Bitcoin Forum

I just had a read of this:
http://www.finance-guy.net/finblog/is-difficulty-creating-centralization-of-bitcoin

It makes a fair point, that mining pools are becoming too powerful, and I don't know about you but my home computer would be useless at mining.

What do you think?  is the growing difficulty bad for mining?

It's a natural process.
Mining become a business with millions $ revenue.
And as any other business - big players displace small miners.

you can mine some pron :P

You can still mine from home, don't forget you save from hiring people and renting a office. Now you need cheap power....

And don't forget the supercomputer you need in order to solve the equation :)

It depends.  You need space, and cheap electricity.   Your electricity rate really is the big deciding part.

You can still mine from home. Some still run their kit in their garage. It is profitable for them? I am not quite sure, may be marginally profitable after taking away electricity and cooling installations. Winter is here and cooling is less of a problem, so might be more profitable than in summer.

You can always mine from home... doesn't mean you're going to make anything from it... then again, it doesn't mean you're not going to make anything from it, either ;).

Sure you can.  Anyone can mine from home, ROI is a whole different story though.

If you do decide to go ahead and mine, make sure it's inexpensive, energy efficient, and you view it strictly as a hobby, not a money printing machine.

I guess this is a key point.  If you mine from home, you have to go into it expecting to lose money... It's a pity because validating the blockchain is an important function and it was awesome when the open book was maintained by the collaborative of all the people... Now it's maintained by a few big players  starting to look like banks, hope they don't start charging fees like the banks :)

Of course you can still mine at home!*







*as long as you aren't expecting to make a profit

All depends on the price of electricity and also during winter in the northern hemishere you can use if to drying clothes...or some home heating wich is a good thing.
I dont mine at home currently just recently moved a miner at home because my wife remembered since last winter that the laundry dried in just few hours...(6pcs  S1 at that time...March 2014)

Serious question. People hang laundry in their homes to dry? That seems so 1940's.

Hey I do it all the time, I'm old school!   :D

Seriously, if it's good clothes I can't get to the dry cleaners, then I air dry that shit for like a day, then hand iron it.

Hmm...maybe the S1s as a clothes dryer is a better idea.

mining bitcoin with personal computer was a game before ASIC released
nowdays to mine bitcoins you need big mining farm
and if you want to solo mine then multiply this :)

You certainly can, especially in an environment where difficulty increases are being tamed. Here are some factors to consider:

1) juice/hash. You need to know your operating expenses. Figure out exactly what it costs to run the unit each month in electricity. Once you have that number (say $50.00 per month for a 1 TH Dragon) you have a good starting point.

2) expected returns. Look at the unit return in BTC with a 2%, a 5%, a 10%, a 20%, and a 30% average difficulty increase. Find the date for each where at current USD/BTC prices it will be unprofitable to run. Figure out your total profit at each diff if you turned it off that day minus the electricity. This tells you exactly how much you have to spend on the miner assuming each diff.

3) Price of the miner. Lets say you figure out that at 2% diff increases a 1 TH Dragon will net you $1165 by July 2015 after electricity costs. And lets say you buy a used one on ebay, delivered for $399. It does not take a genius to realize that you will over double your money.  Of course, with 30% diff increases you will probably never get the $399 back, you would need to buy the unit for more like $70. Buying new equipment at retail prices will usually get you burned. Look for good second-hand deals, they are out there, not just every single day.

4) Lastly, resale. Believe it or not, people will still buy unprofitable miners. You may well recoup $100 selling your unit when you are done with it. Not everyone can do math.

This is where you can actually profit.  Not in the miner earnings, most calculators will give you 100 days+ or maybe never.

It's in the resale where you can be in the positive, if you sell it at the right time, for the right price.  Ebay, Amazon, or right here in this forum is where your loss can end up a gain.

hi guys, im considering buying a 2TH s4 antminer in the coming weeks to mine at home, just wondering is this a good reliable machine to buy at $1299? i sort of worked it out that it would make 0.03 btc per day/24hrs. cheers

ps. my electric is VERY cheap  :D

Hmm, not sure where you got that number from.  This is the S4 earnings per day with the values plugged into Bitcoinwisdom:

https://i.imgur.com/ahOtlIn.png

0.016 BTC/day and it'll lower even more after another difficulty increase.

Long story short, don't waste your money or electricity, mining will not be profitable for you.

Get a coupon from someone on here.   400 dollars off S4's.

I often wonder, for Americans you do understand for less than the cost of 1 dragon miner right now you can get va solar setup for 1 machine right? Stop basing your decisi8ons on the power company eliminate them teach them a lesson, get an off grid 1500 watt solar system for under 600 bucks, They are everywhere. If you were smart youd go on a place like ebay or craigslist and bvuy parts and put one together yourself for under 400 bucks. Use 1 solar system per machine, electricity problem solved :) Once you get big enough chargers and inverters run some extra batteries to cover overnight consumption and then buy your own power meter and pull the line that goes to your house out of your power companies meter and put it in your newly solar powered meter and wala, Now you have absolutely NO electric for anything in your whole home :)

That is just a lot of cost.   I am currently at over 11k watts for mining gear.  I have decent priced electricity.  To get solar just does not make sense.   For each one of those systems I can pay most of my electricity bill for a month.  

I would love to, just hard to justify the initial price.  Also considering my electricity varies its hard.  During winter I am able to go bigger then during summer.   So I cannot justify it as long term.

Electricity is not an issue ;), also pls remember lots of other coins run on the sha 256 algo. So to say its not profitable in untrue. Also I am a trader so if I'm making the smallest amount of btc I can make even bigger money from my machine via trading ;) cheers

Yes we can mine from home; but control is on big mining farm's hands right now. If you have cheap electricty and faith on a promising coin go ahead and mine that coin for the future! Don't wait any income from mining, it's not profitable after ASIC miners and mining farms...

Electricity is not an issue for who?  Your landlord?  Your parents?  Your boss?

Someone pays that bill, and 1400 Watts of electricity isn't cheap for someone.  What's your k/WH or are you hosting this at a business establishment?

And please don't tell you you're day trading alt SHA-256 Algo's back to BTC looking at Coinwarz or mining at Multipool.  That's alot of work for 0.016 BTC a day (which will never add up to $1299 of S4 money).

eh, no! your picking me up wrong, I pay for my electric, but lets just say its super cheap ;), long story short, if my machine produces 0.016 per day, after maybe one or two weeks i take that btc and invest in a particular altcoin and wait for that to rise, very simple. and the machine costing me nothing anyway as im working of pure profit from previous investments, so im not bothered about ROI  :)

also mining would be more for the fun of it for me personally and helping the network, as ive never mined before always trading. so mining will be nice experience for me  ;)

lol, i mine from home and i make 0.07 BTC a day!

So you're saying you have over 8 TH/s of miners at home?  How the heck do you not trip anything in your house?

Come on, be honest.

I mine from home.

Currently over 12Th/sec using a mixture of 40+ Antminer S1's, some S2's and some Gridseed G-Black for Scrypt mining.

I have the Utility room of my house setup for mining, I changed all the 120V plugs to 240V and between the 6 dedicated circuits combined they can provide around 23KW continously without tripping breakers.  There was already 1 circuit for several plugs in there, 1 for the dryer, 1 for the washer, 1 for a fridge, and 1 that is only shared with the lights, So I only had to run 1 more circuit.

I have average biling for the year which is based on the previous years bills, in which there was no mining going on so this year is very cheap for my 12,000+Kwh I am hitting.

So the anwser is yes you can mine from home, just need to make some simple changes.  My goal is to have 100Th/sec mining at home in the next 3 months.

PS Main thing is cost of electricity and converting your outlets to 240V.

yes I resell here on this forum.  the key is find someone with 'free' power 

Sell him a used s-1 during the summer.
Sell him a used s-3 during the fall.
Sell him a used sp20 next year.

If You  are of higher power cost like  I am :
net 10 cents from oct to apr
then 16 cents from may to sept. 

you find a low cost power buddy and sell off gear while you upgrade.
his benefit is discounted gear-------------------and with his 'free' power your low price to him makes him a winner.
you end up making profit  when you make that sale to him.

Will this always be true no. I think it will end with the sp20's for me.

I would agree so far I have found my old miners homes elsewhere.  It normally is a benefit to both parties.   One with free/super cheap electricity is able to give a second life to older gear.

You won't get rich selling the old gear, but it can be a nice little extra BTC.  I started the trend with GPU's, then asics.  It's a good system.   With 10 cent electricity year around I tend to keep my gear quite a while.

On a side note the best mining part I ever sold was surprisingly the old anker hub's during the block erupter days.  With them switching to a 9 + 1 charging model compared to 10 powered port solid metal one it sold at almost same price I bought it.  Almost no loss with using them.

You certianly can mine from home, but chances of finding a block are less. Its best to join a mining pool instead.

its not worth it to mine from home, bitcoin mining is for the rich