Viability of a (Long Term) Mining Career?

[arielbit]

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

1. You have to pay back your loans for everything you built.

2. As network difficulty changes your profits will drop.

3. You have to constantly upgrade/repair/replace equipment in this industry. You will need a store of cash to do this.

4. Who the hell can live on $1k a month? Thats under minimum wage. Remember not everyone lives at mommys and has no bills. I live in a smaller cheap house and my monthly bills not counting food/gas/car maintenance/etc are over $1000 a month.

You sound like someone who has no clue what its like owning a business or even living on your own for that matter if you think $1k is enough to live on. OP said $35k-65k per year. $35k is about $2900 a month before taxes. $65k is about $5400 a month before taxes. Calculate loan repayment rates, commercial rental fees, taxes on your profits......now tell me again how far off I am?

you don't need to live under your parent to live with 1k, i can live with 500 and i'm alone, just don't be stupid and build a family with 500 or 1k

again don't say shit like you have no clue, when you know nothing about the cost of living around the world

if you think that you need 3k a month in every place of earth just to have a normal life, you are the one which is clueless

that makes us two here at 500$.. i can still live at 300-350$ "happily" but i don't want to scare some people here LOL..

[adaseb]

Yeah I am sure most of us can live under $500 a month.

However that would mean moving back in with your parents, riding a bike instead of driving, eating Ramen noodles, wearing used clothes from Goodwill, cutting your own hair, having no insurance, never travelling, not having your own family, etc.

What kind of life is that.

[Amph]

Yeah I am sure most of us can live under $500 a month.

However that would mean moving back in with your parents, riding a bike instead of driving, eating Ramen noodles, wearing used clothes from Goodwill, cutting your own hair, having no insurance, never travelling, not having your own family, etc.

What kind of life is that.

you are right about the bike, but not about food, well i did travel a lot when i was really young due to my father job, so i don't care anymore about travelling

you can have a decent life at 500 let alone at 1k, but only if you are alone yes

[adaseb]

Yeah I am sure most of us can live under $500 a month.

However that would mean moving back in with your parents, riding a bike instead of driving, eating Ramen noodles, wearing used clothes from Goodwill, cutting your own hair, having no insurance, never travelling, not having your own family, etc.

What kind of life is that.

you are right about the bike, but not about food, well i did travel a lot when i was really young due to my father job, so i don't care anymore about travelling

you can have a decent life at 500 let alone at 1k, but only if you are alone yes

Are you living in North America?

[QuintLeo]

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.

 Actually, I do - I have no family where I'm at NOW, and very few friends.
 Won't be "for a few months" either - I'm NOT limiting my plans to Ethereum - in fact I'm still earning more from LiteCoin right now than Ethereum (already have the hardware, no point in shutting it down since it's profitable even though I can't switch it).

 It's not practical to live on less than $500/month ALL UP in most of the US for most folks, but $1000 is easy - I've not made $12000 in a year in over a decade, but I've been pretty comfortable that whole time. Being single, no dependents, etc helps noticeably.


 DO keep in mind that SOME parts of the US have low rental costs, it's not ALL about insane pricing in places like Manhattan (NY) or Orange County (CA) and such.


 P.S. - I've not "lived with mommie" in 37 years and change.

[arielbit]

Yeah I am sure most of us can live under $500 a month.

However that would mean moving back in with your parents, riding a bike instead of driving, eating Ramen noodles, wearing used clothes from Goodwill, cutting your own hair, having no insurance, never travelling, not having your own family, etc.

What kind of life is that.

well i got a bike  

i hate ramen noodles ( the instant ones), i'm eating beef, seafoods, veggies, and fruits, and i have some spices on stock ready to be used when needed. buying clothes for me is not a monthly routine so it is not expensive, haircut here is 1$. there are cheap insurance plans that is enough, i bought GPU's instead of travelling..I'll travel, just waiting for the mood... having family in time..

[Sanguintan]

Yeah I am sure most of us can live under $500 a month.

However that would mean moving back in with your parents, riding a bike instead of driving, eating Ramen noodles, wearing used clothes from Goodwill, cutting your own hair, having no insurance, never travelling, not having your own family, etc.

What kind of life is that.

you are right about the bike, but not about food, well i did travel a lot when i was really young due to my father job, so i don't care anymore about travelling

you can have a decent life at 500 let alone at 1k, but only if you are alone yes

Are you living in North America?

From the post post times, I can see Amph lives in Central Europe or maybe in the East Europe.

[Amph]

Yeah I am sure most of us can live under $500 a month.

However that would mean moving back in with your parents, riding a bike instead of driving, eating Ramen noodles, wearing used clothes from Goodwill, cutting your own hair, having no insurance, never travelling, not having your own family, etc.

What kind of life is that.

you are right about the bike, but not about food, well i did travel a lot when i was really young due to my father job, so i don't care anymore about travelling

you can have a decent life at 500 let alone at 1k, but only if you are alone yes

Are you living in North America?

From the post post times, I can see Amph lives in Central Europe or maybe in the East Europe.

in italy, and it's already expensive to live here. but you can do it with 500 euro a month

[Darwin84]

Sorry but but that's just fools luck. You got lucky that's all. There is no life @ $500 /m unless you are lucky. What if someone dies tomorrow are you going to bury them in your backyard ?  What if you get sick tomorrow and need $20k for a simple surgery, you will die.. What if you injure someone tomorrow just by doing something simple as riding your bike, you will be sued. How about actually living and not just surviving. What kind of life do you have with no toys or gadgets or cars and insurance. How about a boat ? How about parking. Your monthly survival rate is what people pay for parking for 1 month in my city.

@$500 month you can't even afford a new motherboard if something goes down. Its a failed business plan and I hope nobody takes your advice.

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.

 Actually, I do - I have no family where I'm at NOW, and very few friends.
 Won't be "for a few months" either - I'm NOT limiting my plans to Ethereum - in fact I'm still earning more from LiteCoin right now than Ethereum (already have the hardware, no point in shutting it down since it's profitable even though I can't switch it).

 It's not practical to live on less than $500/month ALL UP in most of the US for most folks, but $1000 is easy - I've not made $12000 in a year in over a decade, but I've been pretty comfortable that whole time. Being single, no dependents, etc helps noticeably.


 DO keep in mind that SOME parts of the US have low rental costs, it's not ALL about insane pricing in places like Manhattan (NY) or Orange County (CA) and such.


 P.S. - I've not "lived with mommie" in 37 years and change.

[arielbit]

@Darwin84

500$ a month for parking? from where i live there is no parking fee around here, there is insurance that cost 6 to 11 $ a month, a computer is already a toy, i don't get why people want to play with gadgets, i have a 24 inch monitor and a lot of GPUs to use for gaming. a used motherboard for my mining rigs costs 28$ max, for bike injury you just need an alcohol and terramycin.

[adaseb]

He's probably living in Toronto or Vancouver where downtown parking could cost $500/month.

[Amph]

Sorry but but that's just fools luck. You got lucky that's all. There is no life @ $500 /m unless you are lucky. What if someone dies tomorrow are you going to bury them in your backyard ?  What if you get sick tomorrow and need $20k for a simple surgery, you will die.. What if you injure someone tomorrow just by doing something simple as riding your bike, you will be sued. How about actually living and not just surviving. What kind of life do you have with no toys or gadgets or cars and insurance. How about a boat ? How about parking. Your monthly survival rate is what people pay for parking for 1 month in my city.

@$500 month you can't even afford a new motherboard if something goes down. Its a failed business plan and I hope nobody takes your advice.

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.

 Actually, I do - I have no family where I'm at NOW, and very few friends.
 Won't be "for a few months" either - I'm NOT limiting my plans to Ethereum - in fact I'm still earning more from LiteCoin right now than Ethereum (already have the hardware, no point in shutting it down since it's profitable even though I can't switch it).

 It's not practical to live on less than $500/month ALL UP in most of the US for most folks, but $1000 is easy - I've not made $12000 in a year in over a decade, but I've been pretty comfortable that whole time. Being single, no dependents, etc helps noticeably.


 DO keep in mind that SOME parts of the US have low rental costs, it's not ALL about insane pricing in places like Manhattan (NY) or Orange County (CA) and such.


 P.S. - I've not "lived with mommie" in 37 years and change.

no-sense with all this "what if"

i can argue the same, what if you just die tomorrow, with your millions in pocket? you think your money will resurrect you from the tomb?

[Psipherious]

I do appreciate the sensible replies with math and data regarding how to make 35k+ per month from mining.

They've given me some good things to think on, problems to solve. I truly enjoy this whole Cryptocurrency industry, the alternative finance part of it, the mining is enjoyable. I like maintaining the systems and have no problems trying to solve the issues of how to get cheaper power, where to get good deals on hardware, etc, etc.

But as to the battle that this has turned into as to whether or not someone can live on $500 a month or not is just stupidity.

Go start your own thread titled "how much is enough to live off of per month" or something because it's highly unrelated to whether or not AltCoin mining can be profitable long term. Profit is profit, whether it's $50 a month or $50,000 a month.

People can live off NOTHING per month. People do. Their life sucks. But that is also based on perspectives.

*I* could live off of 20k, or even less per year if I really wanted to or needed to. I don't want to. 35k is my minimum goal. That goal is also mostly irrelevant to whether or not mining can be profitable for you.

Mining is scale-able, so if you can consistently make 500 a month off it, then you can simply spend some more monies on hardware and scale it up.

My main question and entire point of this thread is how sustainable can that be?

If I can make $1 per day off of each GPU card (profit after electricity and other expenses), then 90 cards make me 90 a day which is 2700 a month which is pretty close to my goal. 90 cards = 15, 6 card rigs probably running in the range of 1200 - 1400W per mo each.

But how long is this sustainable. 280X cards which came out nearly 3 years ago are still making great money on a number of coins (including some that are not Ethash based). 7970's which are essentially nearly identical to 280X's are even older. So that's 4+ year old cards that are STILL able to make $1 per month PROFIT over the past year at the very least.

At one point long ago they were profitable on LiteCoin too, I'm sure they're not now but this is my whole point, can you keep selecting the next top coin and continuously make $1 per month profit off a card that's 4 years old?

Again, I appreciate the sensible replies, so ty to those who have posted some.

[Amph]

my advice is, don't buy anything old, at this point

new monster gpu are coming, like the 480, which will kill any other amd instantly, at 150w(the real consumption will be much less, by tweaking the power limit) and doing 25MH on etheruem

you would save really big on consumption, not to mention that they willl cost only 200, with a much greater resell value than 280 or 290

[adaseb]

I do appreciate the sensible replies with math and data regarding how to make 35k+ per month from mining.

They've given me some good things to think on, problems to solve. I truly enjoy this whole Cryptocurrency industry, the alternative finance part of it, the mining is enjoyable. I like maintaining the systems and have no problems trying to solve the issues of how to get cheaper power, where to get good deals on hardware, etc, etc.

But as to the battle that this has turned into as to whether or not someone can live on $500 a month or not is just stupidity.

Go start your own thread titled "how much is enough to live off of per month" or something because it's highly unrelated to whether or not AltCoin mining can be profitable long term. Profit is profit, whether it's $50 a month or $50,000 a month.

People can live off NOTHING per month. People do. Their life sucks. But that is also based on perspectives.

*I* could live off of 20k, or even less per year if I really wanted to or needed to. I don't want to. 35k is my minimum goal. That goal is also mostly irrelevant to whether or not mining can be profitable for you.

Mining is scale-able, so if you can consistently make 500 a month off it, then you can simply spend some more monies on hardware and scale it up.

My main question and entire point of this thread is how sustainable can that be?

If I can make $1 per day off of each GPU card (profit after electricity and other expenses), then 90 cards make me 90 a day which is 2700 a month which is pretty close to my goal. 90 cards = 15, 6 card rigs probably running in the range of 1200 - 1400W per mo each.

But how long is this sustainable. 280X cards which came out nearly 3 years ago are still making great money on a number of coins (including some that are not Ethash based). 7970's which are essentially nearly identical to 280X's are even older. So that's 4+ year old cards that are STILL able to make $1 per month PROFIT over the past year at the very least.

At one point long ago they were profitable on LiteCoin too, I'm sure they're not now but this is my whole point, can you keep selecting the next top coin and continuously make $1 per month profit off a card that's 4 years old?

Again, I appreciate the sensible replies, so ty to those who have posted some.

It won't be sustainable for years. Maybe a few more months.

Litecoin mining was only profitable for maybe 6 months or so.

The rest of the time those 280x were making $0.30/day for people with free electricity.

[Darwin84]

@Darwin84

500$ a month for parking? from where i live there is no parking fee around here, there is insurance that cost 6 to 11 $ a month, a computer is already a toy, i don't get why people want to play with gadgets, i have a 24 inch monitor and a lot of GPUs to use for gaming. a used motherboard for my mining rigs costs 28$ max, for bike injury you just need an alcohol and terramycin.

That's downtown Toronto. $300-$600 a month, depends on security and covered or not and that's just work, you need another $100 or so to park at home.


Great so you have a life of GPUs and gaming in a deadbeat farming town and you fix yourself with alcohol.  

That's a waste of life to most people.

I'm not judging but don't pass this off as advice. You'll be on the streets of a big city soon enough when you're first major life upset happens that you can't fix with $500.

Good luck

[Darwin84]

If I can make $1 per day off of each GPU card (profit after electricity and other expenses), then 90 cards make me 90 a day which is 2700 a month which is pretty close to my goal. 90 cards = 15, 6 card rigs probably running in the range of 1200 - 1400W per mo each.

Not really because there are extra costs as you increase. Cooling, space, internet requirements and I'm not even talking about the legal stuff like licensing,taxes, insurance. The cheap mining model works at home on free internet and up to a few GPU's. You've obviously never mined if you don't know this. After one rig you have to start cooling. After two rigs you have to move out of the room. At 90 GPU you have to move out of the house. AC, noise suppression, fanning, racking, power upgrades to draw that kind of power. Ever think about a fire ?

You also missed the whole chapter on difficulty. If you can't grasp the aboveyou will never understand that.

If you project 2700 a month at today's difficulty expect to be paid on $2400 tops because difficulty isn't going to stop when you come online with 90gpu. Next month $1700-$2000. Next month $1500. But your bills stay the same, in 3 months you can't make rent.  To keep up with 2700 you have to add another 10-15 GPU each month. 

[arielbit]

@Darwin84

500$ a month for parking? from where i live there is no parking fee around here, there is insurance that cost 6 to 11 $ a month, a computer is already a toy, i don't get why people want to play with gadgets, i have a 24 inch monitor and a lot of GPUs to use for gaming. a used motherboard for my mining rigs costs 28$ max, for bike injury you just need an alcohol and terramycin.

That's downtown Toronto. $300-$600 a month, depends on security and covered or not and that's just work, you need another $100 or so to park at home.


Great so you have a life of GPUs and gaming in a deadbeat farming town and you fix yourself with alcohol.  

That's a waste of life to most people.

I'm not judging but don't pass this off as advice. You'll be on the streets of a big city soon enough when you're first major life upset happens that you can't fix with $500.

Good luck

i'm in a city, in a province..if you read up thread i said i can do 300-350$ "happily" ... the minimum wage here is ~175$ LOL ..i'm fine with 500$ 

my location is a comfortable one, i'm even planning to buy a piece of property around here with my savings, 3 malls are in a biking/walking distance, a 4th one is being made, two hospitals are walking distance and a 5 minute commute to the city square.

a metropolis provides higher wages because of higher standard of living..here is a sweet blend of provincial and city living

[Amph]

If I can make $1 per day off of each GPU card (profit after electricity and other expenses), then 90 cards make me 90 a day which is 2700 a month which is pretty close to my goal. 90 cards = 15, 6 card rigs probably running in the range of 1200 - 1400W per mo each.

Not really because there are extra costs as you increase. Cooling, space, internet requirements and I'm not even talking about the legal stuff like licensing,taxes, insurance. The cheap mining model works at home on free internet and up to a few GPU's. You've obviously never mined if you don't know this. After one rig you have to start cooling. After two rigs you have to move out of the room. At 90 GPU you have to move out of the house. AC, noise suppression, fanning, racking, power upgrades to draw that kind of power. Ever think about a fire ?

You also missed the whole chapter on difficulty. If you can't grasp the aboveyou will never understand that.

If you project 2700 a month at today's difficulty expect to be paid on $2400 tops because difficulty isn't going to stop when you come online with 90gpu. Next month $1700-$2000. Next month $1500. But your bills stay the same, in 3 months you can't make rent.  To keep up with 2700 you have to add another 10-15 GPU each month. 

this assuming that no other profitable coin come out, and he can not make the big profit with it like it happened with etehruem

which is a bit stupid to assume, telling the past here, also it is known that when bitcoin will skyrocket you will automatically have 2x profit or 3x profit or more

not to mention that when bitcoin skyrocket the new influx of fresh money will be huge, this will also reflect to many other big alt

[QuintLeo]

Litecoin was profitable on GPUs for more like a year at least, unless your electric rate was VERY high.

 Ethereum looks like it might last that long - depends mostly on how many folks jump into it and how much they bring with them vs. price rise.


 On the other hand, counting on Ethereum mining to make a living for more than a few months, perhaps a year at most, is a fools choice.
 Get the short-term profits, certainly - but long-term is ZERO probability.

 Can't count on new profitable coins either - there MIGHT be some such, but the openings for viable altcoins are growing fewer and fewer as more and more altcoins have swamped the coinspace.