Is it a good idea to start mining Litecoins?

[pixel]

Title says it, opinions?

[erpbridge]

Not really, unless you have a fully established render farm on hand. Farming Litecoin now, is about where farming Bitcoin in Summer 2011 was: BARELY profitable, a few difficulties rises and a price drop or two from being unprofitable. With one or two 7950 GPUs, you'll be lucky to make a buck or two a day. In a couple difficulties, that profit margin will drop to pennies a day.

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CPU mining LTC, and GPU mining Bitcoin, is at that pennies point now, per device. Only by having your hardware fully paid off, and having multiple pieces of hardware across multiple rigs, can you add all those pennies and single dollars together and get something meaningful. By no means is it a replacement for full time employment.

The thing that's really going to hurt Litecoin, and all the other lower cryptocoins, is ASIC mining over in the Bitcoin arena. How so? When the first few hundred people come online with ASICs, its going to drive difficulty sky high within a few weeks to a couple months, almost instantly making GPU mining unprofitable, and FPGA mining will pretty much be dead too. What GPUs are still profitable, will get pennies a day, and as more waves of ASICs come on, even that will peter out.

GPU miners will take all their rigs to what's most profitable and stable, which is Litecoin at the moment... and that will in turn shoot the Litecoin difficulty skyhigh too, turning GPU miners on Litecoin into the same profit margins they get on BTC now. There will then be some who move over to other coins... Before today, I'd have said after looking at Dustcoin.com that PPcoin or Terracoin will be the next in line based on their profitability... but looking at the news about how Terracoin is bouncing offline and back on with at least one exchange being un-synched from the chain, I think its going to kick the bucket soon.

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Really, what there is to say... is that there's no good answer right now. My personal move, as I'm just getting back in things, is to mine what few Litecoins I can, and spread my bet across a few different other coins, including Bitcoin. Soon, though, it'll probably be time to move to another. I'm already starting to look into setting up a local Linux VM with merged mining in P2pool for a couple of the other coins, to gather some backup options.

June and July will be the turning point, I think, when all will start to change. GPU miners are going to be in a free fall at that point, heads spinning as to which minor coin is the flavor of the week for profitability. I would even guess at that point in time, we'll see at least a half dozen new coins pop up, one of which will probably be to Litecoin what Litecoin is to Bitcoin. It will probably be the next evolution of Litecoin's path... moving even further toward massive amounts of RAM dependence... just a guess, but as miners go, we're pretty much peaked out in the arms race as far as GPUs go, with a very high saturation of GPU power.

Good luck. Dustcoin.com is probably your best point to look at for mining profitability info. Go ahead and mine the coin of your choice... just don't get dreams of hitting it rich, as without a large established buildout, you won't. The miner's story, in all coins, is going to stay the same for years... and the stock market / forex traders story is the place where riches will be made or lost.

[reactor]

Look at mining as a hobby or some supplemental income, but realistically don't bank on it.  Much like the Euro, at any time these currencies can fold and a bunch of people will be sitting on some worthless paper.  If you want to go pro, be willing to spend (and lose) the investment on ASIC hardware when it is more readily available as that'll be the only way mining can still pull a profit (with BTC, anyway).  GPU's will shift to LTC or other alternatives, but it looks like those are simply pump and dump currencies to trade up to BTC when rates are on an upswing. 

[tacotime]

Started mining Litecoin large October last year (bunch of 7950s).  Was making about $100-200 a month.  Was pretty cool with that.  Paid off the rigs in 4 or so months.  Hoarded all the Litecoins I earned for shits and giggles, I think they were worth between $0.05-0.08 but the price was stable so I didn't care.

Fast forward to March.  Litecoin went up to $4, dumped most of them, made 2000%+ profit on investment.  Bought another 3 rigs with some of proceeds.  Am mining and hoarding again.  If the price goes down, good.  More LTC for me when the difficulty falls.

The arguments above are more or less the same ones people were making when I was mining for Litecoins at 0.06 USD each.  I ignored them.  I made a lot of money.  Unless some major problem comes up with the chain, I'm going to continue ignoring them.

Okay, time to get back to work here.

[pikeadz]

Started mining Litecoin large October last year (bunch of 7950s).  Was making about $100-200 a month.  Was pretty cool with that.  Paid off the rigs in 4 or so months.  Hoarded all the Litecoins I earned for shits and giggles, I think they were worth between $0.05-0.08 but the price was stable so I didn't care.

Fast forward to March.  Litecoin went up to $4, dumped most of them, made 2000%+ profit on investment.  Bought another 3 rigs with some of proceeds.  Am mining and hoarding again.  If the price goes down, good.  More LTC for me when the difficulty falls.

The arguments above are more or less the same ones people were making when I was mining for Litecoins at 0.06 USD each.  I ignored them.  I made a lot of money.  Unless some major problem comes up with the chain, I'm going to continue ignoring them.

Okay, time to get back to work here.

 

I see this a lot.  People in this community tend to be greedy and discourage others from mining because it makes it less profitable for them when the difficulty rises.  My 7950s are as profitable now as they were when difficulty was 38.  As long as cryptos continue to gain on fiat as far as exchange rates go, this will not stop.  Startup costs can be expensive but it is definitely worth it considering you can resell the GPUs later for 75% resale value.

[zakoliverz]

However, it is unlikely to be profitable to mine using your own electricity unless you have access to free electricity(Work/School).

[marketermac]

Startup costs can be expensive but it is definitely worth it considering you can resell the GPUs later for 75% resale value.

this was absolutely my first thoughts when I got into this...if my 7970s are only producing about $5 per day (they aren't, they are making more then that atm) you're only looking at a month to break even assuming it all tanks and you have to unload the hardware you bought.

So if my risks are mine for a month and loose a bit of time in the learning curve plus reselling the hardware, it was worth it for the experience. If the market continues where it's at or goes up, you'll be sitting pretty well with your mining hardware already on it's way to being paid off.

However, it is unlikely to be profitable to mine using your own electricity unless you have access to free electricity(Work/School).

I've seen this argument SOOO many times before. I understand that I pay less then the average for electricity (.07 per kWh), even if it was quadruple that, which I'm making an uneducated guess is the upper limit of what most people pay, I would still be profitable by quite a bit with the current difficulty and prices in the various altcoin markets.



Just as long as what you put into it is in fact something you are willing to loose completely, I'd say go for it for the learning experience and just so you can be a part of something fascinating. I'd much rather have my money in my mining rigs right now then in a mutual fund or something else much less intellectually stimulating.

[Operatr]

Litecoin is where Bitcoin was a couple years ago, what if LTC rides BTC's success eventually exchanging where BTC is now, and BTC exchanging around $1000 instead. Not saying that will happen, but it can if we support it.

That aside, GPUs will need something to do when ASIC takes over the world soon for Bitcoin mining.

[Mogwai]

.07 per kWh

Even at my 0.2675€/KWh (0.35$/kWh), GPUs could mine LTC at <1.4$, according to the calculator. So if you intend to mine on used hardware, there is little to loose. The difficulty will go up, and so will the exchange rates.

[cdog]

If you already have mining hardware, sure its a good idea. Just remember, LTC is harder to mine than BTC - there is a lot of tweaking involved.

But if you are looking at BUYING a mining rig, that money is EASILY better spent buying coins at these prices, and its not even close.

I have mining rigs, but given current LTC difficulty which skyrocketed into the 300s and isnt stopping, Im buying coins now - not hardware.

Im mining right now barely at a profit because Im hoping the price will go back up - a lot. If it doesnt, this will be a huge waste of time and money, but Im ok with that because I want to support cryptocurrency - I truly believe in BTC and LTC and their future. 

[meebs]

Started mining Litecoin large October last year (bunch of 7950s).  Was making about $100-200 a month.  Was pretty cool with that.  Paid off the rigs in 4 or so months.  Hoarded all the Litecoins I earned for shits and giggles, I think they were worth between $0.05-0.08 but the price was stable so I didn't care.

Fast forward to March.  Litecoin went up to $4, dumped most of them, made 2000%+ profit on investment.  Bought another 3 rigs with some of proceeds.  Am mining and hoarding again.  If the price goes down, good.  More LTC for me when the difficulty falls.

The arguments above are more or less the same ones people were making when I was mining for Litecoins at 0.06 USD each.  I ignored them.  I made a lot of money.  Unless some major problem comes up with the chain, I'm going to continue ignoring them.

Okay, time to get back to work here.

best part about mining is that crap runs itself in the background.. very little work needed once the rig is up and going :-D

[YipYip]

Started mining Litecoin large October last year (bunch of 7950s).  Was making about $100-200 a month.  Was pretty cool with that.  Paid off the rigs in 4 or so months.  Hoarded all the Litecoins I earned for shits and giggles, I think they were worth between $0.05-0.08 but the price was stable so I didn't care.

Fast forward to March.  Litecoin went up to $4, dumped most of them, made 2000%+ profit on investment.  Bought another 3 rigs with some of proceeds.  Am mining and hoarding again.  If the price goes down, good.  More LTC for me when the difficulty falls.

The arguments above are more or less the same ones people were making when I was mining for Litecoins at 0.06 USD each.  I ignored them.  I made a lot of money.  Unless some major problem comes up with the chain, I'm going to continue ignoring them.

Okay, time to get back to work here.

WORD

[pacojones]

Thanks for the good info on mining litecoin - I have a few video cards and was considering building a rig while I wait for my bitcoin mining hardware, but no longer - I'll just continue doing research while I wait...

[FiiNALiZE]

I'm paying $0.1825 per KWH (Fucking crazy, I know) and I'm still making about $100 a month with LTC.

I made around $900 this month though because of XPM

I wouldn't sell your miner. You never know when the next big hit will come out and I'd rather have a miner on hand to jump in the bandwagon.