Bitcoin Forum

Jack and Jill have a bathtub full of 20 Dollar bills that some old Baby Boomers left them when they kicked the bucket.  The contents of that bathtub total 5,000 USD.  Jack has a good Job with plenty of flexibility while Jill works from home.  They have no children with no plans to have any.

Jack comes home after reading all the news about BTC's soaring prices.  He says to Jill he would like to get involved and see what BTC is all about first hand.  Jill turns around and says i heard about it as well... I want to trade the volatility during the day.  Jack says he would like to run a Mine. This would allow him to generate passive income. 

How would we best accommodate Jack and Jill in the above scenario?

Very likely the best scenario is the most boring and simple one. Just buy Bitcoin and hold it for as long as you can. Your money could be worth tens or hundreds of times it's current value one day.

I agree don't complicate yourself by mining Bitcoin or even bother investing in cloud mining which just all turned to scam, just buy Bitcoin hold it and sell when you are in profit, but with to many people holding bitcoin, the price now is way to high than it is a month ago.

If you don't make a big investment it's no longer profitable to mine it. I'd say you should rather invest those money directly into the coins.

Buy and trade or buy and hodl (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375643.0).

Mining bitcoin, successfully (read: to earn a profit), requires more than a $5,000 investment.

Once Jack & Jill are comfortable with Bitcoin, they should consider a few other major cryptocurrencies. Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple come to mind. Each as a distinct and successful business model. Most cryptocurrencies do not.

Creative thread! I like it! Now to answer your question, I would recommend you to buy bitcoin and hold for long term. Mining has become a very costly affair considering the difficulty level. You need expensive rigs and huge electricity to keep the mining up. If the electricity cost is on the higher side, your mining venture may not be profitable at all. However, if you have access to free alternate energy, then you may try to invest a huge amount initially to set up mining because there will be no recurring cost.

Otherwise, try to buy and Hold. Since you have a day job, use a portion of your salary to invest in bitcoin every month. Stack up the bitcoins in a safe and secret wallet and wait for few years. This method can fetch you very good return in longer term. A lot more than mining.

I think you can get a great profit by trading. So buy Bitcoin and trade  :)

Jack and Jill should realize that mining BTC requires a lot of money to start with. It's not worth it to start with 10k USD as having loud, hot, expensive miners in the house would just become a nuisance. If you want to start mining read about CPU and GPU mining and then turn mined altcoins into Bitcoins if that's your ultimate goal.
If Jill knows how her way around trading she can earn a lot of money and the more you can afford to spend in the beginning the better are her chances. The more you invest the more you'll gain (or lose) with every trade.

I think bitcoin investment is better than mine,If you invest money in a mining business, you can not get the money back after your demand. If you invest Bitcoin then coins can get good dividend after the year is waiting because of Bitcoin prices The rate at which it is increasing, the fear of loss is very low. I have kept some bitcoins in the hope of the future for frofit.

Could not agree more.
Mining>> expensive ( tools, investments), complicated, time consuming. No assurance of profits.
Buying BTC >>  you just need to learn how to read charts. As easy as buy during dumps and sell when prices are high (trading & hodl). Time is worth it. Clear profits.

To accommodate their situation I would highly suggest that they both should just invest and buy bitcoin than mining that's because mining is really not profitable nowadays than before when the price of bitcoin was low but if Jack really wants to mine he just try it and learn from it. There are some people who even though they are told that it's not recommendable but they still do it because they want to or they want to experience it with themselves. Totally, depends on the person like me I know that mining is not profitable anymore but I do still mine for experience and knowledge on how it works. There is nothing bad on trial in error but in this situation and the current date. I would recommend investing and not mining.

Minning nowadays is really expensive so I suggest you to buy directly btc from exchangers.

Mining will be slow but it is profitable at the current price. You will start gaining profits after at least 6 months, but bitcoin price might change and more miners might come into the game.

Tell Jack that venturing into Mining at this point in time is very impractical and proved to be difficult without appropriate requirements. Jill's idea of trading is probably be a lot more feasible. Since Jill works from home, she has all the time in the world to do the trading. She just needs to learn the know-hows of trading to maximize profit. For starters, their bathtub content of 5000 usd is quite a good capital. I would suggest to invest half of the bucket to BTC and HODL while half on trading. And whatever profit they earn at trading will be dumped to their HODL pool.

To consider mining BTC, Jack and Jill have to consider the mining equipment and electricity costs. You can use a profitability calculator for this. If it is not profitable, buying BTC and holding will be the better and easy way out.

As Jack has a passive income already, I think it would be best to just buy bitcoin with their savings, keep buying on continuous basis, maybe in small chunks from their savings and keep them secure, locked and hold.
In time they will realize that they can retire early and do all what they have wished for in life, travel the world, buy stuff and enjoy with their savings in bitcoin.
I would not recommend the hassle of setting up and running a mining rig to them.

if both the character have the capacity to do both mining and investment then why? but i like the easiest way and the most recommended way, to buy Bitcoin and hold it as a long term investment. and i think they will like it too.

Buying it is the simplest way to get it, but tapping it is the way to make it passive and lasting. This is my own opinion and the choice depends on you.

It depends if you are miner you will go with bitcoin mining and if you are trader you will go with buying bitcoin.  But it is better if you buy bitcoin and sell it for you to earn in big in short period of time.  Unlike mining, it will take a long time to earn big.  

Buy, for now. And when you gained enough capital and knowledge while trading, get into mining. This is what I like most about cryptocurrency, you can have the bear of both worlds.

If you own a large amount of money to set up your own mining rig under free electricity or at least cheap I'd recommend you to do so,
if you don't just skip the part of mining and start holding btc.

buy and hold is more better because if u mine the risk will be more such as broken gpu,increase diff,pay electricity and etc. while buy and hold  u get directly to your wallet

I agree on this. There's no investment that gains profit instantly. Better to buy, hold and allow it to grow. I think that's a good strategy to start than to mine. A lot of people new to bitcoin think the same and they even go in to this idea to choose whether to buy or mine. Practically speaking for you to see how bitcoin really works, but it first.

My advice is to try to get through bitcoin mining. Because in the market, the price of bitcoin has been affected by many factors, and the volatility is intense. No matter what kind of encrypted currency, early miners are the people who make more profits.

Mining is more effortless when its done i suggest it to them, unlike buying BTC you can't buy when the price is to high and you can't get more profit with that. Jack is right with his plan its his way to be effortless in saving money.

I think this scenario should depend on the risk portfolio of jack and jill since decision making on investments should be based on the appetite of the person as well and not solely on the values that it may generate. Both investment would earn great amount of return in proper time and management and it should be up to them on how much risk can they take for they can also diversify their investments if they want to.

At current price I think mining is a more intelligent way to have your own bitcoin. If you are going to buy bitcoin for $10,000 and keeps it until the price goes up then your bitcoin will not multiply. When you invest $10,000 in mining equipment and start mining then your investment for a one bitcoin will definitely grow since mining will give you rewards in BTC.

Don't waste time of purchasing minning machine and then mine the bitcoin noo. Buy Bitcoin today and hold. Becoz Bitcoin fly like a rocket. If u go for mining it will take lots of time and difficulties.

All this story is complicated. Personal mining admitted as not profitable way to make bitcoins from the beginning of the year, not it came the are of mining farms. So a agree with you two - they both need to concentrate in bitcoin investment or one of them would invest in BTC and other one in some altcoin by his choice.

I would say that Jill would be smart enough since buying bitcoins and either holding it or trading it seems to be the easiest way nowadays without facing any complications.Jill could either continue to trade or withdraw whenever needed.

But Jack would have to initially invest a huge amount for buying powerful mining ASICs and he would have to see whether cheap electricity is available to ensure good profit regularly.Also,he would have to invest some more for cooling equipments.More over,day by day,bitcoin mining is becoming difficult.If the government some day bans bitcoin as well as its mining,then he would have to sell the mining equipments to some other and it would not be an easy task.

So,just buy bitcoins and stay cool.

I would prefer mining because that is what makes sense in all this. Though the initial cost of investment is large but that is for specific period of time only. The difficulty and all the stuff will change very other 4 years so we don't have to worry about it either. We can always have the upgrades and the stuff in place to compete the market. I started the ether mining (GPU based) at the start of this year and never sold my Ethereum upto this point. When I mined I had the ROI of 12-15 months and after the prices was increased drastically I hit the break even point in no time. So yeah mining could be best option if you want to do it of longer period off time. Jack will win lots of rewards if he do it seriously. Jill will have ups and downs lot of time as the market is too much volatile.

Buy btc or mine it?I rather choose to mine it because its more challenging for me and I am so happy if I earn btc in mining rather than to buy it.But if you have alot of money then its better to buy it but its not challenging at all.Mining is the best option for me because in every single bitcoin that Ive earn it really counts and I am so happy to have it.I will never stop mining bitcoin because it helps alot to me financially because I have a financial problem but its okay now because bitcoin is here to support my daily needs and expenses and also to get rich soon

Jill will take time to understand the market and but he will start earning passive income as well if he gets his hand over the crypto trading in very perfect and professional manner. He can systematically invest into it and grow the money over the time without doing much except keeping an eye on the market ups and downs thats all.


In case of the Jack, he will have to build up some good amount of the credit before he can start investing into it. He will have to gather money and then buy the hardware, electricity and all the maintenance stuff t be managed later in the time. Basically he will have some smart and hard work involved and he will need to give more time than the Jill at first glance. Jack will have to wait for at least 1 to 2 years for reaching his ROI and then afterwards he can start earning good amount of money which will be his passive income.

Investing Bitcoin is better than mining especially if you're not computer hardware geek and most miners has a good background in computer hardware and maintenance.
Bitcoin investments will only require money and get money while doing nothing.

mining doesn't worth the effort at the moment, you could invest the same amount of money you would use to start mining to buy directly BTC.
Holding is the key, BTC is a long term investment, it's a different story if you want to mine altcoins (but the future of alt coins still rely on BTC market value).
in a nutshell: buy BTC, hold and enjoy the ride!

Jack should first consider the possibility of running a cryptocurrency mine than aiming on getting a bitcoin minefield. Why? A GPU farm offers great flexibility when bitcoin is in a slump, whereas in bitcoin, you'll need to shell out $3000 first in order to get a miner plus the fact that 1TH/s in today's rate wouldn't be sufficient to give the both of them a good life with all expenses paid for their needs. As for Jill's case, since she just heard about day trading fairly recently, I'd still keep my job first and study about bitcoins and the market next. Risking everything with you being ill equipped is the worst thing you can possibly do in your life.

Buy it. I think it's the easiest and safest way to generate income. You can divide the money between exchanges to minimize the risk and start trading.
A skilled trader can double the money in a month. Of course you'll never be able to make only good decisions, sometimes you'll lose some but it's not that hard to make 10% a month. Following some pros on tradingview can help you a lot, but don't think they're 100% right. Last week most of them were expecting a Bitcoin correction and it didn't come. Instead we went from 9 to 11K in a day  ::) Leave the mining to people with a lot of money, space, and cheap power.

Some great advice here.  J&J thank you for all the tips.

Both Jack and Jill will keep their day jobs.  The main consensus is to to buy and hold BTC.  Jill will take a portion of the funds and play the volatility. Taking a portion of any profit to HOLD.  Wash and repeat.  Any losses will have to be subsidized by J&J's normal income.

IF the profits arise in a timely fashion, as speculators believe they will, then that should provide initial funding for a mining operation for Jack down the road.  Jacks plan would be to start small while increasing capacity steadily and consistently.  Reinvest in the Mine with generated and earned BTC. 

In theory it sounds nice but most of us should know that Murphy's Law steps in and stomps on nearly everything.  So... lets see. 

Why does it take so G.D.L. to move USD'ers from a bank into an exchange?  A WEEK!!!  Really!  I thought this train was moving at internet speeds not using the Pony Express. 

First of all I think the story was quite unnecessary the title itself quite clearly explains your question. The answer is upto you. If you can bear the cost of buying number of ASIC's and other hardwares required in mining. Go with it but remember the technicalities and difficulties involved. Also do consider the monopoly which certain miners have. While Investing is all upto your market strategy as it is clear from your story you want trade volatility of day so you would require a good strategy for analyzing every altcoin.

Very true dollar for dollar my BTC purchase has done better than my mining both at Genises cloud mining and my own $3800.00 PC... but no regrets!
if few thousand is all you have go right down to BTC

Just buy it and keep it as long as you can. You don't have to think about the maintenance fees, etc and i think the profit will also be higher :)

mine maybe. the have passive income, and he can do anything to spent the time. can use to doing thing that make earn active income or joy the bath tub and all day.
buy bitcoin no need a lot of fund. how much you have in your pocket is enough for buy and save them, selling at high price. if you mining, you need more money to buy tool for mine, but if its done you will get passive income

It depends on the capital you are starting with. If a you have a big capital to open a mini farm where you can mine bitcoin then do it. On a long term it will be more profitable and you will get passive income. But take in consideration the time you have to spend to research all the equipment you need and also that you have to keep your eyes on your farm. Also take in consideration that mining becomes harder every day so from time to time you have to upgrade your equipment wich will cost more money.

I would personally recommend to buy bitcoins and hold it. It is much easier that taking care of all mining stuffs. Just buy bitcoins and set a target and when bitcoin price reaches the target you proposed sell your bitcoins. The only thing is that you have to research and wait for the perfect moment to buy bitcoin and that is after the price falls(it depends on more factors)

If you have enough money and cheap electricity then mine bitcoin. In few months you can regain the money you spent with the miner. 

For mining, try this calculator to help you figure out your profitability - enter your miner's hardware cost and rate for electricity. Also adjust the difficulty since it changes every 2 weeks...

https://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator

But as others have said, you're probably better off buying bitcoins, holding half, and trading using the other half.

At the moment I think you should better buy it :)). To buy 1 BTC you need to pay more than 10k$ at the moment but to can be able to mine 1 BTC at the moment you need to pay more than 10k$ many many times :)). The mining difficulty of Bitcoin at the moment is very high so to mine about 1 BTC it'll take you very long time to mine enough beside you will need to invest a lot of money if you want to mine it fast :))

The price just dropped. Your best bet is just to buy it now and hold for the future.

Mining is really risky and generally unprofitable. You need a place that's relatively cool, not humid and with cheap electricity. If you really want to mine and make money, you'll have to mine an altcoin. I see everyone wants to try mining to make money, but it doesn't work like that. Your profits are small, and they grow over time.

i dont think its good to mine bitcoin without asic miner (so if you have one try it, if you want to buy one i wouldnt do it). you can try altcoins with GPU mining (if you are a gamer and have good graphic cards, i wouldnt buy one right now, better wait for Ethereum Casper and then  they should be cheaper. I might be wrong

if the jack has a good coin and still compete in the market, and the little boys feel lucky as long as he is in it, surely he will survive ....

At this point, it really makes no sense whatsoever for an individual to try their hand at mining if you do not have at least $1,000,000 to put up front into investing in your mining farm then just forget about it. You need to consider your location, electricity costs ond ROI and most people these days cannot get good ROI unless all of these factors and more are optimized.

Mining isn’t for everyone. It’s hard and you need lots of mech info. But buying is just more convenient if you’re rich enough.

I like experience value of BCT mining as well as $$$

Buying Bitcoin and using it in trading looks easy and in reach of everyone, but the reality is completely different. Trading is too risky and only experts should do that.

Unlike trading, mining can grant a stable income. You have to spend some money to buy the required devices to create a mining farm and of course you have to learn how to run it. If everything is well setup, you will be able to cover your expenses in a short period and then start earning.

If you have enough experience invest in trading and you will make a fortune, else stick to mining it is safer.

It is necessary to share risks, buy bitcoins for
money, and then divide these sums into several parts, and trade on the stock exchange. This is ideally of course)

The easy way out is to buy BTC and hold. Mining is time consuming and might not be profitable unless you have very cheap electricity. And you have to put up with the noise level, maintain your hardware and etc.

i will buy it coz i know how to use it for rading purposes once i have it. i will diversify to buy that in altcoins and hold it for long term. mining is difficult for me and i need alot of money to buy those hardware.

Same here, I go for the buy if i have a lot of money, Only in this case, because i know that i will make a huge profit if i only invest in bitcoin itself. I mean that i buy a lot of bitcoin and keep them in my wallet. Maybe after that i will decide to buy some mining hardwares and start mining with this money.

If we are sticking to the budget then it becomes difficult to accommodate both options as the funds would be stretched trying to set up a good mining rig and then having enough left over to trade with. Of course a lot depends on other things such as where they live or what gear they may already have as well as experience. For a completely clean slate in a relatively profitable country for mining I would say they should mine. They can grow their income and over time Jack can give some of his returns to Jill and she can begin to trade with it.

Bitcoin have give great way of investment, rather it may by investing money for buying BTC or generating BTC by mining. Bitcoin have defined its parameters, which are unique. And this unique points make bitcoin different.

Buying Btc is always seems tough for users, because of price fluctuation. But it was great tool for investment. Now a days buying BTC is quite hard. Even Mining is also to hard. Day by day difficulty level, block size, block height are increasing comparing to contributed hash power for generation of Bitcoin. So make own and R & D and use own intelligence to make final decision as price and time varies conditions.

I think Buying would be better if you only have money and its also for instance not like mining you'll cost more time and even electricity for it to generate more..But for safety Mining would be better If you could only have the patience of it..

Personally I think buy is the better option for most of the BTC user because mining is not easy way to earn for every single BTC user.
BTC continuously raising so BTC hold is obviously profitable in future life.Although i like mining & i involved in mining.

That will actually depend on you, if you want to or is capable ypu can buy a mining rig but before you start mining consider things first such as electricity cost and repair. Now if you dont have that much amount of money i suggest just buy and hold for about 5 years so you can gain a lot.

Mining bitcoin was a good option a few years back,but now you could try out alt coin rather than planning on getting bitcoin through mining as the difficulty level is really high and only investors with big pockets could end up having a good profit,i would suggest you to invest those amount in good alt coins or in bitcoin at the next correction and plan on holding for the long term .

I think  for me I'll gonna buy for now because I don't have the amount money to buy thing to use in mining that's why I'd better to say just keep buying while it has a price that increase every single day and you can even get it back than mining to into it.

I also agree, BUY HOLD and SELL. or TRADE for some promising ALTCOINS. Price is still going up and will still be going up years from now. Jack and jill would accept this kind of suggestions. Buy and Hold for a few moments. it'll grow over time no need to mine it.

is it worth it to buy one? i mean i haven't done either of the two, i've been receiving payments from signature campaign but i haven't had the chance to own even 1 bitcoin, is it worth it to invest for mining so i could mine coins?

It depends, if you have a large amount of money then you can pretty much have a huge part (possibily too much) in the mining process.
I prefer purchasing it instead of mining it.

Mining bitcoin requires a lot of resources like mining facilities, hardwares and power consumption. If you plan to mine at home, that wont be profitable. My advice is just buy some bitcoin and grow it through trading and long term investment.

Mining BTC is not profitable anymore. not when taking the huge mining farms in country's with low electricity costs into account.
Just buy BTC using dollar cost avaraging and when the bathtub is empty.... HODL.

But did you figure it out with your wife now ? :)

Buying bitcoin is probably your best option.  You would need a lot of GPU's and a farm of them to make a good profit from mining bitcoin.  It is better off to invest in bitcoin with your money.  The old adage is don't work for money, let your money work for you.  If you invest in bitcoin, I could see you making 100% an average of 100% each year for 5 years.

The best Scenario is to buy bitcoin that creating a mine. If you want to gain faster income you go at buying and selling bitcoin its the more suitable and appropriate for many people but creating also a mining for bitcoin is Good cause you will gain money in just sitting cause mining is a continuations income that will also called passive income. the both are good but i prefer trading buy and sell coins cause if gives you faster income if your good at trading :)

Well at current price mining is not a bad thing if you cant buy it.

For me i will choose to buy bitcoin instead of creating a mining equiptment.  Because in mining you have to provide a mining equiptment which is very expensive to have While to buy bitcoin has no hardtime. In mining you have to spend alot of time and money just to mine a few satoshi every month including your electric bills. While to bought bitcoin there is no existance of hardtime and effort to have.  All you have to do is to have a bitcoin wallet and buy bitcoin as much as you can then hold it until it pump.

To mine you need to buy some S9 that is expensive and risky. If network difficult increases too quick or if a S10/S11 miner launches you can lose money.
With s9, you need a good place to put it, because it is noisy see this video at 10:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D03GyDBMqkM

Jack and Jill had prepared their future from bitcoin earnings, but Jill's plan to trade or invest in bitcoin is more desirable than Jack's plan to invest in mining equipment. Mining nowadays takes  bunch of cash and a bunch of electricity load in order to mine a single bitcoin but there is no guarantee that the return of investment can roll back in less than a year comparing to holding, investing and trading bitcoin.

They can do both mining and trading, Jack has a job and can mine to generate passive income. While Jill can trade for she is working at home.

I agree to you the cost of mining equipment now a day are so high plus the electricity you will consume = small mount of earning or maybe a draw/loss.
Its better to buy bitcoin and hold for a long term since the price of bitcoin are continue to pump up you a have a 100% high earning profit but take note dont put all your money in one basket.

In my own opinion there are only two types of the best way to earn btc. First is joining bounty campaigns and exchange all the alt coins that you will earn to btc. In this way you do not need to have a capital then next thing is to actually invest in btc and start trading.

I am more inclined to support jill who will buy Bitcoin rather than jack just doing mining with jack capital, because for mining Bitcoin require substantial capital, for jill if already entered amrket Bitcoin indirectly he will see another potential. coins, and jill that will get a quick profit compared to the jack that only rely on mining.

Well, both the methods have their own pros and cons. However, I would support the trader in this regard because I believe that mining is a serious business now and no more a causal activity. It requires high-end hardware and skills to initiate and run the mining farm. On the other hand, trading is based on the skills (and even a basic computer is fine for trading). Since we are talking about something to do in a spare time, I would support trading.

Bitcoin is a digital currency system and my opinion is only two types of the best way to earn btc they are buying and mining ,for mining bitcoin required substantial capital and next thing is to actually invest in btc and trading.

I think its better to mine than to buy it, because if you buy BTC the owner of it will income but if you mine it yourself then you can earn money by just mining it, but it depends on the person who need bitcoin, if the person is not a business man or a wealthy person that doesn't need bitcoin mining then that person can buy bitcoin for purchasing items that only can be buy using bitcoins.