When difficulty goes up 30 times, caused by ASICs, will you still mine GPU?

[MaGNeT]

How about you?
Will you still mine GPU at a difficulty of 90,000,000 and a 660Th/s network?

I ordered an ASIC yesterday... If it ever arrives I hope to get break-even within a year 

[1714017267]

1714017267

[1714017267]

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[luffy]

sure! other coins

[MaGNeT]

sure! other coins

Added to poll

[debianlinux]

sure! other coins

Added to poll

Not really. I have no intention of converting alt-coins to BTC. In fact, I am far more inclined to convert BTC to alt coins.

[pyromaniac]

Many variant at once:

 ASICs are a myth!
 ASICs are a scam!
 mine Alt-coins

If bitcoin difficulty will grow up, litecoin will much more profitable. But ALL ASIC vendors are SCAM, so nothing to worry about.

[aceking]

Avalon delivered their first units , so how asics are scam ?

[os2sam]

I'll mine my GPU's till my ASIC(s) arrive.  Not so much for the hash rate increase but for the power savings.

[Moshi]

Pulling about 300 watts mining at my dorm. I don't think anybody will care too much when I have nothing to do with my 6950s 

[silverfuture]

If power is free and nothing else is more profitable then why not?

[crazyates]

If power is free and nothing else is more profitable then why not?

Because even if power is free, you'll prolly make more by selling the card then you would over 6 months of mining.

[MaGNeT]

If power is free and nothing else is more profitable then why not?

Will you still mine for 0.0035 BTC / 0.07 USD a day (on a 200Mh/s GPU) when difficulty goes up 10 times?
Predictions are, it will go up 30 times, at least.

A 60Gh/s ASIC like the Butterfly can still be profitable at a difficulty of 1,000,000,000 (based on power consumption, after you returned your investment).

[Moshi]

If power is free and nothing else is more profitable then why not?

Because even if power is free, you'll prolly make more by selling the card then you would over 6 months of mining.

There are times where we have GPUs for reasons other than mining.  I could understand a mining farm, but in my (and other's) cases, I'm just pushing these GPUs because they're meant for rendering and schooling dictates that I can't do that all the time. Selling them would just put me in a need of GPUs (no, I'm not throwing that 3850 in).

It's situational. Not everyone would benefit from absolutely maximized profits.

[GernMiester]

They will mine to keep the network secure because they will cost me about $2-$3 a day in electricity when tweaked.  I can handle the $2-$3 loss every day to keep BTC alive but I doubt many will.
My ASICs will pay for the electricity until difficulty gets too high, If they ever arrive.

Not everyone will get an ASIC or 2 doing 60Gh/s+.
If the over 60Gh ASICs add too much to the difficulty so only $1000s of dollars invested will produce any profit BTC will die a slow painful death bouncing up and down as users mine when diff is low and stop when it is too high

I had $1200 to gamble on some ASIC goodness and I await it's arrival.
I would never call it an investment since I never expect to make my money back.
I mine coins only because people buy them for FIAT or Gold and I profit.

I expect an easy 200Th/s added over the course of 2013.. I hope its high.....

[crazyates]

If power is free and nothing else is more profitable then why not?

Because even if power is free, you'll prolly make more by selling the card then you would over 6 months of mining.

There are times where we have GPUs for reasons other than mining.  I could understand a mining farm, but in my (and other's) cases, I'm just pushing these GPUs because they're meant for rendering and schooling dictates that I can't do that all the time. Selling them would just put me in a need of GPUs (no, I'm not throwing that 3850 in).

It's situational. Not everyone would benefit from absolutely maximized profits.

Oh I get you. I'm keeping my 7970 cuz it's great for games. But if I had multiple GPU rigs solely for mining? It wouldn't be worth keeping them for the pennies a day you'd mine.

[rpgman1]

GPU mining is useful for other cryptocurrencies anyway like LTC. Since the delay of AMD 8xxx to Q4 2013, I might as well get a BFL ASIC if it will be delivered.

[mokahless]

Pulling about 300 watts mining at my dorm. I don't think anybody will care too much when I have nothing to do with my 6950s 

How are you managing that considering ~200W per card before PSU efficiency, the rest of the rig and the only-possibly up-to
~90% efficient power supply? Crazy undervolting?

I intend to keep mining with my dedicated 5830 for a long time during winter, fall and spring. I've also invested in BFL a long time ago. I find the consideration of future value is often overlooked.

[Endgame]

Personally I will be using GPUs to mine alt cryptocurrencies, and ASICs to mine bitcoins.

[zvs]

what if difficulty goes up 30x and it isn't caused by ASICs?

[TraderTimm]

Please see this informative page on alt-coins:

http://www.dinkypage.com/165362

[Prattler]

They will mine to keep the network secure because they will cost me about $2-$3 a day in electricity when tweaked.  I can handle the $2-$3 loss every day to keep BTC alive but I doubt many will.
My ASICs will pay for the electricity until difficulty gets too high, If they ever arrive.

Not everyone will get an ASIC or 2 doing 60Gh/s+.
If the over 60Gh ASICs add too much to the difficulty so only $1000s of dollars invested will produce any profit BTC will die a slow painful death bouncing up and down as users mine when diff is low and stop when it is too high

I had $1200 to gamble on some ASIC goodness and I await it's arrival.
I would never call it an investment since I never expect to make my money back.
I mine coins only because people buy them for FIAT or Gold and I profit.

I expect an easy 200Th/s added over the course of 2013.. I hope its high.....

When you read such posts, you know the bitcoin idea is here to stay! It's because it has such great people behind it!

[Beta-coiner1]

I thought one could use ASICs to mine Alt-coins as well ?

For the time being I say mine massive amounts of ALT-coins while the difficulty is low and collect them.Then when the difficulty is very high you sell for more.:evil:

[davebodger]

Well I never bought (most of) my GPUs for Bitcoin, they were for Folding@Home and/or gaming.
Then F@H messed around and didn't give good points to GPUs so I looked around for something else to do and found Bitcoin.
Now F@H are starting to want GPUs again and are improving their reward system so I will point some of my redundant GPUs back at them.
The rest will go to mining alt coins or ebay, depending on what looks the best profit at the time.
Electricity here in the UK is too expensive now.
My 3GH/s has been marginal for a long time.
I feel the need to cut back on the heating now spring is on it's way  

[awatson824]

I'm going to keep mining bitcoins, or maybe move to litecoin. Right now I get more profit with litecoin than I do with bitcoin. So I might just move to litecoin now..

[debianlinux]

Now F@H are starting to want GPUs again and are improving their reward system...

Uuuuh, rewards? The only reward I ever got for F@H (and I did quite a bit of it) was simply epeen. They offer more than that nowadays?

[MashRinx]

I do know that hardware manufacturer EVGA has a nice deal that, if you fold for their team, you can earn up to $10 a month if you maintain a minimum point total.  Not huge, but it's the only 'reward' tied to folding that I am aware of.  This reward helped finance the purchase of a couple 470s and a couple 580s back in the day.  This was before I had discovered bitcoin however *sigh*.  Oh the lost opportunity in 2010 & 2011...  It would be interesting to see what kind of F@H points I would be able to pull per 24 hrs if I turned all of this Hashing into Folding.

To answer the OP's question, I will probably continue to mine BTC for a while, even at a loss, because I am still bullish on the future price of Bitcoin, due to the increasing Utility they will provide over time.  That being said, I certainly expect there to be a point where GPU mining of BTC doesn't justify the risk, and becomes silly, like CPU mining was after GPUs took over.  At that point I will decide what to do with my hardware, depending on many factors: LTC activity & value, glut of AMD hardware on eBay and other sites, other alt-coins, etc.

[skeeterskeeter]

I will mine for fun, I like to mine, and put all my reward to satoshi dice. Man. If I hit it big... lol well I used to spend 2-3 a day on lotto from the change I get from using cash. so I guess the money I spend on electricity is worth the thrill of getting 640BTC for .01BTC possibly.

I will mine alt coins when I read more about each.

I have two 5830's and two on the way. I don't game much, I'll just put the computing power to what ever is fun for me.

I feel like everyone is adopting the notion that BTCtc is underground or something (SR !) and has value only to certain people, but we all want it to be spread to all? What we need to put effort to is spreading BTCtc fever to small business or some good niche in the worlds economy.

Think a small business who needs something special, which another small business makes in a country across the world could; they could do a secure transaction themselves or through a known exchange and help each other. Which is nice.

Most countries can get and use computers freely, but not trade freely via physical means. So BTCtc would be an excellent way for global economic exchange.


I heard of something called BitMessage, not BTCtc exactly related but very cool. (tangent)

[TehTDK]

Once the difficulty rises enough for me to not make at least 1 BTC a month then I wont bother anymore

[sublime5447]

I am getting a mining rig on Wednesday!!! sweet!  If any of you gpu miners leave for asics. I am interested in buying gpu cards let me know what you got.
Thanks

[veteranBtc]

Why somebody will mine if the cost of electricity is bigger than profit from mining?

[DrG]

Why somebody will mine if the cost of electricity is bigger than profit from mining?

Shush, you're making the newbies think. 

[mokahless]

Why somebody will mine if the cost of electricity is bigger than profit from mining?

Why somebody will continue buying into a stock they think will go up in the long-term, even though they are throwing away their money in the short-term?

Apparently some people who shut down a while back, turned their rigs back on recently when the price went up. Where would they be if they had never shut them off?
It all depends on how much you believe in the value of the system. How much confidence you have in the value and how much risk you are willing to take. This varies between people. Mining for short-term profits by instantly selling is only one viewpoint.

I'm kicking myself for sending BFL a significant amount of Bitcoins (significant by today's standards). In retrospect, paying in cash would have kept me with more Bitcoin value. That said, I was still hesitant on the system and wanted to keep all my financial risk inside the Bitcoin economy, separate from my "real" cash. Had Bitcoin somehow collapsed to under $5 by now, my losses would seem less than if I had paid in cash. And... if I had paid in cash instead of BTC and it collapsed, I would also be kicking myself.

[vapourminer]

I have a bfl jalapino on order from way back, and will trade in my bfl single for a sc at some point while bfl still accepts it for trade in (course if I knew how bad blf lied about itself back then I would of not bought from them buts thats neither here nor there in this thread).

Ill mine with GPUs till its absurd from a network security point. I dont mind mining at a slight loss; I never expected any return on the non recoverable money (for the single and jalapino) I spent from this anyway, and the gpus (6870 in my daily driver, 6770 in my HTPC, 5830 dedicated) I will switch to folding@home or possibly alt coins.

course it helps that Ive made all my money back on everything already, and Ive run folding@home rigs for years (for no monetary returns) so Im not into this for getting rich. more a hobby than anything else, plus being part of the Grand Experiment of BTC. having said that,  having some BTC for retirement spending money (15 years from now) has crossed my mind. be cool if it works out.

[MaGNeT]

I'm going to keep mining bitcoins, or maybe move to litecoin. Right now I get more profit with litecoin than I do with bitcoin. So I might just move to litecoin now..

You can always trade them back for BTC