Bitcoin Forum

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Crypto currency mining is fascinating topic. It is 21st century mining with computer hardware and software. Looking for blocks on the block-chain to be rewarded in crypto currency. To start crypto currency mining business or hobby you have to understand what kind of risks you might face. To start Bitcoin mining you will need and ASIC miner, which is basically bunch of CPUs. This kind of equipment might cost you a lot of capital, so it is a good thing to recognize the risks you might face.

✔️In the early days in Bitcoin mining you could make some profit with your laptop CPU or GPU. These days are long gone, every year new more efficient hardware is been developed. Which makes older hardware obsolete for mining. Meaning that bad timing investment could potentially make your investment worthless.
✔️Hardware failure is very big thing to reduce mining risks. This hardware needs to be run 24/7 to gain the most optimal revenue from mining. Very often these devices/hardware do brake down, asic miners are the worse hardware comparing to GPU. Hashing board failure is common problem on them, which will need additional investment after 6 month from your purchase. If this would happen to your devices.
✔️The one of the hardest parts is not enough profits. Crypto currencies are extremely volatile, one day you could mine in profit the next day you might be at loss. If you are using latest hardware, most important to stay in the game and mine with profit. Is to have cheapest electric rate between all the other miners on network. Electric is everyone biggest OPEX cost, dont even think to start mining as a business large scale if your power costs is above 6-7c a kw/h. It might be profitable to mine with 20c per kw/h today but it might not be anymore tomorrow. Which means you will need to shutdown your mining farm.
✔️Legal risks . Crypto currency is still very new, and it has not been regulated very well. So you might face some kind of crypto currency ban in the country which might affect your mining operation.
✔️Hacking – Use crypto currency safe as possible. You know the good old saying not your keys not your coins. Don’t keep your mined coins on exchange. And use only community trusted mining pools.
✔️And the last of the top 6 is the environmental risk. Choose mining location wisely. Mining hardware most likely will use a lot of power, this is why they will produce a lot of heat. And heat will affect your mining operation. Something like mining container could be an option.
Recognize your risks before starting a mining operation.

Please comment down bellow with any more risks you might think it is worth to mention.
Video HERE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eNuG04n2zI&feature=youtu.be)

If it's a farm it usually means ASICs. ASICs are the biggest risk for several reasons,
including HW quality.

- limited flexibility, usually only one algo supported per device

- short lifespan, ASIC miners become obsolete very fast with no secondary usage (unlike GPUs)

- there are a lot of unethical ASIC peddlers that sell crap, provide no support or are just scammers.

- International borders, most ASICS come from China exacerbating other issues.

- market volatility, 2018, need I say more.

A mixed farm (ASIC, GPU, CPU) would mitigate some of those risks.

I think 6 to 7 cent power is meh.

I think 4 to 5 is a better hedge number.

I think home mining is next to dead 💀 but that if you want to mine at home 🏠 you can do so small scale.

I've been mining at home in a detached garage since the beginning of 2017, 120 gpus, a couple ASICs and some FPGAs on a 100 amp 240 line.  For me its all about overhead which is electrical cost I have 6 cent power and its ok.  If I wanted to mine to make a living I would have to rent adding to cost and I would want cheaper power.  If you wanted to make a decent full time living the operation would have to be very big and expensive to start.  Currently I do not see much gear worth buying, BTC having and waiting for new 5nm chips from bitmain and new fmaily of GPUs coming from AMD and NVIDIA.

Sorry I was thinking anything under 6-7 cents, otherwise you would get burned in bear market. Currently mining isn't that bad  profit on some Asics about 6 month for ROI, ofcource if nothing changes .

There are more risks to mining at home as to say some dedicated warehouse. One of the issues that I was always worried about was burning the house down. It never happened but the amount of exploded capacitors, melted PCIe cables, melted SATA cables and exploding PSU made me very cautious.

Another issue I had was security, especially during late 2017 and early 2018. Back then most ETH mineable GPUs were going for maybe $500 each, and if someone saw that you got 100 of these in your place you could easily get robbed. Hence you had to do it stealth and with the huge heat and loud noise, it wasn't always easy.

The last was obviously the fear of massive difficulty jumps and massive price crashes, however even farms have to deal with this issue. And most GPUs will always hold some value so you won't lose everything, just will be a pain in the butt to sell like right now where there is a lack of demand for GPUs and gamers nickel and dime you constantely.

You really do think that gpus have resell value untill you need to sell them. It is easy to sell GPUs when profitability in high. But when profitability is very low, nobody wants to buy gpus. Same with buying the coin, you'll never know when will be the right time to buy and sell it. Same applies to hardware, newer buy hardware when you see the price has doubled.

Thank you for this.
Im starting a GPU mining farm, just because i got really cheap power. I have nearly 50kw available for only 0.037 cents a kw/h.
First 10kw are in with 70x RX5700 gpus

Cheap power is the secret. You have very good rate to be here for long time.
I would mix it up with some aisic miners just to diversify. But your gpus seems one of the best for roi currently.

Some pointers if you're just starting out.

. For the cheapest CPU like G4400, 8 GPUs per system is fine and anything above it will start to cause issues.
. Go with a Linux distro & try to automate most of the stuff. Windows will definitely take a lot of time to maintain it.
. Make sure to clean your rigs from time to time. Dust is the major enemy for card damages compared to anything out there.
. Use Ethernet cables for the internet rather than WiFi as the latency will be less.
. If you're BIOS modding and the card does not have dual bios switch. Backup BIOS for each and every card before modding it.

the biggest fear is price insta crash ehhe, nothing is more fearful than that, take eth for example, 1400 usd and few weeks later 80 usd, that is 18 times lower, not even superman can minimize the risk damage when that happens. If a coin crashes 2x okay, but 18x, that is death.

Nice tips , just want to mention that my 12xgpu rigs with G3930 running absolutely fine.

What usually sounds to good to be true, dont get into it.  this comes down to overpriced hardware and coins.

Thank you are you mining yourself?
What suggestion would you have for cooling? Summers are quite hot here in peak about 30-40C.

Lol. Has the 2018 bear market really been that long ago that you forgot that ETH hit $1400 sometime in January 2018 and it hit $80 when BTC broke the $6000 support sometime in November or December 2018. So its not "few weeks later" its more like almost a year later.

Either way I agree with you because ETH was $1400 and a week later it had spikes to $750 and a week after that had a spike to $500 or so. When March 2018 began it was the last time it was >$800 which was the best time to mine any alt coins.

Biggest hurdle in our country in setting up a mining farm is the last of your statement, environmental risk as our country has a limited supply of electricity and the price of electricity is very high. Like this, mining is not profitable at all as mining is using too much power to operate.

And because of it there are no or only few are strong enough to start their mining farm in our country.

Can you share which country is this?

Mining So far is the best thing could happen to me ;)

To start mining you really have to consider all risks to avoid them,
1. build a better mining farm or setups, enough cooling engines will make the cards live longer for years.

2. Go for latest mining cards and avoid old cards because they can become obsolete so fast

3. Think more about electricity, if you can build solar panels and batteries it will be better

If I have to judge mining it will be because of my country, high electricity fee makes all my mining dreams end up in a dustbin, if I have to do this someday I will have to build a big solar power grid which will cost me a lot, for now I enjoy trading and staking coins

Yes or if doing at scale, you can host in other countries where price is acceptable.

The only way you will come close to making mining worthwhile is if you can control the full-stack. From cutting edge R&D to manufacturing of the hardware as well as the supporting infrastructure. You must make a profit at every step. The old model of buying public available hardware, paying for power generation and renting space is out. If you do this then you wiil almost be on an equal footing to your competitors. To match the competition and have a small chanced of beating them you also need to control the underlying blockchain that your targeting. Such as the mining pool's and even have a stake in the blockchain project.    This is what I mean with controlling full-stack.

Price crash is the biggest fear ehhe and it happens so fast ehhe, in just one day bitcoin lost 60% of its value, now is barely alive ehhe but dont worry trolls, in 2 months or so bitcoin will be around 100k because when it is pumped it happens fast too ehhe

The diff will lower.

Ltc diff dropped from 6 to 5 due to market crash.

btc is due to drop from 16.4 to 15.0

over extended miners will have to shut down over the next two months.

This price crash had nothing to do with crypto. In fact the crypto price is the least of my concerns
at the moment.

A crypto specific crash would be a risk, but not a primary one IMO.

Been buying open box RX 5700's and with this down turn my gpus have lost less value then if I would have bought btc and they are still producing a little income.  Just a pain in the ass to sell if things don't recover.  Hell the 1070s I bought in early 2017 are still running and have been long paid off and still worth a little.  

I am getting close to turning of my older gpus the profit margin is razor thin and if things get worse I'm shutting down for a while.  No need for a huge electric bill.  I wounder what the btc miners are doing, this sucks with the having coming.