Bitcoin Forum

I recently tried setting up another mining rig but found out all the profitable GPUs are no longer available at all local stores in my country. According to the distributors, people have been buying GPUs in BULK since April 2017.

At this rate, can GPU mining still be profitable long term? 1 year from now? 3 years from now?

I think the decentralized nature of GPU POW mining is here to stay for the forseable future. There will be peaks for sure, just like the last time there was a run on GPU's back in 2014, until ASIC's moved in to take over Scrypt. However those that stuck it out and kept mining are now benefiting from having done so.

Lack of GPUs prolongs profitability for those who already have them, or manage to get some.

 However, do keep in mind that NVidia makes GPUs too, and they are very profitable on most coins and can often beat AMD on hash/watt even where they lose on hash/$ (mostly ETH ETC and such, and the Cryptonight coins like XMR).

 For ZEC (which isn't the most profitable NVidia coin by far but is probably has the second most GPUs mining on it) NVidia is quite close on hash/$ (and might even WIN on some comparisons) WITHOUT FACTORING IN the current AMD "gouge" pricing.



 Funny part - folks have been pushing the Skein coins a lot, but I actually ended up making more on something else (that I'm NOT going to mention here, as it's fairly small and I don't want the profitability of it to get overwhelmed by a bunch of newbies or even one BIG farm jumping all over it).

Mentioning it or not, it doesn't really matter in the end because it eventually evens out with other coins profitability, lots of people know about whattomine, and also people can check what's hot on trading volume on any exchange especially poloniex which is booming hard... probably you meant SIA,(but it doesn't matter)
SIA went up by a lot last couple of weeks and I jumped on the hype train just today, dual mining eth has finally become more profitable for me...

But Sia is just one of many, generally every altcoin has been pumped since last ~2 months...

It's been going on for years just when you think GPU mining is DEAD, A new coin comes along and keeps it a live maybe not right a way but has sense it all started with BTC . so to answer your question ... it may never end for GPU's and switch to a new coin ..If all the coins mined now some how become Useless Or hard to mine with GPU's ..... there maybe a down time point in between coins but it won't stop unless every one completely gives up on GPU's ... which won't happen any time soon....


Same, kind of with some Coins you can mine with CPUs .

That is right. As long as the ETH and ZEC is still mineable, the gpu mining will last.

No party lasts forever, but predicting how long is tricky.
Based on previous altcoin mining bubbles, I'd say less than a year before profitability returns to where it was during the summer of 2016.

The markets are in full party mode, but the party might not end any time soon.

ETH is a powder keg that blew everything sky high, the top guys worked some real magic to get 80 company's many of which are fortune 500 to join their alliance.  So to answer your question there is no answer but as these company's go into testing phases and adoption marches along good times will keep going.

We are still in baby market caps, many things to consider but keep that farm running and plan for the future.

  What's interesting to me is what will be the new tech to replace gpu. It has to happen. Right now the gamers are all freaking out because they can sell their old AMD cards and get nvidia cards,  which would lead me to believe those cards will be the next thing  and perhaps that means a new coin will the one

 Whattomine doesn't list all algos on the compare page, so yes it DOES matter.

 9-)

 For one example, Skein isn't there (even though at least one Skein-based coin is TON more profitable than Pascal which IS there).

 Additionally, the "hashrate" shown on many algos on many cards is WAY off.


 There are already quite a few coins that NVidia cards mine for higher profitability than AMD cards do - even ZEC in the last month or so has been seeing NVidia achieve equal-to-better hash/$ vs AMD, and ZEC isn't exactly small based on the number of cards needed to achieve the current network hash (I think ETH is the only "bigger" GPU-mineable coin on that basis).


 I doubt that profitability of all coins will return to where they were at a year ago - but I DO expect to see a shakeout and a major dump on profitability for most GPU-based coins over the next year or two - probably triggered when ETH starts *finally* phasing out POW heavily (ballpark when it moves POW to half or less of total "Proofing").

 The interesting thing is if that does end up being the timing, it most likely happen pretty close to the same timeframe that the next generation of SHA256 (and probably Scrypt and possibly X11/X13/X15/etc) ASIC miners start selling.



 Moore's Law has been taking a noticeable hit over the last decade, as current semi tech runs seriously into quantum-level issues, and Silicon reaches the "end of the road" as a viable semi material. The next decade could see Moore's Law end - and it looks definite that it's going to have a major PAUSE as a minimum after the 7/10nm nodes go into production.

thats a good question i have around 300 rx 570 470 480 and 580
mix 100 sitting idle right now , should i sell them for 1070s since i can get $360 per card for em hmm

btw no pms pls

 I rarely will see a 470/480/570/580 advertised on NewEgg for under $300 and (momentarily) in-stock - I keep getting tempted to buy as many as I can and put them up on craigslist for $100-$200 more....

I bought two 570s from NewEgg on two different days in past 5 days. Each for $225. Gotta be quick when they list them.

I think it will be a scam.

 Yeah, right.

 Link to a REPUTABLE site or take your FUD back home again.

 Keep in mind that dedicated multi-GPU setups like the PandaMiner are NOT ASIC.

GPU mining will last as long as it will be profitable. When there will be too much miners, the difficulty will drop, and more will join. At some moment there will be an equilibrium that will rise and lower.

When there will be too much miners, the difficulty will rise.

Too much miners will not drop difficulty level but it will rise it due to nature of crypto. Same as with btc.

Nobody could answer for how long it will be profitable but best move would be to diversify your rigs - mix of radeon and nvidia because these can be profitable at different moments with different coins.

To get the point what is more profitable to mine you can temporarily use nicehash to get that info and then get back to your usual pool.

If you are really a complete newbie on mining altcoin then nicehash would be really userfirendly since its not too technical and you can easily set-it up  and talking about difficulty that its just normal to think that it would normally rise since there are already lots of miners of a particular coin and as you said we can see it also on bitcoin which means profits would really lessen up overtime but still no need to worry there are lots of coins to choose from.

It's gameover, in few weeks, gpus will be at 50% off, many trolls will commit suicide.

The reason why I mentioned nicehash is only to get the idea or fresh info of what people on similar places consider profitable coin for exact hardware to mine, that's why I said temporarily (just to get info for your hardware) and after you get info you can get back to your usual pool <== this is the scenario only if you don't know what is better to mine for your hardware, but if you are not noob then probably you already have your own sources of this info

Most new coins are moving away from PoW, so probably the party won't last long. When Ethereum goes PoS everyone will switch to smaller coins, making none of them profitable. There's won't be big new coins to replace Ethereum.

but i think when they switch to smaller coins ,the price of smaller coins will rise.

No one knows...if some coins lose value or switch to PoS, you can move to another coin. From a business standpoint, if you are "in the black"; made your initial investment back and are turning a profit, no matter how small, you are doing okay.


There were some times, early on with bitcoin, when it was cheaper to buy coins on the market then to mine them...

Mining raises coin offer, lots of new people trying to sell, same people trying to buy. How is that going to rise the price? Market logic says mining will tank the diminish value by raising offer without raising demand.

GPU mining will last as long as there will be crypto-currencies. That will always be profitable for someone ;) ! Plus we all thought GPU mining was dead, but Ethereum revived it two times. And yet that is sure there will not be a third time because of Casper, there will still be some coin a day or another, just as ZCash, that will pop up out of nowhere and will be profitable.

Correction: GPU mining will last as long as there will be PoW crypto-currencies without ASICs, which is NOT the most wanted choice for future currencies.

Its possible but it would take years or maybe early.  I saw 2013 and how it ended.  People says there is other coins to mine dont realize users is what keep mining alive.   As a common user why use smaller coin when eth or btc is availible widely.  Problem with smaller coins is up to how strong the marketing without that no money for the future.

In such a scenario it is likely that we will see the mining difficulty increasing sharply, but if there is also a price increase, mining could remain profitable for over a year. The problem is that most of these alts are in a bubble, and it brings the risk of big losses to miners.