Will it still be profitable to mine Bitcoin in the future?

[pilscoop]

I mean for an individual. With the increasing difficulty and halving it gets harder and harder for an individual to make a profit from mining.
What do you think about this?

[OmegaStarScream]

I mean for an individual. With the increasing difficulty and halving it gets harder and harder for an individual to make a profit from mining.
What do you think about this?

With power increasing and new bitcoin mining farms opening , mining become harder more and more , so for an individual it won't be very profitable unless he have pretty cheap electricity if not free ... (that's for now) , on the Future it will probably won't be profitable at all (Correct me if I gave any wrong information's which I don't think I did) .

[pj40]

I mean for an individual. With the increasing difficulty and halving it gets harder and harder for an individual to make a profit from mining.
What do you think about this?

With power increasing and new bitcoin mining farms opening , mining become harder more and more , so for an individual it won't be very profitable unless he have pretty cheap electricity if not free ... (that's for now) , on the Future it will probably won't be profitable at all (Correct me if I gave any wrong information's which I don't think I did) .

Nobody knows what the future will hold.  Once the reward for finding a block is cut in half to 12.5, are all those megafarms going to be able to justify their costs to keep mining blocks?  Will a large amount of home miners fall out?  Nobody really knows.  Us home miners right now are gambling a lot hoping that we'll still be viable at the halvening.

Another thing to consider...will the price of bitcoin keep rising?  The higher the price, the more lucrative it is to keep miners on, even when block rewards are cut in half.

So in summary...Nobody can answer with 100% accuracy.  Some people like blackjack or poker, some of us like bitcoin mining.

[notlist3d]

I mean for an individual. With the increasing difficulty and halving it gets harder and harder for an individual to make a profit from mining.
What do you think about this?

With power increasing and new bitcoin mining farms opening , mining become harder more and more , so for an individual it won't be very profitable unless he have pretty cheap electricity if not free ... (that's for now) , on the Future it will probably won't be profitable at all (Correct me if I gave any wrong information's which I don't think I did) .

Nobody knows what the future will hold.  Once the reward for finding a block is cut in half to 12.5, are all those megafarms going to be able to justify their costs to keep mining blocks?  Will a large amount of home miners fall out?  Nobody really knows.  Us home miners right now are gambling a lot hoping that we'll still be viable at the halvening.

Another thing to consider...will the price of bitcoin keep rising?  The higher the price, the more lucrative it is to keep miners on, even when block rewards are cut in half.

So in summary...Nobody can answer with 100% accuracy.  Some people like blackjack or poker, some of us like bitcoin mining.

Home/Hobby miners we will see It's unsure.  But a lot of the big farms likely will remain profitable as they have so cheap of electricity.

I suspect most of the mega farms pay a few cents.  They just have electricity costs that little guys can't beat.   So chances are they will remain profitable at having I think at least.  It's home/hobby I wonder what will happen to us.

[Raimonn]

It will depend on bitcoin price, if prices are high and you have an efficient miner and low electricity prices mining could be profitable for you. But you need the three items: -Bitcoin price high. -Eficient miner. -Low electricity prices.

[QuintLeo]

Mostly it looks like it will depend on how expen$ive the final 14/16nm generation is, and how many folks end up selling that generation to the general public.
 Diff increases SHOULD stableise out for a long time once that generation has been around for a while, as Bitcoin ASIC will have caught up to the "state of the art" at that point (I'm guessing somewhere around December 2016, give or take 3 months - but won't be shocked if I'm off a few months from that guess).

 At that point, it's actually practical to plan for achieving RoI on hardware in time measured in years, instead of the commonly less than a year and rarely year-and-a-half any miners up to now have had to be profitable (assuming AVERAGE US electric prices on that statement, we all know that cheap electric extends "profitable" lifetime on mining gear).

 Right now, you pretty much have to figure on achieving RoI by July 2016 on any gear you buy NOW, as the halfing will make almost anything currently available either nonprofitable or VERY VERY low profitable after that point - it's actually a bad time to be introducing the next generation.


 Last month, we got a bit lucky on diff increases (probably caused by Bitmain's S7 shipping issues for the most part) - this month is already going to be a lot higher than we've seen for most of a YEAR (downside of the current pricing spike).

[maokoto]

I guess that mining farms are probably already looking for an strategy to prevent their business from going down the tube when the halving is reached.

Being people who manage a lot of BTC, it is likely that they can do something to keep the price up, don´t they?

[Tmdz]

I guess that mining farms are probably already looking for an strategy to prevent their business from going down the tube when the halving is reached.

Being people who manage a lot of BTC, it is likely that they can do something to keep the price up, don´t they?

The only thing they really could do is hold coins as that will control the increase in supply but that also ties up their money.  It really depends on what happens with the price and news as far as bitcoin being more integrated into other markets to up the demand.  If demand takes a big jump miners can release more coins and keep a stable price, make good profit.  No one really know what is going to happen, we can only hope for positive things.

[Sturgeon]

of course yess
the difficult will go up every year, also price will be up too, and i prefered you to split your money
partially of it you buy bitcoin under $400 and partially you can use to buy antminer

[gentlemand]

I guess that mining farms are probably already looking for an strategy to prevent their business from going down the tube when the halving is reached.

Being people who manage a lot of BTC, it is likely that they can do something to keep the price up, don´t they?

I've seen figures of $150 cost for some of the big farms. No idea how accurate that is.

How would a miner be able to keep the price up? They could restrict supply temporarily but those bills will keep mounting up. Spending their own money to support the price makes even less economic sense.

[hoian0809]

None can actually predict the rate of miners joining the network and none can also predict how difficult it will be to mine in weeks, months or years from now. This is reason will ever be able to answer you once and for all “is Bitcoin mining profitable ?”

[Amph]

of course yess
the difficult will go up every year, also price will be up too, and i prefered you to split your money
partially of it you buy bitcoin under $400 and partially you can use to buy antminer

that's not a given, the diff follow the price not the opposite, and if the opposite is not true, miners are screwed

they still have some months before deciding if abandoning their activity or not, there still time for bitcoin to skyrocket again

[Mickeyb]

No it won't be profitable. It's already unprofitable for the majority of individuals and solo miners. I expect that to become even worse in the future.

This is not a big deal of course, even Satoshi envisioned that in the future mining will be done only by the huge mining data centers.

[ranochigo]

I mean for an individual. With the increasing difficulty and halving it gets harder and harder for an individual to make a profit from mining.
What do you think about this?

It won't be profitable for small time miner as big farms usually are able to get rebates from their electricity and hardware. However, normal users can still participate in lottery mining and hope that they hit a block one day. The chances are small but it is worth a try.

[notlist3d]

I mean for an individual. With the increasing difficulty and halving it gets harder and harder for an individual to make a profit from mining.
What do you think about this?

It won't be profitable for small time miner as big farms usually are able to get rebates from their electricity and hardware. However, normal users can still participate in lottery mining and hope that they hit a block one day. The chances are small but it is worth a try.

It all depends there is no way to say "Yes bitcoin will always be profitable" or "No it will always not be profitable".  Right now hobby and home miners are doing pretty good with recent jump in btc value.

Big farms will always have the best luck on ROI since they have a ton of cash and can follow cheap electricity.    But I think there will always be some home and hobby miners.  They will be profitable for the forseeable future.

Having will be the big thing no one knows what will really happen... until then I think as long as decent electricity even small guys do fine.

[Amph]

if the thing about 21inc will go good, and anyone will be able to mine efficiently with their bulb, it can be profitabale and help decentralization

profitable do not mean that you need to achieve roi easy, it's only mean that you have your profit daily

[Erkallys]

Unfortunatly, that's clear that in a near future, individual mining will totally stop, except if you pay electricity less than 0,05$/kWh or free electricity, because even with this rate you may not be in profit. Theorically, transaction fees should replace mining reward. That's sure if it don't already happened in 10 years, that will be bad times for Bitcoin, and maybe his death, or his "theorical death", since the hashing power will be centralized in the hands of a few people.

[ranochigo]

Unfortunatly, that's clear that in a near future, individual mining will totally stop, except if you pay electricity less than 0,05$/kWh or free electricity, because even with this rate you may not be in profit. Theorically, transaction fees should replace mining reward. That's sure if it don't already happened in 10 years, that will be bad times for Bitcoin, and maybe his death, or his "theorical death", since the hashing power will be centralized in the hands of a few people.

The price would rise accordingly and the difficulty would also adjust. ASICs would become more and more efficient with electrical fees decreasing due to renewable energy. Individual mining wouldn't probably stop. Most ASICs are still good for lottery mining which could yield a great profit if the user is lucky enough.

[notlist3d]

if the thing about 21inc will go good, and anyone will be able to mine efficiently with their bulb, it can be profitabale and help decentralization

profitable do not mean that you need to achieve roi easy, it's only mean that you have your profit daily

I don't think 21inc is our best chance.  Looking at what they came out with was really not that great, and with a high price.

They need to really come out with a better product.  Bitfury already made mining bulbs, 21inc is still just talk besides the RPI for 400 dollars I think it was.

[BitMaxz]

It will still profitable in the future if there's new asic miner that has low power consumption.That can use us even in my country Just like an avalon 4.1 has low power consumption but still not recommended in my country. My current rate is around $0.23-$0.47 per kilowatt.. its very high cost than the other country...