Need short-term and long-term advice...

[Alik]

Ok so here is the deal.

A friend and I are about to put a few mining rigs together with money borrowed from a another friend (investor) of mine. So obviously we are paying him back in due time. I'm starting to get a good feel of the market place and it's sort of a big deal because I can get a lot of capital from my friend. Even 100,000 USD if I want, to play with. So, given the extensive available capital, what would you recommend on the mining side and short/long term investment side in general?

In the long run, I do plan on dumping a portion of gains into physical silver given the path of the dollar and maybe even some gold but I'm sticking to mostly silver. That aside, just some recommendations to get the best ROI in the short term as well as long term in general.

We're both techies and will be working on some development of some e-commerce project while working the bitcoin market.

I'm a laid off business adviser and am getting ready to take college courses so for now, I have nothing but time and an investor who is willing to throw in capital so long as I can give him a decent return to start.

Thanks for your suggestions.

[bitcoinewbie]

I know nothing of mining, but i am blessed with the ability to be allowed to communicate with the big kids so i'll post your inquiry in the mining section right now and you can check for feedback there.

edit:

here you go - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15642.0

[BTCPrizes]

You better understand exactly how mining works before you get into it. As for the direct investment in cash, its difficult to give realistic advice in such a volatile market. Be prepared to lose your friend's money and telling him its gone for good (if you can't, then you probably shouldn't be doing it to begin with).

[Alik]

I know nothing of mining, but i am blessed with the ability to be allowed to communicate with the big kids so i'll post your inquiry in the mining section right now and you can check for feedback there.

edit:

here you go - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15642.0

Thanks bud

[Dude65535]

First thing, what are you paying for power. If you have a competitive rate for your electricity you can stay profitable even in bad conditions.

Second buy hardware that is cheap or popular enough to have resale value avoid the middle ground. Cases are optional especially if you figure on the GPUs being the only thing with resale value. If you have the option of recouping much of the hardware cost your risk is very low.

Lastly consider where you are going to put the mining rigs. If you are going to have a lot of mining rigs you have to figure out how much each circuit breaker can handle and what you are going to do about the heat. Every watt/hour of power used is a watt/hour of heat generated. If you can avoid the need for air conditioning you will save on power.

Mining is the lower risk/lower return way of investing in bitcoin.

[Maged]

I know nothing of mining, but i am blessed with the ability to be allowed to communicate with the big kids so i'll post your inquiry in the mining section right now and you can check for feedback there.

edit:

here you go - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15642.0

When you see threads that should be moved like this, can you please hit the report button? If we move them, the OP can still reply to that post.

[killer2021]

Well the important thing to remember is that generating bitcoins will get more difficult to mine over time so mining bitcoins is only a short-term business. However, I am not sure how that will work out over the long-term especially if the price of bitcoins goes up in value year over year.

What you need to do is track all your costs like a hawk (ie. meter the electricity usage by the rig). You also need to live in a location that has cheap electricity + cold climate. So I would suggest some place where it snows. Try to go as high altitude as possible, far north or south. If possible, place your rigs outside to reduce cooling costs.

You want to run your rigs 24/7/365. Forget the college class- you won't have the time especially if your friend is going to be investing 100k.

When you generate BTC, don't just sell it ASAP on the markets, price it high so you get maximum return.

Once again, the important thing is to track your costs, including depreciation of your equipment. Saying, "I paid 7$ for electricity per bitcoin and sold the bitcoin for 8$ and made a 1$ profit" is not going to cut it.

As far as where to invest the profit from the business I'd go for physical silver/gold and stocks, primarily dividend stocks.

[Dude65535]

Difficulty does not increase with time, it increases with the total power of the hardware used for bitcoin mining.

For that reason difficulty will self correct moving towards a point where the most efficient profit enough to continue but not enough to attract more competition.

[Alik]

Well the important thing to remember is that generating bitcoins will get more difficult to mine over time so mining bitcoins is only a short-term business. However, I am not sure how that will work out over the long-term especially if the price of bitcoins goes up in value year over year.

What you need to do is track all your costs like a hawk (ie. meter the electricity usage by the rig). You also need to live in a location that has cheap electricity + cold climate. So I would suggest some place where it snows. Try to go as high altitude as possible, far north or south. If possible, place your rigs outside to reduce cooling costs.

You want to run your rigs 24/7/365. Forget the college class- you won't have the time especially if your friend is going to be investing 100k.

When you generate BTC, don't just sell it ASAP on the markets, price it high so you get maximum return.

Once again, the important thing is to track your costs, including depreciation of your equipment. Saying, "I paid 7$ for electricity per bitcoin and sold the bitcoin for 8$ and made a 1$ profit" is not going to cut it.

As far as where to invest the profit from the business I'd go for physical silver/gold and stocks, primarily dividend stocks.

Good advice. Yes, we've considered the equipment maint. and my partner will be building custom cooling mechanisms for the rigs. We've also calculated the electricity usage of each rig so we have a decent formula for mining which we obviously just update with current bitcoin values and up to date difficulty factors.

Also, I'm not just talking mining and buying bitcoins. Out of the 3 of us, 1 is a good programmer/developer, I am basically half programmer and half business developer and the other is a great business guy and awesome promoter to the best levels of just about any business. So we have a solid group and I am also thinking to bring aboard my cousin who is an advanced forex guy. So I guess what I am getting at is that we're also thinking outside the realm of just mining and investing into coins, but also considering our resources, we can do many things and already have some nice ideas. So any additional ideas maybe for a commerce site you guys would like to see developed around bitcoin users? (ie. auctions, classifieds, etc).

[bitcoinewbie]

I know nothing of mining, but i am blessed with the ability to be allowed to communicate with the big kids so i'll post your inquiry in the mining section right now and you can check for feedback there.

edit:

here you go - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15642.0

When you see threads that should be moved like this, can you please hit the report button? If we move them, the OP can still reply to that post.

noted. I don't know if there is something that can be done about it, but until you said that i have always had a negative association to that button, as if i would be reporting something that i felt was 'bad' and needed to be removed. I'm guessing I am not alone in that sentiment. unfortunately, i have no alternative in mind.

[bcpokey]

You might look into setting up an exchange as an alternative to mtgox. There is already tradehill.com but competition never hurts. And it's profitable in just about all climates, as the current model takes off the top of every trade for both buying and selling (you could potentially set up an exchange that only skims one way and I'm sure lots of people would be excited).

For a sense of why I say this is profitable, $19.6mil USD flowed through mtgox last month. His fee is .00635 x2 (both sides pay). Sounds like yhou have a good team to set one up as well, Forex guy, coder guy, hardware guy. Pretty much everything you'd want right there. If you could set it up in a way that it could handle large volumes of trade, automate withdrawal/deposit from accounts, and all with fast reaction times, I imagine you could snipe a lot of business.

[killer2021]

You might look into setting up an exchange as an alternative to mtgox. There is already tradehill.com but competition never hurts. And it's profitable in just about all climates, as the current model takes off the top of every trade for both buying and selling (you could potentially set up an exchange that only skims one way and I'm sure lots of people would be excited).

For a sense of why I say this is profitable, $19.6mil USD flowed through mtgox last month. His fee is .00635 x2 (both sides pay). Sounds like yhou have a good team to set one up as well, Forex guy, coder guy, hardware guy. Pretty much everything you'd want right there. If you could set it up in a way that it could handle large volumes of trade, automate withdrawal/deposit from accounts, and all with fast reaction times, I imagine you could snipe a lot of business.

I second this idea. MTGOX gets the job done but could use more professional interface and especially lower fees.

[TheGer]

Short and long term advise. 

Stay the hell out of those College Courses they are a waste of money, don't rely on Bitcoins for your personal income by borrowing so much money, and buy Silver instead of Gold.  As Silver corrects to its historical 1/16th ratio to Gold it will skyrocket in price.  You'll see much more gain in Silver vs. Gold.

[Alik]

Short and long term advise. 

Stay the hell out of those College Courses they are a waste of money, don't rely on Bitcoins for your personal income by borrowing so much money, and buy Silver instead of Gold.  As Silver corrects to its historical 1/16th ratio to Gold it will skyrocket in price.  You'll see much more gain in Silver vs. Gold.

lol Thanks. I have my reasons for taking some classes. I'm self taught just like every other programmer out there and have reviewed many of the courses and I know I'm not learning anything. Either way, my reasons are a bit personal so I'm not getting into that.

Who said I was going to rely on bitcoins for my personal income?

[Gregers]

I don't know if bitcoins are good for anything long term since that trend seems to be stable in only one direction. Short term, though, I think you could make a nice profit, but that's why I'm sticking to buying these with dollars and then selling. Seems like the risk is lower and net gain higher that way, or at least that's what I'm hoping.

[killer2021]

Short and long term advise. 

Stay the hell out of those College Courses they are a waste of money, don't rely on Bitcoins for your personal income by borrowing so much money, and buy Silver instead of Gold.  As Silver corrects to its historical 1/16th ratio to Gold it will skyrocket in price.  You'll see much more gain in Silver vs. Gold.

lol Thanks. I have my reasons for taking some classes. I'm self taught just like every other programmer out there and have reviewed many of the courses and I know I'm not learning anything. Either way, my reasons are a bit personal so I'm not getting into that.

Who said I was going to rely on bitcoins for my personal income?

We just assume you are since you said you were unemployed and going to start this business venture. So its logical to assume you are running this business for personal income.

[TheGer]

"Who said I was going to rely on bitcoins for my personal income?"

If you're not going to use them profitably then don't waste your time and money.  If you are going to use them profitably then that is going to wind up being a personal income yeah?  Just don't rely on them as a lifeline to keep you fed and housed.

[Alik]

"Who said I was going to rely on bitcoins for my personal income?"

If you're not going to use them profitably then don't waste your time and money.  If you are going to use them profitably then that is going to wind up being a personal income yeah?  Just don't rely on them as a lifeline to keep you fed and housed.

Well, the point I stressed multiple times above is that we are working on several different things. Not just bitcoin. Bitcoin will be nice for the moment to make some extra cash while mining is worthwhile. That's why I was asking for brain droppings on anything the community could user right now.

If I wanted to, 100 grand could be used to pick up about 44 rigs capable of about 65 gh/s and and gross between 1k-2k a day if the value is floating between 10-20 USD but I doubt I would be comfortable doing that. I've seen some vids on youtube with similar set ups but the market is all over the place right now. Either way, of course I would use it profitably. Otherwise, I wouldn't waste my time.

[Fakeman]

Here's an idea, figure out something you can profitably pay people in bitcoins to do, that can be done just sitting at a computer. You can't have a real economy without jobs, and right now about the only viable 'job' that pays in bitcoins is making bitcoins. It would have to be piecework because paying hourly would create an unnecessary administrative burden.

There are all kinds of bored-ass people sitting at computers who might be happy to e.g. proofread OCR, categorize images or write/summarize articles for money. Some are bored enough to do some of that for free but eventually anyone gets tired of that, look at how the Wikipedia model frustrates a lot of productive people into leaving. Whatever they make, even if they don't make a lot starting out as is the nature of piecework, can potentially increase in buying power if the price of bitcoins goes up. Additionally, the fact that all those people have bitcoins to spend furthers the goal of widespread use. You ensure quality by cross checking results and rewarding high accuracy/writing quality with extra bonuses.

[Alik]

Here's an idea, figure out something you can profitably pay people in bitcoins to do, that can be done just sitting at a computer. You can't have a real economy without jobs, and right now about the only viable 'job' that pays in bitcoins is making bitcoins. It would have to be piecework because paying hourly would create an unnecessary administrative burden.

There are all kinds of bored-ass people sitting at computers who might be happy to e.g. proofread OCR, categorize images or write/summarize articles for money. Some are bored enough to do some of that for free but eventually anyone gets tired of that, look at how the Wikipedia model frustrates a lot of productive people into leaving. Whatever they make, even if they don't make a lot starting out as is the nature of piecework, can potentially increase in buying power if the price of bitcoins goes up. Additionally, the fact that all those people have bitcoins to spend furthers the goal of widespread use. You ensure quality by cross checking results and rewarding high accuracy/writing quality with extra bonuses.

Good points and good thinking. What about on the e-commerce end?