Bitcoin Forum

Hi! I'm just wondering if the more experience bitcoin miners can offer any advice into how you might be able to make a living bitcoin mining. Just wondering if you guys at started at the very begin inning, live in a place with cheap or free electricity or do you mine like I do as a hobby and with a thought that this might turn into a living :)

Thanks,
Peter

It's easy, if you do it with other's money (in this case you don't have even to really mine).
Just look at the formerly GLBSE-quoted "mining companies" in terms of capital raised/dividends paid (if at all).

I know a couple people who used to make reasonable income from mining, but they've both since stopped and sold off their hardware.  I think competition increased pretty rapidly and they just couldn't compete.

Depends on your idea of a comfortable living :-).  There is only $71,000 a day available.  https://blockchain.info/stats

Here's a blog post (mine) that explains this a little better: http://bitcoinsbs.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/how-much-mhash-does-it-take-to-mine-1-btc/

It's difficult to even a quarter of it.  Even if you could get $10K a day, that's only $3.6 M/year.  I'm not sure that would be comfortable enough for me.  The island I have my eye one, along with the plane, boat and other add-ons is like $100 M with something like $10M /yr up keep.

But if one was looking to quit their job,  I wouldn't because things have a nasty way of changing.  What works today will change tomorrow. :-)  Can you make a little money to play with yes.  You could just buy BTC with the same investment and have the same fun.

I actually just ran my numbers to see how much it would require if I were to live off mining. I would need roughly 4-5 BTC's a day to at least make the same amount of money pr month as I do now working. With a BTC to USD exchange ratio of 1700.

But then again, that earning is without taxes, so either I would keep that up and hope I could dodge taxes, which I wouldn't be able to to since I would have to transfer real money onto my bank accounts etc. So realistically I would be looking at 7-8 BTC's a day if I was gonna make a real living out of this, AND remain entirely taxlegal :P.

And I wont even bother starting to run the math on what kind of hardware that would actually require, simply because I have a slight suspicion that the ROI wouldn't make it profitable.

Mining is designed to be barely profitable but if you stole a hundred gigs of hardware and had free electricity and hosting I guess it would work. And unicorns might exist.

Also you would need to continues stealing hardware to keep up with the network difficulty. See gigamining.

Yea that was sorta my point. That stuff like ASIC's aren't going to be worth it ROI wise etc, if nothing but for fun or sports.

It can be potentially profitable if your roommate/mother/sucker is paying the electricity. ASICs would ruin that but no one is ever going to see those.

Some people would disagree with that. But I am not one of them.

But in regards with ASIC's and electricity. I could see it working if someone had solar panels etc on their house that thus didn't get charged electricity until after a certain time. But perhaps its not going to be down to which ASIC's that puts out the most hashing power, but rather the one that can do it the most effeciently and thus save on your powerbill. Provided we will ever see one of them (And I am majorly apprehensive that we ever will.)

There is still a cost associated there which would make it even more difficult to get your ROI. You'd be better off selling excess energy to the grid with your solar power.

What would be the right investment to make a return on mining with a budget of $5k to $7k, not to make a living off but just to make a reasonable little profit? Ordo you have to spend much more? what equipment would you buy etc???

You wont break even before you have to buy new hardware.

there are better investments then bitcoin mining i think but when you mine and then sell your hardware for a good price it can be good

Example: 2nd hand hardware

rig1:hardware
mobo+cpu                         110,-
psu1200 watts                   120,-
mem 4g + usb                     20,-
hd5870   80,-pcs  x 5         400,-  total 2gh
total invest                        650,-

2gh for 650,- is possible if you take your time to search good and make 10rigs out of it

6500,- / 650,- = 10 x 2gh = 20gh 6k/7k  invest (without elect cost) you are a big miner then...

making almost 3btc a day is now 3x 19,50 = 58,5 aday x 30 is 1755,- a month ROI in 6 or 7 months IF

This is just a very tight example and you must count some more things like blowers and airco unit, lots of cabels and pcieriser gear and electr. costs your own time setting en keeping it running.. but it is possible..

if the btc price goes up you will have the number almost right here ...but donn,t understimate the work of keeping 20gh running let alone the electr. bill you will get ...and IF asic arrive you better sell everything very fast to buy 6/7k of asics

But if you want to make a living  you better start a own pool and make sure everybody mines with you.. :D :D

GL  ;)





 

If the network hash rate gets to 500 TH, each of BFL Single (60 GH/s) will earn about 0.5 BTC/day.  So you will need 16 of them.  So for $20,000 you're good to go.  Well until the Network hash rate goes to 1,000 TH, then you'll need to double down and spend another $20,000.  Good news is that the $40K is tax deducible, if you run it as a real business, since its needed to generate the BTC.