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Title: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: itayl2 on December 04, 2013, 05:50:18 PM I'm very new to this game, so excuse my ignorance.
Say I purchase 312GH/s (3 rigs * 104GH/s) for around 13,500 USD. (sounds a reasonable price?) According to what I know, 1800W consumption sounds about right for these rigs. Obviously I join a pool before beginning to mine. If I plug in the data in here: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ with a time frame of 3 months, which I realize is a bit simplistic, but I get about 8390 USD net profits. I realize difficulty may spike due to next gen ASICs and the fact that I would get the rigs only in Jan-Feb 2014, but what is the missing factor here that would convert profits of 8390 USD to some kind of a negative number? What I am missing here? 90% of the posts here mention mining as no longer profitable. I'm wondering whether I'm missing something, or this is just a strategy? Please help! :) Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Bitships on December 04, 2013, 05:54:46 PM 13,500 USD are round-about 11.7 Bitcoins (today). With 312 GH/s you will never reach 11.7 Bitcoins, not even in two years.
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Gemminyc on December 04, 2013, 05:56:56 PM Say I purchase 312GH/s (3 rigs * 104GH/s) for around 13,500 USD. (sounds a reasonable price?) According to what I know, 1800W consumption sounds about right for these rigs. And when you start mining ? Time is everything. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Martijnvdc on December 04, 2013, 05:57:34 PM Say I purchase 312GH/s (3 rigs * 104GH/s) for around 13,500 USD. (sounds a reasonable price?) According to what I know, 1800W consumption sounds about right for these rigs. And when you start mining ? Time is everything. Which is too late, ofcourse. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: itayl2 on December 04, 2013, 05:57:46 PM My question is why :)
What is affecting the reality of bitoin mining and is not taken into account in the calculator I referenced? Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 04, 2013, 06:00:17 PM It's not always unprofitable, but most people just look up the profit per day based on the hashrate and then calculate OnlineCalculatorSaidX$perDay*365 = MASSIVE PROFIT
But once you start factoring in electricity expected change in difficulty BEFORE you can actually start mining AND AFTER you start mining, then it becomes less profitable or unprofitable. If you want profit right now, go get a GPU rig and mine Litecoins. They are at $39.71 a pop and you can get a decent chunk of them with even a 1-2MH/s machine. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Bitships on December 04, 2013, 06:01:31 PM My question is why :) What is affecting the reality of bitoin mining and is not taken into account in the calculator I referenced? Try: http://btcinvest.net/de/bitcoin-mining-profit-calculator.php You could easily get profit with minig if the difficulty doesn't increase. Bitcoinx.com does not have a option to make a monthly difficult grow. Your 3 months based on a difficult of 707,408,283. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: ChessWhiz on December 04, 2013, 06:01:41 PM It has to do with the trajectory of the difficulty chart. Higher difficulty means fewer BTC mined by the same hash rate. http://blockchain.info/charts/difficulty
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: pontiacg5 on December 04, 2013, 06:02:52 PM People that say it is unprofitable to mine have either not done enough reading, or they just want to convince weak hands to stay out of the mining game. Plenty of ways to make money mining right now.
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: morrisford on December 04, 2013, 06:03:01 PM The projected difficulty for late February 2014 is somewhere around 3 billion on the low side and something like 5 - 6 billion on the high side. 312 Ghs at that difficulty and the current exchange rate for bitcoins would yield about $425 per week with the yield dropping about 15 - 20 % every 12 days or so. The yield for 6 billion difficulty would be about $200 per week. That weekly yield would give about $20,000 or $10,000 earnings WITHOUT any further increase in difficulty which will never happen.
Morris Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: cp1 on December 04, 2013, 06:06:52 PM Getting it in "about Jan - Feb" is what kills you. And the difficulty increases every 2 weeks. Check out http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/a/14e963282c
What miner are you buying? Are you sure you'll even get it in Jan/Feb? Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: itayl2 on December 04, 2013, 06:09:54 PM The projected difficulty for late February 2014 is somewhere around 3 billion on the low side and something like 5 - 6 billion on the high side. 312 Ghs at that difficulty and the current exchange rate for bitcoins would yield about $425 per week with the yield dropping about 15 - 20 % every 12 days or so. The yield for 6 billion difficulty would be about $200 per week. That weekly yield would give about $20,000 or $10,000 earnings WITHOUT any further increase in difficulty which will never happen. Morris What causes the yield to drop about 15-20% each 12 days? The difficulty increase? Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: morrisford on December 04, 2013, 06:11:04 PM Yes. The big factor not addressed in most of the profitability calculators is the difference between mining now and 3 months from now. An eruptor blade (at 10 Ghs) that will pay for itself in about 2 months right now will return just a few dollars a week starting in March. Also, The huge volume of new terahash coming online in the next few months is most likely to skew the difficulty big time.
Morris Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 04, 2013, 06:12:27 PM People that say it is unprofitable to mine have either not done enough reading, or they just want to convince weak hands to stay out of the mining game. Plenty of ways to make money mining right now. Or it's because they are still living in a few months ago when Block Eruptors were 1BTC each. Some of the newer ASICs look priced to profit. That ASIC Miner Cube looks to be a great option right now, for example, but I'd rather just hold onto my coins. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: PenAndPaper on December 04, 2013, 06:12:46 PM Use the calculator of thegenesisblock and then see how many coins your miners will ever mine. Then compare than number with the bitcoins that you could 've bought instead of the miner. Then regret a little :P
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: ajax3592 on December 04, 2013, 06:14:52 PM The projected difficulty for late February 2014 is somewhere around 3 billion on the low side and something like 5 - 6 billion on the high side. 312 Ghs at that difficulty and the current exchange rate for bitcoins would yield about $425 per week with the yield dropping about 15 - 20 % every 12 days or so. The yield for 6 billion difficulty would be about $200 per week. That weekly yield would give about $20,000 or $10,000 earnings WITHOUT any further increase in difficulty which will never happen. Morris What causes the yield to drop about 15-20% each 12 days? The difficulty increase? Yes it increases as time passes by and more coins are in the market. Honestly, Bitcoin mining is not profitable anymore. Any coin's mining returns good ROI in its initial stages. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: cryptonic on December 04, 2013, 06:18:02 PM Well, it will become unprofitable soon. Unless you have cheap or free energy, because the difficulty will increase when the price increases. And there is a delay between the two.
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: itayl2 on December 04, 2013, 06:18:23 PM The projected difficulty for late February 2014 is somewhere around 3 billion on the low side and something like 5 - 6 billion on the high side. 312 Ghs at that difficulty and the current exchange rate for bitcoins would yield about $425 per week with the yield dropping about 15 - 20 % every 12 days or so. The yield for 6 billion difficulty would be about $200 per week. That weekly yield would give about $20,000 or $10,000 earnings WITHOUT any further increase in difficulty which will never happen. Morris What causes the yield to drop about 15-20% each 12 days? The difficulty increase? Yes it increases as time passes by and more coins are in the market. Honestly, Bitcoin mining is not profitable anymore. Any coin's mining returns good ROI in its initial stages. I finally get it :) Thanks everyone. So how do people intend to stay in the game? I mean, what kind of a rig would give enough GH/s/J and not cost too much to eat into the revenues? Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 04, 2013, 06:23:52 PM Honestly, Bitcoin mining is not profitable anymore. Any coin's mining returns good ROI in its initial stages. Except that it is... Buy a Cube, run it for 2 months, sell the Cube. You will end up with more BTC than you started with. I guarantee it. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: morrisford on December 04, 2013, 06:23:57 PM >>So how do people intend to stay in the game? I mean, what kind of a rig would give enough GH/s/J and
>>not cost too much to eat into the revenues? That is a really hard question. For me it is a keep watching and calculating what the yields would be for the various combinations of mining methods. At the moment some of the group buy/shared plans sound fairly good but the difficulty changes can cause big aberrations because the shared plans all start in March or later. Morris Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: RodeoX on December 04, 2013, 06:24:33 PM The question is how many of these mining rigs do you own....
http://i40.tinypic.com/9h3rsx.jpg We are at a stage that requires an investment to get into mining. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Bitships on December 04, 2013, 06:27:04 PM The projected difficulty for late February 2014 is somewhere around 3 billion on the low side and something like 5 - 6 billion on the high side. 312 Ghs at that difficulty and the current exchange rate for bitcoins would yield about $425 per week with the yield dropping about 15 - 20 % every 12 days or so. The yield for 6 billion difficulty would be about $200 per week. That weekly yield would give about $20,000 or $10,000 earnings WITHOUT any further increase in difficulty which will never happen. Morris What causes the yield to drop about 15-20% each 12 days? The difficulty increase? Yes it increases as time passes by and more coins are in the market. Honestly, Bitcoin mining is not profitable anymore. Any coin's mining returns good ROI in its initial stages. I finally get it :) Thanks everyone. So how do people intend to stay in the game? I mean, what kind of a rig would give enough GH/s/J and not cost too much to eat into the revenues? Some people are mining other coins like LTC. Sometimes they are more profitable, because you can sell them for Bitcoins and gain more BTC then mining it. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: itayl2 on December 04, 2013, 06:27:16 PM Honestly, Bitcoin mining is not profitable anymore. Any coin's mining returns good ROI in its initial stages. Except that it is... Buy a Cube, run it for 2 months, sell the Cube. You will end up with more BTC than you started with. I guarantee it. Details / Links? :D Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 04, 2013, 06:32:28 PM Honestly, Bitcoin mining is not profitable anymore. Any coin's mining returns good ROI in its initial stages. Except that it is... Buy a Cube, run it for 2 months, sell the Cube. You will end up with more BTC than you started with. I guarantee it. Details / Links? :D https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=349787.60 Buy it for 1BTC, run it for a little bit... you should be able to mine close to 1BTC + electricity costs in 2 months... then anything you can sell it for is profit. Note: It does come from a rare ASIC company that actually ships its orders out. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: itayl2 on December 04, 2013, 06:39:44 PM So there are no other setups that would cost below 15K and would actually ship before March 2014 (and turn a profit)?
What about the Black Arrow Prospero X-3 or the KnC Neptune? Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 04, 2013, 06:47:55 PM So there are no other setups that would cost below 15K and would actually ship before March 2014 (and turn a profit)? What about the Black Arrow Prospero X-3 or the KnC Neptune? March 2014 is so far away... high risk should mean high reward, but history makes us weary of the future... Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: willpower101 on December 04, 2013, 10:56:24 PM OP these are your basic factors ranked in order of how they affect bottom line:
As the value of BTC goes up the cost of currently available equipment goes up. In your scenario, you could spend 13k on a 312ghs miner starting TODAY. And make your cost back by the end of January. Then you could sell your 13k miner for roughly what you have in it (unless btc tanks) and have 24k total profit. To get the same with investing, you'd have to buy ~13 btc today and hope they double to $2000 USD by the end of Jan. (This investing in BTC thing was great when you could get 60 for 13k, but it's not as glamorous when you can only get 13btc. The PROBLEM happens when you spend 13k to get a 312ghs miner in Late January or early Feb. Starting January, you'd only make half your investment back. Starting february, you'd only make $3k of your original 13k back! Of course, once you sell the equipment, you can break even or come out a couple of BTC ahead. But this particular scenario you posit is a bad one. With an 1800w miner that cost 13k, you'd need to start off mining at 550GHS in January, or 1100ghs in February to even BREAK EVEN in 2014. One thing to note that's not on this list is the value of the BTC. I like to estimate their increase in my calculations. Other's aboslutely do not do that because it's so speculative. For you I have left that part out. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: willpower101 on December 04, 2013, 11:03:15 PM So there are no other setups that would cost below 15K and would actually ship before March 2014 (and turn a profit)? What about the Black Arrow Prospero X-3 or the KnC Neptune? Neptune is only profitable if it ships in Q1, anyone who gets one in Q2 will be SOL and barely be able to make their investment back. Anyone who starts the Neptune in April will start making negative BTC by the end of July. They will have made $8000 worth of btc minus $13.5k of initial investment, so Negative 5500ish. Once they sell their Equipment, they might be able to come out even or probably a little ahead. The ONLY offset to this is if the difficulty doesn't grow as fast (unlikely) or the value grows by 50% per month in the next 6 months. (Highly, speculative, insanely actually.) I don't know about the other two, but the knc neptune is a bust unless it gets here in january or february. If they could say "Guaranteed Q1" I'd be on board. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: galbros on December 04, 2013, 11:21:09 PM Mining is just speculating on bitcoin in a different way. Right now you will at best break even mining, so by mining you are essentially saying that you think the price of BTC will rise. That is the same thing as simply taking the same amount of money and buying some BTC. However, with mining there is less of a trail to you of how you got your BTC versus an exchange.
If you look back on this forum this has almost always been the case. Mining wasn't profitable at BTC prices of those times either, but it damn sure was in hindsight. Hence my point that mining is speculating just in a different way. So I would say if you want to learn more about bitcoin by all means mine away! But don't expect to make money unless BTC continues its rise in price. Good Luck! Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: cttrade23 on December 04, 2013, 11:24:24 PM I keep reading that mining the other coins is more profitable at the moment due to the massive resources already mining bitcoin. I would like to mine the others but am wondering whether the same equipment is as efficient at mining the other coins. I know Litecoin uses a different algorithm. Does anyone here know if the ASIC miners soon available will mine Litecoin and other SCRYPT coins efficiently?
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: zeraTunerse on December 04, 2013, 11:29:42 PM Does anyone here know if the ASIC miners soon available will mine Litecoin and other SCRYPT coins efficiently? I have no info about ASIC miners soon available for SCRYPT coins. It might not happen in next year at all, it would require a lot of investment (or preorder model) Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 04, 2013, 11:31:42 PM Does anyone here know if the ASIC miners soon available will mine Litecoin and other SCRYPT coins efficiently? No. There was a failed Scrypt FPGA, and the ASIC development seems a bit far out there. But, yes, if you are mining Bitcoin with a GPU, then you are wrong for it... plain and simple. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: willpower101 on December 04, 2013, 11:48:58 PM Mining is just speculating on bitcoin in a different way. Right now you will at best break even mining, so by mining you are essentially saying that you think the price of BTC will rise. That is the same thing as simply taking the same amount of money and buying some BTC. However, with mining there is less of a trail to you of how you got your BTC versus an exchange. I think it's more about the tangible assets that you can liquidate if the price falls. If you buy a 12k miner today and the price falls by half tomorrow, you can sill sell that 12k miner for almost as much as you paid for it as long as you are reasonably quick about it before the machine values start to fall too. (Their value lags behind btc by 4-8 weeks) If you buy 12k worth of btc and it falls to half tomorrow then you just lost 6k flat out. I'm currently looking at scrypt mining ltc and converting to btc. Buying preconfigured miners isn't all that profitable, but if you configure one yourself then the barrier to entry is slightly higher and the cost slightly lower. It works out to be a small profit. Honestly, Bitcoin mining is not profitable anymore. Any coin's mining returns good ROI in its initial stages. Except that it is... Buy a Cube, run it for 2 months, sell the Cube. You will end up with more BTC than you started with. I guarantee it. That is IF you can get a cube right this second. How long before those cubes ship? Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: CrypticWritings on December 05, 2013, 12:00:46 AM 13,500 USD are round-about 11.7 Bitcoins (today). With 312 GH/s you will never reach 11.7 Bitcoins, not even in two years. That's speculation, that's not set in stone in any way Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: thebitcoinme on December 05, 2013, 12:02:44 AM Unprofitable, in my view, is due to a few reasons:
1) some people purchased the physical mining machines back at the beginning of the year when the cost was really expensive and the machines never got delivered to them until later on in the year when the cost of the machines decreased since the amount that can be mined decreased. This means: purchased at a higher rate, but now mining at a lower rate = unprofitable. 2) electricity bills; you have to constantly have your machines on. 3) limited mining capacity of the physical machines; each machine can only produce up to a certain amount of bitcoins, which means, unless the value of bitcoins increase, you may only be breaking even. A SOLUTION: Sign up for cloud mining, which doesn't have all these issues. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: CEG5952 on December 05, 2013, 12:02:56 AM difficulty is rising too fast based on the length of time between order and commencement of mining
if you think bitcoin is going to 6 or 7 figures, it will surely be profitable to mine now..... long as you're not selling now Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 05, 2013, 12:25:35 AM Honestly, Bitcoin mining is not profitable anymore. Any coin's mining returns good ROI in its initial stages. Except that it is... Buy a Cube, run it for 2 months, sell the Cube. You will end up with more BTC than you started with. I guarantee it. That is IF you can get a cube right this second. How long before those cubes ship? Knowing CanaryInTheMine, I'll probably have it in hand in the next 7-10 days. It should break even in about 45-60 days after I receive it... lead time was already taken into account. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: dzarmush on December 05, 2013, 12:41:11 AM Once they sell their Equipment, they might be able to come out even or probably a little ahead. This is one more thing I don't get. I also read about it in group buys. They say: "when our group miners are no longer profitable we sell them and share the money". But who is going to buy non-profitable miners? Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 05, 2013, 12:43:34 AM This is one more thing I don't get. I also read about it in group buys. They say: "when our group miners are no longer profitable we sell them and share the money". But who is going to buy non-profitable miners? Here ya go. People are always buying non-profitable miners... I have no idea why. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0 and www.ebay.com Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: CEG5952 on December 05, 2013, 01:07:56 AM people are enamored with the idea of mining bitcoin. like they think it is creating money out of thin air. they will keep buying no matter how bad the margins.
not me.... Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Ardenyham on December 05, 2013, 01:19:09 AM This is one more thing I don't get. I also read about it in group buys. They say: "when our group miners are no longer profitable we sell them and share the money". But who is going to buy non-profitable miners? Here ya go. People are always buying non-profitable miners... I have no idea why. If you buy with USD you have hope you make profit if Bitcoin price rise. And it seems it is hard to understand how the difficulty works and how quickly you can mine much less / day Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Fear_in_Cube on December 05, 2013, 01:24:08 AM Mining kinda works if the difficulty rises slowly (yeah right) and the exchange rate goes up a couple hundreds more. Other than that you're looking at a losing proposition, especially when you're using over a certain electricity consumption bracket, you're paying 2x more in your electricity bill.
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Hap3niz on December 05, 2013, 03:47:58 AM makes me wanna move into an all bills paid apartment and use up all the energy! lol
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 05, 2013, 04:34:48 AM makes me wanna move into an all bills paid apartment and use up all the energy! lol I think that's the wrong way to look at it... If you already have the equipment, you should be mining with it... if you have the money to buy the equipment, then you should probably just buy the Bitcoins. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: nahtnam on December 05, 2013, 04:49:58 AM My question is why :) What is affecting the reality of bitoin mining and is not taken into account in the calculator I referenced? The difficulty rises. The next rise is in 6 days. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: dzarmush on December 05, 2013, 05:04:27 AM All of that makes me think that Cointerra, BFL and other companies are mining right now with these new fancy chips. They make really good money and sell the equipment in Q1/Q2 when we still have a small chance to earn something. And several months later we sell our miners to total noobs and waiting for new open pre-orders of more powerful miners.
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 05, 2013, 05:09:19 AM All of that makes me think that Cointerra, BFL and other companies are mining right now with these new fancy chips. They make really good money and sell the equipment in Q1/Q2 when we still have a small chance to earn something. And several months later we sell our miners to total noobs and waiting for new open pre-orders of more powerful miners. That is a fair assessment (and a cruel reality) for the mining business since ASICs have become some prevalent (and fraudulent) Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: willpower101 on December 07, 2013, 05:41:52 AM This is one more thing I don't get. I also read about it in group buys. They say: "when our group miners are no longer profitable we sell them and share the money". But who is going to buy non-profitable miners? Here ya go. People are always buying non-profitable miners... I have no idea why. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0 and www.ebay.com They buy unprofitable miners because they suck at using the calculators and bias them towards profitability on accident. I have a 5x9 whiteboard full of economic equilibriums (based on excel, I just like to visualize my data by hand too) that tell me exactly what is profitable and what isn't based on every factor I can think of. Mining is profitable in only a select few scenarios today, and profitable in the future only if estimated conditions based on no less than three different variables are met. It's a gamble, but I could put my money in stocks at 12% return all day long. (Most years I average 23-24%) Very few calculated risk investments can offer 100 - 400% returns in time periods of months. Equipment not only holds value, it shifts with the price of BTC. As BTC goes up, worthless equipment becomes more... haha, worthless technically. But by that, I really mean the price increases and you can sell it for plenty. This mining calculator does a really good job of estimating the worthlessness of machines actually. http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: itayl2 on December 07, 2013, 07:27:56 AM This is one more thing I don't get. I also read about it in group buys. They say: "when our group miners are no longer profitable we sell them and share the money". But who is going to buy non-profitable miners? Here ya go. People are always buying non-profitable miners... I have no idea why. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0 and www.ebay.com They buy unprofitable miners because they suck at using the calculators and bias them towards profitability on accident. I have a 5x9 whiteboard full of economic equilibriums (based on excel, I just like to visualize my data by hand too) that tell me exactly what is profitable and what isn't based on every factor I can think of. Mining is profitable in only a select few scenarios today, and profitable in the future only if estimated conditions based on no less than three different variables are met. It's a gamble, but I could put my money in stocks at 12% return all day long. (Most years I average 23-24%) Very few calculated risk investments can offer 100 - 400% returns in time periods of months. Equipment not only holds value, it shifts with the price of BTC. As BTC goes up, worthless equipment becomes more... haha, worthless technically. But by that, I really mean the price increases and you can sell it for plenty. This mining calculator does a really good job of estimating the worthlessness of machines actually. http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php Would you be willing to share these mathematical insights here / in private? :) Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: shliie on December 07, 2013, 07:42:42 AM Why do you keep hearing mining is unprofitable?
Because, mining really is unprofitable, when you take electricity costs and increasing difficulty into consideration. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: cowandtea on December 07, 2013, 08:01:45 AM I'm very new to this game, so excuse my ignorance. Say I purchase 312GH/s (3 rigs * 104GH/s) for around 13,500 USD. (sounds a reasonable price?) According to what I know, 1800W consumption sounds about right for these rigs. Obviously I join a pool before beginning to mine. If I plug in the data in here: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ with a time frame of 3 months, which I realize is a bit simplistic, but I get about 8390 USD net profits. I realize difficulty may spike due to next gen ASICs and the fact that I would get the rigs only in Jan-Feb 2014, but what is the missing factor here that would convert profits of 8390 USD to some kind of a negative number? What I am missing here? 90% of the posts here mention mining as no longer profitable. I'm wondering whether I'm missing something, or this is just a strategy? Please help! :) Because those that buy bitcoin when it is low at around 100-200$ already gain 5-10 times... meanwhile miners still trying to break-even :) Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: mailhot on December 07, 2013, 08:31:35 AM Really hard question. I also cost a lot of money and time.
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 07, 2013, 09:00:34 AM Why do you keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Because, mining really is unprofitable, when you take electricity costs and increasing difficulty into consideration. Another sockpuppet that doesn't understand math... :( Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Marbit on December 07, 2013, 09:18:42 AM i dont know how to speculate on difficulty. it is too abstract. all i know is, it is skyrocketing, and may continue to skyrocket. whatever you do, don't pre-order, every day counts.
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: AustenN on December 07, 2013, 09:26:12 AM If you can count on getting into mining within the next week I believe it will pay off. The sooner the better. Its more about the investment into bitcoin than paying off what you spent getting into it. Depending on where bitcoin is in 2 years will determine if you made money or not. All in all, this late into the game no one really knows how profitable mining will be. It all depends on where the value of the coins goes.
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Leppoda on December 07, 2013, 10:18:48 AM Why do you keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Because, mining really is unprofitable, when you take electricity costs and increasing difficulty into consideration. Another sockpuppet that doesn't understand math... :( Hi, I am new here. Could you take some time to explain that? I have read quite a lot of posts here, and many of them mentioned the mining revenue will drop 20-30% every 2 weeks. If that's the case, it seems all of the mining equipment I found on the net cannot earn itself back. I have also use some online calculator and find that the cex.io cloud hashing cannot earn itself back as well. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: bryant.coleman on December 07, 2013, 10:59:30 AM Because those that buy bitcoin when it is low at around 100-200$ already gain 5-10 times... meanwhile miners still trying to break-even :) I'll just say one thing. People who bought their mining equipment for BTCs did the most heavy mistake. My friend put 90% of this BTCs to buy used mining equipment when BTC was at 100 usd. He got only around 40% of his cost in return (so far), despite operating the equipment almost continuously. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: BTCuserz on December 07, 2013, 11:04:57 AM Just get out ur mining picks, slap on some headphones, and get mining away, you will catch up in no time.
https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s7.postimg.org/4fqkdtcqz/china_internet_jpeg.jpg&fnr Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: itayl2 on December 07, 2013, 11:12:47 AM Why do you keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Because, mining really is unprofitable, when you take electricity costs and increasing difficulty into consideration. Another sockpuppet that doesn't understand math... :( Perhaps you could use your condescending tone to enlighten us as to the profitability of it? With the expected spike in difficulty, and the shipping time of the ASICs out there, how is one to make a profit? Also an answer comprised of more than 1 line would be great. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Extesa on December 07, 2013, 12:03:23 PM Why do you keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Because, mining really is unprofitable, when you take electricity costs and increasing difficulty into consideration. Another sockpuppet that doesn't understand math... :( Perhaps you could use your condescending tone to enlighten us as to the profitability of it? With the expected spike in difficulty, and the shipping time of the ASICs out there, how is one to make a profit? Also an answer comprised of more than 1 line would be great. I am so confused now. Some people says mining is not profitable, even when you exclude the electricity cost. Some people says mining is profitable, even after you take the electricity cost. Would appreciate if someone can show the math to me!! Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: pontiacg5 on December 07, 2013, 04:58:30 PM Why do you keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Because, mining really is unprofitable, when you take electricity costs and increasing difficulty into consideration. Another sockpuppet that doesn't understand math... :( Perhaps you could use your condescending tone to enlighten us as to the profitability of it? With the expected spike in difficulty, and the shipping time of the ASICs out there, how is one to make a profit? Also an answer comprised of more than 1 line would be great. Are you dense or just dumb? Nobody is going to be able to explain it, because it if was explained so easily everyone would do it, difficulty would skyrocket and everyone would get less. You have to do research on your own, get electricity at a better rate, buy miners cheap and now, never pre-order like a fool. Whatever the hell it is you can do to give you an advantage over everyone else. Only that will make you money mining, and only you are going to be able to figure that out. If you find that too hard, just buy coins. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 07, 2013, 05:47:34 PM Why do you keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Because, mining really is unprofitable, when you take electricity costs and increasing difficulty into consideration. Another sockpuppet that doesn't understand math... :( Perhaps you could use your condescending tone to enlighten us as to the profitability of it? With the expected spike in difficulty, and the shipping time of the ASICs out there, how is one to make a profit? Also an answer comprised of more than 1 line would be great. Sorry for the condescending tone, but I have already explained this in several threads many times over. I'll copy and paste from a previous post I made a few days ago. I am planning on making a website explaining this information because it seems too many people are misinformed. Also, Scrypt mining is now directly related to Bitcoin as sites like middlecoin.com exist where you hash Scrypt directly for Bitcoin and not some shit alt-coin. I will probably buy 3 Used amd 7950 for around 200$ each in Sweden new 7950 cost around 400$ so it's tio much i already got à CPU ram etc i Will only need to buy a motherboard and some cables I got totally free electricity how Much should I expect to get in 1 month and when does Asics come to scrypt 1) You can use this information to find the hashrate for your cards that you want to use: https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison As you can see you should expect 600-700kH/s with those cards... if you get 3 then you can expect 1.8-2.1MH/s. Then go to a calculator like this one: https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc?hashrate=2000&difficulty=1964.83427079&power=&energycost=0.10¤cy=USD And you can plug in the numbers. You should get right around 1LTC a day which is worth about $40 right now. 2) ASICs will never come to Scrypt. Something new will come along before someone takes the time and money to properly develop a Scrypt ASIC. Of course, I hope I am wrong on that. :) It is not so easy, If you want GPU mine, check your electricity rates and use mining calculator before buying GPUs ;) That is an understatement. GPU mining can be very tedious, time consuming, and frustrating. It can take several trips to electronics stores to find parts, and then wait times on ordering supplies like risers, PSU cables, etc. But it can also be quite fun and definitely profitable. I don't know anywhere in the world that the electricity rates would be so high as to you not turn a profit if you don't factor in the cost of the GPU. And I don't factor that in because most of the GPUs still retain their value through resale. The 5850 I bought in April for $60 will still sell for about $60 today. 3x5850 = 1MH/s hashrate and supplied on 850W PSU, if 850W is used 24/7 for a month, the profit expected is: .491 LTC a day * 30 days = 14.73 LTC = $534 at current price Total kilowatt hours used during the month = 30(days) x 24(hours) x .850 (kilowatts per hour) = 612 KW hours* *it will be lower than this since I don't think it's possible for a 850W PSU to constantly draw 850W from the wall, but we will just say that it does anyways For a mining rig of this nature to be unprofitable then your electricity would have to be $0.87/KW hour or higher. In comparison, the typical high average that I have seen is $0.15-0.25 which would mean you are turning electricity into 300-600% of the cost of straight up buying the coins. I see absolutely no reason why anyone would have idle miners at this time, and cannot for the life of me understand why so many people can blindly say "mining is not profitable anymore" Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: PenAndPaper on December 07, 2013, 06:03:00 PM People are so idiot that they just want a magic machine that can create money out of thin air. They just want that and they don't care if they can do better with buying bitcoins instead.
Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: itayl2 on December 07, 2013, 09:27:33 PM Why do you keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Because, mining really is unprofitable, when you take electricity costs and increasing difficulty into consideration. Another sockpuppet that doesn't understand math... :( Perhaps you could use your condescending tone to enlighten us as to the profitability of it? With the expected spike in difficulty, and the shipping time of the ASICs out there, how is one to make a profit? Also an answer comprised of more than 1 line would be great. Sorry for the condescending tone, but I have already explained this in several threads many times over. I'll copy and paste from a previous post I made a few days ago. I am planning on making a website explaining this information because it seems too many people are misinformed. Also, Scrypt mining is now directly related to Bitcoin as sites like middlecoin.com exist where you hash Scrypt directly for Bitcoin and not some shit alt-coin. I will probably buy 3 Used amd 7950 for around 200$ each in Sweden new 7950 cost around 400$ so it's tio much i already got à CPU ram etc i Will only need to buy a motherboard and some cables I got totally free electricity how Much should I expect to get in 1 month and when does Asics come to scrypt 1) You can use this information to find the hashrate for your cards that you want to use: https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison As you can see you should expect 600-700kH/s with those cards... if you get 3 then you can expect 1.8-2.1MH/s. Then go to a calculator like this one: https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc?hashrate=2000&difficulty=1964.83427079&power=&energycost=0.10¤cy=USD And you can plug in the numbers. You should get right around 1LTC a day which is worth about $40 right now. 2) ASICs will never come to Scrypt. Something new will come along before someone takes the time and money to properly develop a Scrypt ASIC. Of course, I hope I am wrong on that. :) It is not so easy, If you want GPU mine, check your electricity rates and use mining calculator before buying GPUs ;) That is an understatement. GPU mining can be very tedious, time consuming, and frustrating. It can take several trips to electronics stores to find parts, and then wait times on ordering supplies like risers, PSU cables, etc. But it can also be quite fun and definitely profitable. I don't know anywhere in the world that the electricity rates would be so high as to you not turn a profit if you don't factor in the cost of the GPU. And I don't factor that in because most of the GPUs still retain their value through resale. The 5850 I bought in April for $60 will still sell for about $60 today. 3x5850 = 1MH/s hashrate and supplied on 850W PSU, if 850W is used 24/7 for a month, the profit expected is: .491 LTC a day * 30 days = 14.73 LTC = $534 at current price Total kilowatt hours used during the month = 30(days) x 24(hours) x .850 (kilowatts per hour) = 612 KW hours* *it will be lower than this since I don't think it's possible for a 850W PSU to constantly draw 850W from the wall, but we will just say that it does anyways For a mining rig of this nature to be unprofitable then your electricity would have to be $0.87/KW hour or higher. In comparison, the typical high average that I have seen is $0.15-0.25 which would mean you are turning electricity into 300-600% of the cost of straight up buying the coins. I see absolutely no reason why anyone would have idle miners at this time, and cannot for the life of me understand why so many people can blindly say "mining is not profitable anymore" Thanks a bunch for the detailed reply. Mining LTC is definitely profitable, I know that. I was referring to Bitcoin.. Anything I'm missing there? increase in difficulty in Jan + Feb combined with shipping dates = sucks to be btc miners? Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: itayl2 on December 07, 2013, 09:50:29 PM Why do you keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Because, mining really is unprofitable, when you take electricity costs and increasing difficulty into consideration. Another sockpuppet that doesn't understand math... :( Perhaps you could use your condescending tone to enlighten us as to the profitability of it? With the expected spike in difficulty, and the shipping time of the ASICs out there, how is one to make a profit? Also an answer comprised of more than 1 line would be great. Are you dense or just dumb? Nobody is going to be able to explain it, because it if was explained so easily everyone would do it, difficulty would skyrocket and everyone would get less. You have to do research on your own, get electricity at a better rate, buy miners cheap and now, never pre-order like a fool. Whatever the hell it is you can do to give you an advantage over everyone else. Only that will make you money mining, and only you are going to be able to figure that out. If you find that too hard, just buy coins. Web hostility is always useful. Thank you. I've been looking for miners available immediately, and could only find really low gh/s miners. The only powerful ones I could find (say 500gh/s and above) will ship Jan 2014 minimum... except for one, not sure about that. Increase in difficulty in Jan and Feb, combined with the shipping times, render it useless for someone who doesn't already have a miner. Also, this is FORUM. If you don't want to take place in it, don't. Thanks for playing. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: naphto on December 07, 2013, 09:52:13 PM 1) difficulty change
2) price change You will never get any ROI. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 08, 2013, 12:15:40 AM 1) difficulty change 2) price change You will never get any ROI. Disagree. The Cube will give you a positive return on investment. I'll even document the proof when mine arrives next week. I paid 1BTC for it and at 38GH/s it should mine over 1BTC in approximately 45-60 days. Scrypt mining is wildly profitable now, but I don't have the hard numbers on it. I'm working on a few things, but I am trying to hash (no pun intended) out all of the details on the outline, but hopefully I will have a more informative site available in the near future that puts these silly rumors to rest. Some devices can be profitable, some never will be. Others will require you to buy it, mine with it, and then sell it and hope to get a profit that way. But it's possible with all of them, it just takes research and initiative. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 08, 2013, 12:21:08 AM Thanks a bunch for the detailed reply. Mining LTC is definitely profitable, I know that. I was referring to Bitcoin.. Anything I'm missing there? increase in difficulty in Jan + Feb combined with shipping dates = sucks to be btc miners? I am not exactly sure that the ASIC production is at the point where the difficulty will continue going up 40%+ much longer. Difficulty gains of 40%+ are very rare, but they just happened twice in October. In November they went back down to 16-25% and if they stay in this range, then it actually doesn't suck to be a BTC miner depending on what the $/GH cost is... no idea what the golden ratio would be right now, but I am going to be doing some research on this when I have more free time after Christmas. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: cp1 on December 08, 2013, 04:07:21 AM Disagree. The Cube will give you a positive return on investment. I'll even document the proof when mine arrives next week. I paid 1BTC for it and at 38GH/s it should mine over 1BTC in approximately 45-60 days. If difficulty increase is limited to 25% per jump then you'll break even in 75 days. Higher than that and it doesn't look good. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: Damnsammit on December 08, 2013, 04:59:17 AM Disagree. The Cube will give you a positive return on investment. I'll even document the proof when mine arrives next week. I paid 1BTC for it and at 38GH/s it should mine over 1BTC in approximately 45-60 days. If difficulty increase is limited to 25% per jump then you'll break even in 75 days. Higher than that and it doesn't look good. Do you have the numbers on that? I think I have numbers that prove otherwise, but they are on my work computer and I won't have access to them until Monday. Thanks :) Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: cp1 on December 08, 2013, 05:24:09 AM Date/Difficulty/BTC earned
Code: 12/7/2013 12/10/2013 12/22/2013 1/3/2014 1/15/2014 1/27/2014 2/8/2014 Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: simonce2 on December 08, 2013, 05:33:58 AM Date/Difficulty/BTC earned Code: 12/7/2013 12/10/2013 12/22/2013 1/3/2014 1/15/2014 1/27/2014 2/8/2014 Where do you get that expected future difficulty? PS. Never mind, find that you just plug 25% in each increase. Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: PenAndPaper on December 08, 2013, 07:08:21 PM Thanks a bunch for the detailed reply. Mining LTC is definitely profitable, I know that. I was referring to Bitcoin.. Anything I'm missing there? increase in difficulty in Jan + Feb combined with shipping dates = sucks to be btc miners? I am not exactly sure that the ASIC production is at the point where the difficulty will continue going up 40%+ much longer. Difficulty gains of 40%+ are very rare, but they just happened twice in October. In November they went back down to 16-25% and if they stay in this range, then it actually doesn't suck to be a BTC miner depending on what the $/GH cost is... no idea what the golden ratio would be right now, but I am going to be doing some research on this when I have more free time after Christmas. Just wait to see how rare the 40% jumps are going to be after february... Title: Re: Why do I keep hearing mining is unprofitable? Post by: PenAndPaper on December 08, 2013, 08:15:21 PM BitCoin Mining Hardware takes so long to arrive and by the time I got it its already out of date. If I order the new mining hardware I'm stuck in the same circle all over again. I'm tired of waiting for outdated mining equipment so I mine here - Instant BitCoin Mining - https://cex.io/r/0/Strider/0/ I find this much more efficient and my electric bill went way down! Cloud Mining Works (https://cex.io/r/0/Strider/0/) Yes cloud mining is a good way not to wait for outdated hardware but in a way to buy outdated hardware right away. Also stop posting referrals ::) |
