Bitcoin Forum

Hey guys, me and some friends are currently pooling a lot of $ to start accuring machines to start mining crypto currencies.
Researching everything is proving a real headache, one forum may say something is great, yet another site will say its a scam. We have already ordered a Neptune, but does anybody know anything about these Xtreme Miners, allegedly they will have 3 machines coming out in jan/feb? 2 of them look faster, cheaper, and use less power than the neptune, does anyone know what is the catch?
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
http://www.xtrememiners.net/#!products/cngp
any advice greatly appreciated.

I'm afraid there is no best miner for newbies,

Better just buy bitcoins.

the " just buy bitcoins " reply seems to be just a way for miners to try and stop more people from getting in and making the difficulty rise faster .
 why do you not explain to all of us why " there is no best miner for newbies " Are all the miners out there only able to be plugged in to the wall by an experienced miner ? Is it like driving a truck over the road where you can not get a job doing unless you already have experience doing it ?

http://bitcoindifficulty.com/

Take a look at that graph. That's the reason why i would also suggest you to buy instead of mine. Its simply to hard to get BTC with just mining if you don't got an amazing miningrig.

xtrememiners.net - scam or not?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345612

I recommend bitminter.com as an easy to use miner and pool to just jump into.

The reason not to mine and spend your money on btc's rather than mining hardware is straightforward. BTC price will in all likely hood only go up from here. With an occasional sell off dropping the price for a few days.
The reason to mine is a philosophical one if your not going to make much doing so. If a single entity gets more then 50% of the hashing power they effectively control the network. So you mining even a tiny bit helps keep that from not happening.

In my opinion. Everyone who owns and uses bitcoins, should have a miner running to support the network.

In case you make mining by GPU it has almost no effect for the network. Just wasting of electricity...

I have to agree, I running two USB block errupters not because these can pay off, but just to support the network a bit.

Not bad but also not good

The best thing for a newbe is to mine on new currencies.
With Bitcoin mining its impossible to make money at the moment, unless you have an uncle, which owns a hashing hardware company.

Litecoin mining is still available but will also be harder the next months, i guess. Maybe we have luck and there will be a nice BTC crash, so that LTC is falling as well. Then there will be maybe decreasing the difficulty there.
If that happens I expect LTC to raise again latest on the next BTC hype next year.

Best thing is, to buy yourself a nice computer with nice GPU(s) like R9 290x and mine currencies like NVC, PPC or YAC.

I think people say to just stick with trading because there is a lot more to mining than there is to trading. In trading, you simply have to keep an eye on the market fluctuations, buying low and selling high. With mining, you have to keep an eye on the market and also speculate difficulty levels, estimate ROI, set up/maintain hardware, and hope the market stays in your favor for trading later on. You're a full time maintenance tech and stock trader once you purchase a rig or two.

Keep this in mind when deciding how quickly you can make the most money in this game.

Agree with you. One can mine some alt-cryptos with low-end CPU, while even using latest GPU for BTC mining can be just a waste of electricity due to BTC difficulty.

When getting a miner you must be lucky , and i mean lucky for thr company not to:
-run away with the money , deliver after 6 months , deliver something that doesn't match the initial specs.
With bitcoins , you must just hope that the price won't go down. In which case , you're gonna be at a lose even if you own a miner.

So it's safer to go with bitcoins , looking on the profile of the current mining hardware manufacturers.

And with this , when all people go and mine that coin , the difficulty will rise and you're in the same predicament once more.
Then people will flock to another alt coin , leaving that coin unprotected , and....
Don't forget the cheapest miner on the market is now a botnet.

I agree that a lot of newbies will be best off mining altcoins.   I've been mining quarkcoin with a 6 year old cpu and getting about 8 per day.  Not a lot, but still.   Also, mining worldcoin with my gpu.   Selling about half of what I mine for BTC and holding the rest.   Some alternate cryptocurrencies have seen gains much bigger than bitcoin.

You should mine some WTF coins.  ;D

In most cases, newbies pay more for mining equipment than the equipment will ever mine. Most newbies buy equipment and start mining without even determining if they are going to make a profit. I have yet to see a newbie miner actually do the math and then ask an experienced miner to verify it.

The appropriate answer to the question, "should I mine bitcoins?" is no. If you post this question in a forum, then you don't have the knowledge or ability to mine profitably.

The Neptune looks good at 12k USD now, the only thing is delivery in 4 to 8 months is too long, many things will happen in that time, such as: latest asic chips becoming more energy efficient, current mine technology becoming more mature and less expensive, new makers with good products, known  makers not being able to deliver.

With difficulty going up the hosting costs could become a problem, KNC charges 350 USD per month for the Jupiter, the fact that they haven't published energy consumption for the Neptune makes more probable it'll cost more to host it.

get whatever is in your budget and do some research on what is more profitable to mine with the hardware you get

I'd double check that good driver exist if you want a GPU. Some of the OpenCL stuff is a pain.

Are you willing to wait for hardware to ship? Many manufacturers are currently taking pre-orders on "next gen" hardware that has yet to be made. This is kind of a sub-gamble because not only are you betting on bitcoins but you'll also be betting on the manufacturer to deliver in a timely manner. If you aren't willing to wait for hardware and want to start mining immediately, then you are left with trying to buy out existing hardware from other miners... at a time when many other people are also trying to do the same thing. Demand is at an all time high for mining equipment; many people who bought mining equipment months ago are able to easily resell their gear at a huge mark-up. Are you willing to risk being left holding the bag when this bubble pops? Is it a bubble? It's fairly safe to assume that bitcoin is not a bubble, but is that so safe to assume for the equipment values? I think the rising difficulty has a large influence on that.

yes and with the very light penalty imposed for this crime it will run rampant soon enough . I think the company in Ca that got caught for taking over 10 K or so of computers got a simple fine of 325K I think it was as long as he did not do it again in the next ten years . Should have been 20 years at hard labor .

Why not do cloud mining? That way you don't have to pay for electricity.

Every hardware maker is coming out with new faster less power consuming equipment. But everything is a pre-order so you have to buy then wait. The hardware companies are using the pre-order money to do research and development. Sometimes they release on time and sometimes there are delays. I suggest sticking with established companies like KnCMiner or Butterfly Labs. http://mentaso.com/ keeps up with new hardware and has a decent review.

Whats did you say there?
Stick with an established company like........BFL?????

I was wondering why this was stated myself. Proceed with caution when buying from Butterfly Labs, they have about the same speed as a butterfly when it comes to delivery...unless they've done some major changes since then.

And ordered and paid for a bfl 50gh miner on black Friday.  Hope I get it soon.

I would not hope too much, I waited half year for mine before delivered.

Well cloudhashing boasts an incredible 4 - 20 GH/s  for 275 - 950 a year . worthless as far as I am concerned . What could you possibly gain with 20GH/s ?
 Minercloud has 1 5 GH/s totaly useless at any price

There are a lot of idiots customers who think that 50usd/GH is good because they can't afford a miner which costs 2000.
Instead of going for a group buy , they end up buying those pieces of garbage.

A lot of you mention trading. The problem with trading is that you have to actually know what you're doing with trading. Its no different than trading on traditional currency markets. Noobs usually loose tier pants in currency trading. So just because you're trading bitcoin and not euros it does not mean it's any easier. Mining on the other hand is pretty a rather easy enterprise.

I don't think newbies should consider mining bitcoin.  The competition is too hard.  Maybe mine an altcoin and convert to bitcoin?  That is what I am doing now.

I tried to buy some Linden on second life and then trade that off for bitcoin on Virwox . What a pain in  arse that was . Second life is some kind of video game world  . you had to open an account there and one with this exchange  and link them . Then go into the game world to a atm machine and get a code . buy their currency and then send it to virwox and exchange it for what ever you want . Never did figure out how to find that ATM machine .

It will probably cost too much for a newbie to start mining now. I don't think you'll get a high enough ROI for it to be worth it.

I second bitminter. it was what got me into the mining culture. now i use coinex for a majority of altcoins and ypool for XPM.

It's true in case of Bitcoin. But thereare many forks with reasonable difficulty to start mining. Plus for now new several forks appear every week.

I second this. I'm new to the mining game, and every opportunity I've seen so far has either slammed a door in my face or offered me candy and invited me into the heavily tinted minivan. I'm not impressed with many of the companies and offers out there so far. As tempting as it is to basically create your own money, it's easier right now to just trade the damn stuff. There may still be some profits in GPU mining for altcoins, but even those are getting slim now. Gonna have to hope for some major changes in Bitcoin values to make mining worthwhile.

Personally I would think that bitcoin is almost done with . I think half the coins are already mined and that would probably be down to almost none by the end of the year with all these high power miners hitting the market . these companies are just playing it out to the end . They are mining like crazy and know it almost over so they are selling all the miners they can before it is too late so their profits can be maximized .
 I am still thinking of a 400GH/s miner and use it for bitcoin to pay it off then for others to make money and hope their values go up as bitcoin crashes in the dirt when there are none left to mine . Bitcoin can not ever be a main currency because it is far too hard to purchase one and most people would never go through the BS it takes to do it .

I even didnt try buy the Lindens after I read their warnings all Lindens should be used in game only and could be confiscated.. (or something like this)

i think it's better to mine litecoin and some coins lite that and exchange them directly
you can do a good profit with just a GPU
bettet then getting involved in very hard war like bitcoin mining

1. Bitcoin won't crash in the dirt when there are no more left to mine nor when it becomes too difficult to reasonably mine for the block reward.
2. Bitcoin won't be fully mined by next year nor the year after that...the last estimate I read about was 2032, but then again, it was designed to be fully mined by 2140 wasn't it?

It's a huge risk to get into Bitcoin mining if all you are doing it for is the money.

75% just out of interest 25% maybe I could earn some of the money back ;)

And even when the block reward has reached 0 you still earn the transaction fees included in the blocks right? If the BTC usage grows the reward might still be interesting.

Exactly. There will always be an incentive for miners.

After many hours of BS I finally tried an experiment and went to virwox . Funded with paypal . Only 80.00 allowed . Cost 3 bucks to do it . bought linden . 76.00 . Sold linden for BTC got 0.077 BTC . transfered to scam house , I mean coinbase. Am now waiting for the price to up over 900 and will sell the .077 and see how much I profit . Am hoping for 1 or 2 dollars .
 Meanwhile I am waiting for it to also drop to around 700.00 for btc and then I am going to buy 1 and wait for it to go up some and sell . But unfortunately coinbase has a crappy business model and even worse customer service so it will take about 3 days to get my coin so I can sell it . ID verification for instant buy does not work and customer service will not do anything  or even respond to your request more than once and that is jsut to put you off with BS . I would never trust these people with a lot of money for more than a few minutes if possible .