Bitcoin Forum

I may only be a teenager, but I want to start investing. I've been looking around seeing what I could do to turn a few little dollars into twice its value. I've wanted to just wait for the value of mtgoxCAD to go down then to just buy buy buy, then sell it all when it gets expensive, but then I saw mining contracts and just mining Bitcoins myself. If I were to go with this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48935.0) contract, and I used the 500MHash for 9 dollars I would only be getting 10 dollars from it at current mtgoxUSD rates.

I'm still curious about other options.Now my question is, what do you guys think would be a viable plan to make some small change from Bitcoin?

I am also a investor and a owner of a investment fund :) I am also a teenager (17), if you want to get into investing I recommend setting up a GLBSE account and start getting into some stock exchange, I also recommend to setup a margin trade bot, for example https://dnnbitcoin.aricie.com .
Mining is a nice little extra income but in the end I think it's a waste of time if you compare to the profit you make, if you need any help with starting up your investements just give me a shout and I can help you get started :D

Dang, thanks man!

Here's the method I've used that has helped me make 700% profit on a $100 investment since about June 20th.  That's right...700% profit using a SAFE strategy since the bubble burst.

I took $100 when TradeHill was still accepting Dwolla (you will need a new deposit method at this point) and deposited it into my TH account. 150% of my profit has come through mining using a 6970.  The other 550% has come though trading.

The method:

1)  Use entire deposit to place a buy order approximately 10% below current market value.  The exact price at which you set your bid order is dependent on a number of factors and takes a little experimentation to get "correct."
2)  Wait for someone to dump a large amount of coins
3)  Typically, a quick dump on TradeHill is immediately followed by a return to the pre-dump price assuming that the dump on TradeHill wasn't precipitated by a dump on Mt. Gox
4)  Immediately sell your coins at the pre-dump price unless you have very good reason to think the price is going to continue to go up.

The pros of this method:  
1)  Assuming you keep close observance of the market, it will be very hard for you to lose a lot, if any, money.  It's very low risk.
2)  You stand to make anywhere between 5-10% profit on every trade.  

The cons of this method
1)  There will be many times where you will not perform any trades for several weeks, either because the price stays very stable or increases.
2)  If the price increases, you may miss out on a rally because you are always waiting for the dumps.
3)  If your buy order is not adjusted correctly, you will miss the dumps.  I can't tell you how many times I would have caught the dips if I had increased my bid price by a penny.  For example, today I had 2 buy orders placed:  1 buy order was set at 3.1300001 and the other was at 3.130001.  One of the dumps hit my 3.130001.  It missed my 3.1300001.  
4)  This is NOT a long-term investment strategy.  It's essentially an extremely conservative day-trading strategy.

Results:
About 80% of my trades have been profitable whereas 20% have either been break-even trades or trades for a loss.  I've also made a few mistakes including (yikes) typos while entering my bids or sells.

Hmm, thats a nice strategic plan you got there joint :D

what if I were to open up a bitcoin business(like a mining contract thing) would that be profitable in anyway?

Well yes there are a lot of different bitcoin businesses that are profitable, for example i run one were I offer Spotify Premium codes for Bitcoins :)
Regarding Mining contracts, it can be profitable but you can also lose (well not gain as much as you would have if you mined yourself) it depends on how the prices of bitcoin moves and how the difficulty changes, If someone pays to mine 1Ghash for a month and they pay the amount they would mine at a certain difficulty to you and then the difficult decreases then you lose money as you got paid less then your mining rig pulls in. If the difficulty increases then you make a profit.
At least that's how I have seen most mining contracts being setup :)

oh, thanks! ;D

I get free electricity as part of my rent agreement and I've thought of doing the same thing.

Mining isn't that profitable for me even with free electricity.  I'm making like $1 a day haha.

I've put it out there that if anyone wants to move a small rig of theirs to my place, they are more than welcome.  I would simply charge them something along the lines of half their current electric bill.  But I still don't see myself making more than $50 a month if someone took me up on this.

If you're talking about setting up a mining company from scratch, then I'm assuming you're talking about investing in a lot of hardware.  It would take you a very long time to pay off that hardware.  It's a big gamble.

Indeed setting up a mining company from scratch is not only a big investment cash wise but also takes a lot of time to make sure all the hardware is running 100% of the time, I recommend finding someone that you can offer a good or a service and sell it in Bitcoins, it's easier to start with small amounts that way and a good way to get into the bitcoin community :)

Thanks for the advice guys, I really appreciate it! ;D

No problems :D, if you need any more help just ask. It's just nice to see that I can help out someone that was in the same situation as I was half a year ago :P