I figure if I'm going to try it as a hobby, might as well recoup some costs from Uncle Sam while trying.  Maybe might help to break ROI faster, especially if looking at more than a year for that to happen. 

I built a gaming rig for my step son about 2 years ago and dumped about $2000 in it for his 14th birthday.  I could definitely see dumping another $2000 for another gaming rig for my other son who turns 14 in a year.  Sure would be nice to be able to buy a hardcore chip and top notch graphics cards soon if I could write them off for altcoin mining and then stop and hand the setup to him when he turns 14.  The 1200w power supply I just bought to start out has a 10 year warranty, so no chance of having to buy another before the hardware is outdated.

I can agree to that, it needs to be spread around to keep it truly decentralized.  Otherwise, we'll have the Official Bank of Bitcoin savings and loan to be dealing with, defeating the purpose of bitcoin in the first place.

What are the chances a HUGE investor would come in at the end and buyout all the large farms in order to control most of the transactions in the future? I know that's way in the future and I'm probably way off the original topic now...sorry!

I can see that raising profit as well, but also raising difficulty.  If it's a way more efficient machine, wouldn't you want to weigh the profits of running the same ph at less wattage and maintaining difficulty vs raising the ph maintaining the same wattage and increasing difficulty to see which maximizes profit?  The difficulty won't increase immediately but will catch up if you increase ph...

I'm thinking largescale miners will eventually have to start scaling down to the most efficiency vs most gain as rewards keep halving.  I can't imagine it being cost effective to run all out full bore till the end of rewards when the only take will be transaction percentages.

I found some tax software that came out in 2014 that supposedly deducts costs associated for mining and such automatically, anyone heard of anything like it or tried it?  http://libratax.com

It would make sense to freeze ph and try for better efficiency, why would they want to start a larger ph race guarenteed to increase difficulty.  They'll make plenty running more efficient equipment and not adding to more market burden.

Altcoin would be a better choice for $200, you need a pc with a power supply and as good graphics card as you can get though.  From what I understand, it'll be useless for anything else while using it to mine but you can always stop mining temp if you need to use the pc for something else.

Man, if I didn't have to pay for electric...might be worth renting a small studio that's all bills paid and cram that sucker with miners and run it full bore till management caught up with me...  

I know the large scale miners are surely taking as many tax breaks as they can get for their operations, but have any of you small scale/part time miners or hobbyists tried to claim deductions for mining on your taxes?  I'm assuming you could write off some potrion of your electric bill, your internet, mining rent space area (whether it be home or business), the equipment and whatever else might be able to be written off or deducted.  I'm wondering if I could claim this as a home business and get enough deductions to offset the taxes I pay on my full time real day job?

Example: My wife does mystery shopping part time for play money and made $700 last year.  We had to file that because her mystery shopping company sent her an income tax declatation for being an independent contractor (I can't remember the form number but like a W-2).  Had she stayed under a $400 threshold that we did not know existed, it would have been free money.  Instead, since she made over the $400 low limit they hit her with an independent contractor earnings tax fee of about 40% on her earnings.  Of course she had no receipts for buying mystery shop items or transportation gasoline cost logs etc so she got screwed.  I'm looking to recoup some costs of the mining equipment, electric, internet, etc from my mining hobby/venture...however small it may be...

If this is in the wrong place or it has been addressed previously, feel free to move it or direct me to where I could find such disscussion.  Really curious on how people go about procuring the taxbreaks/offset costs associated with mining.

I don't understand the thought of saying it's not worth it to mine now, since the bitcoin price is low.  I'm looking at this as a small investment, like buying small shares of a stock.  Before the "big boom" of bitcoin, it had averaged approx $110 per coin for awhile and then was highly inflated to approx $1120 per coin.  Now it's been sitting around $220 and I expect the price to drop more before somewhat inflating again.

 The way I see it, if bitcoin stays current or deflates a little, then it puts pressure on the mining farms to suspend operations till the price is profitable again...meaning they only farm when they can immidiately flip their rewards for a good (inflated) price.  With my hope and assumption that bitcoin will inflate again (like any volatile stock would, the short past history of bitcoin has demonstrated, and because the dollar value decreasing somewhat because of US debt), then why would you not mine for bitcoin if you can afford it at a temp loss for suspected future gain?  

If I mine now while the price is low, and supposedly so is competition (because we know if bitcoin was $1,000 per coin then EVERYONE would be running full power), and hold till the price inflates somewhat better than what it cost me to mine, then I've made more money by continue to mine now because I have presumedly more bitcoin shares.

Sorry this is so long or if it is in the wrong forum, but saying not to mine now because it is not immediately profitable (whether as a hobby to break even or as an investment), seems to me like saying not to buy Walmart stock because it's at $30 a share when it normally is at $100 a share.  I know it's a lot of assumtions to think bitcoin will rise again and many variables can affect price, but to me if you only mine whenever it is ONLY immediately profitable...then you're shorting yourself on the investment that we all hope and think that bitcoin will rise again.  If you don't think bitcoin will pay off to mine or buy when at a low price, then you probably shouldn't be doing so anyways regardless of price.  The point of investing is to buy low and sell high, buying high and hoping for higher is where investments go bad.

Okay, thanks everyone, I was not aware the sp20's could be tweeked so optimally.  Sounds like I'll be getting 2 sp20's instead of the S5's.  I wanted the S5's because of the lower wattage draw when compared to the sp20, but now knowing they can be tweeked down then I'll definitely go with the  sp20's.  Thanks for the help again, knowledge is power and you guys are the kings!!!

So maybe I ought to really look into buying the sp20's instead of the s5's?  Sounds like they are quieter w/o need for any modifications.  I'm sure the initial cost is a little higher, but I thought an sp20 needed 1150 watts to run per the manufactures' website?  Now I'm confused...is there a low speed on the sp20 or do you guys have them tweeked to run at lower watts?

That's the setup I was hoping for, Finksy.  Sounds like a good small  efficient setup to start out.  Thanks for all your help!

Noise will be an issue as well as heat.  For sure I will change the stock fans with deltas and probably only run one S5 during the hottest summer months...but from my understanding of what you're saying the S5's are much louder than the sp20's?  I guess my prorities are pretty much in order of: wattage per tg/s, heat and then noise.  

From what I've researched, the sp20 pulls about 1.3-1.4 tg/s at 1100w, and an S5 pulls about 1 tg/s at 600w.  Is that an accurate comparison?

Thanks for all your help, info and posts.  I'm new to all this stuff but eargerly gathering my sources to make this a little hobby for me.  I'm new to this social media stuff too, I like to fly under the radar without having facebook etc so if I make a "social mistake" please excuse me...

Sorry to rehash the thread, but I just bought a EVGA 1200w P2 power supply I found on sale yesterday to couple up on an sp20 or some S5's.  Debating between the sp20 and the S5, it looks as though I might be better running 2 S5s and get better power use per tg/s than combining an S5 and an sp20.  The S5's are easy to find at about $450, but can hardly locate any sp20's for sale and the price is significantly higher than the S5's.  I'd like to stick in the 2 tg/s range since I'm a noob and see how this goes.  Any thoughts about me thinking 2 S5's might be "friendlier" than an sp20 or an sp20 coupled with an s5?

Heat is one thing to worry about since I'm in Texas, that's why I favor the S5 over the sp20 here because lower watts.  

At the 50 coin per block rate it was well worth it for the huge investment, but being they will soon be rewarding only 12.5 per block I think anyone would be lucky just to break even.  Could have taken a bigger part had I found out way earlier about mining, but if it occupies some of my time then it'll be a good escape.  Wish me luck!

Thanks for the info.

Was going to go for a break even point and then sit on the coins and hope for the best as a long term investment.  No way I can compete with the guys running PH/s but seems like an interesting idea for hobby.

I'm new here, but have been looking into mining seriously for awhile now and am going to try it soon.  Looking at antminer S5 to start for low investment at 1.1T and if that works out this summer will move up to a sp20 jackson to add on during the winter to also help heat my house since I'm all electric utilities anyways.  Might start earlier on the sp20 and run it half powered at about 800MG/s cause I think the heat would be too much to offset cost during the summer where I am in Texas.  It's already a furnace here during the summers so I can't imagine wanting to put more excess heat upon myself.  Any ideas where to find good mining equipment to start at the lower TG/s speeds?  Can't do much more than that now since just trying it out, but looks like interesting prospects for bitcoin ahead...