Viability of a (Long Term) Mining Career?

[Psipherious]

While I'm not entirely new to the world of Cryptocurrency, I am fairly new to mining.

I only started a little over a couple of months ago with a single card, but really enjoyed it and quickly expanded to 5 cards running in a couple of hacked together configurations and just recently have built a dedicated rig to house the 5 cards and looking to add 1 additional (all 280X) for a total of 6.

I am very aware that right now we're in a phase/period of time where mining certain crypto (Ethereum) is quite a bit more profitable than usual.

I see people constantly warning, “don't buy more equipment” or build more rigs now, etc, etc because so and so and this and that got burned during Litecoin days or early BitCoin mining which turned to ASIC, etc.

But as I keep reading deeper and deeper into this world of cryptomining and it seems that there may have almost always been at least something profitable to mine if one were to monitor the market and hand pick their coins.

I also understand that "profitable" can most certainly depend on how much you pay for electricity as well as your equipment.

I'm in Canada and currently paying approx 0.14 USD per kwh and am more than doubling what I pay for in electricity each month (on Ethereum) so far.

I purchased all of my 280X's used off Kijiji and other buy/sell forums. I've earned back more than 1/3rd of what I've put in so far and before the end of June I’ll be well over 50% ROI.

I would like to hear from others that may have been doing this since the beginning or as early as possible (i.e. the last few years), whether it be mining BitCoin, LiteCoin, FeatherCoin, VertCoin, etc, etc. whatever it may be…

I am very much enjoying this business and even if I am unable to double my electricity costs, as long as I can make some kind of profit (like 50% over elec costs) I would like to continue to expand and perhaps build this into a career/long term income.

I am by no means looking to get rich/make millions, etc. But rather make something in the range of an average American income around 35 - 65k range (yes a large range but I’d be fairly content anywhere in there).

So my real question is, are there regular people that have been doing this for a few years, generally GPU mining (but I’m open to other forms/ASIC mining) and have turned it into a full time income for themselves?

Is it a viable long term business that can actually work if built from a business perspective (like not mining from our basement on residential power)?

I have already found a few ways to get some cheaper electricity, the lowest I’ve found that is accessible to me is around 0.8 usd/kwh and I am aware of even lower options but they would require either a significantly large investment or me moving to another province.

I’m considering both options such as taking out a small business loan to build some rigs, or working a side job to raise some income and build 1 rig at a time + convert all existing rig profits into further expanding the business/building more rigs.

Aside from shopping for used video cards (which as mentioned is how I got all my current ones) I’m not too sure of any way to get good deals on cards. If I was to buy 10 or 20 cards at once even, I know of now ways to get any significant bulk discounts as bulk discounts seems to only happen for hundreds or thousands of cards.

So in terms of sourcing cards/parts at good deals outside of retail and used channels, that’s probably my biggest hinderance right now in terms of expanding more quickly.

But again, I’m looking to hear from people who have been doing this for a while. I am trying to do historical research on difficulty and profitability but it’s a bit challenging. However it does *seem* like there has almost always been a profitable coin.

As said, this is something I’m really starting to enjoy and it’s almost becoming a passion for me. I regret not getting involved many years ago.

Any advice, tips, encouragement, etc or major negatives I might not be considering to people who are already doing this (living off crypto incomes) ??

[adaseb]

What province are you located in? Because 0.14USD kwh is way too much, its almost 0.18kwh CAD.

If you really pay that much for electricity then mining in the long term will be very difficult. You can only make some decent money right now since ETH is very profitable but pretty soon half your profits will be going to pay for power alone, then you will start breaking even, and then you will be mining at a loss.

Usually these types of profits that we are getting these days are short lived. Reason being is that everybody wants "free money".

Miners don't make this much daily everyday for the last 3-4 years. There are ups and downs. Mostly its downs, where the only miners mining are the ones with free electricity.

[fanatic26]

Here are some reasons that might make you want to reconsider trying to make it your main source of income.

1. Your power cost is way too high to make it a viable in the long term as a business where you currently live. You have to buy large amounts of power in most cases to get it cheap enough to make sense for what you are doing.

2. ETH is much more profitable than any other GPU mined coin at present. This presents a problem in that the difficulty is skyrocketing because everyone is flocking to the coin. This means every difficulty change will   reduce your profits.

3. ETH is not a coin to invest in mining long term, the devs have already announced it will go Proof of Stake which basically takes gpu mining out of the equation. There are other profitable GPU coins but none that can rival ETH so you will have to balance on a razor thin profit margin.

4. If you did want to turn it into a business there are a ton of other costs to factor in. When you buy power in bulk it comes in on these high power lines and have you have to buy big expensive transformers to step
    it down to a usable range.  You will need a large warehouse sized location. You will need massive amounts of cooling. You will have to pay for an expensive reliable internet service. GPU mining rigs tend to be very picky and you cant have any internet hiccups or you will have way too much downtime.

5. With profit margins being so thin you will need a very large farm to cover bills and pay yourself a decent wage.

6. Since you did not already have the equipment when ETH went to the moon you have already missed out on the most profitable stage of its life cycle.

7. Since you are only interested in a small salary to live on I am going to guess you do not have a lot of money to start this venture. Id say you would want at least $1 million to start a company that mines full time.

[xingqiaoyin]

Mining farms in chinese locations are running at 0.6 or less electricity and they're HUGEEEEE....

If you cant find lower or equal utility price,you simply can't compete with these guys period

[QuintLeo]

Major farms in the US are mostly in Washington, paying ballpark 3c/KWH at most.
I suspect most of the major Chinese farms (all of the ones that have talked publically so far at least) if not all are also in major hydropower areas with VERY VERY cheap electric.

[Liquid71]

Not viable at all, hobby part time but as a sole source of income forget about it

[Amph]

only one thing matter: electricity cost

if you have 0.05 cent or lower, in kuwait they have 0.01, then every altcoin is profitable

you can even point at monero right now and have your $1k a month with 100gpu, yes it looks underwhelming, but it's profitable

and monero is one of the worst for gpu mining

[Psipherious]

What province are you located in? Because 0.14USD kwh is way too much, its almost 0.18kwh CAD.

If you really pay that much for electricity then mining in the long term will be very difficult. You can only make some decent money right now since ETH is very profitable but pretty soon half your profits will be going to pay for power alone, then you will start breaking even, and then you will be mining at a loss.

Usually these types of profits that we are getting these days are short lived. Reason being is that everybody wants "free money".

Miners don't make this much daily everyday for the last 3-4 years. There are ups and downs. Mostly its downs, where the only miners mining are the ones with free electricity.

Ontario. It's in the range of 13 - 14 cents usd kwh. This is the standard residential power, and also for small businesses, not sure if big commercial outfits get some of discounts.

I know it's stupidly high and mining would not likely be viable long term on that. I'm on that right now because I'm in very early stages building up hardware. Once/if profits of mining drop too low to make that worthwhile to continue using I will of course need to move my equipment.

Anyway, as mentioned, I have access to a place I can get it around 0.8 usd. The only way I know of to get it for less (in Canada) would be to either move (myself with equipment) or setup my own "facility" in another province where I could get it around 0.4 usd.

Low power costs are certainly "do-able". There does seem to be a number of options available in North America for fairly low power costs.

That 0.3 that was mentioned in Washington, I guess that's for "Industrial" power? I presume that would be subject to some type of zoning requirements?

[Psipherious]

Here are some reasons that might make you want to reconsider trying to make it your main source of income.

1. Your power cost is way too high to make it a viable in the long term as a business where you currently live. You have to buy large amounts of power in most cases to get it cheap enough to make sense for what you are doing.

2. ETH is much more profitable than any other GPU mined coin at present. This presents a problem in that the difficulty is skyrocketing because everyone is flocking to the coin. This means every difficulty change will   reduce your profits.

3. ETH is not a coin to invest in mining long term, the devs have already announced it will go Proof of Stake which basically takes gpu mining out of the equation. There are other profitable GPU coins but none that can rival ETH so you will have to balance on a razor thin profit margin.

4. If you did want to turn it into a business there are a ton of other costs to factor in. When you buy power in bulk it comes in on these high power lines and have you have to buy big expensive transformers to step
    it down to a usable range.  You will need a large warehouse sized location. You will need massive amounts of cooling. You will have to pay for an expensive reliable internet service. GPU mining rigs tend to be very picky and you cant have any internet hiccups or you will have way too much downtime.

5. With profit margins being so thin you will need a very large farm to cover bills and pay yourself a decent wage.

6. Since you did not already have the equipment when ETH went to the moon you have already missed out on the most profitable stage of its life cycle.

7. Since you are only interested in a small salary to live on I am going to guess you do not have a lot of money to start this venture. Id say you would want at least $1 million to start a company that mines full time.

1. Yes I do realize it's far too high to base any long term expectations off this. I can get it for 0.8usd with a bit of work. Or 0.4 with a *lot* of work, like moving out of province or setting up a remote facility out of province. The cost involved in setting up my own facility though, it would almost make more sense to just move to get those rates.

2 & 3. I'm fine that ETH is not for mining long term. I already know full well that it's mining phase is going to end. But that is the entire point of my post, to see if it's possible to truly make a living by hand picking the most profitable coins of the time. If that means changing to a different coin each month or even each week, so be it. If this is something I'm going to work on full time that's easily manageable.

4. These are certainly some additional things to consider. While being aware of all of these issues, power limitations, cooling and redundant internet access, the power limitations would be my biggest concern. I've got some workable ideas for the cooling and redundant net but have not much "electrical" experience other than installing some new lights and ceiling fans & light electrics soldering (fixing some TV's, etc), I have zero experience when it comes to industrial power.

5. Yes, I did pretty much figure this. EVEN if I was doubling my cost of electricity per month on say a 6 card rig AND paying only 0.5 cents, lets say I was making $75-100 per month per rig. I know I would require 25 - 50 such rigs to make a living.

6. Again, ETH itself is not a huge factor in this to me. Sure, having gear when ETH started would have been absolutely wonderful. People making tens of thousands of dollars just based on the shoot up in price. This would certain help a lot with purchasing more equipment.

This is why I'm curious of people who have may already have been doing this for years, i.e. well before ETH was even on the scenes. Say in the days between "end of BitCoin GPU mining" up til start of ETH mining. Aside from LiteCoin, were miners making anything in that phase? I mean, serious miners, not hobbyist miners.

This is also why I'm curious if it's possible/where to get cheaper than retail bulk equipment because it will lower the ROI time allowing one to expand and build faster.

And, if I can slowly build up my equipment, even if profit margins are very thin for now, it will allow me to have the equipment in place if/when another new/big altcoin comes onto the scene.

Obviously I don't want to count on something like that and just want to plan to make money if ETH wasn't even part of the picture right now.

Anyway, you've giving me a couple extra points to think on for sure, I appreciate this input and exactly why I started this post.

[Darwin84]

Mining is a hobby. Calling it a career is a stretch of the imagination. There is no way you can compete with anything in a small town or a place where power isn't cheap and hardware isn't easy to come by. Only a small percentage of miners that I know are making money and they are usually the people making money in everything else. You have to stay on top and have good finances, constantly keep up with tech otherwise difficulty will swallow you up before you mine your first coin.

[adaseb]

Moving provinces just for mining is crazy. Like others said before me. This should only be considered a hobby.

Mining is basically "free money" and everybody wants it so with time the difficulty will keep increasing and increasing and it will get harder and harder to make anything.

Just enjoy the current profits while they last.

[bitcoin730]

I don't think so but if you search in google you will find I guess

[Mugtaiya]

If you have 12 rigs of AMD GPU, they will hash about 1.8GH/s, and consumes 14kW, you make about  $153 profit, the electricity cost is $47, revenue is $200. When the difficulty doubles, you will make $53, not enough to support you.

[Amph]

If you have 12 rigs of AMD GPU, they will hash about 1.8GH/s, and consumes 14kW, you make about  $153 profit, the electricity cost is $47, revenue is $200. When the difficulty doubles, you will make $53, not enough to support you.

$53 a day is still pretty good

and anyway you assumed a high electricty for considering $47 a day with 14kw

with 0.05 cent it is much lower, like 1/3

[Darwin84]

Do you trust your calculations to be from a 15 post miner.  What is he talking about 12 GPU without even mentioning what GPU and where and at 1.8gh.  1.8gh in ethereum is closer to 100 GPU so he probably means 12 x 6 GPU rigs, which is something I would not invest in if money was free. At 10 GPU be prepared to move out of your room or basement. At 100 GPU you can't even enter the house.

[Psipherious]

Moving provinces just for mining is crazy. Like others said before me. This should only be considered a hobby.

Mining is basically "free money" and everybody wants it so with time the difficulty will keep increasing and increasing and it will get harder and harder to make anything.

Just enjoy the current profits while they last.

Moving provinces to start a business is not as crazy as one might think and hopefully indicates some level of my seriousness in wanting to turn this stuff into a viable business.

Of course if all one thinks is that some projects can only be a hobby, that is all it will ever be for them. Many people turn passionate hobbies into full time businesses.

If that's the easiest way for me to get power at less than a quarter of what I'm paying now, then so be it. With a move I can cut my power costs in about half by renting some hosting space in a lower electricity cost area. I just don't know if that will be enough of a cut for long term though.

I'm just looking for ways to do that. Kind of brainstorming here, coming up with a plan and hoping for some input from people who might already be doing it as a profession/business.

[Darwin84]

Moving provinces is for doctors or oil workers. Moving provinces for mining is about as smart as buying a cottage in nunavut.  Do you plant to relocate to a new town and sit an house with no friends or family so you can make $10 a day for a few months.

Please try to grasp what mining is and understand difficulty. It increases daily and even you think the numbers look good on paper they are not realistic results. The calculators online are broken on purpose to attract people into mining. They are run by the big players in the game who have in interest in propping up the crypto currency. Even if the calculator show you today you can make $500/month then its more like $400 in reality but that is only for this week. Those same numbers by next week will say $375 and keep on going down daily until you hit the point where power costs more than return.

[fanatic26]

Despite all the negative nancy home miners that are bitter they cant mine on their expensive power at home saying no, you can make it a viable business. You really need a strong amount of capital to start because in order to make a living wage you must run a large number of machines.

E.G.:

Current estimated monthly profit on antminer S7 @ $0.05 power:   (using coinwarz calc)

Total Earned: $170.07
Less power: $46.80
Gross monthly profit per S7: $123.27


You run 500 S7s at the current difficulty and you are making $60k a month....of course when you look at the halving that changes things quite a bit:


Total Earned: $85.04
Less power: $46.80
Gross monthly profit per S7: $38.24


Post Halving (at current difficulty) those 500 machines are still making $19k a month.

Getting power down to $0.03/KwH the same calculations predict a return of $28,400 per month gross post halving. It really depends on your cost to build the facility, your power cost, and how fast you can scale up the number of miners you are running if you want to make this a viable business.


Disclaimer: Do not calculate profit more than 30 days out as difficulty adjusts often and projections tend to be worthless in the long run. These are very rough estimates just to be used as an example.

[Satlite]

Do you trust your calculations to be from a 15 post miner.  What is he talking about 12 GPU without even mentioning what GPU and where and at 1.8gh.  1.8gh in ethereum is closer to 100 GPU so he probably means 12 x 6 GPU rigs, which is something I would not invest in if money was free. At 10 GPU be prepared to move out of your room or basement. At 100 GPU you can't even enter the house.

That is just a simulation. With the 1.8GH, 14kW, it is achievable by 6x12 x390 undervolt and underclock. But the capital cost is high.

[Amph]

Despite all the negative nancy home miners that are bitter they cant mine on their expensive power at home saying no, you can make it a viable business. You really need a strong amount of capital to start because in order to make a living wage you must run a large number of machines.

E.G.:

Current estimated monthly profit on antminer S7 @ $0.05 power:   (using coinwarz calc)

Total Earned: $170.07
Less power: $46.80
Gross monthly profit per S7: $123.27


You run 500 S7s at the current difficulty and you are making $60k a month....of course when you look at the halving that changes things quite a bit:


Total Earned: $85.04
Less power: $46.80
Gross monthly profit per S7: $38.24


Post Halving (at current difficulty) those 500 machines are still making $19k a month.

Getting power down to $0.03/KwH the same calculations predict a return of $28,400 per month gross post halving. It really depends on your cost to build the facility, your power cost, and how fast you can scale up the number of miners you are running if you want to make this a viable business.


Disclaimer: Do not calculate profit more than 30 days out as difficulty adjusts often and projections tend to be worthless in the long run. These are very rough estimates just to be used as an example.

another thing to add

why in the hell you need to aim at making 60k or 19k a month, when with a regular job you would only make 1k?

let's be equal here, if you want to get rid of your steady job, you need just an income of 1k per month, it can be reached easily by mining any shitcoin if you have proper electricity