Mining still worth it?

[Alik]

What's your best guess for the next 1-6 months?

Is their still room for new miners to start now and still be profitable? (individual miners and people who have money to spent on a couple dozen rigs).

Now that we've seen this "bubble" stable out, do you still think value will graduate to $50USD or better and still be a player Vs the difficulty?

[1714778009]

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[Atroxes]

Ask this:

[Alik]

Way to strike a reasonable discussion.

[Yeti]

I believe it can be profitable, otherwise I wouldn't have built a rig just this Friday. But... you never know so the crystal ball might be the only that can tell you if it's still "worth it".

There's a risk associated with it, a big mining operation could come online any minute and produce 1 Th/s, driving difficulty wild. Or somebody could hack Mt. Gox, steal all the funds and shatter confidence so bad the price falls to $1 or below.

That's why I keep my risk low by only having one card in a cheap rig. If everything falls apart, I hope to sell it to a gamer for a reasonable amount.

Apart from that, the price could also skyrocket tomorrow. Your investment could pay off in 2 - 3 months and you'd only have to factor in the price of electricity from there on.

You never know.

[Cluster2k]

Is their still room for new miners to start now and still be profitable? (individual miners and people who have money to spent on a couple dozen rigs).

Next difficulty level is around 845,000 and will probably go over a million in 10 days time.  Whatever BTC per day rate you have will be halved within 2 weeks, and probably halved again by early July.  Will the price go up to compensate?  Well, the difficulty is only relevant to miners.  Speculators who bought their BTCs at $1 a few months ago, or $10 on Friday, aren't going to care how expensive your power is or how little return you get for a $600 6990.  

The only way mining is proftable right now is:

- You bought the gear a month or two ago, and it has already paid for itself

- Or, whatever BTC you generate now you intend to keep.  Not worth selling for $20ea as you're looking for more.

On the last point, be aware that there are a lot of miners in the same boat.  We saw the BTC price fall 66% within 2 days.  Could you hold out and not sell up?  At least if you buy the hardware and BTC crashes again you get to keep it.  Speculators are left with large losses.

[hugolp]

Way to strike a reasonable discussion.

His answer comes from the fact that this question gets asked constantly. For example, 4 or 5 threads under this there is this one: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15571.0

And the answer is that nobody knows.

[FlappySocks]

Just remember...CPU's are now obsolete for mining. GPU's are next.

[Coinbuck @ BTCLot]

Or somebody could hack Mt. Gox, steal all the funds and shatter confidence so bad the price falls to $1 or below.

Yeah sounds very easy to do 

[airdata]

I got around 12btc over the last 2-3 days w\ ~1.7Gh  I'd say it's still worth it.

[jackjack]

I got around 12btc over the last 2-3 days w\ ~1.7Gh  I'd say it's still worth it.

Seriously? On which pool?

[[Coins!]]

Acc'd to this, 1700 Mhash will net 3 coins/day.

http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

So, doesn't really matter the pool, 1.7Ghash is a lot of hashing.

[kokojie]

Another calc here that figures electric cost into the equation
http://linewbie.com/minebtc/dashboard.php

[Wepp]

Just remember...CPU's are now obsolete for mining. GPU's are next.

GPUs are current for mining.
ASICs are next.

[fcmatt]

Just remember...CPU's are now obsolete for mining. GPU's are next.

GPUs are current for mining.
ASICs are next.

whenever someone says the word ASIC i think of juniper routers. you know, like a m10, m40, mx80, etc...
they are really really expensive but fast as all heck. it is the expensive part i am thinking of.

ASICs always seem expensive because they never seem to be truly mass produced in enough
quantity to drive prices down to a level that seems affordable for mere mortals.

so GPUs, which are made in quantities that are huge, are very cost effective for the price.

how long will it take for ASICs to overtake GPUs when it comes to that line of thinking?
i would guess years (several) and maybe never. Also one cannot assume the AMD will just
be sitting there on their rears with the same tech. In a couple of years their cards will probably
be 2-3 times faster. I say never because it has to make sense financially to really produce these
things in any quantity. Would you bet the farm right now?

fpgas are not going to cut it over GPUs.. i think the same will be true with ASICs. the cost for them
just does not make sense. It will take too long to recover the investment.

just rambling. i am not an expert in any of these fields. i can be wrong and probably am. but that
is how i feel about it.

[Freakin]

Acc'd to this, 1700 Mhash will net 3 coins/day.

http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

So, doesn't really matter the pool, 1.7Ghash is a lot of hashing.

it will only net 3 coins/day for the next 12 hours... after that it's closer to 2

and difficulty follows price, not the other way around

[muyoso]

After the next difficulty rise, bitcoins will need to be in the 30-40 dollar range to attract new miners.  If it stays in the 20 dollar range, the idea of making a giant profit off of mining is pretty much gone.  If you wanted to buy a new computer anyway and use mining to help pay off what you were already going to buy, that would still be a valid use for mining.

[NetTecture]

After the next difficulty rise, bitcoins will need to be in the 30-40 dollar range to attract new miners.  If it stays in the 20 dollar range, the idea of making a giant profit off of mining is pretty much gone.  If you wanted to buy a new computer anyway and use mining to help pay off what you were already going to buy, that would still be a valid use for mining.

Hahahaha.

Seriously.

if that is a 100% rise and the next one a 100% rise it STILL is a good investment, especially if you can wait for the BTC to pop up

Bnks give me x% for my money, with x  being low single digit. Stocks are mostly very dead at the moment. The ROI of a mining rig is nice. If you scale up.

[sirj]

Unless the 7 series comes soon, this next difficulty bump is pretty much going to make it impossible to break even on electricity.

[horgh]

Seriously, how much you guys are paying for electricity? I calculated that at the moment I make about $18.69/day with 600 M/hash speed. See:

Current difficulty: Next difficulty: 861328.82 Difficulty increase in: 0.77 days

Exchange Rate ($/฿): Your MH/s: Power price ($/KW):
Time frame   BTC           Dollars   Electricity cost   Final
Per hour   ฿0.04           $0.87    $0.1                   $0.78
Per day   ฿1.06        $21           $2.3                   $18.69
Per month   ฿31.91   $629.92   $69.12           $560.8
Per year   ฿388.25   $7664.04   $840.96           $6823.08


Am I living in right country with cheap electricity because it seems that mining will be very much worth it for some time at least.

[ItsASpork]

Unless the 7 series comes soon, this next difficulty bump is pretty much going to make it impossible to break even on electricity.

Unless you mine with an old card or have massively high power costs, you must be stupid. Right now electricity is about $1.70 per BTC assuming 750w system, 565 Mhash/s (1btc/day) and energy costs of $.10/kWh. The difficulty would have to increase to about 4-5 million for it to be unprofitable to an existing dual 5830 miner.