my opinion about mining

[grondilu]

For what it's worth, here is my opinion about mining.

Mining is a race, a competition.   And in any race, not everybody can win.  So to me, mining is pointless and it's much simpler to just buy bitcoins...

...UNLESS:

- you're a computer-nerd.  You enjoy dealing with a lot of complicated hardware, and you are good at setting them up ;

and/or:

- you have access to very cheap hardware and electricity ;

and/or:

- you are extremely smart and thus you are capable of implementing your own mining software or dedicated device (FPGA, ASIC, whatever) ;

and/or:

- you are concerned about the overall bitcoin security and thus you want to bring as much computing power to the network as you can, even if it will not give you many bitcoins in reward


I personally don't mine as I don't fit in any of the above exceptions.   To me, mining would be as silly as signing up for a marathon against professional runners (I can't run more than a mile or something )

[1714928096]

1714928096

[KnuttyD]

Well, you still get a prize even if you get last place in the race, albet a small one
But it is still only worth it if your time is worth so little to you that you use it setting up mining
Still, I agree, it is much easier to simply buy bitcoins, and let the value grow.

[melter]

For what it's worth, here is my opinion about mining.

Mining is a race, a competition.   And in any race, not everybody can win.  So to me, mining is pointless and it's much simpler to just buy bitcoins...

...UNLESS:

- you're a computer-nerd.  You enjoy dealing with a lot of complicated hardware, and you are good at setting them up ;
it's not that hard to set up a computer.

and/or:

- you have access to very cheap hardware and electricity ;
the cost of mining hardware will take you a matter of days to get back through mining.
and/or:

- you are extremely smart and thus you are capable of implementing your own mining software or dedicated device (FPGA, ASIC, whatever) ;
no comment
and/or:

- you are concerned about the overall bitcoin security and thus you want to bring as much computing power to the network as you can, even if it will not give you many bitcoins in reward
I couldn't care less, im in it for the money - period.

I personally don't mine as I don't fit in any of the above exceptions.   To me, mining would be as silly as signing up for a marathon against professional runners (I can't run more than a mile or something )

comments in bold.

[Littleshop]

When you say "a matter of days" do you mean a matter of months?  When I see the phrase "a matter of days" I think of a few days, maybe a week at the most.  Mining hardware will not pay back that fast.

[EpicBacon]

you're a computer-nerd.  You enjoy dealing with a lot of complicated hardware, and you are good at setting them up

MMMMMmmmmmmmm hardware.

[melter]

When you say "a matter of days" do you mean a matter of months?  When I see the phrase "a matter of days" I think of a few days, maybe a week at the most.  Mining hardware will not pay back that fast.

i got all my money back in about just over a week. (XFX 5850 + XFX 650W PSU + 2GB RAM + Gigabyte mATX board + intel Celeron dual core CPU, already had a case in my garage)

this was in late april

[d3c0n808]

When you say "a matter of days" do you mean a matter of months?  When I see the phrase "a matter of days" I think of a few days, maybe a week at the most.  Mining hardware will not pay back that fast.

i got all my money back in about just over a week. (XFX 5850 + XFX 650W PSU + 2GB RAM + Gigabyte mATX board + intel Celeron dual core CPU, already had a case in my garage)

this was in late april

Did you account for your cost of electricity as well?

[melter]

When you say "a matter of days" do you mean a matter of months?  When I see the phrase "a matter of days" I think of a few days, maybe a week at the most.  Mining hardware will not pay back that fast.

i got all my money back in about just over a week. (XFX 5850 + XFX 650W PSU + 2GB RAM + Gigabyte mATX board + intel Celeron dual core CPU, already had a case in my garage)

this was in late april

Did you account for your cost of electricity as well?

i don't pay for electricity.

[Zagitta]

No offence but i think the only thing that actually stops you from mining is your attitude towards learning something new...

The only real excuse for somebody not being able to mine is a lack of starting hardware and/or lack of initial capital to make an investment.

[bcpokey]

I'm not really sure why these threads keep popping up.

Mining can be fun and profitable. Buying coins can be fun and profitable.

Do whatever you like, your reasoning is not necessary.

[trentzb]

When you say "a matter of days" do you mean a matter of months?  When I see the phrase "a matter of days" I think of a few days, maybe a week at the most.  Mining hardware will not pay back that fast.

i got all my money back in about just over a week. (XFX 5850 + XFX 650W PSU + 2GB RAM + Gigabyte mATX board + intel Celeron dual core CPU, already had a case in my garage)

this was in late april

I find this highly unlikely. Assuming conservative costs for the items listed: $160 (5850) + $60 (PSU) + $25 (RAM) + $60 (MB) + $50 (CPU) = $355, assuming difficulty was ~100k late April (I believe it was ~150k) would mean 400 Mh/s (heavy OC) would generate ~4 BTC/day. At even today's exchange rate of ~$8.30 that would net a USD of ~$33.2/day or $330/10 days.

[melter]

When you say "a matter of days" do you mean a matter of months?  When I see the phrase "a matter of days" I think of a few days, maybe a week at the most.  Mining hardware will not pay back that fast.

i got all my money back in about just over a week. (XFX 5850 + XFX 650W PSU + 2GB RAM + Gigabyte mATX board + intel Celeron dual core CPU, already had a case in my garage)

this was in late april

I find this highly unlikely. Assuming conservative costs for the items listed: $160 (5850) + $60 (PSU) + $25 (RAM) + $60 (MB) + $50 (CPU) = $355, assuming difficulty was ~100k late April (I believe it was ~150k) would mean 400 Mh/s (heavy OC) would generate ~4 BTC/day. At even today's exchange rate of ~$8.30 that would net a USD of ~$33.2/day or $330/10 days.

I don't know where you buy your hardware, but my costs were:

Video card was $110 after rebate and resell of shogun 2 ($20), PSU $58 AR, RAM was $20, MB was $40, CPU was $40 = $268

[trentzb]

post links, receive your rebate check yet?

[melter]

post links, receive your rebate check yet?

rofl... i'm not going to waste time putting together a list of the stuff I bought to prove this... I bought my xfx 5850 off tigerdirect (they don't have them anymore), the RAM from overclock.net member, everything else came from newegg. go search yourself if you're that interested.

[trentzb]

Your claim is inaccurate. I will put my BTC where my mouth is. I will pay you 1 BTC if you can prove via your invoices and supporting links that you paid <= $268 for those items you listed and that you covered your hardware expenditures in "about just over a week" based on the difficulty and exchange rate in "late april".

Provide proof and a BTC address and I will gladly pay you 1 BTC.

grondilu I concur, you must have access to VERY cheap hardware and electricity else mining is chasing moving goal posts. I don't believe for a moment this particular user can substantiate his claims of expenditure recovery in just over a week.

[trentzb]

After further research I can safely bump that offer up to 5 BTC. I will pay you 5 BTC if you prove your claim. Historical exchange rate data shows end of April at ~$1 USD to 1 BTC and first week of May up to ~$3 USD. I noted on another post you reported getting ~335 Mh/s out of that XFX 5850. At a difficulty of even 100k and 335 Mh/s you would at best recover $75 USD in one week and $150 in two weeks, well under your stated recovery claim of $268.

I'll give you some benefit of doubt, let's say you are a GPU God and somehow you manage to drag 500 Mh/s out of your 5850. Let's also assume that the difficulty was only 50k at the last week of April and that the exchange rate last week of April was $3.00 USD per 1 BTC. With those numbers you are still shy of recovering your hardware expenditures in a week at ~$220 USD recovered. A little over a week and you are getting close to your $268 number.

Your claim is entirely false, period, end of story. Prove otherwise and you can add 5 BTC to your end of April wallet balance of ~20 BTC.

[Steve]

When you say "a matter of days" do you mean a matter of months?  When I see the phrase "a matter of days" I think of a few days, maybe a week at the most.  Mining hardware will not pay back that fast.

i got all my money back in about just over a week. (XFX 5850 + XFX 650W PSU + 2GB RAM + Gigabyte mATX board + intel Celeron dual core CPU, already had a case in my garage)

this was in late april

I would suggest you re-evaluate your return by calculating your revenue as if you sold every bitcoin you mined as soon as you mined it, because that is your true revenue from mining.  Any bitcoins that you keep, the profit you experience from appreciation is from your speculation in bitcoins, not mining (because you could have bought those bitcoins on the open market instead of from a mining operation).  If you're not doing the accounting for your mining business this way, I'd say you're not doing it correctly.  I've been mining since early March and have around 20x the mining power you do.  My hardware is not yet fully covered (though if I account for the resale value of my hardware I am profitable)...I have generated around a 20% profit from mining in that time frame, but my bitcoin speculation (bitcoins I either buy or keep from my mining output) has returned about 450% in that same time frame.

[bcpokey]

When you say "a matter of days" do you mean a matter of months?  When I see the phrase "a matter of days" I think of a few days, maybe a week at the most.  Mining hardware will not pay back that fast.

i got all my money back in about just over a week. (XFX 5850 + XFX 650W PSU + 2GB RAM + Gigabyte mATX board + intel Celeron dual core CPU, already had a case in my garage)

this was in late april

I would suggest you re-evaluate your return by calculating your revenue as if you sold every bitcoin you mined as soon as you mined it, because that is your true revenue from mining.  Any bitcoins that you keep, the profit you experience from appreciation is from your speculation in bitcoins, not mining (because you could have bought those bitcoins on the open market instead of from a mining operation).  If you're not doing the accounting for your mining business this way, I'd say you're not doing it correctly.  I've been mining since early March and have around 20x the mining power you do.  My hardware is not yet fully covered (though if I account for the resale value of my hardware I am profitable)...I have generated around a 20% profit from mining in that time frame, but my bitcoin speculation (bitcoins I either buy or keep from my mining output) has returned about 450% in that same time frame.

 

[chungenhung]

post links, receive your rebate check yet?

rofl... i'm not going to waste time putting together a list of the stuff I bought to prove this... I bought my xfx 5850 off tigerdirect (they don't have them anymore), the RAM from overclock.net member, everything else came from newegg. go search yourself if you're that interested.

I totally know how he got it for that cheap. I was a deal sweeper myself years ago, and you can get some really good stuff for more than half off if you know what you are doing.

[melter]

After further research I can safely bump that offer up to 5 BTC. I will pay you 5 BTC if you prove your claim. Historical exchange rate data shows end of April at ~$1 USD to 1 BTC and first week of May up to ~$3 USD. I noted on another post you reported getting ~335 Mh/s out of that XFX 5850. At a difficulty of even 100k and 335 Mh/s you would at best recover $75 USD in one week and $150 in two weeks, well under your stated recovery claim of $268.

I'll give you some benefit of doubt, let's say you are a GPU God and somehow you manage to drag 500 Mh/s out of your 5850. Let's also assume that the difficulty was only 50k at the last week of April and that the exchange rate last week of April was $3.00 USD per 1 BTC. With those numbers you are still shy of recovering your hardware expenditures in a week at ~$220 USD recovered. A little over a week and you are getting close to your $268 number.

Your claim is entirely false, period, end of story. Prove otherwise and you can add 5 BTC to your end of April wallet balance of ~20 BTC.

CPU: $43
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116039

Mobo: $44
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157173

Video Card: $130 after rebate - $20 for reselling the shogun 2 game = $110
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=365429&csid=_21
(It was $130 after Mail-in Rebate, I then sold the shogun 2 game for $20, I'm sure everyone knew about this deal when it was still up)

PSU: $45 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207012&cm_re=xfx_psu-_-17-207-012-_-Product
(This had free shipping when I bought it)

RAM: $20
ram was bought from a member on overclock.net for $20. I don't know how to prove that to you.

I already had a spare case (not that you even need one) and HDD.

= $262 total

-----
On average the amount I sold for was about $8. I sold my bitcoins two times back then. The second time I sold was during the spike in price leading up to $9.33 (although I did not sell for that high, I sold mine for $8.71 the second time IIRC), but yeah, about $8 average between the two sales. If you can show me how to get the mtgox chart from back then, I will show you at what point in the chart I sold my coins.

My 5850 was (and still is) mining at about 345,000 khash/s. In that difficulty I was getting about 3.5 BTC / day. So it would have taken me about 9 days to get the money back.

btw, my bitcoin address is 1Cz5hcRr2du74AF5MCvy8zKRFd4AyMBZjJ

although of course I do not expect to get anything from you, other than more excuses for how I'm lying.

When you say "a matter of days" do you mean a matter of months?  When I see the phrase "a matter of days" I think of a few days, maybe a week at the most.  Mining hardware will not pay back that fast.

i got all my money back in about just over a week. (XFX 5850 + XFX 650W PSU + 2GB RAM + Gigabyte mATX board + intel Celeron dual core CPU, already had a case in my garage)

this was in late april

I would suggest you re-evaluate your return by calculating your revenue as if you sold every bitcoin you mined as soon as you mined it, because that is your true revenue from mining.  Any bitcoins that you keep, the profit you experience from appreciation is from your speculation in bitcoins, not mining (because you could have bought those bitcoins on the open market instead of from a mining operation).  If you're not doing the accounting for your mining business this way, I'd say you're not doing it correctly.  I've been mining since early March and have around 20x the mining power you do.  My hardware is not yet fully covered (though if I account for the resale value of my hardware I am profitable)...I have generated around a 20% profit from mining in that time frame, but my bitcoin speculation (bitcoins I either buy or keep from my mining output) has returned about 450% in that same time frame.

 

I'm not mining as part time job or as some stable source of income. I just did it for fun and to make a few hundred dollars. I don't expect to continue mining for more than another couple of months at the rate difficulty is increasing, nor am I planning on buying more hardware... this mining PC is like the fifth PC i've built, I don't intend to fill up my basement with any more outdated computers.