Too late to start mining?

[sciter]

Since I started mining a few months ago, the difficulty has increased about tenfold, while the market price of a bitcoin has increased about thirtyfold. Doesn't sound too late to me.

That said, if I'd taken that $500 I spent on mining equipment and just bought bitcoins instead, I'd have turned something like a $14,000 profit (on paper), for a lot less effort spent. I haven't mined anywhere near the number of bitcoins I could have bought.

That said, any fool can predict the past. Mining is profitable right now, whereas buying bitcoins requires a lot more 'faith'. It's really up to you.

I had to use my first 2000 BTC to fund my video card purchases back in January  .

Hahaha...WOW.

It's interesting, the trade off between what amounts to currency speculation in the form of holding your bitcoins, cashing out to reduce USD risk, and purchasing services with bitcoins.

Personally, right now, I'm a currency speculator.  Haven't sold any bitcoins for some time.  I figure I'll hold on to them til they have a value I think is worthwhile, and then I'll spend them in what will then be a more mature market place.

If you read this forum and other sources on the internet, many people think it would be wise too hold the btc because the value will probably rise.

[thefussydutchman]

it will.

[tmac3399]

I did some simple math to see if I could pay off just a GPU, and it didn't look good.  Then, in a few days, the BTC tripled in value, and suddenly there was a business case!  Doesn't pay for much, but it seems it would pay off the new GPU.

[thefussydutchman]

It will pay it off.  I am in the same boat just starting out.  i hope to just pay simple bills like water , power, maybe rent in time.

[ruskihitman]

well my 6990 is chuging away should pay itself in about 30 days, everything else after that is profit, or i might buy another one if i can find one.

[Ian Maxwell]

Given that the current outlook for miners is better than when I started, you might wonder why I'm not putting more money into it now. Believe me, I'm wondering the same thing. 

[Yuvea]

as long as you're patient, mining will be profitable for the foreseeable future.  You have to remember that you don't HAVE to sell at a low price.  You can hoard and sell at the spike points just the same!

[Vanquistador]

as long as you're patient, mining will be profitable for the foreseeable future.  You have to remember that you don't HAVE to sell at a low price.  You can hoard and sell at the spike points just the same!

I worry about doing that and hurting the market, however.  If too many people go about doing that the price could plummit, which hurts the long term goals of bitcoin.  (If the market fluctuates too much)

[Ticker]

I guess if you havent started yet mining, its allmost not profitable anymore especially if the bitcoin will fall down.

[nuclearstar]

Most PC enthusiasts replace their PC once every 3 years i guess. Atleast I do anyway. I discovered bitcoins about a month ago and looked into it.
Turns out my gaming rig is not all that good, its an nvidia GTX 470 and pretty power hungry. I get about 90mhash/s out of it and can get 110 if I overclock it.
But then I wouldnt be able to play games on it, so I did a bit of research and also some digging in my attic. I found my old PC and dusted it off.
It is only an AMD X2 6400 with a single slot PCI-E mobo, but realised that if I buy an AMD/ATI 5850 then I would at current rates only need to mine 6 bitcoins to get my money back, considering that the old PC was just going to sit in the attic forever.

I have got a nice wireless dongle for it and will stick it back in the attic soon. But overclocked(memory underclocked) it runs at 55 C and pumps out 350mhash/s


I should get my money back in a week or so in terms of bitcoin value.

Although the guys that discovered it last year are very luck and probably have 1000's of dollars worth of bitcoins, I still think there is money to make in mining, even if its just a bit of extra spending money to give you a few hundred dollars. For me that would come in very handy for doing basically nothing.

[Gdawg]

I have just started. All I hope to do is pay for my computer building addiction. I just bought a 6870 right before I knew about bitcoins so I hope it will pay itself off and then more.

[skyhigh]

Few hours ago I had no idea why so many were saying its too late to start mining. So I did some reading and calculating.. 

We are at the crucial point where it is still OK to start mining, but you will basically mine to get free hardware and maybe a cheeseburger. Before the end of this week difficulty factor will change again from current 567269 to something bigger. Before I did all this reading and calculations I had no idea difficulty factor is going mega crazy as of late. Here is a chart http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-ever.png

Every 2016 blocks difficulty factor is recalculated and is going to increase more and more eventually to a point of breakeven with electricity cost and after that even more so we will be running with a loss hoping for Bitcoins to be worth a lot more in the future. It takes only approx 10 days for difficulty factor to change and it can change by a lot. Here are past few changes with dates and factors:

2011-04-30            109670
2011-05-09            157416
2011-05-18            244112           
2011-05-26            434877         
2011-06-06            567269

Next difficulty change will be at the block 131040 which you can monitor here http://blockexplorer.com/ This thing might happen by Thursday of this week and my prediction is we are going up by 15 to 20% to about 660000. Before the end of the month we will get another move to 750000. Difficulty factor is going up so quick that it will soon be at electricity costs vs making Bitcoins. I know and understand there are other important factors to be considered but mining for a true newbie like myself is just not worth it any more.

To calculate your approx earnings you can use this calculator http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php You can do approx calculations for every week if you are estimating the difficulty factor change. Keep in mind the difficulty factor changes every 10 or so days, so you are basically interested in a weekly earnings ONLY. Don't be fooled what it says you will be making per month because factor will change twice before the whole month is over.


Why did I do all this research ?

Personally I got money to burn and I wanted to go big with this. I could start with approx $75k of hardware and add about $10k per month, but after my research I'm 100% sure we missed the easy cash in this thing. Start of this year difficulty factor was around 15000 and it would be a sweet run if I picked it up then. I would run it all the way until I was breaking even with electricity costs with I'm predicting will occur next year depending on the base electricity price for an individual.


So what can a small scale newbie do ?

You can buy a fancy Radeon gpu and do the mining whenever computer is idle and I can guarantee you will eventually get your investment back plus a cheeseburger every once in a while. Which is not such a bad deal for all the gamers out there who couldn't afford high end card so far.


All of this is just my research and personal opinion on the matter.

Good luck to all the newbie miners out there.

skyhigh

[khamark]

if you are going to get into it, begin NOW! i started 1 week ago with just a 5850, when i saw that itwas working i went to my local reseller and asked him the components...just what i needed, motherboard, ram, cpu (a sempron 140 lol) and 2 ati 5850 extreme, unfortunately the 5850s have not arrived yet, they should arrive tomorrow or wed. in the meanwhile he gave me a 6850, so now i'm mining with a 5850 and a 6850 at a 500Mh/s waiting for my other vgas to arrive..and i've already got some cash from bitcoin to recover the inversion...so...go for it

[KorJax]

But how does difficulty factor affect the value of the bitcoin?

Is this something where the higher the difficulty, the higher the value and therefore people who are still chugging make up for the lack of BTC generation by simple virtue that the BTC is now more valuble?

Or will more difficulty make BTC prices drop?

I've never done anything economy related before so I'm still trying to wrap my head around all of this. The only real world parallel to Bitcoin and mining that I know of is the Gold Rush

[marvinmartian]

I think the issue of "too late" requires looking at the following.  I have ordered this list based on my own opinion:

1.  The future value of BTCs
2.  Your ability to set up and configure machines to mine efficiently
3.  How much you are willing to invest
4.  How much you expect to gain
5.  What value do you place on your free time ($/hr)
6.  What kind of hardware you purchase

Good luck.

N

[GoldZuGeld]

don't forget the graphic cards are getting better.

[KorJax]

Has anybody ever done something like rent out a load of VPS servers somewhere and mine on them, rather than building it up at home? Ideally you could go with a host that offers a refund guarantee, mine the shit out of it till the refund date, then refund and you got the computing power for free. Even if it's not ideal, free is free.

VPS servers would not work at all since most VPS servers I know don't carry video cards, which are pretty much required in order to mine.

Someone would probably make a killing though, starting a server rental service just for Bitcoin that specilized in servers that use specific video cards good for mining with average components for everything else.

[Pingofriend]

At this point, I would reccomend using 6000 series cards. The 5000 series cards will lose ALOT of value if the bitcoin ever fails. The 6000 series can still be used as a gaming card

I would not agree to this generally... I have compared Sapphire HD5850 xtreme with Sapphire HD6870 vapor-x:

When mining, the 5850 keeps really cool and quiet, around 72°C evene overclocked to 775 MHz, giving around 290Mh/s. The other, 6870, becomes REALLY hot and so loud that I can not sit in the same room. I've never had such a loud beast. The 6870 gives around 260Mh/s, and I don't dare to oc this one at all. After this experience, I would not even think about to have a 6870 in my desktop PC, I also will send back the 6870. I love my 5850, and it's worth its money also as gamer card.

just my 2 cents 

PF.

[Elokane]

Greate post, Skyhigh.

[Vanquistador]

At this point, I would reccomend using 6000 series cards. The 5000 series cards will lose ALOT of value if the bitcoin ever fails. The 6000 series can still be used as a gaming card

I would not agree to this generally... I have compared Sapphire HD5850 xtreme with Sapphire HD6870 vapor-x:

When mining, the 5850 keeps really cool and quiet, around 72°C evene overclocked to 775 MHz, giving around 290Mh/s. The other, 6870, becomes REALLY hot and so loud that I can not sit in the same room. I've never had such a loud beast. The 6870 gives around 260Mh/s, and I don't dare to oc this one at all. After this experience, I would not even think about to have a 6870 in my desktop PC, I also will send back the 6870. I love my 5850, and it's worth its money also as gamer card.

just my 2 cents 

PF.

I believe xaxistech is reffering more to the thought of re-selling the graphics cards assuming a bitcoin crash.  I had the same idea, as much as I wish I was apart of the original 5830 purchases, I went with the 69xx series since I could resell them assuming a drastic market failure.