Bitcoin Forum

Basically its like deja vu all over again like in Winter of 2013.

The RX470/570 which is the 7970/R9 280X equivalent is sold out globally and nowhere to be found.

The RX570 basically makes exactly the same profitability as the 280X did back in 2013. Actually a little more profit since it uses less power than scrypt.

From those of you that weren't around. Mining was crazy profitable at the beginning of 2014. A 280X made somewhere around $7-8USD/daily. Fast forward 6 months later in Summer 2014, it was borderline profitable since it consumed more electricity than made profit.

What killed GPU mining back then were introduction of Scrypt ASICs which made the difficulty skyrocket exponentially and combined with the MtGox bankruptcy and falling BTC price.

Now since its 2017 there are many factors that can kill these amazing profit-abilities.

1) Ethereum goes POS or reduces its block reward.

2) Ethereum (ZEC) prices crash.

3) Bitcoin price crashes due to hard-fork UASF

4) Difficulty skyrockets. This I doubt since ASICs are very difficult to manufacture and sales of GPUs only provide linear difficulty growths. Currently there are GPU shortages which are capping the difficulty growth.

Gpu will flourish  and BTC will fade a bit.

It is not at all like 2013

first off alts have more value then btc does at the moment .

and this is a new thing  never happened till now.

http://coinmarketcap.com/

Market Cap: $77,116,169,677

of which Bitcoin   $37,205,556,335

this means   $39,910,6133,342 is alt coin

as recently as Jan of 2017 btc was well over 70%
now under 50%

the question is will btc ever be the giant it once was?
not what will kill the alt coin market?

Of course as usual I am often wrong.
one of my worst predications made  was the iPad would be a failure and never do well at all.

My noobie 0.0000002 worth.  When eth goes POS it will be a major event for home mining.  A LOT of miners are mining eth so all those will switch to other coins which will cause a massive increase in difficulty resulting in plummeting profits.  I really hope I'm wrong but I can't see anything else happening once eth goes POS.  But I'm still going ahead and getting ready to build my first rig.  It's not so much about the money for me but the fun.  (But then if it stops being profitable then it won't be much fun)

Ya I mean there is a lot of speculation about ETH going POS but I am highly highly skeptical we will see full POS out of ETH anytime soon.

it will only go to pos if  an asic comes out to mine it.

and they may simply  make the dag 8gb  which would most likely kill off a lot of 4gb gpus and that asic.

this would not hurt eth but could effect zec

Tuly Yo Hillaee

Another difference to me is that the 7970 cards were in the ~$550 price range if I remember correctly, and with the 400/500 cards that can be found in the $200 - $250 range, the ROI is still very strong for GPU mining.  I started GPU mining BTC back in 2012 and 'retired' from all mining back in mid-2015, thinking that that particular ship had come & gone and got back into the game in early 2016.  I'm as bullish about GPU mining now as I have ever been.  I feel like for the foreseeable future there will be something worth mining with GPUs for quite some time.

Erasmus (was MashRinx)

There is also something else different than in late 2013, is that it's been more than a year that mining ETH is profitable. And guess what? Last year (in feb) it was the same talking, don't buy GPU ETH will go POS soon and so on..

In fact, it's better than last year, because we have far more option to mine (ETH, ETC, ZEC, ZCL, LBRY, UBQ, etc)

yes and one reason is more then 16.3 million btc  coinsare in wallets  and a simple password releases them...

So a vast amount of wealth  is easy to trade an alt coin for a piece of a btc coin.

consider this  Nvidia has the ability to pump Zcash  from 295,035,556 at  a price of 209 a coin  to

600,000,00 at a price of 420 a coin if they choose to do this.

Think of the frenzy for nvidia cards to mine Zcash.

I think people simply do not see the wealth pc companies have to compete against asic mining  by making gpu mining worth while.

Intel---------cpus
Amd---------gpus and cpus
Nvidia------ gpus
Asrock------motherboards
Asus--------motherboards,pcs,gpus
Biostar-----motherboards
Gigabyte---motherboards,gpus
Evga-------motherboards,gpus,psu's
Msi---------motherboards,gpus
Dell--------gaming pc's
HP---------gaming pc's
Lenovo----gaming pc's



Above is small part of the list  of companies that want gpu mining to work.

compare to Bitmain,Bit Fury, Avalon  a few others building Asic gear

which side has the real $$$    pc+gpu's side has the money  not Asic

^^as always wise words from Phillip.

Not sure but i am scared from all the mining capacity that is coming online.

In last week Ethereum Network Rate went from 28.5 TH/s to 32.5Th/s thats almost 200k RX 570-580 equivalent.

No wonder they are all sold out and we can't seem to find any.

I hope it will not do 8 GB DAG, that will kill most cards.

People who have money and 0% knowledge with computers will kill GPU mining profitability in 2017.
It's sad but it's true.
Rich people around me are buying rigs because they heard "hey come get some free money", and why not make more profit when you already have enough, right ?
Take it from the small guys who just want to make an extra penny.

This is actually true. I remember buying used 280x from businessmen who had no computer knowledge and they had like 30x GPUs for sale. Spent $10-20K easy.

Look at the last 2 weeks:

http://www.coinwarz.com/difficulty-charts/ethereum-difficulty-chart

the only thing is ETH going pos, i can't see bitcoin price decrease anymore, it's very strong and rock solid,a nd adoption is way bigger now, adoption can't go back you know, it will get better abd better form now for bitcoin, the only thing remaining like is aid is ETH going pos and destroying the profit of other altcoin, but vitalik say that he is not sure baout ETH going pos anymore

Would there be any point for a newbie to start mining today?

I'm going in pretty hard... figure some alt coins will retain profitability long enough for me to get my money back & then some extra.

Right now I've got 33 GPUs online and I have 20 more that I will be bringing online during the first two weeks of June. Just need to build the PCs and get them rolling & figure out where to plug them in... haha.

If it's still profitable I've started drawing up plans to bring another 84 cards online... will require some major wiring upgrades, though.

IMHO... if you can actually find cards at a good price and especially if you already have the rest of the PC to use... it's still a good investment.

I've taken to buying cheap refurbished PCs and swapping the PSU / inserting GPUs. Saves alot of the startup cost.

Its a personal question... no one knows if its the beginning or the end its a gamble/risk if you are willing to take one go ahead and start mining.

can you buy from amazon?

If so  that is returnable for 30 days
so it would at least give you about 25 days  to decide what to do  while you mine.

I like Phil's point that pc companies  could feed cash into Zec for sales.  Like a rebate  but only for smart people or couponers.

This is an HP omen  cost 800  has a Nvidia 1060 in it.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-omen-by-hp-desktop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-1tb-hard-drive-brushed-aluminum/5759916.p?skuId=5759916

This is an HP omen cost 1300 has a Nvidia 1070 in it.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-omen-by-hp-desktop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-1tb-hard-drive-brushed-aluminum/5759917.p?skuId=5759917

This is an off brand but legit high end game pc

Has a 1080 ti in it cost 1580

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/cyberpowerpc-gamer-xtreme-liquid-cool-desktop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-120gb-ssd-1tb-hd-black-orange/5794003.p?

All three pc's  have value as miners  while you sleep  so  this is great for pc tower sales.

Not in the market for a prebuilt  but I have a best buy elite status.  So I get 6.25% off that pc.  It would earn 7 or 8 dollars a day.

Which means under 200 days for it to roi.

 I wonder if it fits a second card.

Thats hoping the ROI stays same or flat, but with difficulty rising and if prices dont you will not get the same 200 days ROI FYI

You completely miss my point.

People need pc's for work and play .

It is a prebuilt pc with warranty  that gives you a daily pay back when you sleep.

I could sell that pc to a lot of people and offer to set the mining up.

What does it mean you get a  top of the line pc for hundreds less.

I am not looking at it from a miners viewpoint at all.  But from the viewpoint of a person that buys higher end pc's it makes the pc far more attractive if it pays back money while you sleep.

That pc is tax free in delaware so 1580  is the price.  I get a 98 dollar best buy discount  so it is 1482.  If it earns 8 a day then 6 a day then 4 a day then 2 a day  you average 5 so in 200 days it is 1000 back.  bringing the cost of a quality pc under 480  .

My point is boosting coin prices will sell pc's and pc companies are starting to see the sales.  which means they will feed some money into coins  as a commercial  of sorts.

Or is a meaning less concept in this example.  as no one looking to roi will buy this.   they would build a 2 x 1080ti machine of the same price and run it as an open careless rig.

this is for a dorm and a guy that wants a stud pc for his dorm it just got a lot cheaper due to mining potentail.

Isn't that profitability/return only true until they get their utility bill?  I guess if you're in a dorm and someone else is paying the bill, great, but other than that?

I am not sure but I believe he was talking about the net profit per day which means that electricity bill was already subtracted out in his figures. But I will wait and let him speak for himself.

I think as long as you have a competitive electricity price , all that discussed before isn't important as you will always be in profit and will not surrend fast.

Cheap electricity is the key here.

If mining gets to the point where only the ones with "cheap" electricity can mine then its not going to be worth the hassle for most.

Consider someone paying 10c/KWH, at that rate as long as they made more than >$0.36 per GPU they would be in profit.

Say they are making $0.10 per day net. After 1 year they would only make ~$36.50. Right now you can make that in less than a week. Most will just eBay their GPUs rather than earn so little.

5 months ago, Vitalik Buterin said there was a 50%-80% chance of ETH switching to POS in 2017: https://np.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5lfugz/eip_186_modified/dbvu8fd/?context=3

This was, of course, before Ethereum got pumped, so that may change things.

I'd add that what is most worrying is your 1. ETH's switch to POS. Coindesk quotes Vitalik when he says,


http://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-casper-proof-stake-rewrite-rules-blockchain/

Most likely we will feel a decrease in profitability, but im confident mining will not simply roll over and die.

Cryptocurrency mining has hit the mainstream and everyone and their dog wants to build a rig and rake in the dollars.  This signals the beginning of the end.  The only reason mining continues to be profitable is the coin prices keep going up.  Take ethereum for example.  The difficulty has doubled over the last month due to the massive increase in miners but the profit hasn't gone down because the price has gone up even more.  When eth stops rising, there will still be more new miners coming online for a while and the difficulty will continue to rise resulting in a plummeting mining profit.

If eth stagnates for a while or even (heaven forbid) drops a lot, then mining will quickly become unprofitable for all but those with the cheapest electric.  Quickly you will see ebay full of people trying to sell their no longer profitable RX470/480/570/580 etc.  If I was thinking of buying a decent video card for gaming, I would wait till the end of the year as I'm sure I will be able to pick up a used RX570 for less than $50.

The same thing applies to all other cryptocurrencies.  They will only be profitable if their price keeps rising faster than the difficulty.  This is very unlikely to continue for long.  The best way to make money is directly investing in the coins themselves.  Either way, profit depends on increasing coin value.  But the difference is that unprofitable mining rigs will not be worth much as ebay will be bloated with used parts and resulting low prices.  Whereas coins will still have value long after their mining profitability drops into negative territory.

What will kill GPU mining profitability?  Easy, too many people jumping on the bandwagon.  That will kill it for sure for most.  I expect this to happen by the end of the year if not sooner.  GPU mining should be looked at more as a hobby than a way to get rich.  If you starting out now, the best you can realistically hope for is a break even ROI.  Maybe you will do better, maybe worse but forget about riches.  The lucky ones are those who were setup last year before it got so popular.  I wish I was one of them.

I agree 100% with your sentiment.

you are correct.  so if you have a need for a stud pc for whatever reason other then   mining.  Mining now  allows you to get a better pc.

Ie I need at least a nvidia  1060 for my design work .  I can go to a 1070.

My numbers  are post power.  and the key is not longer cheap power.  at this moment you can gpu mine at 25 cents a kwatt and make money.

I mined at 12.7 cents in may  and paid 535 for power I earned pre power over 3k  so net of 2500 last month.
So if I was at 25 cent power  and paid 1000 for power earn pre power 3k  net of 2000 last month.

So the question is do we go up a lot and we are better today then the first day of this thread.

Do we crash and burn?

Or do we slow slip down to reality?

I like the slow slide. as my guess as most likely.

Not the crash and burn.

Some people use Green Energy for mining.

"Green Energy" is usually the most expensive when you factor in solar panel/inverter etc depreciation.

Magnetic generator anyone?

The pollution involved in manufacturing solo panel is also high.

The thing that would kill GPU mining profitability would be the mass realizing the biggest profit to be made is investing in ICO with a strong development team behind it and a good use case. But, GPU mining would still continue even if it is not profitable simply because it is fun at least for me haha.

good point, I was discussing this with my brother in law today

for established miners, it will make sense to keep at it while profits are good

but for newcomers (specially those afraid to try mining) more likely ICOs will be their main avenue of investment

gpu mining is being strangled by the mass of incoming asics. then when eth goes pos othercoins will get hammered. then unless another coin comes out like eth did it will be back to mining at a loss and hoping the coins prices go up in the long term. these asics are massively overpriced as always and they make no sense to me to buy them

I think you're wrong with your arguments. People that get into mining, also will HODL some coins and they may even buy some (back) when the price drops.
Plus I doubt a (GPU) miner will sell its coin at a loss. (power costs)
So I do think the large number of miners is the main reason why the prices are quite high right now.

Just switch to Vertcoin (VTC) if you want to support a GPU only coin. They will always stick to a non Asic algo.(currently Lyra2RE).