Just out of curiosity, how are you calculating this?
It would help me decide how much I'm willing to spend if I could calculate it myself.





That is what I was leaning towards; buy one ASIC for about 1100 USD and put around the same amount into bitcoin and see how much the bitcoin outperforms the mining, as an experiment.

Also, does anyone know a reasonable way of estimating how much the value of  bitcoin is likely to appreciate in a year from now?

Hi everybody,

Thanks for your responses, I appreciate the input.  

Anyway, I guess the prevailing opinion is that I would get better return on my money by purchasing bitcoin, rather than mining it. I did not consider this and will probably start investing some money in bitcoin.

However, I don't think it would be a complete disaster if I did some mining. It turns out that I have access to free electricity for my rig for the next 5-8 years at least, so theoretically it should pay itself off almost certainly, which means at worst I would break even. Unless of course you count the opportunity cost of what else I could have spent the money on. Furthermore, the money I would put into it (1-2 thousand USD) is not money I "need" anytime soon, its a fraction of my savings. If I lost it all, it would suck but it wouldn't affect me that much.

So I think out of curiosity, fun, and learning I will set up an asic rig with the hope of breaking even in the year I set it up. If I do the math even with projected huge difficulty based on the increase in hash power from asics, it could pay itself off twice by 2014, but as long as I break even eventually I will consider it a "success"(or at least not a mistake). I am not hoping to make huge profits or anything.

Then as an investment, with the hope of making money I will purchase bitcoins ad let them apprecciate, which will probably be much more profitable for me then the mining, as was suggested.

Do my expectations seem reasonable, or am I making a big mistake?

Thanks!

Thanks for the replies!

Just to clarify I am not considering a gpu rig, just an asic one.

Hi guys,

So very recently I discovered Bitcoin and have been reading up on it. It seems like a very genius idea and avoids a lot of the problems conventional money has. Also interesting to me is bitcoin mining. I am pretty good with computers and have built my own so I was thinking of building a mining rig.

Anyway, I have been wondering whether it is too late to enter the world of bitcoin mining and still make a profit. I know a lot of people are bummed out about ASICs making their GPU rigs totally obsolete, and a couple months back tons of people were pre-ordering these ASICs that are coming out January, and one of the concerns was how long it would take these companies to take care of their back orders. Because the bitcoin difficulty would increase drastically with the sudden inrush of rigs with really high hashing rates, obviously the people who got their ASIC rigs up and running earlier would have an advantage over those who started later. (If I understand how this works correctly) If I ordered now I would be way at the back of the pack in getting my ASICs I think.

I could afford to drop a 2 or maybe 3 grand on a rig, and maybe set it up at work for free power, but I am worried it wouldn't even break even if I were to start ordering parts today. Also, how drastically would the profits (if any) decrease in the near future, e.g. a year from now. Could I still make a profit or would it be a waste of money?

Opinions or advice anyone?

Thanks!