Bitcoin Forum

What do you think the difficulty rate will average out to being over the next few months? Because even 15% is roughly break-even for S3's. I'm back in the game with these little bastards. If the difficulty rate stays reasonable, there's a nice little bit of money to be made still.

With the S3's it all comes down to cost for power, if you get a good deal on your power, the S3's are a nice option.  Mining is in turmoil, the altcoins ironically are disruption in sha256 mining even though everyone trades them in for btc. I got ROI in 42 days on my scrypt asics.

My power is pretty cheap (.08 per kwh) so as long as difficulty increases are under control, things look pretty good here.

What is the profitability like in scrypt mining as of late? I don't know that I ever would do it, though... I actually believe btc has a long future ahead of it, and I don't so much think so about altcoins. :p

Cloverme got scrypt miners early.  Look at the LTC dfficulty for the past month and tell me that doesn't look like Bitcoin last year at this time.  I wouldn't buy anything for scrypt unless I was a hardcore believer.

Yeah you should do well with those power costs. Difficulty has leveled out a bit for the past couple of adjustments, it's sort of knocked out the home miners who were looking to make say $100 a day. Personally, I think difficulty has had smaller increases (less than 10%) for the past two adjustments because it's caused a lot of causal miners to turn off equipment because the power to run them cost more than what they made.  The new asic miners for bitcoin are not priced low enough or power efficient enough, take a kncminer neptune, that miner needs about 2000 watts to run, at $6k each, you're looking at about 180 to 200 days before you see a return with power costs between 0.08 and 0.15.  Let's say it makes 10 bitcoins between now and the 200 days, that's less than buying the miner right now ($5.8k at todays price), you might as well just buy the bitcoins. Don't let that discourage you though, I'm a bitcoin believer and I think it's worth investing in at any cost. I think in the next few years, bitcoin is going to be the pay we pay for anything online.

If you want to get into bitcoin mining, pick up some antminer s3's, your power costs make it an attractive buy and see if anyone will give you some coupons for them too to bring the price down even further.

Bitsaurus is right, I did get into mining altcoins (mainly litecoin) early (in 2013), so this year I've been mining both bitcoins and altcoins. The altcoin market is very, very tricky, there are only a few other coins that have a large marketcap that people seem to really believe in (litecoin, dogecoin, peercoin, and feathercoin), everything else people use to trade-in for bitcoin immediately (including myself). The profitability of late has been better with scrypt, i've been getting back $0.19 per $1 invested vs $0.10 per $1 on bitcoin.

The difficulty has not even started to climb yet - Expect at least 500 Peta before year end - Multiple players are rolling out 20 MegaWatt Farms.

As a small miner I am sure you can grasp the amount of hardware that is... (And that is happening as we type to each other)  So imagine how this will impact difficulty when they reinvest 90% into more hardware.

I have access to free electricity, soi have very good profit of my antminers.

How much free electricity? Unless you have access to megawatts, it's barely worth mining any more.

That still makes an S3 profitable...

I am not speculating... I am a miner :/

Use whatever formula you will, if the difficulty is low enough to make mining profitable more miners will be on which will raise the difficulty the the break-even point. This is how it has been since the beginning.

That's basic economics. But it's been profitable as it hasn't found that equilibrium yet. The disagreement is when it will get there...

I'm gathering that you got ripped off by over-priced hardware...

Unfortunately there are so many scams out there. :( I had a BFL preorder a long time ago and I was one of the lucky ones who actually was able to get a refund.

The best post I've read in ages!

99% of the  people who say, "I have free electricity" are in dorm rooms or apartments. And they have no idea just how much electricity it takes to earn significant BTC income. AND they have no idea just how much heat and noise mining will generate.

A standard dorm room's electricity will be capable of earning about $4.00 per day. An apartment, maybe 3 times that... before the landlord comes-a-knockin' and starts asking if you have a grow-farm in your apartment.

Heh or until they plug in that new miner and <POP!> all the power goes out on the floor as someone tripped the 20A breaker.

It's the old 15A wiring that is going to really go pop.  I've seen some homes and apartments that use the crappiest 14guage wire and you can even see it charred at the socket terminals.  Stick a couple S3s on that socket and you'll be asking for trouble with anything else on the line.

Those antminers are one of the only miners that seem profitable and able to access.

S3 antminer is among the best right now but 14 and 20 nm is coming. Hopefully you have ROI by then..

A lot of ASICs are designed and shipped. I won't be surprised to see bigger increases sooner or later. If people see it as a profitable investment, they would buy ASICs to mine, for people with cheap electricity, they can host much more. The difficulty would increase significantly and it won't be profitable any longer.

20nm is here... see the KNC Neptune. Disappointing. It barely beats the efficiency of Bitfury's 55nm from a year ago. 14nm is a long way away. And smaller dies size doesn't always mean better.

Mining just seems to be crazier and crazier.  I mean, it seems at this point that people and companies have realized how profitable it can be so there are just newer and newer miners coming out.  It doesn't seem to show any sign of slowing down so you have to hope you can get positive ROI fast...or just go with cloud mining at least there if diff. stays low you can positive ROI and then not worry about having defunct hardware.

BFL set out to go for 65nm before Avalons 110nm tech that BFL failed horribly (of course BFL would fail at making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich).  Better design will lead to greater efficiency now - not the race to the smallest node.

Not at all... by your comment i'm gathering you bought 3-4 antminers and think that is what I meant by I am a 'miner'

If you really were mining at any serious hash speeds you would understand what I am saying by this is really not as profitable as people dream it would be. I should be selling hot dogs on the side of the road for 40% margins

I think you'll be good for a few months. Lots of miners say they don't know how long it will be profitable but I'm curious if they are holding the coins the bulk of the coins they mine.  

Planning on an increase in value is the only reason to mine. That said, I just spent my first BTC on a miner upgrade.

No, mining and speculation are separate businesses. We've been through this before here.

Well yes - if mining is a replacement for bass fishing or Everquest, then it is a leisure activity. IIRC, there was an article about gold panning in the Sierra's that focused on the social aspects of the activity. Since my mining operation is tiny and based on "free" power, I might fall into this category. I'm not quitting my day job.

That said, in a topic titled mining speculation, I might be forgiven for munging the two notions together. In a thread entitled "To those who say mining is unprofitable:" helping to think through the profit elements of mining is useful. To make a profit mining today you need one of the following:
- Very inexpensive power
- A slowdown in the rate of difficulty increases (may be in process).
- An increase in bitcoin value.
- Less than $1/GHS hardware.

A slow down in the rate of difficulty? lol.. thats cute...

I believe the only constraint is power.  If you don't have at least 200 amps of power dedicated to mining, then your earning is very low.

I put GPU mining profits (Q2 2010) into a 1.5kWh solar array, grid connected. So now the elec from that is thought of as free as I do not owe anything on it   ;D

Nice, but are you earning anything substantial?