before mining. Unfortunately now, I no longer feel the same way obviously because even counting the gains I made on hardware prices due to low supply, I'm still losing out compared to investing outright.

My biggest regret is that I'm went in btc half assed second guessing when I shouldn't have. If I actually believed that btc will do well and go up in value, I should have just invested which is my reason for the rant. I have no doubts now. I expect market fluctuations, but I'm looking at long term and mining was the wrong choice.

Well, if you believe so, then there's onlya 1 thing to do asap:

Sell your hardware and invest the money in BTC as fast as you can.

Don't dare? Don't complain!

It really hurts seeing all those people just thinking about Bitcoin as a money machine.
Bitcoin is much much more that you goldshitting mule.
It has the potential to change something and you guys should see it with the necessary respect.

Like others have said. You can mope about and wonder what you could have done, but you've already acted. This is how things are now. I think you should look more to mining as contributing to the network. Much like people who run Tor relays and exit nodes with the intent to promote and support an idea.

Read the cypherpunk manifesto (http://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html). This is much bigger than just making a quick buck.

We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.

We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.

Bitcoin is not anonymous. Every transaction is logged in the blockchain.

I thought about this long and hard trust me. There is no need to reverse it all, but rather stop and do right from now on. Only reason why it's not being done immediately is because they aren't losing me money while running. Also selling only about 3-4 thousand dollars worth of hardware now to buy btc isn't gonna be any different then me spending the money I have on the side to do the same. Which I have been doing since $4+ if you read my posts. I don't feel that I need to disclose the amount I've since invested, but it's a lot more than 3-4k for sure. I have changed the way I invest into purchasing rather than mining a long time ago and don't need to do it twice. Literally only prob for me now is not having more liquid cash in hand outside of credit.

You need to remember that this is NOT mining isn't profitable thread. I'm saying I wish I chose to invest rather than mine. I am currently doing both with no plans to increase mining at all. I only regret that I started mining instead of investing for the reasons stated above. If you don't realize this then you are obviously below average in intelligence.

I will infact get rid of my miners long before the profit is reduced to very little unlike many of you guys I'm sure, but doing it now is only gonna cost me more both ways.  I'm waiting for a good time around a quarter before next gen release to sell all my current mining gpus.

If you see that investing in btc is somehow being less involved than mining, then I'm lost as to how to convince you otherwise. Having faith in currency enough to exchange it with dollar seems to be enough support if you ask me. Me supporting BTC as a currency seems to be a given and I support 100%. If you think you are holier than thou and money means dirt to you then, I have nothing to add. And don't forget, I am mining. Just stopped adding capacity a long time ago after seeing the investments being much more profitable.

I mean people aren't selling mining capacity for cash for no reason. They know that buying btc upfront with that cash rather than running the rig themselves is more profitable. Do they also not see the potential?  

Of course. Read the full paper for a better explanation of the few paragraphs I quoted. It is anonymous to a point.

When put in the context of Bitcoin, it allows people to make decisions. Do I want to promote my bitcoin address, attach it to an alias, my real name? My personally mined coins. So on and so forth.

You need to look at it from, "At what point is it not anonymous?" instead.

Lazy bum... stop complaining, take your pick and go back into the pit....  ;D

This is basically a "I wish I had bought gold at 200$" thread.

I just wish I had heard of this stuff a year ago when difficulty was still so low you could create what would now be worth > 200$ in a day.

Whoever is holding the larger chunks of the current 6 million BTC should be well into 6-7 figures by now (pizza 10k BTC = $170k now..and despite what the BTC community keeps paranoiding on about, that's still a small house and several cars in the real world with the oh-so-evil-and-dead USD currency).

Litt,

Its OK really.  What you are feeling is normal for anyone who speculates and invests.  Remember evrything is a cycle.  Don't become a perma BTC bull.  Cycles up and down.  Adjustsments in strategy are part of the fun or aggravation depending on viewpoint.  You are fine.

hehe  :D You obviously are in the know.. just let me rant a little and make myself feel a little better about the past.


I do feel pretty good that even in my current position as I've only gained from my involvement in btc in terms of monetary rewards. I suppose we haven't seen a big downside at all yet. But for some reason, because of the way btc is being distributed with difficulty, I don't ever see mining outpacing investing as long as btc prices continue it's journey upwards. This is THE reason why I'm now regretting my decisions. Many of you don't feel this way like I do and may still feel careful investing in btc. I do because my mind has changed about the prospect of btc growth.

If anything I'm definitely very bullish in thinking that it will continue in such fashion for a long time, but I also suspect taht btc is another whole another beast altogether and is not going to behave like normal commodity or currency. Because of this, I am feeling how I'm feeling. Don't many of you feel the same way as me in terms of confidence in btc's success in the future?

What is it then? How can you not be in it for the money? We are not making bananas here, its currency. I don't care about the politics, its the money I am interested in.

If you buy, sell, hoard....its all for the money, and if its not, donate it! We are trying to get the most efficiant cards for the least abount of money...We do not buy cases, we overclock to get the max amount of hash, we stick 4 cards onto a mb when it might be a better idea to use 2 motherboards. We speak about the difficulty killing our proffits, what part of the world has the cheapest electricity....

I do not want to change the world I want to make money.

The great thing about mining is that i am helping create a new kind of currency, and maybe if this thing does take off it will make the world a better place.

i think the great majority think like i do. Its ok if you don't but calling us gold shitting mules just makes you an asshole.


smoketoomuch, I would like to say sorry from all the gold shitting mules if any of us made you cry.

I have traded Forex for the past 5 years...and the feelings you have all the time.

Sometimes you think..."the euro will gain against the Dollar but I will wait a little
while until I see some momentum or a fibonacci retracement is hit"...then other
things happen, you get distracted you come back and sure enough the euro is
2 cents higher versus the USD.  Dam I knew it would do that, why didn't I get
in??

Such thoughts are not productive, as you are stuck in the past, and it will make
you miss the next opportunity just around the corner.  You have to have
self-compassion, forgive yourself, be gentle on yourself, you don't have  a
crystal ball, you are human, you can make mistakes.  Those who always want
perfection actually seem to be less happy than those who know there will
always be randomness in life.

I just found out about BitCoin yesterday although I have been interested in
digital currencies for years, even getting scammed on E-Gold paying for
conversion services and never got my money.  Was told that there was no
way to get a refund, all transactions are final...scammers heaven.  I am not
about to buy these highs, personally I would rather learn to mine or find some
way of adding value to the community....eventually I will buy.

I did the math about a year ago and came to the conclusion private mining at 4+ghash/s will be profitable until at least mid 2012/2013 due to difficulty increases. After that point, I'm not going to invest into more hardware unless the price keeps up.

What I didn't count in was the sudden increase in value that would result either from rapid demand, media exposure or speculation. I am making about 200 times more now than I estimated last summer because of the current price hike. Even if difficulty doubles now, it will still be profitable if price keeps rising.

Though, I wont mind if the price drops temporarily to $10, or even $1-$5. It will still be profitable for at least a year counting in electricity costs.

So you have about $3000 in mining equipment or more.

So far I would have done better buying BTC then mining as well but....

All of my video cards are worth more then I paid for them.  Most of them have gone up in value 40%.  I paid under $200 for most of my 5870's.  Now they are north of $250 and getting harder to find. 

I wish I had continued CPU mining ...

Late last year I started CPU mining on a spare server as a joke and solved 2 blocks before Windows update promptly rebooted the system.  I never bothered to restart the miner and I forgot all about BitCoin until last month. That was the easiest $1,700 I've ever made. Oh well ....

I have reinvested along the way to build out my mining ops. The other day I added it up and I have mined about 650 BTC. If only I had held onto them forever BTC wil go to US$100,000/BTC and I could have been a multimillionaire. Seriously? I just got past breaking even on my reinvestment and if the something catastrophic happened to the network, the price plummeted, or I just got tired of the noise and heat I have a really kick ass machine and some extra money in my pocket from selling a few video cards, even at a bit of a loss.

Now I can use the BTC I make to buy some Bitcoin T-shirts, Alpaca Socks, Play Blackjack, and buy munchies and practice currency trading/investing after paying for electricity. I'm happy.

I'm sure there are a lot of other worthwhile replies in this thread, but I'm just going to go ahead and say that I like you. And read the rest later.

I wish that I had been born 20 or so years earlier and known that a little company called microsoft was going to blow up and buy tons and tons of their stock, or that I had been born 10 years earlier and made good buddies with the guy who started google and get a bunch of their internal stock before they went public. Or actually I guess if I could see the future I could still make a ton of money now.

For those of us who already had the equipment, Mining is still the best investment. Definitely wish I knew about this two years ago, but thats life. The 100$ I've made thus-far is almost all profit, which practically pays for my gaming habits.

Win-Win, sure I am not rolling in cash, but every little bit helps man.

The way things are going I'd start buying AMD stock....

This.

A warehouse store manager told me AMD is having some huge announcement in the next few months about new CPU/GPU combos and some other stuff.

So either way....  AMD could be a big winning...

I got into mining a few weeks back. Absolutely love it despite the rising difficulty. The worst case scenario for me is i end up with a totally badass gaming rig that cost me little to no money! The most likely case is I end up with same gaming system, AND making a few bucks as well.

Hindsight is 20/20, you should never regret the decisions you make, since there is nothing you can do about them.

I will even make you a deal... sell me your mining rig, and you can invest that money in BTC's :)

Don't regret them, but always learn from them.

Seeing as I am not an experienced investor and have little free money it was easier for me to justify buying hardware so if the venture didn't go anywhere I at least had equity in the hardware that I could get back.

Now that I can mine some coins and use them to gain experience investing in the market perhaps next time I'll put $500 into the market instead of hardware. Of course the market will be different and probably won't be as insanely profitable as Bitcoin is right now.

yes hindsight is 20/20 and I do regret, but learned from my past. The issue was that I thought the market won't be profitable like it was then and it was and then some. At this point I see btc breaking 18.25 highest ever. This is why I should have invested and ride the big early gains when it cheap to double up. I don't think it will ever slow down like it has in the past. The flame caught on now. Investing imo is definitely a better option than mining and will be for a long time. I'm definitely leaving the mining to the better people and investing. Once the value increases to a certain lvl say next year, at that point mining maybe better option with more efficient hardware. 

Could of, should of, would of etc.

We can always hope we did something, but we didn't.

Sure I spent $1k on mining hardware, and within 1 month I've more than paid it off already.

Had I spent $1k on BTC @ $3, I'd be sitting on about $6,000 at current rates.

The fact is though that mining is much less risky, considering you still own the hardware and can sell it at any time.

---------

If you want more risk, buy now @ $19.  Who knows it could hit $100 in a month's time.


--------

Mining and holding the BTC might be a pretty good strategy.  I told myself I'd keep 1/3 for long term investment.  But when I saw $15 a coin, greed set in and I cashed in the 1/3 i set a side.  :-[

This is bigger than simple profits. Read some of the comments in the source code and learn about the cyberpunk/cypherpunk culture. Of course I won't call anyone a gold shitting mule just because they want to profit, because I'm a gold shitting mule myself.

It's just that there is a point, a reason it was created and it wasn't to just shit gold. It's not about politics. It's about privacy in a world full of camera nests, nationwide wire-tapping, warrant-less searches, monopoly money, world banks, and tyranny.

I liked the part where some people in the thread implied one of the fastest deprecating items in the world (GPU cycles used to be new a new card coming every 6 months) was the equivalent of a sound investment they could always sell again.

30%ish off value within 3-6 months of nearly anything computer related, > 50%  / over 60% prices gone within a year of high end / enthusiast level overpriced items.

That would be similiar to whatever BTC you buy losing 50% value..both are acts of speculation, but the computer hardware value loss is a whole lot more certain due to 20+ years of this mechanism being in play..


Which is not to say that I at any point felt it a great idea to invest actual money into BTC, even despite what is happening right now. If at all? Maybe 1-3% of your "risk money", if you have such a thing.

and yet 2 year old 5970's command on ebay prices comparable with prices of new cards and I was just quoted 750USD for 2GB 5970 card by some chinese "manufacturer" (yea I know they are insane)

Or you could mine AND invest, and have the best of both worlds!

I like your thinking.

I too could have spent $10k on bitcoins - which could have been worthless tomorrow - instead I spent it on mining equipment - which I can sell tomorrow for at least 75% of what I paid (since I bought it all used in the first place).

Had I have spent $10k on bitcoins - I would be nuts... now I am safe and semi rich.

I did my sums and decided the risk of mining vs speculating just sat better with me if I mined. If it all went pear shaped at least I had the envy-of-my-friends graphics card :-) so I went with mining. Maybe my worker-ethic is hardwired to prefer production over speculation.
So far, if I'd instead put my money into speculation I'd be 3.3 times better off than I am by mining - but at what risk?

I started mining three weeks ago and sold my first BTC at $7 each.  Now they're pushing $30.  Do I feel a bit foolish?  A little.  But I decided it was worth getting some money back for all the money I invested in new hardware just in case bitcoin's value collapsed or the US government shut down the major exchanges.  Never underestimate the sudden intervention of governments (online poker players know something about that from a few months ago).  Even if only a few exchanges were shut down, most investors and speculators would flee, collapsing BTC's value.

Maybe bitcoins will be $100 within a few weeks, maybe back to $10.  Who knows?  We all wish we had stuck $10k into BTCs when they were less than a dollar each, but how many people had the foresight and the tolerance for a very high risk investment to do that?

 ???

As long as there is Bitcoin, there is mining.

simply put in a spreadsheet your Watt consumed, the cost of electricity, the BTCs mined and the convertibility of that BTCs in $ or EUR or your currency.

if balance is positive, go ahead.
if balance is negative, stop mining.
no more, no less.

in the meantime, invest earned BTC/USD/EUR in solar/wind energy, lowering electricity bill.

perhaps, mining bitcoins, earns enougth money to be energy independent.

if not, at least you have the equipment bought!!!

Everyone says what if they had known about BitCoin earlier... Well, there is a good chance you wouldn't have started mining anyway.

I first heard about it a year ago, checked it out, saw that there was hardly any market, and thought that it won't scale, (still not convinced) so I didn't bother. Then I checked it again a few months ago, but then I saw that the client isn't mining anything with cpu. I decided that I will look further into it when I have some time. Well, by that time the thing just exploded. So much for my luck and foresight...

That's like watching a football game. Then thinking damn, if only I had placed a bet on Team A winning, I would have got $$$$$.

In other words, it's completely retarded.

It's pure speculation. It could drastically drop next month, or dramatically rise. No one really knows. That's the reason why you didn't invest before. The same still applies right now, else you'd be buying as many BTC as you can get your hands on right?

Count yourself lucky, there have been guys who found out about BTC mining a long time ago and have binned thousands of BTC because at the time it was worthless. So they've potentially lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

*meniacle laugh* youuuuu biiiiiiitch, Dont sway mind my around with a single quote!, I do that to MY friends!, Dont make me feel how it feels!