Bitcoin Forum

Imagine if electricity was free and you had $5000. What mining farm would you set up, and for which coin?

-Just a bit of fun :)

If I had to pick just one I'd go with BTC but there are a few that come to mind honestly.

Either 3 of those new Gridseed Blades or 10 Antminers S1s, maybe 2 of those Coincraft A1 1TH/s clones if you can get it around $2500 each.

If Gridseed Scrypt coins, if Ants or A1 then Bitcoin or SHA-256 coins.

easy..
what to mine? BTC
how? well if you TRULY arent paying any electricity costs, then you should buy the cheapest old miners out there like some BFL or Avalon G1 old scrap.. this will maximize your Ghz output per $ invested.
after a quick look on the market, I am pretty sure there are many desperate sellers who want to get rid of their old miners for really dirt cheap.
a hash is a hash whether it comes from an S1, A1 coincraft, or a KnC miner..

Whatever company just released their new hardware the other day and assuming the specs are still profitable
Scrypt or SHA256

I would buy all the junked Avalons and ASICMINER blades and mine Bee Tea Seas

So do you mean those who pay for electric bil are not having that much profit?

I would buy 10 Antminers and mine bitcoins.  No other coins interests me. 

I'm trying to illustrate a point.. which is that if electricity is free, then buy the cheapest hash per $ paid..
for example, if you have free gas, would you factor in MPG in your car buying decision?
same concept applies with miners, if I have free electricity, then I'd buy a cheap-ass 200 Ghz avalon miner (from some1 that desperately wants to sell it) that costs say $200 than say an S1 antminer at $470 or a 200 Ghz BitFury at $800

I'm trying to illustrate a point.. which is that if electricity is free, then buy the cheapest hash per $ paid..
for example, if you have free gas, would you factor in MPG in your car buying decision?
same concept applies with miners, if I have free electricity, then I'd buy a cheap-ass 200 Ghz avalon miner (from some1 that desperately wants to sell it) that costs say $200 than say an S1 antminer at $470 or a 200 Ghz BitFury at $800
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Ask this on Alt coin section, everyone is gonna say BTC on here.

free does not mean unlimited, so when buying the miners it is good to take energy efficiency into consideration.

Lets say you have X amount of free electricity per month (limited by breaker, wire, street transformer, or other factor).

now lets say that X amount is totally free.
but you have to decide between a miner that uses 10 Watts per GH/s vs 1 W per GH/s, well is you use the miner that use 1 W per GH/s, given the same total amount of free energy you will get 10 times the hashing rate.

So free does not mean unlimited, so making good use of that electricity is a good idea, since it is an asset that you have, and the better you managed that asset the better.

Think of it this way the bitcoin faucet gives you free bitcoins, but not because they are free you are going to waste them because they are limited.

This is the very concept that gives bitcoin value, a limit of 21 million coins.
 
Given that electricity is limited, you have to consider all factors to make a good decision not just hashes per dollar.

Also getting rid of the heat is a pain, since the most efficient method is the use of fans a lots of ventilation, since if you use air conditioning you will be sacrificing energy that could instead be used for mining.

I know it is one of those thing that the average person will never get, the fact that something does not have a price, does not mean it has no value, even bitcoin itself when it started had no price, but it did have value.

if electricity is limited, which in reality it is, then yes I agree with what you said.. otherwise, I see no problem with my point.

The way I think about it as an economic optimization problem. You have an input and output, as well as a belief of what the bitcoin value should be, all you have to do is solve the optimization problem and see what hash per dollar *given* your electricity constraint and bitcoin value belief yields the maximum.

The average person may not get this, but it is not hard to educate.

I check the http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency every 3 days.
Mine as the best currency.
Probably most of the time dogecoin.

Would probably mine a SHA coin, as that uses most energy as of now, and if you have free electricity.... well then, what the heck:)

I would go for antminer S1's.
They are easy to use and cheap. They are still in stock now(27th of april).
If you order from bitmain directly you still get the 90 days of Warrenty.

The best way in this situation is mine bitcoins with antminers

mining bitcoin directly, because now the scrypt scene seem even more dead

Considering the rocketing difficulty of BTC, I would buy 3 of those Gridseed blade miners and mine Litecoins. One can always convert Litecoins to BTC.

Probably whatever is most profitable at the time, which would likely be a newer scrypt coin. I'd also exchange whatever was mined to bitcoin though.

 I would find the most profitable alt coins and mine them , then exchange to bitcoins and sell them, with free electricity I would want to get like at least 10 TH/s.

You clearly have the best answer and it was not an intuitive one either.  "If electricity is free .."  Then you only optimize for hashes per $ and do not factor electricity.  It is pretty obvious once pointed out.

Bitcoins, Litecoins and some other random coin.

But what mining rig has the best $/hash without taking into account electricity cost? Antminer S1 seems a decent one (1.33 usd/ghs without PSU).

Antminer S1 cheep and good miner
best choice for free electricity

3x Gridseed Blades, mine most profitable coins in coinwarz and trade it to BTC
my nephew live near power station, and he has free electriicity
i hope he allow me to make mining farm there ;D

I assume electricity is the only commodity that is free here; money being not.
In this case I'd invest in some Scrypt ASIC  and employ them on Litecoin mining.

If money were not an issue, I'd definitely mine Bitcoin.

Havent you moved in yet LOL