Bitcoin Forum

I own 1.06 BTC.  I bought in when it was worth roughly $200.  I now want to get more serious about acquiring BTC.  The most I am able to buy each month is $100 worth.  So that is $1200 a year in BTC.  Maybe I am just being greedy but that isn't enough for me.  So I am considering the mining route.  I was looking at bitmain antminers but all of their BTC mining machines are sold out.  However,  I can preorder a litecoin miner for the August-September time frame.  The miner plus all extra parts will cost me rought .6 BTC.  Using coinwarz calculations (at current prices and difficulty) I see that I could mine roughly $10,000 worth of litecoin annually (power costs have already been subtracted).  Which I could then exchange for BTC.  To make this purchase I would use .6 of my 1.06 BTC.  But I just don't know if I have all the information necessary to make a properly informed decision about this.  Is this the right decision?  Are there any current or future pitfalls (other than price fluctuation) that I should be aware of.  Is something going to happen in the near future that would make this miner worthless by the time a receive it or shortly after?

Thanks in advanced.

I think you have checked most important things. Maybe difficulty can increase due to more and more people in cryptocurrenies. In this calculations never be too optimistic and try to expect some problem. But if you paid 200$ for BTC you will make profit for sure.
P.S. I'm not expert in mining, still learning.

I think you are on the right but make sure you put the difficulty rate for at least the next 12 months into your calculations so that we can have an accurate picture of how much you are going to earn and also have ways of cooling the miners they will get very hot.

You are already doing the right thing. You have applied good strategy by saving $ 100 a month which is double in the bitcoin form if you keep it for long time. Also, mining wouldn't be beneficial after long time as it would be too concentrated for you after few years. The cost of electricity and mining equipment will keep changing. The difficulty would be so much that it will end up with loss to your mining. The maintenance would be so much that your mines and rigs if you make any would end up with loss. So better save today and enjoy tomorrow.

i think its better if you buy video cards than to buy litecoin mining hardware because your hardware is only for scrypt algorythm but if you buy video cards, then you can have many option to mining. beside that, you need to calculate about the electricity fee and you need to think to how long you can get ROI.

altcoin miners,namely x11 miners are currently much more profitable than bitcoin miners,they use less power,less noisy
and have better ROI,3-4 months compared to 6-9 months on bitcoin miners
alternatively,you can assemple a GPU farm and mine at a lower speed but you will be able to sell the equipment for 60-75% of the original value later
everything changes rapidly though:litecoin and etherium prices skyrocketed,bitcoin price is growing fast
so mining is once again an option to invest into,you got to read and calculate yourself before you invest

No its not the solution for you

If the most you can spend on this is $1200 a year you have to consider the options.
Main one will be: will you be able to monitor the miner and keep it running without downtime?
You can buy antminer t9, which will give you $260 a month at current prices, but will use 1570W, so you need to check how much will that cost and do the math. If you have cheap power, stable internet and can get over $150 a month after paying, you can give it a try. If it's less, I wouldn't bother.

I'm not sure if mining Litecoin is still profitable to be honest. I know bitcoin mining now is not as compare to years ago. So I suggest you better study first and make to see if mining Litecoin will give you enough ROI. Of course we can't predict the future so we will not know what will happen to mining it in the future. Again, you need better understanding before getting your hands dirty. We can only give you advise, it is still up to you to make the final decision. I really hope that you do succeed in your new endeavor so goodluck to you mate.

You can use the "Lending" function of exchanges, and get about 20%/year of interest. It's easier than mining and probably more profitable, but there is the risk of
insolvency of the exchange.

You are talking about the L3+'s.  You are in a line with tons of other people. When everyone gets their july/aug/sep pre orders That $10k per year estimate will be greatly reduced.  Not telling you not to do it but it will definately be less than that figure.  Investing each month is a good option which if done over time has proven a winning strategy.

not with poloniex, really hard to have insolvency with their monstrous volume, they are the first lending platform also for bitcoin, but the percentage you are talking about are no where near the reality, where do you get high % like that with the volatility of bitcoin?

mining right now has the less risk among of all investment, it's really a safe bet, dunno why people can't see this...

i was not talking specifically about poloniex, i only said that there is a risk of insolvence, it may be a low or high risk depending to the exchange. Poloniex is certainly a good exchange, but keeping btc on an offline wallet is certainly safer. A little risk is still present.
That % is not so unreal, on poloniex the medium interest rate is 0.1% a day. There are some bots that claim to reach a 19% interest/year. That interest is referred to btc, not $, so volatility doesn't have anything to do with it.