Mining dead for home users?

[timau]

Is there any reason to mine for blocks if we are competing against people who are investing their money
in ASIC and FPGA hardware. I was thinking of building a rig that mines LTC or other scrypt because I
wouldn't be competing against other sha256d miners but now I hear that FPGA and ASIC for scrypt are in
development. Sounds like a loosing game if you missed the boat.


I very much appreciate all comments sorry if I don't reply to your comments immediately.

[Peezr]

I really don't mine anymore. Not profitable.

[pening]

There's been talk of FPGA and ASIC for scrypt some time.  So where are they? 

As far as i understand scrypt was specifically developed to be "resistant" to such technology, not ASIC proof, but deliberately altering the parameters so that the hash algorithm is memory intensive.  Whats an ASIC chip with say 2GB of fast ram attached?  Its going to look a lot like a GPU, at least in terms of cost to manufacture.  I'm not going to say never (and may have mis-understood), but seems to me ASIC are unlikely and if they do show up will not have the same step change as they had with SHA256. 

[caminilegroup]

I mine with 4 v2 blades and sell through coinbase every week. I average about 100 USD weekly. It pays the electric and cable / internet bill and a little in the pocket.

[YoyodyneSystems]

If you have the time, money, space, power, and non-stop go get 'em.... You can do very well. If you do Scrypt mining (high end video card based systems) you can sell back the
gear at some point when you are done mining and trade up for new gear or cash out. Power price is most critical. Oregon for example is $0.07 per KWH.
Whereas California.... well some areas are $0.39 and going up actually. Scrypt uses far more power than Bitcoin mining which is SHA-256 ASICs ... very specialized chips
with better energy efficiency. But those are harder to sell back. Unless of course the price of BTC goes up and up. Then they might go up in value instead of down. Which actually
just happened this month.

Hope that's not confusing.. heh.

[toy4lov3rs]

There's been talk of FPGA and ASIC for scrypt some time.  So where are they? 

As far as i understand scrypt was specifically developed to be "resistant" to such technology, not ASIC proof, but deliberately altering the parameters so that the hash algorithm is memory intensive.  Whats an ASIC chip with say 2GB of fast ram attached?  Its going to look a lot like a GPU, at least in terms of cost to manufacture.  I'm not going to say never (and may have mis-understood), but seems to me ASIC are unlikely and if they do show up will not have the same step change as they had with SHA256. 

Your right Litecoin ASIC will be like GPU, but simplier, thus more power effective, making GPU mining unprofitable if you pay for electricity. But not anytime soon

[timau]

I really don't mine anymore. Not profitable.

Damn quick attack with that response

When did you stop mining? And what Cryptocurrency did you mine? Any tips on mining, pool or solo mine?

There's been talk of FPGA and ASIC for scrypt some time.  So where are they?  

As far as i understand scrypt was specifically developed to be "resistant" to such technology, not ASIC proof, but deliberately altering the parameters so that the hash algorithm is memory intensive.  Whats an ASIC chip with say 2GB of fast ram attached?  Its going to look a lot like a GPU, at least in terms of cost to manufacture.  I'm not going to say never (and may have mis-understood), but seems to me ASIC are unlikely and if they do show up will not have the same step change as they had with SHA256.  

What is the main difference between an ASIC and FPGA? They are both integrated circuits. I may be wrong on this but wasn't FPGA only for scrypt mining and ASIC for SHA256d mining? But now supposable they are developing ASIC for scrypt.  

[YoyodyneSystems]

Until someone actually delivers ASIC for Scrypt... I wouldn't worry about it at all. IF it even happens it's many months out and I doubt it will be very relevant anytime soon.
If it was possible and worth it then it would have already happened.

There is the factor the Litecoin and other alt just became far more valuable just this last few weeks. But we will see. It's not something to worry
about really because graphics cards sell back pretty nicely so you can cash out and buy the next gen.

It comes down to power. It needs to be under $0.15 per kWh right now. A system that pulls about 850 watts will get you about 1800 KH/s.
That's a pretty decent rule of thumb. Because in California that system will cost you $200 a month about. No joke. In Oregon it would be
about 1/5th that price to run. $40 a month. The system might cost you around $1500. And maybe in 6 months you can can at least half that
for it.

[hunnaryb]

What is the main difference between an ASIC and FPGA? They are both integrated circuits.

FPGA can be reprogramed thus less power effecient to do the same task as ASIC. But FPGA can be reprogramed to other tasks, while ASIC will always must stay the same

[caminilegroup]

I got really tired of heating my house GPU and then ASIC mining and watching my electric bill go up and up so I shifted some BTC into Cloud Hashing.

My electric bill went down and the wife stopped nagging about the noise.  I'm still mining and making BTC but no longer have the headache of mining "in-house."

Worked for me.

There is always the Cloud Mining option.

I finally learned that by the time I received my ASIC miners they were already obsolete.

Mining in the cloud keeps me on current technology.

Which one is it? Stick with one pitch and go with it.

[odolvlobo]

I really don't mine anymore. Not profitable.

There's been talk of FPGA and ASIC for scrypt some time.  So where are they?  
As far as i understand scrypt was specifically developed to be "resistant" to such technology, not ASIC proof, but deliberately altering the parameters so that the hash algorithm is memory intensive.  Whats an ASIC chip with say 2GB of fast ram attached?  Its going to look a lot like a GPU, at least in terms of cost to manufacture.  I'm not going to say never (and may have mis-understood), but seems to me ASIC are unlikely and if they do show up will not have the same step change as they had with SHA256.  

What is the main difference between an ASIC and FPGA? They are both integrated circuits. I may be wrong on this but wasn't FPGA only for scrypt mining and ASIC for SHA256d mining? But now supposable they are developing ASIC for scrypt.  

Mining bitcoins can be profitable if your control your costs. If you don't know how to estimate future mining revenue, then you will probably pay more in costs than the bitcoins you will mine. I don't mine alt coins, but I've heard they can be profitable, too.

An ASIC is basically a mass-produced chip designed for a specific purpose (mining bitcoins in this case). An FPGA is a programmable chip. ASIC chips are faster because they are built for one thing, and FPGA chips are general-purpose and programmable.

If you are investing in mining equipment for scrypt coins, then you need to take into account the ASIC and FPGA scrypt miners coming out some day when you calculate your profitability.

[Boa]

I mine with pools. It seems pretty good for me, I get logical amounts of coin (mainly LTC), and its quiet for me. I sell off my stuff, and then invest. I made 9 into 10.5 dollars, so not too shabby. Especially since I haven't spent any money.

[PenAndPaper]

Is there any reason to mine for blocks if we are competing against people who are investing their money
in ASIC and FPGA hardware. I was thinking of building a rig that mines LTC or other scrypt because I
wouldn't be competing against other sha256d miners but now I hear that FPGA and ASIC for scrypt are in
development. Sounds like a loosing game if you missed the boat.


I very much appreciate all comments sorry if I don't reply to your comments immediately.

I don't think that scrypt asics are anything else than rumors. And even if someone indeed makes on consider all the months of waiting for the preorders.
And there are going to be preorders for sure.

[Ardenyham]

I believe there will always be some profitable coin to mine for home users with their CPU or GPU. Our hobby will not die hopefully

[caminilegroup]

Is there any reason to mine for blocks if we are competing against people who are investing their money
in ASIC and FPGA hardware. I was thinking of building a rig that mines LTC or other scrypt because I
wouldn't be competing against other sha256d miners but now I hear that FPGA and ASIC for scrypt are in
development. Sounds like a loosing game if you missed the boat.


I very much appreciate all comments sorry if I don't reply to your comments immediately.

I don't think that scrypt asics are anything else than rumors. And even if someone indeed makes on consider all the months of waiting for the preorders.
And there are going to be preorders for sure.

I remember this from a thread a couple weeks ago.

https://alpha-t.net/product/scrypt-asic-miner/

[zalzane]

you can always mine a scrypt altcoin and just swap it out for bitcoins

[DarkKnight]

I looked into this a bit before jumping into the deep end myself. The only "available" non-GPU Scrypt miners out there are FPGAs. The current ASIC offerings look like scams. It's questionable as to if FPGAs are even worth getting into at 1KH/$, and the BTC bubble looking as if it may have popped. More than that, there aren't any available in the scale that it's worth investing at right now. The developer of the only FPGAs that I can tell have been shipped, Beekeeper, isn't releasing them particularly fast (but what do I know). It's really a question of Low Heat, Low Cost, and High Hash Rates. Pick two. However, you can scale out FPGAs at home a lot easier than GPUs. After a certain point, it get's pretty expensive to keep your GPUs cool, even in the winter.

[wearepoor]

you can always mine a scrypt altcoin and just swap it out for bitcoins

This is the best use for our GPU cards, so in some indirect way GPU mining Bitcoins is not dead, thanks to alt coins