It depends on the equipment and the cost of electricity. A good guess would be $1.25 to $3.50 per day.

Bitcoin mining is profitable only if you can get the equipment for less than 0.018 BTC per GH/s.

Scrypt mining is harder to estimate because it also depends on electricity costs and exchange rates. My scrypt mining revenue is about $5.00 per day per MH/s right now. If the difficulty rises 1% per day, then I can expect the total revenue to be about $500 per MH/s. I then subtract the power and equipment costs to get my profit.

What work are you talking about? "the joint" answered the question I thought you were asking. If you don't see any "accepted" shares, then there is no work to be lost. I occasionally see "rejected" shares because they were stale. And when the pool is having problems, I see sometimes messages about shares being lost because I was disconnected for the pool.

If this is really just a gamble, then you don't need to ask for advice. You are asking to many questions. Just pick something and see what happens.

In theory, the average cost is just under 1 BTC to produce a bitcoin. That is because if it costs more than 1 BTC, then miners will stop mining, lowering the difficulty and the cost. If it costs less than 1 BTC, then more people will start mining, raising the difficulty and the cost.

In reality, it currently costs much more than 1 BTC to mine a bitcoin. It is reasonable to expect that 1 GH/s will mine no more than 0.018 BTC, yet people are paying double that for cex.io and most mining equipment.
 

How much do you expect to make from mining? It doesn't seem very smart for someone to invest a lot of time and money into mining without even knowing how much they will make.

Never leave coins in someone else's wallet. You are going to lose them.

Anyone can mine bitcoins. The amount of bitcoins you mine depends on the hash rate of your equipment and the difficulty. The issues with profitability are the costs of mining -- the cost of the equipment and the cost of electricity. These days, buying an ASIC and mining with it is not profiitable because the equipment is too expensive or you don't receive the miner until the difficulty has gone way up, and mining with a graphics card is not profitable because the electricity costs more than the card will mine. Established miners might be able to get some deals on ASICs so that they continue mining at a profit, but it is difficult for everyone else to make a profit right now.

Unless you are mining solo, your are not competing with pools, because you are part of a pool. Also, the biggest pool doesn't get all the blocks. The number of blocks they get is proportional to their hash rate. Even a small solo miner will get a block occasionally.

I do it all the time. Click on the link in my signature.

I noticed a while back that putting an address in your signature would tag the address on blockchain.info. I don't know if they still do that.

A calculation is done after every 2016 blocks. If the last 2016 took less than 14 days to produce, then the difficulty is increased. If last 2016 blocks took more than 14 days, then the difficulty is decreased.

new difficulty = old difficulty * 14 days / time

The number of people that chose "Greater than 1,000,000" is over 12 -- I know someone is not telling the truth.

I don't think there is anything inherent in bitcoin that will prevent fractional reserve banking. Bitcoin won't solve that problem. I think it might even make it worse.

I recommend using blockchain.info. It is easier to use and more convenient. It is also more secure than Bitcoin-qt if you turn on all the security features. Be sure to encrypt and backup your wallet no matter which one you use.

I think not:


On the other hand, it is possible that he chose a headline on a physical paper because it can't be modified like an online version.

The feasibility of mining with a CPU ended more than a year ago. It will cost far more in electricity than you will mine. Even if electricity is free, the amount you mine (especially with an i3) will be so close to 0 that many pools will just call it 0.

So, if you really want to mine, you will first need to find pools that support mining with a CPU, and then choose the best one.

Consider this: you lose money if you hold cex.io for any significant period of time, but cex.io mines more than an Antminer for the same price. Thus, you lose money even more if you mine with an Antminer. At the current prices, you should do neither.

To make a reasonable profit by mining, you can't pay more than 0.015 BTC per GH/s.


You can't keep up with the difficulty because the price is too high and the mining revenue is not enough to buy the lost mining capacity.

I would determine which will get you the highest GH/s.

4 Antminers cost 0.324 BTC ($275), and give you 6.4 GH/s.
6.4 shares of cex.io cost 0.304 BTC and give you 6.4 GH/s.

If I had to pick one, I would pick cex.io then because it is cheaper and you can start mining now.

However, the best choice is neither. 6.4 GH/s costs 0.304 BTC, but it will mine no more than 0.13 BTC over several years, so you will lose about 0.17 BTC overall if you try to mine it.

Buy the BTC directly and you will come out ahead.

That is definitely a good read. The information is solid and unbiased.

An interesting quote from the head of FinCEN:

"... those obligations to protect the U.S. financial system from money laundering need to be taken seriously." It is odd that she considers money laundering a threat to the financial system. That is like saying that "resisting arrest" is a threat to the population, or that paying your taxes without filing a 1040 (which is a crime) is a threat to the U.S.

It's great news. It will definitely raise interest by merchants. But don't count on sales being sustained at this level.