Spend $2k on mining rig or bitcoins? Still worth getting 2x antminer S7's?

[ssnova]

I see the difficulty on alloscomp with 9.46 TH/S (2x antminer S7's).... and I wonder... ponder, if I'm better off just buying the bitcoin's or trying to build a mining rig with say around $2.5k?  I believe bitcoin will probably take off real soon...  Right now I pay for electricity, but there are options for me to lease places with electricity included/free in the coming months. 

What's your take?  I feel like... getting say 4-5 bitcoins would be a decent investment in a few months, at the same time, I could order some miners and let it try to get a handful of 4-5 bitcoins over the course of 7-8 months(if alloscomp's calucations are correct).  I would imagine that more and more people would be getting into it in the coming months, which would make me question if it's a good investment or not to try to mine in the short-term to intermediate.

What's your take and input?  Any or all, welcomed.


Thanks and regards in advance.

ssnova.

[1715659206]

1715659206

[1715659206]

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[Robertt]

I'm not a miner, but I guess buying the miners would be more profitable because after you make ROI you can sell the miners and make hopefully 50% of what you bought them for.
4-5 BTC + (cost of miners - 20-30%)

Otherwise you could just but BTC and hope the price goes up

[Yakamoto]

Personally, I think investing in Bitcoin would be the better idea, however that is just my opinion and should not be taken as literal advice. 20 TH/s isn't bad for a mining system, but it also likely wouldn't pay off for a long time, and due to the recent market moves with Bitcoin, it seems like the better short-term investment.

For the long term, if the rate of electricity is quite low in your area, then mining might be the better long-term solution, or at least before the halving that will be taking place later this year. Having some Bitcoin stored away might increase its value after the halving, allowing for you to make a ROI sooner.

I'd just say do some calculations and choose whatever. It's your money, not mine.

[Jet Cash]

I wondered about this, but I decided that if I wanted to mine, it would be better to mine altcoins rather than Bitcoins. My reasons for this are -

Cloud mining seems to be a ponzi variant.
Some mining pools seem to be getting dishonest reputations.
Solo mining is not practical as you don't have the hash power and speed to find blocks and get them accepted on the blockchain.

I'd be interested to know if there are viable options, as I feel small miners are an asset to the Bitcoin economy.

[Kprawn]

On the mining side you have a lot of IF's and uncertainties, the way I look at it :

1. You still got to find that lease with free electricity. {Until that contract is signed, you still have to calculate your risk as if you going to pay for it}

2. You will still need to get the equipment {Orders might get canceled or delayed}

3. The difficulty will only go up, with the Halving coming up and the rewards declining.

On the other hand, If you just buy and hodl Bitcoins now you have none of these uncertainties apart from the volatility and all pointers now, shows

a upward spike coming soon. {Pure speculation, but it's looking good}

[franky1]

the difficulty only changed 1 day ago so the variance of the next difficulty is small on alloscomp, because there is not enough block data to make a accurate estimate of change..

expect a 5%-10% change every two weeks and dont base it on the weak estimate of just 1 days data of 0.7%

so imagine now its 0.202btc a week
by the time you get delivery of your goods the difficulty would be atleast 5% less (below is a very very generous view of earnings based on only 5%)
meaning you are only mining at
0.19228313 a week for 2 weeks (0.38456626)

then following 2 weeks
0.365337939
so on a month of running you would have 0.75 ATMOST by end of march
lets make it easy 5% over 2 weeks is 10% over a month
0.68btc (1.43btc total) end of april
0.61btc (2.04btc total) end of may
0.55btc (2.59btc total) end of june
0.50btc (3.09btc total) end of july
now the reward halving has happened..so not only are would you have only got 0.45 without the halving.. but now its 0.225 due to reward halving
0.225btc (3.315 total) end of august
0.2btc (3.515 total) end of september
0.18btc (3.695 total) end of october


so over 8 months of just a 5% difficulty increase you are likely to get under 3.695
and thats without factoring in the increased hashrate or knowing if your going to be hooked up to a large pool or small pool and their luck

here is a better display of difficulty rises https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty
over the last 10 weeks https://bitcoinwisdom.com/assets/difficulty/bitcoin-hash_rate.png?1456032604
difficulty went up by 70% (1.0 to 1.7   = 14% every 2 weeks)

so in short.. my maths is above was very generous at only 5% and you need to expect to get far less then the amounts of bitcoin i shown

ok i redone the maths, based on 14% per 2 weeks
0.38456626   mid march
0.33072698   end march
0.28442521   mid april
0.24460568   end epril
0.21036088   mid may
0.18091036   end may
0.15558291   mid june
0.13380130   end june
0.11506912   mid july
0.04947972   end july (remember block halving)
0.04255256   mid august
0.03659520   end august
0.03147187   mid september
0.02706581   end september
0.02327660   mid october
0.02001787   end october
2.27050834   total for 8 months

so expect to only get back between 2.27btc-3.7btc AT MOST

[_Miracle]

Hi ssnova,

just buy the bitcoin.
I used to mine and miss it but haven't seen anything worth mining with for awhile.
Many of the current miners draw bigtime power, enough so that depending on the condition of the wiring
in the property: it could potentially pose a fire hazard.
A property that offers free electricity may include clauses in the lease regarding high usage.

The last miners running in my house were S3's...loud, warm and power hungry ;-)
The S7's may require a special outlets ect.

[franky1]

its also worth noting that the retail price of a miner is 3-5 times higher than the cost the manufacturers make it..

basically for every miner you buy, you are handing the manfacturers 2-4 miners for free.. so no matter what the electric price is, you will never get to compete against the big boys. as they are literally mining with 0 cost of equipment. and as i said for each rig a user buys, they are increasing their holding by 2-4 miners, outpacing the competitions hashrate.. always

[SFR10]

AFAIK in alloscomp, the future difficulties, are not measured so the results are a bit inaccurate. It could be a good investment since it's one of the most efficient miners out there but also since the halving is coming, I expect it's price to even go further down and also new mining equipment's pop out with better and more efficient chips so you might want to wait a little longer before you start. For now, I would advise to maybe but BTCitcoin and let the magic of halving surprise you with the result in terms of BTCitcoin value.

[Amph]

i would leave the s7 alone it's not worth it anymore, the earning is almost the same as the old s5, i would wait for the next gen, they are ready to be released in some months

there is not even more time to do the trick that you sell your hash to reach roi quickly, because the s7 is depreciating quickly already....

[notlist3d]

i would leave the s7 alone it's not worth it anymore, the earning is almost the same as the old s5, i would wait for the next gen, they are ready to be released in some months

there is not even more time to do the trick that you sell your hash to reach roi quickly, because the s7 is depreciating quickly already....

I think it all depends on electricity price.   If you can run old gen gear some of it is decently cheap compared to what it was, heck S7's are even 720 which seems cray compared to where it started.

But again all depends on electricity.  The last drop to 720 for 4.73 TH with current gen should push last gen down even more.... and it did it pretty quickly really.

[ssnova]

Wow, first I wanted to say thanks to everyone who had replied!  It was all very insightful, and for the most agreeing.


Special shoutout to franky1 for spelling out the math.

I was on the fence, but it certainly does seem that buying is more reasonable than building massive mining rigs.  Especially when considering the ROI in months as well as the difficulty when the halving does occur.

[Zaducis]

Hi ssnova,

just buy the bitcoin.
I used to mine and miss it but haven't seen anything worth mining with for awhile.
Many of the current miners draw bigtime power, enough so that depending on the condition of the wiring
in the property: it could potentially pose a fire hazard.
A property that offers free electricity may include clauses in the lease regarding high usage.

The last miners running in my house were S3's...loud, warm and power hungry ;-)
The S7's may require a special outlets ect.

I think it is better to just buy the bitcoin. The difficulty rises too fast. If you do not have free electricity, do not mine.

[notlist3d]

Hi ssnova,

just buy the bitcoin.
I used to mine and miss it but haven't seen anything worth mining with for awhile.
Many of the current miners draw bigtime power, enough so that depending on the condition of the wiring
in the property: it could potentially pose a fire hazard.
A property that offers free electricity may include clauses in the lease regarding high usage.

The last miners running in my house were S3's...loud, warm and power hungry ;-)
The S7's may require a special outlets ect.

I think it is better to just buy the bitcoin. The difficulty rises too fast. If you do not have free electricity, do not mine.

Difficulty rises fast but prices are also dropping.  Look at batch 11's were talking around 720 each.  So they are getting cheaper.

Diffiuclty this change actually looks pretty good.... which yes is odd with how we were going fast and having bit changes.  But short term difficulty does not look bad with this change.

[Erumara]

By my math if you can get your power for BTC.00015/kWh you should see a reasonable ROI, I'm quite interested to see what happens when the reward halves, but I can only deduce that:

1) A number of old miners will start going offline as no longer profitable, gonna be watching to see the eH/s move before, and the 2 weeks after.

2) $/BTC will move. Flat logic would say based on supply halving, price will double over x time, with difficulty increasing and new-gen hardware it's impossible to say for sure.

3) Profit? That's down to $/kWh.

Of course the real alternative to this is that 1 happens and 2 doesn't, which means that either the newest s7's remain half as profitable and it drives up the price for the next gen, which would drive up $/BTC or crash the small mining market entirely. Personally I can't wait to get my s7's up and running and watch what happens.

As far as investing in and holding onto bitcoins, I have to say it's a pretty decent idea.

[tertius993]

...

2) $/BTC will move. Flat logic would say based on supply halving, price will double over x time, with difficulty increasing and new-gen hardware it's impossible to say for sure.

...

I don't see that happening - the "supply" will not "halve", the only thing which will halve is "the rate of increase of supply" which is a quite different thing.

[notlist3d]

...

2) $/BTC will move. Flat logic would say based on supply halving, price will double over x time, with difficulty increasing and new-gen hardware it's impossible to say for sure.

...

I don't see that happening - the "supply" will not "halve", the only thing which will halve is "the rate of increase of supply" which is a quite different thing.

I have begun to hat this theory.  So many say this in beginners forum.  Luckily in other forums it is far less currently. 

The having does not guarantee a problem from supply and create a big jump.  It could... .but it could not.  The thing is pretty much everyone using it including investors know about having.  So likely we will see raises (if they come) before having.

The theory we produce 1/2 so supply will go crazy... i could be wrong I just don't see it.

[ezeminer]

...

2) $/BTC will move. Flat logic would say based on supply halving, price will double over x time, with difficulty increasing and new-gen hardware it's impossible to say for sure.

...

I don't see that happening - the "supply" will not "halve", the only thing which will halve is "the rate of increase of supply" which is a quite different thing.

I have begun to hat this theory.  So many say this in beginners forum.  Luckily in other forums it is far less currently. 

The having does not guarantee a problem from supply and create a big jump.  It could... .but it could not.  The thing is pretty much everyone using it including investors know about having.  So likely we will see raises (if they come) before having.

The theory we produce 1/2 so supply will go crazy... i could be wrong I just don't see it.

Everyone could dump after halving if it reaches a certain price, I am pretty sure it will happen. But then again there could be new players, who knows.

[notlist3d]

...

2) $/BTC will move. Flat logic would say based on supply halving, price will double over x time, with difficulty increasing and new-gen hardware it's impossible to say for sure.

...

I don't see that happening - the "supply" will not "halve", the only thing which will halve is "the rate of increase of supply" which is a quite different thing.

I have begun to hat this theory.  So many say this in beginners forum.  Luckily in other forums it is far less currently. 

The having does not guarantee a problem from supply and create a big jump.  It could... .but it could not.  The thing is pretty much everyone using it including investors know about having.  So likely we will see raises (if they come) before having.

The theory we produce 1/2 so supply will go crazy... i could be wrong I just don't see it.

Everyone could dump after halving if it reaches a certain price, I am pretty sure it will happen. But then again there could be new players, who knows.

If "everyone" dumps there is not enough new players to take over though.  For even current pricing we cannot lose our base users.  If we lose current holders.... future does not look good.

So at having we really need people to believe in long term upward trend.   We don't want anyone dumping right after.  But either way I don't see having as a big day I think knowing about it before we see results of it before it.

[Erumara]

...

2) $/BTC will move. Flat logic would say based on supply halving, price will double over x time, with difficulty increasing and new-gen hardware it's impossible to say for sure.

...

I don't see that happening - the "supply" will not "halve", the only thing which will halve is "the rate of increase of supply" which is a quite different thing.

Perfectly correct, I meant to say the *miners* supply will halve on an average basis, from that standpoint of course older hardware will go offline and perhaps drop the eH/s noticeably. I suppose my takeaway from this was simply that difficulty will only have to stagnate for a matter of 2-4 weeks and I will see my ROI come back. I'm just interested if anyone would agree it may be slightly riskier to be buying hardware ATM.

I'm still betting on BTC going up as a result, I feel quite strongly it's an all-around good time to be involved in cryptos, with Japan looking to legitimize BTC and Canada now regulating it as a commodity it's an upward situation all around.