Why dont more miners mine alternative cryptos where they can make more?

[mr_random]

Looking at the profitability percentage in this picture below we can see there are several coins which are more profitable than bitcoin (with bitcoin at 100% as the base rate):



What are the reasons why people don't mine these other coins and make themselves more money? And if miners dont want to trade the coins for USD, Litecoin actually has a decent marketplace of goods and services cropping up thanks to it's big rise in value.

Can someone explain?

[superfastkyle]

Well there are a few things
For example PPCoin is almost 4 days to confirm. Your PPCoins could be worth nothing in 4 days.
People who mine BTC at low profit levels do so to hold and sell later.
If your bullish on Bitcoin its still somewhat easier to mine them then buy them
Bids on particular alternate currencies are usually much lower than what is listed on that site. If you aren't patient and dump your coins you won't get the percentage listed. Also bid walls are usually very shallow
If you are a big time miner say 50G/H or more you can likely double a currency's difficulty on your own
Some people have job/lives outside of bitcoin and aren't willing to check profitability several times a day in order to change their pool files every time.
TRC coin for example changes to 2x or more profitability several times a day but it never lasts for more than about 45 minutes. Which almost requires you to use a higher fee PPS pool. Variance can kill you if you are pool hopping for only minutes at a time
LItecoin is harder on video cards and creates more heat. It is also harder to configure for optimal results
mmpool mines BTC NMC IXC DVC currently about 1.3x bitcoin profitability

[crazy_rabbit]

People do mine the other coins, personally I do TRC. It's retarget for difficulty is so fast that it swings quite a lot even in one day. So you have to get used to it. But then so does the price. So mine low, sell high. (Or hold)

[supermine]

Interesting graphic. The full truth is, many Exchanges charge exchange fees, so if you are a small miner you won't like that. Second and more gravely is the high fluctuations of these currencies, I mined LiteCoins and prices went from 0.24 to 0.18 per BTC in hours. So if the occasional 30% drop in profitability is OK for you, then these currencies are for you. I wanted to try them again someday, but I don't see sense in investing energy (which is a burdon to earth) into a currency that might die. Or can you show me an app that uses Litecoins. BitCoins at least got adapted by Wordpress and Reddit.

[mitty]

FPGA and the few ASIC miners out there also have much less (or no) flexibility when it comes to mining anything other than Bitcoin.  Casual miners may not bother to consider mining litecoins, and/or may not have to want to deal with anything more difficult than starting their miner and walking away.

[supermine]

Agree the complications of getting into reaper and friends will consume time. Having said that - please show me a miner that does not constantly monitor his hashing rates and income.

[billotronic]

I have always been a huge fan of PPcoin for the reason you just highlighted.

1. There is an exchange to BTC
2. It's geared towards CPU and I have a LOT of pc's running both at home and work doing NOTHING.
2.1 My personal favourite is running a miner on my unraid server's amd APU. It sucks, but the damn thing barely sucks anymore juice mining then pushing HD on my network so why the hell not.
3. Most pc's have decent CPU's
4. It's fun to be an 'early adopter'
5. If PPcoin some day becomes valuable, I will be a rich man.
6. Not a day goes by that I don't hate myself for not jumping on the BTC bandwagon the first DAY I learned of it.
6.1 We should start a BTC charity for fools regrets to pay for Whiskey and smokes.

[W-M]

FPGA and the few ASIC miners out there also have much less (or no) flexibility when it comes to mining anything other than Bitcoin.  Casual miners may not bother to consider mining litecoins, and/or may not have to want to deal with anything more difficult than starting their miner and walking away.

This of course also means that in the unforseeable future, when more people have ASICs (and BFL hopefully has delivered) that the difficulty of the Bitcoin will rise unproportionally to the other currencies. This might mean that mining the other coins might be more profitable, at least for the people not using high-end chips.

[billotronic]

FPGA and the few ASIC miners out there also have much less (or no) flexibility when it comes to mining anything other than Bitcoin.  Casual miners may not bother to consider mining litecoins, and/or may not have to want to deal with anything more difficult than starting their miner and walking away.

This of course also means that in the unforseeable future, when more people have ASICs (and BFL hopefully has delivered) that the difficulty of the Bitcoin will rise unproportionally to the other currencies. This might mean that mining the other coins might be more profitable, at least for the people not using high-end chips.

Thats what I am banking on

[ShadowedStranger]

Why do you discount the possibility that people might actually mine to *gasp* protect the network, and that profit is a secondary motive?

[CoolIT]

I am actually looking into changing over to litecoin mining.

I love the bitcoins because it's so easy for me to exchange them for CAD using cavirtex.


My measly 900Mhash miner is getting slower and slower on bitcoins so it might be more profitable to mine litecoin and exchange to bitcoin to then sell over cavirtex...

If anyone can direct me to a reliable site that exchanges litecoins for cash as direct deposit, I might just go that route.

Still in the process of research and trial/error for my switch. Full time job keeps be busy enough.

[biternana]

Yeah, I'm also serching for a Litecoin exchange. But please don't mention btc-e or vircurex, they have shitty opportunites for paying (I live in Germany)

[k9quaint]

Yeah, I'm also serching for a Litecoin exchange. But please don't mention btc-e or vircurex, they have shitty opportunites for paying (I live in Germany)

Use the alt exchanges to convert to BTC, then transfer to and get your money out through MTGOX

[biternana]

That's an idea. thanks.