Cloud servers? Worth it?

[n00b2.0]

Hey, I was reading this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8405.0 because myself and a few friends were trying to work out if it was feasible. But the post finishes in November 2011, and since I cant post in that section, I want reopen the idea.

Nearly a year and a half later, have things changed? Is it still not possible to do this without losing money? Amazon offer a free tier, where you get limited resources for free each month. If this is possible, and I can only mine a couple of BTC0.0001s per day, its still free money. And the method can be perfected after. I can do it at home, and break even fairly ok, if I limit when I mine to when I'm using the computer anyway, but if I'm not - its not profitable. (I'll explain why in a different post. Its a different topic, for a different day.)

A friend has also told me that Amazon offer some kind of "1yr for free" deal on some kind of server. But he doesnt know the details, and will try to find out for me. But I also know Amazon are not the only cloud server suppliers out there that offer free trials/tiers. Do you know any other providers that I could try?

Finally....Anyone want to help a poor student pay his electricity bill?  (1NWhKc383pff1dsSsAWBnQa1t2w9s7jvgT)


Thanks for ANY help!

[1713998572]

1713998572

[1713998572]

1713998572

[DeathAndTaxes]

Simple version is no.  Using the free tier you won't earn even a penny a week (USD).  Technically you are right it is free but it really isn't worth it.  If your lucky you will get maybe a penny each month.  I would recommend spending 30 minutes in a parking lot looking for change on the ground it likely has a higher return on your time.  When ASICs hit you will be lucky to make a penny per year.

Using anything other than the free tier you will simply turn a large amount of USD into a smaller amount of BTC.

[Winterfrost]

Nearly a year and a half later, have things changed?

It's only changed to become less and less profitable as the mining difficulty has risen. The free tier doesn't give you any of the high-performance (GPU) time, so you're basically CPU mining. Even then, you'll quickly eat through the free tier allotment.

[n00b2.0]

Tried to reply already, but something failed. Wouldn't even let me re-paste what I had wrote. Because I had "already posted it". Can't be bothered writing all of it again. Haha! Basically....

When ASICs hit you will be lucky to make a penny per year.

I was looking at the BFL ASICs, and according to my calculations (using

Code:

 Difficulty * 2^32 / Hashrate 

equation), the 1,500GH/s device would pay for itself in less than a month, with a difficulty of 10,000,000. Even at 20,000,000 it would take less than 50 days. Lets say 60 days including electricity. Hell, increase it to 30,000,000 and its still only 2 and a half months. 100,000,000 and its still less than a year. [assuming the exchange rate stays constant (i know it wont), and that the reward stays at BTC25].

Its a huge investment to start with ($29,899 for now), but do you think its worth it? Even the 4.5GH/s mini device seems handy.

What do you think? Stay away? Or start pulling my change together, and order one?

[DeathAndTaxes]

This has been asked a couple hundred times I recommend searching the forum and doing a lot of reading before putting down any cash.

The simple version is difficulty will adjust to hashpower. If you can buy a box which is 150x more powerful than the largest of the mining farms so can anyone else.  Redo your math at difficulty 20x higher than current.  Now try 20x higher than current rising to 50x higher than current over the next year.

[n00b2.0]

Ya, sorry. I've found a few more posts just strolling around the forums. Can only wait and see what happens. Some people seem to think that most ASIC companys are scams? I think I'll sit this one out. See what happens.

Thanks for the replies anyway guys!