Small time miners - What do you do when ASICs hit and you don't upgrade?

[bels]

Mine through the winter since GPUs will serve a 2nd purpose(space warmers) which is what made it so cool to begin with(gaming). When 2013 begins to warm up, I'll stop. Possibly buy an ASIC if production at that point doesn't require a multiple month waiting period for delivery.

That is something miners are good for.  I have mine in my basement and the excess heat trickles on up and helps heat my house by a degree or two.

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[betatest512]

Well I am not a small time miner.. well with the new diff yeah i guess i am.. hahaha

honestly i haven't upgraded anything yet.. no pre orders in place.. show me the hardware before i lay down the money.

Will i be left behind in mining? Probably.. so will many others.. I will just buy and sell Bitcoin.. i seem to make more that way anyways..

how many bitcoin's do you have in hand to buy ans sell them

and at what rate's you buy and sell them and which exchange you use.

[wormbog]

I sold my extra 5830s off a couple weeks ago. With electricity costs already close to break-even, my switch to a metered 4G connection for home broadband cinched it - mining uses too much precious bandwidth.

Once ASICs hit, I'll calculate how long it will take for a jalapeno to pay itself off, then order or not based on that number.

Bigger picture I think the arrival of ASICs will be like the Industrial Revolution (in the US) impacted farmers - lots of small farms closed down or were consolidated into bigger, more efficient farming corporations. There were (and are) still plenty of small farms around, but the majority were replaced by larger, for-profit businesses. Bitcoin mining will go the same way. Mining farms will invest and buy tons of ASICs, some enthusiasts will run a few jalapenos for old time's sake, but most will sell their GPUs and (hopefully) start using their coins to buy and sell things.

[mrich8]

I'm not sure what I'll do. My cards are paid for and my electricity is cheap ($0.088 per kWh) and with current prices I am profiting. I am in Texas and would run electric heat anyway come winter, so I may keep the miners on in various rooms of my apartment to provide heat as long as I still relatively break even.

No matter what, I need to keep one PC on to run the Bitcoin client, so if it comes down to that, I'll liquidate most of the hardware and see how many cheap ASICs I can afford. They have to be shipping though, no wait list BS.

[Ascholten]

Don't forget though that soon after ASIC's hit, if it hasn't already, the bitcoin value is going to halve.  Your profits are now cut in half.   Now factor that into your cost of electricity and besides those who can
use their computers for cheap space heaters in the winter, I see many folks getting out because it's more expensive to mine than it's worth.

Aaron

[Jack1Rip1BurnIt]

Don't forget though that soon after ASIC's hit, if it hasn't already, the bitcoin value is going to halve.  Your profits are now cut in half.   Now factor that into your cost of electricity and besides those who can
use their computers for cheap space heaters in the winter, I see many folks getting out because it's more expensive to mine than it's worth.

Aaron

You are correct....assuming the market value of a single bitcoin doesn't increase dramatically.

[FrogBBQ]

Bigger picture I think the arrival of ASICs will be like the Industrial Revolution (in the US) impacted farmers - lots of small farms closed down or were consolidated into bigger, more efficient farming corporations. There were (and are) still plenty of small farms around, but the majority were replaced by larger, for-profit businesses. Bitcoin mining will go the same way. Mining farms will invest and buy tons of ASICs, some enthusiasts will run a few jalapenos for old time's sake, but most will sell their GPUs and (hopefully) start using their coins to buy and sell things.

This argument makes no sense really since it does not take into account the increase in difficulty that will result from a significant raise in overall TH/s that ASIC rigs will produce.

Industrial revolution allowed more land to be farmed but it did not make it harder to get the same yield, in fact it was the opposite.

Bitcoin mining is a totally different ball game altogether. With the ability to have for less than $10K 270 to 420GH/s of power and very limited electricity consumption, GPU mining will quickly become obsolete (read not profitable). Unlike farming, there is no gain in small MH/s operation (such as organic farming for example). ASIC mining will just become the new norm since anything else will be not profitable.

That said, this will not happen overnight but I would think over the next 2 to 6 months. We shall see.

[meebs]

Bigger picture I think the arrival of ASICs will be like the Industrial Revolution (in the US) impacted farmers - lots of small farms closed down or were consolidated into bigger, more efficient farming corporations. There were (and are) still plenty of small farms around, but the majority were replaced by larger, for-profit businesses. Bitcoin mining will go the same way. Mining farms will invest and buy tons of ASICs, some enthusiasts will run a few jalapenos for old time's sake, but most will sell their GPUs and (hopefully) start using their coins to buy and sell things.

This argument makes no sense really since it does not take into account the increase in difficulty that will result from a significant raise in overall TH/s that ASIC rigs will produce.

Industrial revolution allowed more land to be farmed but it did not make it harder to get the same yield, in fact it was the opposite.

Bitcoin mining is a totally different ball game altogether. With the ability to have for less than $10K 270 to 420GH/s of power and very limited electricity consumption, GPU mining will quickly become obsolete (read not profitable). Unlike farming, there is no gain in small MH/s operation (such as organic farming for example). ASIC mining will just become the new norm since anything else will be not profitable.

That said, this will not happen overnight but I would think over the next 2 to 6 months. We shall see.

quick.. somebody put out a youtube video saying that asic mined coins are tortured coins of low quality! buy organic GPU mined coins :-P

[bels]

ROFL.  With a plan like that we should be able to charge at least 2x more for GPU coins.

[Stephen Gornick]

As a bookend to this thread, further discussion on the topic here:


What will happen to all the "traditional" mines once the new ASIC based miners
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=114585.0

[Fred26]

I will buy old gpu's, and use them to heat my house =D
It's cold and rainy where I live, and heating is useful everywhere!
I figure 10 kwh through video cards is better returns than 10 kwh through heaters =/

[Odi]

^^^^^^^ Was never a math major  

I still won't just quit.

Or he could just not care about the small loss in electric and cooling costs

(like if I never receive my bASIC pre-order, I would still run my 400MH/s: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=114585.msg1289314#msg1289314 )

For some, it is only a hobby, not a money maker.  Similar to why people run distributed.net, SETI@Home, or BOINC

[K1773R]

Are you going to switch to LTC, PPCoin, etc... or just cash out your hardware by selling on ebay or similar?

Non of the above.  I'll solo mine full time as soon as it isn't profitable to pool mine anymore.
Sam

why solo mine? just join p2pool

[Odi]

why solo mine? just join p2pool

p2pool is only a way to make sure you get more regular payouts than solo mining.  If you don't care about the payouts and are just mining for fun, then why load the network with more transactions?

People are already complaining that the blockchain is big and hard to download, p2pool is accelerating that because of all the small transactions per block found

[SaintDevil]

I so love my computers running during this cold time, so nice and toasty (outside 42F, inside 75F) that I do not eager much to turn them off. I guess if you live in a house that would be a different story.

When  my asic arrives, I may just switch to litecoin mining, already tried figured out how it works so the process will be easy. Maybe consider gaming on them too, but haven't tested 2 5970's against gtx570.

[Meatball]

I will buy old gpu's, and use them to heat my house =D
It's cold and rainy where I live, and heating is useful everywhere!
I figure 10 kwh through video cards is better returns than 10 kwh through heaters =/

Ah, yes and no.   Heaters will probably give you more efficient conversion of power to heat compared to the cards, but it might be close.

[Ascholten]

That's true meatball but a video card gives you a rebate

Aaron

[bitvientiane]

I will buy old gpu's, and use them to heat my house =D
It's cold and rainy where I live, and heating is useful everywhere!
I figure 10 kwh through video cards is better returns than 10 kwh through heaters =/

Ah, yes and no.   Heaters will probably give you more efficient conversion of power to heat compared to the cards, but it might be close.

For converting electrical energy to heat, almost any device is effective because it's basically the "waste" that's heat. Gas -> heat is still more cost-effective though.

[aqrulesms]

I will buy old gpu's, and use them to heat my house =D
It's cold and rainy where I live, and heating is useful everywhere!
I figure 10 kwh through video cards is better returns than 10 kwh through heaters =/

Ah, yes and no.   Heaters will probably give you more efficient conversion of power to heat compared to the cards, but it might be close.

For converting electrical energy to heat, almost any device is effective because it's basically the "waste" that's heat. Gas -> heat is still more cost-effective though.

It is more cost effective to use GPUs as a heat source if your house does not have gas infrastructure.  A 10kW electric furnace produces the same amount of heat equivalent to 10 kW of GPUs. 

You can just pipe all the heat produced into the fan that can distribute heat to the vents of your house.

[quasarbtc]

I plan on picking up a few 7970s for dirt cheap either here or on ebay when the market gets flooded with people getting out of GPU mining. Maybe a 2nd for crossfire. Maybe throw one in my brother's computer to replace his 7770. Who knows?!

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