i have $250,000 to start a farm help me plan it

[coingrabber786]

hello all, i like to see what you would think, if you had $250,000 to start your own farm, what eqip ? how much equip would you use? what software would you use? how would you set it up? and would you be profitable within 12 months?

i know power cost is one of the main factors, so pls assume average but not high,

so what would you build ? 

or list your dream farm as well , sure why not think big or go home is what i always say! so please help me plan a farm ! i cant gold mine in the yukon like on discover, so let me mine what i can while i can so please help me a lil info goes a long way

[GreatNorthData]

If your power rate is "average", you'll never make any money, and the halving next year will push you into bankruptcy. If you have no experience with hosting, you'd be better offer buying equipment and finding someone to host it for you cheaper than you could do it yourself.

[philipma1957]

hello all, i like to see what you would think, if you had $250,000 to start your own farm, what eqip ? how much equip would you use? what software would you use? how would you set it up? and would you be profitable within 12 months?

i know power cost is one of the main factors, so pls assume average but not high,

so what would you build ? 

or list your dream farm as well , sure why not think big or go home is what i always say! so please help me plan a farm ! i cant gold mine in the yukon like on discover, so let me mine what i can while i can so please help me a lil info goes a long way

 Listen to the others   your power cost is average  means you lose money.

Now your best real chance is to get some one to make you custom miners from good chips.

Sidehack and Novak have been playing with bitmaintech's chips and getting really good  efficient results.

If they built you miners that were more efficient in mass production amounts you may stand a chance.

   a .3 watt miner with .09 cent power is as good as a .6 watt miner with .045 cent power.  do the math.

This would be the only way you stand a chance to make money.

[gkv9]

If you really actually have that much money and if I would put at your place and think, I would not go for mining, instead either look for cloudmining as there are a few good ones that exist and you can check them on the thread mentioned below:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=878387

Else, you can directly invest in Bitcoins by buying them, wait and watch for higher prices, and trust me, Bitcoins are very cheap at the moment considering what is coming in the near future...

[jonnybravo0311]

With your "average" power costs, I'd be looking into a hosting provider that could do it for me cheaper.  There are a number of options available to you in that realm.  Find out how much capacity those providers can offer you.  Just as an example, if you were to grab the S4+ from Bitmain, you could get about 250 of them (they're about $1000 each).  That's going to get you 642.5TH/s of hashing, and will have 370kWh power consumption.

The S5 is more efficient, but requires you to also purchase your own PSUs to power them.  With the same $250,000 budget, you could get 550 S5s and 275 APW3-12-1600-B2 PSUs from Bitmain (well... you'd be just slightly over your budget there).  You could probably find better PSUs... I was lazy and just used what Bitmain has for sale... ...550 S5s will get you 635.25TH/s for a power consumption figure of 324.5kWh.

Assuming $0.05 cost for electricity... (if you can negotiate that with a provider)...
The S5s would expect to make you $1739 - $389.40 = $1349.60 a day
The S4+ would expect to make you $1759 - $444 = $1315 a day

If we assume those expectations stay constant (which they don't, but for the sake of this discussion), you're looking at ~185 days to recoup your initial investment with the S5s.

[Oscilson]

If  power cost is less than $0.04, then all in cost of bitcoin is around $150 for large farmers. They can make some money. With the $250,000 investment, you will not make much money as your unit cost is too high.

[-droid-]

With your "average" power costs, I'd be looking into a hosting provider that could do it for me cheaper.  There are a number of options available to you in that realm.  Find out how much capacity those providers can offer you.  Just as an example, if you were to grab the S4+ from Bitmain, you could get about 250 of them (they're about $1000 each).  That's going to get you 642.5TH/s of hashing, and will have 370kWh power consumption.

The S5 is more efficient, but requires you to also purchase your own PSUs to power them.  With the same $250,000 budget, you could get 550 S5s and 275 APW3-12-1600-B2 PSUs from Bitmain (well... you'd be just slightly over your budget there).  You could probably find better PSUs... I was lazy and just used what Bitmain has for sale... ...550 S5s will get you 635.25TH/s for a power consumption figure of 324.5kWh.

Assuming $0.05 cost for electricity... (if you can negotiate that with a provider)...
The S5s would expect to make you $1739 - $389.40 = $1349.60 a day
The S4+ would expect to make you $1759 - $444 = $1315 a day

If we assume those expectations stay constant (which they don't, but for the sake of this discussion), you're looking at ~185 days to recoup your initial investment with the S5s.

This is some great math here, OP take note.

You should focus on the S5, or hold off a bit and wait and see what bitmain (should) be releasing later this month, as apparently it will be slightly more efficient.  If space is an issue then the S4+ is your best bet because of the integrated PSU's and the ability to stack them all up for a more dense application.

If I had 250k, I would be contacting hosting centers / bitmaintech / sidehack / maybe even the avalon people and see what kind of deal you could get

[alh]

You probably should get a real number for electricity costs. "Average" really doesn't tell anybody much, and if you actually have $250K to spend, do some due diligence, and figure out what you are willing to do (e.g. move to another state/country, rent/build a suitable space, etc). Just dropping a message here isn't likely to get actually started in a useful way.

If you have no mining experience, then start with a single S5, and see what it's like to set it up, how it behave, how loud it is, how hot it runs, and so forth, That'll set you back a tiny fraction of your bundle. The you can decide what makes sense when you multiply that by 400 for example. Can/will you undertake most of the work, or do you need to contract it out?

There are so many ways to spend $250K on Bitcoin mining, the advice will be all over the map, literally, and perhaps wildly inaccurate for you and personal situation. A dollar figure and the phrase "Go big or go home" isn't really much of a business plan. Also figure the extent to which you can have your $250K "investment" and have turn into a $200K wild goose chase, and the impact on your life.

Just my opinion. 

[notlist3d]

Your going to need to move to follow cheap electricity.  Everything else comes after this.

But with such a big investment you would need to follow the electricity.  But you might need partners to help offset the cost of building, cooling equipment, electricity setup, etc.

[Xialla]

uhh, OP reading your questions, you should in first place try to find somebody from your country, who is somehow involved in bitcoin to help you, because you obviously had "only" capital for investment but nothing else..

good luck anyway

[notlist3d]

uhh, OP reading your questions, you should in first place try to find somebody from your country, who is somehow involved in bitcoin to help you, because you obviously had "only" capital for investment but nothing else..

good luck anyway

The sad thing is how often this is asked as speculation.  I'm guessing chances of OP spending 250k is very very slim.

Chances are someone just made a number in their head and asked what others would do.

[Amph]

with that amount i would not waste my time in starting a mega farm, instead i'll start a mega buy of bitcoin, which is growing nicely, and in few weeks or month, i might see already a +30% on my investment, which mean 75k

mining should be done very big from the beginning if you want to compete with china's farms, but unless you are very rich and your zone has basically insignificant electricity cost, it can not be done

the whle mining point in a nutshell

do you have electricity below 0.1$ per kw/h or below 0.05? yes go for s5 in mass, no buy bitcoin directly

[Nixian]

About power cost if you invest part in power storage you can reduce cost maybe by only mining on NON-peak power , this without any renewable energy source connected

The power storage in my home project : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1071741 is only one of the power storage options as you can read in topic.

[newb4now]

If you really actually have that much money and if I would put at your place and think, I would not go for mining, instead either look for cloudmining as there are a few good ones that exist and you can check them on the thread mentioned below:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=878387

Else, you can directly invest in Bitcoins by buying them, wait and watch for higher prices, and trust me, Bitcoins are very cheap at the moment considering what is coming in the near future...

Cloudmining BTC is not profitable either. I agree the money would be better spent by buying bitcoin directly.

However if your goal is to support the network and not making money, by all means carry on and start mining

[xstr8guy]

Here is the best strategy to earn big money with ASIC miners...

Take your 250k and use it to invent a time machine. And now forget how that invention has already made you the wealthiest man in the world and travel back to the summer of 2012.

Buy a couple of AMD GPUs just to familiarize yourself with BTC mining. Don't go crazy and build a massive GPU farm or buy those intriguing FPGAs you've been reading about. They will all be obsolete by the beginning of 2103.

Sometime during the summer of 2012 you will be reading here on BTCtalk about 4 companies who are planning to release ASIC miners by the end of the year... Butterfly Labs, bASIC, ASICMiner and Avalon. Now here's the really important part; the first two companies will completely flake-out and rip-off their customers, the third will produce functional miners that are super high-priced and the last (Avalon) will pre-sell their first batch 66GHs ASIC miners for $1300.

Order as many of the first batch Avalon miners as is humanly possible! And maybe slip those Chinese fellows some extra cash to skip ahead in line. Being first in line is VERY important. Order more than you can possibly host at home. You will soon be able to sell the extras for 20 times their original retail price. However, do not (under any circumstances) order from any later Avalon batches. The company will self-mine with them for many months before delivering the dusty miners to the customers.

Your shiny new ASIC miners will arrive nearly on time around the very beginning of 2013. You will now be the king of BTC mining! You will be mining hundreds of BTC every day (depending on how many miners you bought). Save those BTCs in a secure offline wallet and don't spend any of them until you hear about another company developing much more efficient ASIC chips... Bitfury.

Bitfury is important because soon everyone and their brother will have these loud, hot ASIC miners built by Avalon (and later, Butterfly Labs) that suck 6-8W/GHs and BTC mining difficulty will absolutely skyrocket. But Bitfury miners will use only ~1W/GHs. They will look like amateur crap, be finicky as heck, you'll have to buy tons of fans to keep them cool and probably quit your day job just to keep them running.

Now open your very full BTC wallet and preorder every Bitfury August batch card you can afford. Towards the end of August, sell every Avalon miner you have to clear space for your Bitfury gear. And surprise! Your Bitfury miners will arrive on time while people are still waiting for their year-late Butterfly Labs miners.

And now here's the really, really important part... sell every remaining BTC you have as soon as it reaches $1150 near the end of 2013. And keep selling every BTC as soon as it's generated by you quiet, cool Bitfury ASICs. Go outside and enjoy the weather, take that vacation you've been waiting to take, kiss a girl (or boy), walk the dog, etc. Do anything you want, you're rich! Oh and don't forget, you still have that kick-ass Time Machime to play with.  

Don't worry about buying BTC again until January of 2015. And certainly don't bother trying to keep up with the rising BTC difficulty by buying miners from KNC, Bitmain or Spondoolies.

[War...]

Here is the best strategy to earn big money with ASIC miners...

Take your 250k and use it to invent a time machine. And now forget how that invention has already made you the wealthiest man in the world and travel back to the summer of 2012.

Buy a couple of AMD GPUs just to familiarize yourself with BTC mining. Don't go crazy and build a massive GPU farm or buy those intriguing FPGAs you've been reading about. They will all be obsolete by the beginning of 2103.

Sometime during the summer of 2012 you will be reading here on BTCtalk about 4 companies who are planning to release ASIC miners by the end of the year... Butterfly Labs, bASIC, ASICMiner and Avalon. Now here's the really important part; the first two companies will completely flake-out and rip-off their customers, the third will produce functional miners that are super high-priced and the last (Avalon) will pre-sell their first batch 66GHs ASIC miners for $1300.

Order as many of the first batch Avalon miners as is humanly possible! And maybe slip those Chinese fellows some extra cash to skip ahead in line. Being first in line is VERY important. Order more than you can possibly host at home. You will soon be able to sell the extras for 20 times their original retail price. However, do not (under any circumstances) order from any later Avalon batches. The company will self-mine with them for many months before delivering the dusty miners to the customers.

Your shiny new ASIC miners will arrive nearly on time around the very beginning of 2013. You will now be the king of BTC mining! You will be mining hundreds of BTC every day (depending on how many miners you bought). Save those BTCs in a secure offline wallet and don't spend any of them until you hear about another company developing much more efficient ASIC chips... Bitfury.

Bitfury is important because soon everyone and their brother will have these loud, hot ASIC miners built by Avalon (and later, Butterfly Labs) that suck 6-8W/GHs and BTC mining difficulty will absolutely skyrocket. But Bitfury miners will use only ~1W/GHs. They will look like amateur crap, be finicky as heck, you'll have to buy tons of fans to keep them cool and probably quit your day job just to keep them running.

Now open your very full BTC wallet and preorder every Bitfury August batch card you can afford. Towards the end of August, sell every Avalon miner you have to clear space for your Bitfury gear. And surprise! Your Bitfury miners will arrive on time while people are still waiting for their year-late Butterfly Labs miners.

And now here's the really, really important part... sell every remaining BTC you have as soon as it reaches $1150 near the end of 2013. And keep selling every BTC as soon as it's generated by you quiet, cool Bitfury ASICs. Go outside and enjoy the weather, take that vacation you've been waiting to take, kiss a girl (or boy), walk the dog, etc. Do anything you want, you're rich! Oh and don't forget, you still have that kick-ass Time Machime to play with.  

Don't worry about buying BTC again until January of 2015. And certainly don't bother trying to keep up with the rising BTC difficulty by buying miners from KNC, Bitmain or Spondoolies.

i love this ^^
and i want to borrow your time machine... i promise to give you back in a blink of an eye, u wont even notice i'm gone...

[xstr8guy]

Here is the best strategy to earn big money with ASIC miners...

<snip>

i love this ^^
and i want to borrow your time machine... i promise to give you back in a blink of an eye, u wont even notice i'm gone...

If you do it right, you can return the time machine before you borrow it! Or will that cause a rip in the time-space continuum?

Btw, you must kill Hitler if you borrow the time machine. But everyone already knows that. It's Time Travel 101.

[jonnybravo0311]

Here is the best strategy to earn big money with ASIC miners...

<snip>

i love this ^^
and i want to borrow your time machine... i promise to give you back in a blink of an eye, u wont even notice i'm gone...

If you do it right, you can return the time machine before you borrow it! Or will that cause a rip in the time-space continuum?

Btw, you must kill Hitler if you borrow the time machine. But everyone already knows that. It's Time Travel 101.

And clearly, nobody's invented the time machine yet since history records Hitler causing havoc.  Speaking of rips in the time-space continuum, wouldn't killing Hitler cause a pretty nasty one?  Of course, there's always the problem of the paradox... imagine I create a time machine that can only see 1 minute into the past.  I see myself and decide on a whim that I can't take it anymore and shoot my former self.  So, now my former self is dead, which in turn means I died a minute before I shot myself.  Wait... who pulled the trigger then?

[navigator]

You could start a real farm with that much and probably make more long term.

Mining for large profit is no longer an outcome. As time goes on profit margins will fall to barely profitable.

[goxed]

Here is the best strategy to earn big money with ASIC miners...

Take your 250k and use it to invent a time machine. And now forget how that invention has already made you the wealthiest man in the world and travel back to the summer of 2012.

Buy a couple of AMD GPUs just to familiarize yourself with BTC mining. Don't go crazy and build a massive GPU farm or buy those intriguing FPGAs you've been reading about. They will all be obsolete by the beginning of 2103.

Sometime during the summer of 2012 you will be reading here on BTCtalk about 4 companies who are planning to release ASIC miners by the end of the year... Butterfly Labs, bASIC, ASICMiner and Avalon. Now here's the really important part; the first two companies will completely flake-out and rip-off their customers, the third will produce functional miners that are super high-priced and the last (Avalon) will pre-sell their first batch 66GHs ASIC miners for $1300.

Order as many of the first batch Avalon miners as is humanly possible! And maybe slip those Chinese fellows some extra cash to skip ahead in line. Being first in line is VERY important. Order more than you can possibly host at home. You will soon be able to sell the extras for 20 times their original retail price. However, do not (under any circumstances) order from any later Avalon batches. The company will self-mine with them for many months before delivering the dusty miners to the customers.

Your shiny new ASIC miners will arrive nearly on time around the very beginning of 2013. You will now be the king of BTC mining! You will be mining hundreds of BTC every day (depending on how many miners you bought). Save those BTCs in a secure offline wallet and don't spend any of them until you hear about another company developing much more efficient ASIC chips... Bitfury.

Bitfury is important because soon everyone and their brother will have these loud, hot ASIC miners built by Avalon (and later, Butterfly Labs) that suck 6-8W/GHs and BTC mining difficulty will absolutely skyrocket. But Bitfury miners will use only ~1W/GHs. They will look like amateur crap, be finicky as heck, you'll have to buy tons of fans to keep them cool and probably quit your day job just to keep them running.

Now open your very full BTC wallet and preorder every Bitfury August batch card you can afford. Towards the end of August, sell every Avalon miner you have to clear space for your Bitfury gear. And surprise! Your Bitfury miners will arrive on time while people are still waiting for their year-late Butterfly Labs miners.

And now here's the really, really important part... sell every remaining BTC you have as soon as it reaches $1150 near the end of 2013. And keep selling every BTC as soon as it's generated by you quiet, cool Bitfury ASICs. Go outside and enjoy the weather, take that vacation you've been waiting to take, kiss a girl (or boy), walk the dog, etc. Do anything you want, you're rich! Oh and don't forget, you still have that kick-ass Time Machime to play with.  

Don't worry about buying BTC again until January of 2015. And certainly don't bother trying to keep up with the rising BTC difficulty by buying miners from KNC, Bitmain or Spondoolies.

Travel back to 2009, use some spare desktops, laptops and servers. Save yourself the trouble of a mining farm. Buy pizzas for 10KBTC a pop with the coins. Don't forget to Hoard 50% of your mining stash in an offline wallet.