Bitcoin Forum

What price per GH/s is worth it to purchase right now?

With this calculator http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator using a BTC price of 75 USD and current difficulty one GH/s will mine $53 in a month. How should one project out after that to account for the rise in difficulty? Just half the dollar amount to account for a doubling of diff every month?

$50 month 1, $25 month 2, $12 month 3, $6 month 4, $3 month 5, $1 month 6 ?

Is 1 GH/s only worth about 100 USD right now, or is my admittedly very crude estimation too pessimistic?

Exchange rate is trending down too... 

If you have it in hand, I'll give you $75

If I would pay 500$ for a 5GH/s, you can guess what I would pay for 1 GH/s.  :P

#fail

Mining game is over. The people who won were Avalon Batch 1-2. The people who are enjoying some success are those who are receiving BFLs now. The ones who ordered 2012 BFL's and Avalon batch 3 will see some profit. Anyone ordering mining equipment now is throwing money down the toilette.

You want to make money with bitcoin, find a way to be part of the economy of bitcoin. Make, create, sell, service etc. for bitcoin.

The only way a miner getting in the game now will make a return on their investment would be if Bitcoin saw a very solid steady rise in price. That's not happening as you can see anytime soon.

buy btc directly, they are cheap now

agree with $75.

To my understanding the question was, how much would you pay for a miner with 1GH/s with INSTANT delivery.
Of course I wouldn't pay those amounts if delivery is in autumn.
But fact is you would get a small ROI if you got the miner today.

At least according to this list:
http://decentralizedhashing.com/bitcoin-mining-equipment-table/

Yeah, that was the intent of my question. If you could in theory buy some mining hardware today and have it delivered in one week or less, what would 1GH/s be worth right now.

It seems I wasn't too far off with my $100 figure, you would probably break even at the very least. $75 should ensure some profit.

Just goes to show I paid about 3x what I should have for a couple of USB Erputers. Oh well, live and learn. At least I didn't buy 10 or more.

Who knows, maybe difficulty won't keep skyrocketing if all the promised ASIC deliveries don't come to pass and/or the BTC price keeps dropping. BTC losing more value would obviously negatively impact ROI though. I tend to think people who do get ASIC devices will mine with them no matter what though, since they can't do anything else with them. So the difficulty skyrocketing is virtually guaranteed, only an impediment to ASIC devices being delivered can prevent it.

The problem isn't the prices, the problem is the availability as I see it.

There is only two ASICs available with instant delivery. And those perform badly compared to what they cost.

But don't beat yourself up, the price of BTC can skyrocket. It can go either way.
It's an investment the way I see it.

But before I make any purchase, I always check if i can get something better for my money.

I wouldn't want to pay more than $75/GH/s. The way difficulty is increasing and will continue to as products ship and the market trending downwards pretty quickly as individuals cash out on ASICs for more widely accepted currencies, there is a lot of risk. You have to remember that at some oint mining is creating costs in another currency as utility providers at the very least aren't accepting BTC, so cashing out is almost a necessity at some point and the currency risk associated with any business is present.

This is exactly the question I've been asking myself, and tracking with calculations..

Someone on this forum mentioned that mining hardware is worth no more than $.30 per 1MH/s so in theory $300 per 1GH/s.  That's before electricity costs are factored in.  

However if you project difficulty into the future at about 10-15% increase every 2016 blocks, and then figure out how much you can mine, it is eye opening how few bitcoins you can actually mine in the lifetime of this hypothetical 1GH/s ASIC device.  Today you can mine something like 0.14 BTC per week, per 1GH/s, but 6 months later its 0.002 or 0.001 per week and it no longer matters if you keep mining or not, you're basically going to turn off the device and throw it away.  

And that's before you look at the market price of BTC .....

Edit: based on the difficulty calculations, a 1GH/s device will mine 1.6 BTC in 52 weeks starting from today, if difficulty increase trend continues at the average rate it was recently.  That's $160 if BTC price is $100 on average, $80 if BTC price is $50 on average.  (!)

The difficulty will start to level off by the end of the year. I imagine pre-orders are down quite a bit since the exchange rate has been dropping.

Even so, you would have to get your Jupiter pretty early in September for it to be cheaper than to just buy bitcoins... And since if you order now you won't get it till October... Hard times for hardware producers.

Once you can order an ASIC from several different manufacturers, and have them arrive in a reasonable timeframe the market will stabilize. Profits will be less, but there will still be profits to efficient mining operations.

I get the sense that majority of people getting in now did so because of media coverage and they don't fully realize how much money can be made.  For every winner there have to be some loosers right?  The money has to come from somewhere. 

I don't think you necessarily need losers for the Ponzi scheme type aspect to work.

I buy at $10, sell to you at $100, made 10x
You sell to somebody for $1000, you made 10x

In a typical Ponzi scheme the people at the bottom lose everything, but with bitcoins there will always be another layer at the bottom of the pyramid, so as long as they keep their use, everybody continues to win.

Bit of a sophomoric account I am sure, but it is how I understand it.

You dreamer ! Today is an all time high regarding Network total !   237.480 Thash/s as I write this.

Difficulty is going to explode any time soon.

Nightowlace said it very well : "Mining game is over. The people who won were Avalon Batch 1-2. The people who are enjoying some success are those who are receiving BFLs now. The ones who ordered 2012 BFL's and Avalon batch 3 will see some profit. Anyone ordering mining equipment now is throwing money down the toilette. "

DO NOT INVEST IN MINING ! You are sure to loose money, the game is indeed over...

LOL, you guys are crazy.

If mining isn't profitable, how come people still are mining with GPU's?

Investing is always risky, but if you wise up a little and run the numbers there is always a way to make profit.

Reminds me of what everyone was saying back in 2011.

Some people are still mining with CPUs, I'm sure. 

Reasons (all a risk) for mining with GPUs, I assume:
1. Even if paying for electricity, you are still today making more than electricity costs of running GPUs.  This does not account for hardware costs.  I don't know where the tipping point is but I think somewhere with BTC dipping below $50, at current difficulty. 
2. Not everyone pays for their electricty. 
3. You can be losing money today, but believe that BTC will some day be worth $100, $1000 or even $10000. 
4. If you can't do math but everyone's hyping about it like they are, you can believe it is all profitable. 
5. It is still possible (just not probable) that difficulty will go down.  And GPU mining will be rejuvenated again. 

etc etc

Another 2 cents :
Around 50$

This question really should be phrased as "BTC you would pay for 1 GH/s right now" because miners return bitcoins, not us dollars.

Since this thread has been posted the exchange has dropped by 30% maybe the first part of this thread completely useless.

Those who would pay $100 for 1 GH/s before would only pay $75 now.

I wouldn't pay more than 1 2/3 BTC per GH/s right now. Break even point is probably a bit higher, maybe 2 BTC per GH/s

That makes a 80GH/s Avalon worth about 133 BTC, and a 5 GH/s Jalapeno worth about 8.33 BTC

That comes out to be about $115/GH/s at present exchange rates.

Probably 1 GH/s = 1 BTC

If they were available right now I will pay $50-70 per GH, every week that goes by I would reduce that by $10....

I spent $229 on 1GH/s earlier today.

Why? Because aside from mining for the coin, I'm mining to keep Bitcoin running.

As far as profit goes, do you know what happens when everyone decides "this just isn't worth it!" at the same time and shuts down their devices? Reward goes up for those who decide to keep going.

Yes, it will still end up with very expensive devices having a lot of control, and people with free electricity. But that's okay.

Do you have any idea how many asic are getting ready to be delivered ?
The only one who will decide it's not worth it are those with gpus (their reward will go down if they keep mining) and they will switch to lightcoin that is 30% more profitable.

~$50 to have it in hand today.

I think it comes down to how long will it take you to pay off the rig, then you calculate electricity vs coin value.     A safe number is probably how much you can get in 30 days, so $53.  Since difficulty changes 2-3 times a month, you should be able to get it paid for in under 2 months.   Then calculate how much electricity costs and calculate at what difficulty level and estimate price would you need to shut down the device.   If you have free electricity, you are lucky and should just get the unit paid off and run it til it dies. :)

My rig is paid off and if I had to pay for electricity, it would probably be off (or sell the parts and purchase coins).  I think that is the other piece of the puzzle.  Once you can't run it-- being able to sell the components is a great thing.  Probably can't sell an asic which cost more to run than what it mines but you can with each computer part.  (then again,  the USB Block Erupters are selling even through it doesn't make much sense.  When I saw them sell for $400 each, I couldn't believe my eyes)  I recently saw a BFL 60GH/s sell for 153 BTC.  How crazy is that?  Not sure where I'm going with this...  :)

Short answer = whatever 1GH/s can get you in 30 days.

That's not exactly right, and it depends on what you are talking about when you say "money".  Bitcoins, by definition, are created out of compute power, there are no "losers".  Wealth can rise or fall without any corresponding loser or winner.  During the financial crisis, there were FAR more losers than winners, as another example.

Considering a Gpu rig at 1k will cost around $500, $300

$45 per GH/s. If of course your'e doing it as a hobbyist, an idealist or a believer this is the next big thing forever, measuring what you would pay in BTC or USD is irrelevant. If paying for things and having an actual operating market that involves currency that has value is something you're interested, measuring it in USD or a local currency is pretty important at this point.

1 gh/s will only net about .45 bitcoins a month at the current difficulty (that will change fast) - there would be no net profit  - it would be easier to simply buy btc for USD. The value of mining comes in the residuals after the equipment has paid for itself

If you pay 50 bucks for the miner it might take 3 months to gain profit.
But so what? It's still your own hard earned bitcoins right?

You are asking two different things here.

You should be asking how many btc somehow would pay for 1 GH/s.

Mining returns btc, not dollars.

Given an increase in difficulty of 10% every two weeks, 1 GH/s will earn at most 2.5 BTC. The actual increase is more likely to be around 20%, and at that rate 1 GH/s will only earn about 1.4 BTC.

So, I would pay no more than 0.7 BTC (currently around $67) for 1 GH/s.

So no one's willing to speculate that one day , maybe 1 year from now, maybe 5, that BTC will be worth 10X that? If thats the case, then you have a more viable solution.

Case in point, I have a 401K that I will be holding on to for 30+ years .. at that time, I can expect a large retirement fund .. In other words, If BTC fails, does it matter I spent $1k Today, to possibly make $30K in a few years with the coins I mined?


Secondly, People that say mining is dead, are way off. Do they not think that there won't be other ASICs that get built that are more powerful / less power? Obviously that will be the case and the cycle will just repeat it self.


Kosta

It doesn't matter how much BTC is worth in the future (assuming that the value rises). The choice is between buying X BTC and buying a miner that earns Y BTC. If X is more than Y then you should keep the BTC and forget the miner.

Nobody says that mining is dead. GPU mining is dead (or nearly dead) and hobbyist mining is struggling, but mining overall is stronger than ever.

What I meant is .. if I want to waste $1000, I could buy a few K16 right now, or buy 10 Bitcoins. If I believe I can mine more then 10 Bitcoins over the next few years , then Id rather gamble on the mining then the Bitcoins themselves.

If your talking about Hundreds of thousands of dollars, then yes it may make more sense just buying BTC. but for such a low entry point, its a toss up


kosta

240$ you'll break even in one year with 10% monthly increase.
152$ you'll break even in one year with 21.5% monthly increase. (3300 Ths)

... electricity free,

Whatever the cost is, it doesn't matter. Just buy your gigahashes and "help secure the network". Never mind how inconsequential that gigahashes is, many people will claim that they're doing what they're domh with zero profit motive,tneyrejust trying to "ensure th future of bitcoin."  Joint hat crew and you can claim moral superiority

Yes, " Moral superiority " ;D

Miners return bitcoins, but they cost dollars to acquire. So trying to project returns based on dollars is completely reasonable. Even for miners that you can purchase for bitcoin, you also have opportunity to sell those bitcoins for dollars, so you have to compare to dollars. Well, you don't have to. But being that the works still runs on fiat, I'd think it'd be crazy to omit that part.

Considering what ASICMiner has on the horizon, I am willing to pay exactly 30 American Dollars for 1gH/s right now.

EDIT: Alluding to the rumor that AM repeat Erupter USB customers able to purchase addition units at 0.1BTC.

I would like to see how you came up with that value. ASICMiner could be planning on shipping 100 TH/s machines in a year and 1 GH/s right now would still be worth a lot more than $30. For example, If the difficulty were to increase by 50% every two weeks forever, 1 GH/s would still be worth about $67 right now.

People have seen their GPUs get devalued so quickly as of late that they're extending it to everything else. I briefly owned a jalapeño (sold on eBay), but before selling in eBay, I first talked to a few people on here that we're expressing interest. Granted the eBay buyer likely overpaid, but the offers I got from "serious" buyers on here were laughable. They acted like network difficulty was going to raise 10x in the next month or two!

But then there are so many different opinions. USB block eruptors for instance. Even at their new lower prices, that there are so many buyers, it's baffling. You see people boasting abou buying 10 or more, and I'm thinking that's $600 for 3300 mh. Or you could go on a limb and order a jalapeño. Spend 550 for 10 gh. True it'll be probably two months to receive, but they are actually shipping - I'm thinking that to have 3000 mh in hand today is still far less valuable than to have 10000 mh in hand in October. The couple month lead time from instant delivery doesn't make up for the incredibly high dollars per hash they provide.

Slight ramble. Sorry

I agree with $30 per gigahash (today).   Next month it will be worth $20 since KNC is priced around $20 and will be shipping which will make that the current price per GH.  I would pay a 50% premium ($30 today compared to $20 next month) for a miner today.

I'm basing the price per GH based on the price of the units for sale today.   BFL set thier prices to $50 (per gh) and Avalon was around $100.   They could dictate price but that will change soon with the new ASIC companies like KNC on target to release at a price under $20 per gh.

The USB stick is the most expensive price per gh EVER.... 

here is a full comparison.  http://minr.info/

 Do you honestly believe they are going to resolve their entire pre-order backlog in less than two months ?

 Remember, they did state that by the end of September, they should be all caught up  (paraphrasing their COO's statement a couple weeks prior that they are looking to be finished in two months).

Watching their shipping updates go by, yes, I think that they'll get through their Jalapeno queue in the next couple of months for certain. The rest of the queue(singles, minirigs, etc?) Probably not. So i guess the question is, when they reach then end of their jalapeno queue, will they let those orders pill up while they're shipping their older orders? I know the answer most people here will say, but who knows?

(Of course i went to go look jsut now, and yesterday the apaprently shipped no jalapenos.)

So yes, despite the outpouring of outrage at them, they actaully do seem to be making progress, especially at the lower end of their product range.

thanks for that site!

Thanks for that link. What I think is most important about the information is that nearly all of the entries say "Not shipping, no working product seen."

As I wrote before, all the expectations for ASIC miners so far have been wildly optimistic and innaccurate, and I don't think the situation will improve. It is unlikely that KNC will be shipping hardware next month for $20 per GH/s, and it is a bad idea to base your value on them meeting their goals. I also wouldn't be surprised if at least one of those companies is really a scam.

KNC posted that they are still on target for a september release.  This is the first group to offer ASICs produced by a company with history.  ORSoC has been doing this for 10 years with projects much more complicated than BTC hashing.   (It is only a month away so we don't have to wait long to see if they deliver)

Labcoin just released IPO shares but I highly doubt they can deliver so quickly considering they are just getting into the game.  (http://www.labcoin.com/)  It appears that they have some experience.

Next month is going to be a major milestone for BTC.  So many companies releasing miners,  it will be interesting to see which ones arrive.  Any high powered ASIC with mass distribution will crush competition.  Up til now, no company has delivered to the masses.  Everything has been in small batches.  The USB sticks were done but I just don't count that due to the high price and low hash rate.

Keep an eye on BitFury, KNC, LabCoin, and companies using the Avalon chips.   The Avalon chips suck up power but they have so many chips being shipped, it will make a serious dent in what 1GH/s is worth.

Agree...

I did however purchase an Erupter, which gives me around 336 Mhps, which in month and half I should get what I pay for the device. Then afterword's will pure profits.

I don't mine it, being that I have my computer 24/7 online and im getting power direct from the usb.


But I did the math and its the only option is going with ASIC and the cheap ones.

Funny you agree on everything he says.
But in the next sentence you contradict everything he just said by explaining how mining is profitable.
You bought an Erupter and you expect profit in a month and half. How can mining not be profitable then?

I'd pay somewhere around what xcrowd is going to charge, around $12-$15 per Gh

It depends on when you started mining and what you paid for the miner, but most people that bought the USB miners will never make a profit in BTC.  And even if they make a profit in $, it would have been more profitable if they just bought the BTC outright, instead of mining it.

You mean to say that if they bought the miners at 2BTC a piece, they will never get that back by using the miners?

As far as erupters go they need to come down to around $15-$25 usd for me to jump in.

If someone payed 1btc for an erupter it would take 270 days to break even assuming a conservative diff increase of 5% a month. With a 10% increase it will take 1 year to break even in btc.

So this isn't really anything I can order ATM, i have a few Jupiter shares that I payed $30 for 1.2gh, but who knows if that will make sense 6 months from now  ???

Reminds me of what everyone was saying back in 2012.

It depends on how much the difficulty rises, but it is unlikely that any USB Erupter will ever mine 2 BTC or even 1 BTC. If the difficulty continues to rise at 20% per period for the next few months, then it is unlikely that miners starting today will ever mine even 0.5 BTC.

On the other hand, there is always a chance that the the difficulty will to fall below what it is now...