Bitcoin Forum

Im sure this question has been asked tons of times before but i am curious. Why do you mine?

I can see a few reasons:

1.) (and hopefully the most common) you genuinely want to help BTC/LTC/etc become a legitimate currency in everyday life.
this seems like it should be the most popular answer. but eventually you have to do something with all that mined coin. and with the difficulty building all the time, it seems like a common part of mining is to immediately use your mining proceeds to get more mining power. that way you can actually make back the initial investment and pursue one of the other routes to profitability while still helping bitcoin prosper.

2.) youre in it for the money
you see the btc-usd calculators and just see dollar signs with no real effort other than the initial investment and the occasional power bill. not to mention the actual act of turning that btc into usd which seems like it can be trying at times with all the steps that have to be taken. especially if you are just selling on exchanges rather than to people via craigslist or localbitcoins or similar

3.) youre in it for the money : hardware version
you mine to make btc to mine coins to buy hardware to sell. This ties in to #2 but with the specific focus of being all about selling hardware. This seems to be the most profitable but that is slowly coming down. anywhere that you can get miners for BTC (which to me seems like a more trustworthy business than those miners that take USD, but thats a different topic) you can hoard them and resell on ebay or craigslist or wherever. those 2btc erupter usbs were selling like hotcakes (why do hotcakes sell so well?) at 400 bucks a pop initially! now they have cooled to closer to 1btc (after the price of them dropped to 1btc) rate equivalent and often you can get them for less than 1btc equivalent in USD. this is becoming a problem now because you are often hit with fees so an ebay auction is around 13% when its all said and done. at those rates, you would just be better to use localbitcoins.com to sell your coins but then its way more hassle. 

what other categories have i missed? why do you do it?

personally, i am mining for coin just to mine more (it seems to be addicting to always try to get better hash rates :/ ) I have not done anything more with my coin other than reinvest but the time is coming soon i guess to figure something out.
ive got an erupter blade, an erupter usb army thats slowly growing, and an fpga single for nostalgia. my gpus are only hot when im playing farcry blood dragon or something.

I don't mine, I invest. IMO, that's the only reasonable thing to do now.

It really should be a mix of two of them.
Mining to support Bitcoin is all sweet and stuff, but mining gets you coins. Not putting those coins into circulation turns Bitcoin into something useless.
Whatever way you look at it, it's a simple question of economics. Someone has to make money off bitcoin in order to keep the circulation going.

So whatever your motives to mine are, eventually everything you do with it is for the greater good that is making Bitcoin a worldwide accepted currency.

well put. it seems like mining to use the coin to buy more miners is a good way to go. i might take my chances on bitmit or similar sites eventually to get the toys and things i dont necessarily need to spend my paycheck on.

to try and make money why else

For me, it is a combination of 1 and 2. I would like to make some money but I would also like to strengthen the currencies I mine.

I mine mainly for 1.)

I buy some BTC and hold it.

I invest some.

Basically I'm in it for the ride, but of course I wouldn't mind becoming feeeeelthy rich. ;D

i know a few people that only run on the exchanges trading in and out BTC. I can see how that is immediately more profitable but doesnt mining seem better in the long run? Only because it seemingly comes out of hardware doing calculations rather than timing a trade properly.

I guess each have their own ups and downs like hardware costs vs transaction fees. but in an unstable market such as BTC I guess you would have to be pretty good at following the market in order to make money. but that just shows how much i know about going the purely trade route rather than the mining route.

I mine for 1) aswell.

I'd be lying to say I wasn't motivated by the fantasy of option 2, but option 1 is why I keep doing it even after I come to my senses.

Personally, it is mostly just 1. Maybe two, but that is kind of shaky and is just a positive side effect.

There is another catagory: for the hell of it :D

Why do I mine?

As a great philosopher once said "Why not?" -- sometimes it's that simple.

I could make it complicated -- but it's not worth the effort.