Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Mining speculation => Topic started by: aak.wd on July 09, 2014, 07:07:33 PM



Title: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: aak.wd on July 09, 2014, 07:07:33 PM
its been last 5 days watching over this bitcoin thing and i have some extra cash so i just wanted a suggestion that if i start mining today by buying the hardware would i be in much profit or its just a decent profit??
and i dont have hell of cash its just my pocket money which i would be investing.
so finally is it profitable for a beginner to start mining today?
and i see the difficulty rate increasing like anything day by day..
if yes plez just suggest some hardware which is ecnomic and will pay back in few months.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: mwizard on July 09, 2014, 08:06:08 PM
Bitcoin mining is now generally only profitable if you have very cheap electricity ($0.1 per kWh or less) or can use the miner as a space heater.

It is an interesting hobby if you just want to explore mining.  I would suggest buying a small miner, maybe even a USB miner, and trying mining.  It you can afford a larger miner I would suggest something like the Bitmain Antminer S3 for about $450. The S3 also requires a suitable power supply.

There were periods in 2012 and 2013 when domestic mining was very profitable but those days have long gone for most people. You now need cheap electricity to make money from mining.

Put it this way - if bitcoin mining at home was still an easy way to make money everyone in the world would be doing it.  For most people bitcoin mining at home has been uneconomic since late 2013.

Someone else may like to comment on the profitability of altcoin mining - Litecoin, Dogecoin etc.



Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: xstr8guy on July 09, 2014, 09:52:11 PM
This is probably just another drive-by noob post.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: philipma1957 on July 10, 2014, 03:38:38 AM
its been last 5 days watching over this bitcoin thing and i have some extra cash so i just wanted a suggestion that if i start mining today by buying the hardware would i be in much profit or its just a decent profit??
and i dont have hell of cash its just my pocket money which i would be investing.
so finally is it profitable for a beginner to start mining today?
and i see the difficulty rate increasing like anything day by day..
if yes plez just suggest some hardware which is ecnomic and will pay back in few months.

No miner pays off in a few months.

Exceptions  are:

 your power is really cheap and or free.

You run a business  that uses electrical power to dehydrate food.

You use electrical kilns to dry lumber.

You buy today and coins go up like mad.-------------mining in this case makes usd / fiat profit.  not btc profit.     say 1 coin at 620 usd   or .5 coin at 2000 usd.  buying and hold a coin may do better but faces different tax law then mining for a coin.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ALToids on July 10, 2014, 07:18:08 AM
its been last 5 days watching over this bitcoin thing and i have some extra cash so i just wanted a suggestion that if i start mining today by buying the hardware would i be in much profit or its just a decent profit??
and i dont have hell of cash its just my pocket money which i would be investing.
so finally is it profitable for a beginner to start mining today?
and i see the difficulty rate increasing like anything day by day..
if yes plez just suggest some hardware which is ecnomic and will pay back in few months.

No miner pays off in a few months.

Exceptions  are:

 your power is really cheap and or free.

You run a business  that uses electrical power to dehydrate food.

You use electrical kilns to dry lumber.

You buy today and coins go up like mad.-------------mining in this case makes usd / fiat profit.  not btc profit.     say 1 coin at 620 usd   or .5 coin at 2000 usd.  buying and hold a coin may do better but faces different tax law then mining for a coin.

Oh I don't think you could use miners for food dessication.  The mines emit too many VOCs and they're not certified food handling equipment, so at least in the US it would be a no no to do it for sale.  Could you dry your own beef jerky at home, yeah, but just don't sell any food because the fines are insane.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: Bitsaurus on July 10, 2014, 07:57:12 AM
Even if it is unprofitable to mine at home people may still do so if they have a sizable investment in BTC and would like to help keep it decentralized.  I'm losing money mining but I still do it since I have a heavy BTC investment.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: Loophole on July 10, 2014, 08:22:23 AM
its been last 5 days watching over this bitcoin thing and i have some extra cash so i just wanted a suggestion that if i start mining today by buying the hardware would i be in much profit or its just a decent profit??
and i dont have hell of cash its just my pocket money which i would be investing.
so finally is it profitable for a beginner to start mining today?
and i see the difficulty rate increasing like anything day by day..
if yes plez just suggest some hardware which is ecnomic and will pay back in few months.

Short answer: Nope.
You can check the expected profitability yourself for whatever ASICs or cloudmining contracts you can find on https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator. :)


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ranochigo on July 10, 2014, 12:08:26 PM
Not much or even none hardware can reach ROI. Difficulty increases very fast. Some of those companies manufacture bad quality products and some charge too high. Some do not even deliver their products.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: philipma1957 on July 10, 2014, 02:13:33 PM
its been last 5 days watching over this bitcoin thing and i have some extra cash so i just wanted a suggestion that if i start mining today by buying the hardware would i be in much profit or its just a decent profit??
and i dont have hell of cash its just my pocket money which i would be investing.
so finally is it profitable for a beginner to start mining today?
and i see the difficulty rate increasing like anything day by day..
if yes plez just suggest some hardware which is ecnomic and will pay back in few months.

No miner pays off in a few months.

Exceptions  are:

 your power is really cheap and or free.

You run a business  that uses electrical power to dehydrate food.

You use electrical kilns to dry lumber.

You buy today and coins go up like mad.-------------mining in this case makes usd / fiat profit.  not btc profit.     say 1 coin at 620 usd   or .5 coin at 2000 usd.  buying and hold a coin may do better but faces different tax law then mining for a coin.

Oh I don't think you could use miners for food dessication.  The mines emit too many VOCs and they're not certified food handling equipment, so at least in the US it would be a no no to do it for sale.  Could you dry your own beef jerky at home, yeah, but just don't sell any food because the fines are insane.

you would need to use the hot air from the miners to heat a coil. then use a fan to blow on the coil.

  thus the air used to cool the miners never touches the food.  I have penciled a few designs that use this approved rack


http://www.lemproducts.com/product/stainless-steel-dehydrator/jerky-food-dehydrators

this is an 800 watt rack .

 if you do no use the heating element   and use 3 s-3's the key would be to transfer the heat and not the air. I have a few ideas on how to do it.

This is an invention waiting for this industry  here is an item that burns 800 watts of power for heat.

Combine the s-3 with this and make a safe dehydrator.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: Bitsaurus on July 10, 2014, 09:25:53 PM
its been last 5 days watching over this bitcoin thing and i have some extra cash so i just wanted a suggestion that if i start mining today by buying the hardware would i be in much profit or its just a decent profit??
and i dont have hell of cash its just my pocket money which i would be investing.
so finally is it profitable for a beginner to start mining today?
and i see the difficulty rate increasing like anything day by day..
if yes plez just suggest some hardware which is ecnomic and will pay back in few months.

No miner pays off in a few months.

Exceptions  are:

 your power is really cheap and or free.

You run a business  that uses electrical power to dehydrate food.

You use electrical kilns to dry lumber.

You buy today and coins go up like mad.-------------mining in this case makes usd / fiat profit.  not btc profit.     say 1 coin at 620 usd   or .5 coin at 2000 usd.  buying and hold a coin may do better but faces different tax law then mining for a coin.

Oh I don't think you could use miners for food dessication.  The mines emit too many VOCs and they're not certified food handling equipment, so at least in the US it would be a no no to do it for sale.  Could you dry your own beef jerky at home, yeah, but just don't sell any food because the fines are insane.

you would need to use the hot air from the miners to heat a coil. then use a fan to blow on the coil.

  thus the air used to cool the miners never touches the food.  I have penciled a few designs that use this approved rack


http://www.lemproducts.com/product/stainless-steel-dehydrator/jerky-food-dehydrators

this is an 800 watt rack .

 if you do no use the heating element   and use 3 s-3's the key would be to transfer the heat and not the air. I have a few ideas on how to do it.

This is an invention waiting for this industry  here is an item that burns 800 watts of power for heat.

Combine the s-3 with this and make a safe dehydrator.

That's asking for 2 points of heat transference which is not particularly efficient.  Heat is most easily transferred through solids or liquids.

A better solution would be to liquid cool the miners and use the heat given off by the radiator to dry the food.  As long as the radiator has no reactive paints or chemicals on it's surface it should be certifiable.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: wunkbone on July 11, 2014, 01:58:17 PM
Yes if the difficulty stay the same for the coming months. But the chances is really slim..


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: R4v37 on July 13, 2014, 07:40:00 AM
no one will know for sure
for example, u solo mine, then in a few days, u got 25btc
its like winning a lottery  :D

but its not like that if u play in pool...


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ranochigo on July 13, 2014, 08:04:39 AM
no one will know for sure
for example, u solo mine, then in a few days, u got 25btc
its like winning a lottery  :D

but its not like that if u play in pool...
However, for most hardware, it would be a miracle for them to even block unless you invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in it.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: oceans on July 15, 2014, 01:44:19 AM
I bought a few cheap USB miners at the hopes of getting lucky.
Maybe one of these days I will wake up and have 25 BTC sitting in my wallet.(One can only hope) lol
It is like a lottery ticket, I dont expect to get anything out of it, but it could happen.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ranochigo on July 15, 2014, 07:30:04 AM
I bought a few cheap USB miners at the hopes of getting lucky.
Maybe one of these days I will wake up and have 25 BTC sitting in my wallet.(One can only hope) lol
It is like a lottery ticket, I dont expect to get anything out of it, but it could happen.

It is however, very impossible since the difficulty is so high. You will need extreme luck to even get a block. IMO, you are wasting a portion of your electricity.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ThomasCrowne on July 16, 2014, 01:49:11 AM
You will be hard pressed to find any ASIC gear that isn't a pre-order that will pay for itself.  Ever.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: philipma1957 on July 16, 2014, 03:26:23 AM
I bought a few cheap USB miners at the hopes of getting lucky.
Maybe one of these days I will wake up and have 25 BTC sitting in my wallet.(One can only hope) lol
It is like a lottery ticket, I dont expect to get anything out of it, but it could happen.

It is however, very impossible since the difficulty is so high. You will need extreme luck to even get a block. IMO, you are wasting a portion of your electricity.


you do not understand the math involved.  if you did you would not make that statement.

the math is very simple.  here it is if your gear is efficient  enough to pay for power  ie right now about 1 watt per gh is perfectly fine.

 you should solo mine on a pool like bitsolo 1 out of  15 days   or 20 days.

as long as your gear  is beating the power cost it is like getting true odds on a 4 digit number.   

here is why.  a 1th miner at 1000 watts and 15 cents  a kwatt  should earn  .02904 btc in a day .


 so if you run that machine for a day  it is 24 k watts  or 3.60 usd   and the coin it would have earned in the pool was .02904.

Since running the 1th solo or in the pool cost the same 3.60   .     your extra cost of solo is the .02904 you did not earn in the pool. 

so you spent 17.89 usd to try your luck at getting a solo block.


divide  25 by .02904 =   861 to one   I rounded.  so your chance of hitting 1 block is 860 to 1 if you mine for 1 day at  the current odds.     


if you lose you lose 17.89    if you win you get 25 btc or 15375 


   so the math is  you get about 860 to 1 for the bet……     so you are getting odds exactly equal to being in a pool.

eventually if you do it you will make out since you are playing  the same odds…..


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: KimNam on July 16, 2014, 03:34:14 AM
you can read this thread :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=680370.0
it has some good opinion about your topic

for me personally, it's not profitable anymore for home mining
based on my calculation


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ballbugsbunny on July 16, 2014, 04:25:20 PM
True. It's almost not even for altcoin mining.
I have a fun question though..
If you mine just with your regular quad core cpu, for two hours per day, which are your chances of finding a block?
Are these chances less than buying the cheapest lottery ticket of a normal national lottery?
(Let's say a lottery where you guess 5 out of 50 numbers)
It's usually called "the fools tax" lol.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: Bitsaurus on July 16, 2014, 08:01:48 PM
True. It's almost not even for altcoin mining.
I have a fun question though..
If you mine just with your regular quad core cpu, for two hours per day, which are your chances of finding a block?
Are these chances less than buying the cheapest lottery ticket of a normal national lottery?
(Let's say a lottery where you guess 5 out of 50 numbers)
It's usually called "the fools tax" lol.

If you are talking about CPUs, you have less than a one in a billion chance of finding a block if mining Bitcoin.  CPUs run in the low MH/s range, ASICs are in the low TH/s range - so about 1 million factor.  Current network is 125PH/s give or take, so not even one in 100 billion.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ballbugsbunny on July 16, 2014, 08:40:39 PM
True. It's almost not even for altcoin mining.
I have a fun question though..
If you mine just with your regular quad core cpu, for two hours per day, which are your chances of finding a block?
Are these chances less than buying the cheapest lottery ticket of a normal national lottery?
(Let's say a lottery where you guess 5 out of 50 numbers)
It's usually called "the fools tax" lol.

If you are talking about CPUs, you have less than a one in a billion chance of finding a block if mining Bitcoin.  CPUs run in the low MH/s range, ASICs are in the low TH/s range - so about 1 million factor.  Current network is 125PH/s give or take, so not even one in 100 billion.

Yeap talking about someone that does single mining with his home PC and the bitcoin core software.
Nice ;). So completing the query, if you buy a lottery ticket as mentioned above, you have one chance in 434027,777...

So, start buying lottery tickets non-pool, non-ASIC muggots :)


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: minerjoen on July 16, 2014, 08:50:24 PM
True. It's almost not even for altcoin mining.
I have a fun question though..
If you mine just with your regular quad core cpu, for two hours per day, which are your chances of finding a block?
Are these chances less than buying the cheapest lottery ticket of a normal national lottery?
(Let's say a lottery where you guess 5 out of 50 numbers)
It's usually called "the fools tax" lol.


Well the topic starter seems not to read?
Anyway bitcoin mining is some kind of waste of money, unleas u have free/cheap power costs ( like other says ), u can better buy bitcoins, because the price for 1 is only raising up.

What i do i mining alt coins, like i mined some coins a few days, at that week i earned like 10 dollar, 2 weeks later the same coins brought me to over the 200 dollar for the same coins ( not more ).

u can beter stay on this forum for 2 weeks at least, and read all the topics what tracks ur interest, and at this moment i advise the alternative crypto topics.

But again if u have free / verry verry cheap power costs at ur home or somewhere else, u can mine bitcoins for sure.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ballbugsbunny on July 16, 2014, 09:04:58 PM
True. It's almost not even for altcoin mining.
I have a fun question though..
If you mine just with your regular quad core cpu, for two hours per day, which are your chances of finding a block?
Are these chances less than buying the cheapest lottery ticket of a normal national lottery?
(Let's say a lottery where you guess 5 out of 50 numbers)
It's usually called "the fools tax" lol.


Well the topic starter seems not to read?
Anyway bitcoin mining is some kind of waste of money, unleas u have free/cheap power costs ( like other says ), u can better buy bitcoins, because the price for 1 is only raising up.

What i do i mining alt coins, like i mined some coins a few days, at that week i earned like 10 dollar, 2 weeks later the same coins brought me to over the 200 dollar for the same coins ( not more ).

u can beter stay on this forum for 2 weeks at least, and read all the topics what tracks ur interest, and at this moment i advise the alternative crypto topics.

But again if u have free / verry verry cheap power costs at ur home or somewhere else, u can mine bitcoins for sure.

No don't get me wrong here.. I'm new at the forum but not new to the whole btc world (of warcraft)..
I also mined altcoins as you pointed out and made some money. Also exchanged some of them for btc.
Unfortunatelly currently altcoins are not profitable for my power consumption and it's really time consuming to bet which is going up in order to still make money.
I prefer to spend my time somewhere else...

Nevertheless I just made a fun question, food for thought.
The people in business, keep it up..


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ranochigo on July 17, 2014, 10:20:13 AM
True. It's almost not even for altcoin mining.
I have a fun question though..
If you mine just with your regular quad core cpu, for two hours per day, which are your chances of finding a block?
Are these chances less than buying the cheapest lottery ticket of a normal national lottery?
(Let's say a lottery where you guess 5 out of 50 numbers)
It's usually called "the fools tax" lol.
Yup, the chances are significantly less if you run with your CPU. As you are running it only two hours per day, don't even think about getting a share.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: DrG on July 18, 2014, 08:55:51 AM
True. It's almost not even for altcoin mining.
I have a fun question though..
If you mine just with your regular quad core cpu, for two hours per day, which are your chances of finding a block?
Are these chances less than buying the cheapest lottery ticket of a normal national lottery?
(Let's say a lottery where you guess 5 out of 50 numbers)
It's usually called "the fools tax" lol.
Yup, the chances are significantly less if you run with your CPU. As you are running it only two hours per day, don't even think about getting a share.

If you are solo mining which is what we are talking about, you'll be looking for difficulty 1 shares.  You will stil easily find difficulty 1 shares on a CPU.  But the chance of a difficulty 1 share solving the block is less than being stuck by lightning while sitting inside your house.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: Golph on July 18, 2014, 03:32:03 PM
its been last 5 days watching over this bitcoin thing and i have some extra cash so i just wanted a suggestion that if i start mining today by buying the hardware would i be in much profit or its just a decent profit??
and i dont have hell of cash its just my pocket money which i would be investing.
so finally is it profitable for a beginner to start mining today?
and i see the difficulty rate increasing like anything day by day..
if yes plez just suggest some hardware which is ecnomic and will pay back in few months.

Mining is not making profit these days, you won't ROI your hardware because of difficulty.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: Connor936 on July 19, 2014, 07:29:44 AM
its been last 5 days watching over this bitcoin thing and i have some extra cash so i just wanted a suggestion that if i start mining today by buying the hardware would i be in much profit or its just a decent profit??
and i dont have hell of cash its just my pocket money which i would be investing.
so finally is it profitable for a beginner to start mining today?
and i see the difficulty rate increasing like anything day by day..
if yes plez just suggest some hardware which is ecnomic and will pay back in few months.

Mining is not making profit these days, you won't ROI your hardware because of difficulty.
It depends on how much you pay for your electricity and how much you pay for your hardware and how much you can sell the machine for when you are done using it to mine. If you keep your costs low enough then you will ROI. If you overpay then you will not.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ranochigo on July 19, 2014, 08:05:25 AM
its been last 5 days watching over this bitcoin thing and i have some extra cash so i just wanted a suggestion that if i start mining today by buying the hardware would i be in much profit or its just a decent profit??
and i dont have hell of cash its just my pocket money which i would be investing.
so finally is it profitable for a beginner to start mining today?
and i see the difficulty rate increasing like anything day by day..
if yes plez just suggest some hardware which is ecnomic and will pay back in few months.

Mining is not making profit these days, you won't ROI your hardware because of difficulty.
It depends on how much you pay for your electricity and how much you pay for your hardware and how much you can sell the machine for when you are done using it to mine. If you keep your costs low enough then you will ROI. If you overpay then you will not.
You should consider if the difficulty increases too much, the ASICs breaks down and the sudden surge in difficulty. I doubt you would even be able to sell it at half of the price. You can easily lose your investment.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: redsn0w on July 19, 2014, 11:47:41 AM
No ,isn't profitable  for you to start mining today  ::) .


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: oceans on July 20, 2014, 02:47:00 AM
I bought a few cheap USB miners at the hopes of getting lucky.
Maybe one of these days I will wake up and have 25 BTC sitting in my wallet.(One can only hope) lol
It is like a lottery ticket, I dont expect to get anything out of it, but it could happen.

It is however, very impossible since the difficulty is so high. You will need extreme luck to even get a block. IMO, you are wasting a portion of your electricity.
Yea, the probability is EXTREMELY low, but its fun to just let them run and hope that one day it might pay off. I mean they only cost pennies a day to run.
I think I like to do it more for fun.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: BitcoinHeroes on July 20, 2014, 05:54:10 AM
Well, the difficulty is suppose to slow down but seems like it never will. So no, it will never be profitable to mine..


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ranochigo on July 20, 2014, 06:13:26 AM
Well, the difficulty is suppose to slow down but seems like it never will. So no, it will never be profitable to mine..
The difficulty isn't supposed to slow down actually, bitcoin is gaining a lot of attention from all parts of the world, even if GPU and ASICs mining doesn't exist, people will still mine if they have unused computer and low electrical cost. ASICs are continually being produced therefore more people will mine and the difficulty will rise.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: spiceminer15 on July 20, 2014, 06:22:39 AM
best bet is to buy used stuff for really cheap...

i bought 11 antminers for about 1500. ive been getting .05-.065 btc a day depending on pool luck... will it roi???? eventually itnwill.... how long depends on luck and any diff increases....

andpriceof btc...


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: ranochigo on July 20, 2014, 06:38:15 AM
best bet is to buy used stuff for really cheap...

i bought 11 antminers for about 1500. ive been getting .05-.065 btc a day depending on pool luck... will it roi???? eventually itnwill.... how long depends on luck and any diff increases....

andpriceof btc...
You need really good electrical rate to ROI. Even though those are cheap, their lifespan may not be as long as a new one, and they May underperform. Difficulty is likely to rise a bit faster since more ASICs are being shipped.


Title: Re: is it profitable to start mining today??
Post by: spiceminer15 on July 20, 2014, 07:09:40 AM
my power last month was 177 running  ac almost all the time and miners