Bitcoin Forum

How low will prices need to drop before you start taking your rigs offline?

i can afford the electric. let it ride

Covering your ongoing costs is obviously a requirement. Otherwise you are better off buying what you’re mining instead. Anything other than that is a personal desicion based on your particular motivations and circumstances. Mining when profitability was low seems to have worked out well for those that mined ETH from November 2016 when it was $10 and barley covering electical costs. However a six card rig was able to mine several ETH a week. If you are in a situation where you have to sell what you mine to pay your costs, it makes it tuff to HODL when profitability is low though.

At the current Ethereum difficulty levels, the coin price could go as low as $150 and still be at break even for electricity for most people. This of course works well for those who have paid for rigs, but those who just bought in the past 60 days they can say good bye to any quick ROI forecasts for the time being.

So I think the answer would depend on when you bought the majority of your mining gear, as people with paid for gear can probably keep mining as long as the daily profits exceed their electrical costs. Those with more recent purchases, especially considering they probably paid quite a premium for their GPUs may want to consider selling off while they can still get a decent price. If the coin price continues to drop and stays low for a month or more, I feel people will then start looking to get out, again with the more recent entrants the first to go.

that's market speculation, not mining.

i'll mine even at a minor loss and just hold hoping that when it takes off i got a ton of eth banked.  As long as I can afford the electric bill I will be mining.

ill mine til i die. im only 29, been in the game for year. wish i got in sooner. not for the coin collection, but for the love of the game. the troubleshooting, the rig building, just watching my rigs hash while i daydream about my girl giving two shits about it. life

i give a fuck about the current profitability, because for me mining is a long term investment

When bitcoin was 20k, Ethereum was 1200, Decred was 100... your electricity costs should have been covered for the next 5 years. Not trying to mean at all, but it sounds like your first crash in .... anything. Everything crashes, everything recovers. Crypto has been crashing for the past 5 years, and it’s sky rocketed to new heights every single time.

Best advice I can give: When the market is at an all time high, take out your initial investment and cover your costs. When the market crashes, stop checking coin market cap and go spend time with family and friends.

I sold my holdings near the highs at the beginning of the year.  Got enough reserves to keep mining for another year or two.  At this point, some of the alt coins would have to drop by another 50% to force me to turn off my rigs.

“Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful”
-Warren Buffett

Nonsense. Bitcoin was at 20k for a minute. Bitcoins spectacular rise and fall all occurred in only a few months. Nov 2017 - Feb 2018. I made plenty of money but not enough to cover costs for 5 years..

I started mining in 2013 and stopped in disgust when Cryptsy stole all my coins.. My fault. Don't keep coins on an exchange. Lesson learned. I got back into mining in 2016. I have multiple rigs and asics. Most of it is already paid for. I'm not asking for advice.

I asked when are people going to start taking rigs offline. If it continues to drop I think we'll start to see a flood of cards on eBay.

Flood of cards on the market would be great, I could finally afford to build a rig or two  ;D

I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, let's more committed miners stay in and keeps the GPU market from being this weird shady aftermarket that it is currently. Ruining it for both miners and gamers trying to get the cards.

this crash is exactly the same as 2008 crash.
back then everything crashed because banks easily give credits to speculators to buy assets (houses) and drive prices up
now banks give you credit cards to buy bitcoins and price fuel sky rocket.
2st: bank takes the credit back from you, price crashes back
my prediction is this: the price will go back to where it has been before banks gave easy credit to buy coins

the moment you allow americans to buy something on credit, expect that to sky rocket in price, be it anything stocks, crypto coins, houses, cars, etc
just look at stocks: fed gave banks free money, stocks sky rocketed to ultra records the history never seen.
how easy it is to control people with this nice weapon they have  :)

Profitability is still higher than at the start of 2017, where an rx480 was grinding out a dollar a day before electricity costs. Now a 580 still does $1.6 a day, still well within 1 year roi after electricity costs, still way better than any traditional investment. (except for miners with high electricity costs)

It wasn't the Americans causing bitcoin to skyrocket.  Bitcoin was trading for much higher in foreign markets.

coinmarketcap and whattomine

if eth hits 500, I'm gonna give my rigs a couple days vacation, and reevaluate my path forward, electricity is not cheap by me unfortunately

I've started mining to cover the cost of a 1080ti...then became addicted: it's fun and the community is great.

that happened to me too. now i have 17 of them.

I will mine even if coin to mine is slightly negative below electric cost. I won't like it but cheaper than paying coinbase fees and it's the best dollar cost average technique

How much is your electricity price? If it is below $0.1/kWh, it is still profitable at current coin prices.

I dont think many ppl sell their mined coins instantly. Atleast i hope they dont  ;D When the market takes a dive you just dont sell the mined coins, we all know it will go back up again. I hate when ppl talk about "daily profits" etc in mining, becourse you sell on ATHs etc to get the most out of your mining.

As long as im making more than electricity costs.

The price us really going up and Down every time I really don't know what is the problem on trade now. I believe that market will be better very soon.

A lot of people I think prefer to take what they can get when they can get it especially those who are doing this to pay all their bills and need the liquidity.  Quite a lot of alt coins are bad long term investments and everyone knows it.  They don't want to get caught holding the bag so they get rid of it quickly.

The unpredictability of it makes things difficult and you really need to know what you're doing to be able to know the difference between something that sounds great but has no real use case or long term value and something that does.  A lot of people like myself here who just got started within the last few months and honestly don't know - so they tend to stick with nicehash or trading off what they mine immediately.

I'm not smart enough to know what will take off, so I'm grabbing a thousand each of every new cheap thing that comes along. Most will be useless, but I only need one to take off. I don't see mining for daily/weekly income as a good plan, at least not for me. If I wasn't such a hoarder I could have made money on a bunch of things I'm holding, but then I wouldn't be holding them anymore. I like cheap coins because it's a lot more satisfying to get 60 etn than it is to get .00001 eth for some reason. And it's easy for a cheap coin to go up 5 cents, ten cents. A 20 cent coin at a thousand coins is still 200 dollars. At 25 cents it's 250. Of course, if you sold it at 6 cents, it's price when you mined it, you only get 60 dollars. I think even people chasing a weekly income should be holding thier mined coins, looking for the right spot to sell, don't just mindlessly cash out every week. It's not like it takes a long time, a 5 cent or ten cent coin can double in a week or two.

There is really no  Market Collapse / Mining Profitability  issue it seems normal to me ups and downs are what mining is all about . right now it seems stable even though BTC price might seem down form the 20k it was at but that's a good thing, it's holding at or around 6 to 8 k stable . that matters more . while the stock market isn't doing so good, i knew/saw that coming .

I normally mine to hold so to me there is no real effect i see .

in fact i just bought a L3 + because the A4 + cost to much for a 100 mh more, i said i would never buy bitmain again an wouldn't have if innosilicon didn't over price there miners so much . I like mining ...


an will keep using my gpu's, A4 not the plus but might sell it for another L3 + or put to a A4 +. ..  an buy new stuff as needed and sell off the old stuff as needed . an the A6 is not worth the cost when all it is , is two  A4 +'s in one you might be better off looking for single A4 +'s if your a little guy doing it for Fun or work .

May buy one or two V9's from bitmain there at the old s3/S5 price .

Electricity cost no big deal for me and may get even better were looking into solar again so i will be abusing the hell out of it during the day an tone it down at nite some ... if were able to get it this time .

I found the mining profitability of ETH has dropped more than 70% in the last month.

Mining profitability drops in tandem with coin prices. Overall the market is dropping. Only way to get through this is to keep the coins mined or exchange to BTC and keep BTC. This may be a better way to survive through current market conditions as alt coins drop faster than BTC.

Funny is, many people here use the money they earn on crypto to pay electricity bill which means as price crashes as they get afraid and sell cause they need to cover the electricity bill, so much fun hehe, right now if you pay $0.1 per kw then it means 30% is going to pay the electricity bill, now if you pay $0.2 which is most people around the world then it means 60%.

https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr=30&p=130&fee=2.0&cost=0.2&hcost=440&commit=Calculate

Latest check says a rx 580 30mhs gives you $0.81 per day but is much lower than that, pools never pay what whattomine shows, always 30% less so it means a rx 580 is giving you a return of $0.50 per day and given the rx 580 price of $440 then you return of investment is around 880 days but you need to take into account the cpu, memory ram, power supply, hard drive, so it means you roi is close to 1000 days right now per gpu on eth which is the most profitable coin given whattomine right now. 1000 days is around 3 years.

The good thing is, soon will be plenty of rx 580 for $100 - $170 to buy hehe

I will just keep mining.  I built my rigs and paid them off while the getting was good.  I will mine coins I want and let fate do the rest.

I can't imagine selling off my rigs my babies! But I will at some point. We will all do it sooner or later just in order to keep up with the advancements in GPU tech.

On a serious note, just ask your doc to bump up the dosage of your antidepressant and problem is solved. At least until your elec bill hits 60%... then go ask Metroid for a quick solution :)

Finally, there is always a good excuse to keep mining no matter what. It's when you are really interested in acquiring a newborn coin which is not obtainable otherwise and the only way to get it is to mine it yourself. [aside from nicehash etc.]

-SCSI

I pay 0.12 per kw and mining is still very much profitable.  I have 16 GPU's that cost me about $4.20 - $4.90 per day to mine with depending on the algo.  I'm currently making about $20 per day mining, which is very very low compared to what it was but its nowhere near the 'unprofitable' range. 

hehe.

Our religious enthusiasm for mining and the will to go even through negative spans will prolong the suffering. The market can't recover as fast as the difficulty goes up. Too many MiningTards and nobody gives up.  It's about sheer survival now. Bwahahahahahaha. *screech*
And the 0.2¢/kWh dudes may just a few weeks ahead of the 0.1¢/kWh miners and so on. Everybody will go red for a while. It's just the beginning. Exciting times. :)

I remember people telling me that mining 2 BTC per day with my old graphic card is unprofitable because BTC is only 3 cents, and I spend 10 cents electricity, so I'm 4 cents in red

No offense but that logic make no sense what so ever.

At the point your electric costs exceed your mining income, you are better off just buying the coin outright than paying a premium for it. Not only do you end up paying more for the coin, but you also place unneeded wear and tear on your mining rig(s).

Youve forgotten the fact that he is still mining coins and their value will usually go up over time. So he hasnt "lost" anything unless he sells for a loss... Just like the stock market.

Like @Raimy said, if the rig uses up more electricity than it produces in crypto, it is literally cheaper to buy it outright.  You'll end up with the same amount of coin (that you can hold) and less money comes out of your wallet up front.