Bitcoin Forum

According to rise of difficult of mining.

I must say it is so hard to earn some real cash from doing it.

You invest for example $2000, it is not a lot like for mining hardware, but for most of us it is quite large investitment.

So you spend 2000$. If difficulty will not go up (not possible) you will have your money back in about 4 months.
If your mining hardware will not fail.

But difficult will rise. So time to get money back will add to 4 months and it is gonna be (example) 6-7months.

So :)

The only good way to start mining is invest 10.000$ - 15.000$ minimum.
Then we can talk.

It is getting to be harder and harder :)
Like it should be. But... i just say - soon normal user will be not able to mine in reasonable investitment price.

An investment which shows a profit after 12 month would be conspired a good investment by most people.

Plus, alongside rising difficulty the BTC price may rise as well.

Maybe you right. From my point of view it is getting to risky to invest into mining.
There is no any varranty that you will have profits :)
Sure - risk is needed. But - What I just think is, that soon there would be better ways then mining to earn BTC for those who hasnt got a lot of money.

I doubt you would find any takers beyond 4 months to breakeven right now.  In fact the auction and sales threads support that claim.

The harsh reality is that reliability of these new miners is completely unknown and unknowable.  Failure rates on some gear is already into the 10% range.  Add that to the extreme difficulty increases and bitcoin valuation risk and mining investments are painfully risky.  Many, many folks would be broke right now if not for the November/December moonshot in prices.

If you want to bet on price increases it is far safer to buy coins and put them in cold storage.

I guess youn re right.
I think simmilar. Good way to invest money into crypto is just to buy some BTC :)

This, right here. Not only is the reliability of miners unknown, Bitcoin itself is still new enough that it's risky even in its current state.

It seems the only way to make money in mining is to buy the most efficient miner (seems to be an antminer s1) mine it as long as possible until it loses good resale value, and then manage to sell it to a newbie who is willing to overpay.

I really don't see the fun in that.  Which is a shame, because I like the whole mining process.  As someone who doesn't know a great deal about computers, and someone who knew nothing about mining about a month ago, I've learned a lot.

Seems like the rich will have the money to get rich off of mining while they knock out and take advantage of the little guy.

Human greed wins again.

It's no different than the businesses here that keep having IPOs. They are all selling for WELL over what they are worth. Some are selling their IPO for as many as 100-200 years' worth of income, and people are stupid enough to buy them anyways in the hopes that someday they will be worth something.

PT Barnum would be proud

lol, I just wish people would think before they jump. People say "oh, a casino! And it's only 0.001 BTC per share! Who cares if they're raising 50 million dollars in BTC and haven't even launched, they're worth it!"

Not if the investment is a capital asset that depreciates at a rate of 50% every one or two months.

How is someone who invest that much not affected by the rising difficult?

A big mining farm suffers the same effects + they have much heavier effects of running expenses, like power, cooling, rent and maybe even staff. They have to shut down the very moment they are not profitable.

Mining is not about "printing" money. It is designed to be a highly competitive field with minimal gains.

He's not. but investing 10k-15k$ will make it more sure that you will get your money back and earn some more.

Well it's up to how you manage your BTC. You can stack up your profits by trading your mined coins. Just don't think about gambling.

You still haven't explained why that is. I know several who have invested quite more. Why should someone with 15k get more BTC per invested $ than someone who only invests 1000?

If you buy 1 TH for 10,000 or 100GH for 1,000 makes no difference in the $ to BTC ratio.

There is one big difference.  If you buy 1 Th/s you can put it in your garage and just pay for the additional power bill.

If you buy 100Th/s you need a building, racks, air conditioners, security and more.  Buying that will cost more than your mining hardware, and leasing it will cost more than the miner makes in a few months.

The advantage will swing back to distributed miners soon.  But don't expect to pay your living expenses with 1 or 2 machines.

That's what I said in my first post in this thread. And you are right. Assuming hardware cost is the same, hobbits miners even have an advantage before professional miners. It's just that Bitcoin Mining is a Marked without any real entry barriers. There is no special skill you require to do it, no hard to aquire licences, no millions in investments. Markeds like that always stay to are big part in private hands, but also are barely profitable. Think running a bar, pizzeria, a webshop, a hairdresser's shop.

I just got an asic machine with 230gh...

Though I was going to pay it off in 3 months...

checked again, oops didn't quite allow for difficulty rising...

So, when it get to the point in 2 months or so that I switch it off, does that not mean that a whole lot of people will also switch off?

If this is the case then the hash rate drops, people look at buying instead, prices go up, difficulty goes down and we switch back on again?

This seem like the logical way it should go, but BTC is so unpredictable.

I wonder what my investment will feel like in a coupe of months, lol.

You will not mine anymore, someone else will by that hardware from you and mine on free electricity, total hasrate will not be affected. You will decide tobuy coins, that is great, value will increase.

The amount you invest should not matter.  If investing $2000 is not a good investment, how is investing $10,000 make that investment any better?
The risk is the same, regardless how much you invest.

IN your eyes, with the exception of just buying BTC, what is a good investment otherwise?  I could have sworn that I read somewhere that the typical ROI is considered good if it can exceed 20% per annum.

Gold is near production costs, but it is not an investment.  More like a storage of value.
Look at utilities stocks, some can pay 5%.  Private mortgages can pay 5-7%, depending on the risk.

Mining hardware is not a good investment for two reasons (among others):

1. Extremely fast depreciation in assets and profit
2. Market is filled with uninformed participants who bid up h/w prices to astronomical levels

Buying hardware today is like buying tech stocks first week of March 2000.

Buying BTC directly is risky, but it is probably less risky then buying mining hardware.  You are buying a limited resource that (hopefully) will not depreciate 20-30% every two weeks.
Versus buying mining hardware that is virtually unlimited resource that depreciates 20%+ every two weeks.

EDIT: ask HF BabyJet customers how they feel about spending 50-60 BTCs for each HF box.

If difficulty keeps increasing, people with less efficient hardware will eventually quit mining, and then difficulty will adjust itself...

The remaining miners should be having the most efficient hardware, but they may not be all sharks or whales....