Why bother?

[darnth]

Ok, sufficiently baited to do an actual response

In addition to fully agreeing to brinebold (e.g. stress on GPU), even the electricity cost is a relative thing.

Personal example:
I am living in a house which (typically french I guess) has electrical heating only. Most of the rooms are heated by one electrical radiator per room, the total electricity the heating eats up in the winter months is about 3kW total.
I could replace the radiators in a few rooms by mining rigs at 0 electricity cost. Any W they use ends up as heating in the end, saving me the same W in electrical heating.

So even if GPU mining drops to the point (very location -> electricity price dependent) where it technically doesnt look profitable power cost wise, 5-6 months of the year I could mine for no running costs at all.

Whether one thinks its worthwhile to buy rigs or upgrade machines specifically for mining is a different question, which everyone knows best himself i guess .

P.S.: I wrote a lot of "could", the above actually was my plan for last winter, as I have a few slightly outdated PCs standing around (that can still fit 5790s), but then was too busy with other stuff to actually set it up

[darnth]

Rereading trolly OP again.

"They should pay more" 
People will join mining until the gain is marginal compared to power cost. By definition its worth it, else nobody would be doing it.

[Vanquish7]

What the hell is trolling???.sorry im new to these forums  

Trolling is saying something stupid or offensive deliberately just to get an enraged response from someone, at which you proceed to laugh. But I can assure you I am dead serious, and I never intended to get rich or any stupid shit I just hoped every now and again I could get myself an 8th of bud but it seems it would take me a month or 2 just to get a few measly grams, whoever makes that 25 coins has sure as hell got to be keeping 24 of them because the payout is an absolute joke. They are straight up scamming us, im not trolling, that's how it is, deal with it. I could go around looking for change on the floor and make money faster.

[brinebold]

Ok, sufficiently baited to do an actual response

In addition to fully agreeing to brinebold (e.g. stress on GPU), even the electricity cost is a relative thing.

Personal example:
I am living in a house which (typically french I guess) has electrical heating only. Most of the rooms are heated by one electrical radiator per room, the total electricity the heating eats up in the winter months is about 3kW total.
I could replace the radiators in a few rooms by mining rigs at 0 electricity cost. Any W they use ends up as heating in the end, saving me the same W in electrical heating.

So even if GPU mining drops to the point (very location -> electricity price dependent) where it technically doesnt look profitable power cost wise, 5-6 months of the year I could mine for no running costs at all.

Whether one thinks its worthwhile to buy rigs or upgrade machines specifically for mining is a different question, which everyone knows best himself i guess .

P.S.: I wrote a lot of "could", the above actually was my plan for last winter, as I have a few slightly outdated PCs standing around (that can still fit 5790s), but then was too busy with other stuff to actually set it up

I'm going to pick some nits here, since you're invoking the 1st law of thermodynamics in your argument. While energy in a closed system can be neither created nor destroyed, your house is not quite a closed system as the walls do not prevent the escape of all energy. We'll ignore the loss of heat because you'd be losing it at the same rate if generated by an electric radiator too so that's net 0 in this comparison. However, you're going to export some of that energy to the internet in the form of data packets.  I haven't quite measured it myself but I'd imaginee proof of work takes up at least as much bandwidth outgoing as incoming work requests. You'll also be leaking energy through your walls in the form of EM waves (more if you use wifi) that pass through our walls without being absorbed and converted to heat.

Accounting for what probably amounts to less than 1% of the energy in use here, your logic is still sound. I have gone months later than most people before turning on a heater because my apartment is well-insulated and I have two computers running in my bedroom so I know processor-based heating really works.

[Paul89273]

Why not try one of the other ALT currencies?

[Malawi]

Ok, sufficiently baited to do an actual response

In addition to fully agreeing to brinebold (e.g. stress on GPU), even the electricity cost is a relative thing.

Personal example:
I am living in a house which (typically french I guess) has electrical heating only. Most of the rooms are heated by one electrical radiator per room, the total electricity the heating eats up in the winter months is about 3kW total.
I could replace the radiators in a few rooms by mining rigs at 0 electricity cost. Any W they use ends up as heating in the end, saving me the same W in electrical heating.

So even if GPU mining drops to the point (very location -> electricity price dependent) where it technically doesnt look profitable power cost wise, 5-6 months of the year I could mine for no running costs at all.

Whether one thinks its worthwhile to buy rigs or upgrade machines specifically for mining is a different question, which everyone knows best himself i guess .

P.S.: I wrote a lot of "could", the above actually was my plan for last winter, as I have a few slightly outdated PCs standing around (that can still fit 5790s), but then was too busy with other stuff to actually set it up

I'm going to pick some nits here, since you're invoking the 1st law of thermodynamics in your argument. While energy in a closed system can be neither created nor destroyed, your house is not quite a closed system as the walls do not prevent the escape of all energy. We'll ignore the loss of heat because you'd be losing it at the same rate if generated by an electric radiator too so that's net 0 in this comparison. However, you're going to export some of that energy to the internet in the form of data packets.  I haven't quite measured it myself but I'd imaginee proof of work takes up at least as much bandwidth outgoing as incoming work requests. You'll also be leaking energy through your walls in the form of EM waves (more if you use wifi) that pass through our walls without being absorbed and converted to heat.

Accounting for what probably amounts to less than 1% of the energy in use here, your logic is still sound. I have gone months later than most people before turning on a heater because my apartment is well-insulated and I have two computers running in my bedroom so I know processor-based heating really works.

If you had done some more general assumptions instead of the nitty-pickings, I think you would have had a better argument.

To use the rigs as heating and counting the electricity as 0, one has to put the rigs in a room where one would normally would use at least the same amount of electricity for heating.
This means that one get a lot of fan-noise in your living room etc.

My guess is that most people put their rig in a space that would normally not normally be fully heated in the winter. In a storage room, hallway etc. If so, there will be extra electricity needed to get the same heat-output in the living area.

Besides - A heatpump would have given the same amount of heat for less than 1/3 of the price.

Still, If it's cold outside, and you can reduce your heating bill due to rigs, the reduced need for other heatsources can be calculated against the rigs electricity usage.

[RodeoX]

This is why reading is important. Any reading at all on the subject of mining would reveal that unless you are using equipment specifically made to mine bitcoins you are wasting your time. The time for mining with your PC is gone.

[Malawi]

This is why reading is important. Any reading at all on the subject of mining would reveal that unless you are using equipment specifically made to mine bitcoins you are wasting your time. The time for mining with your PC is gone.

Even though there are large mining operations for gold, you can still go out with a single pan trying to find something.

[Aahzman]

Back in my day, almost any dingbat with 8 AMD cards running on a folding table could mine profitably with $2 coins. When we weren't running profitable (if assuming immediate cashout to fiat), we still kept running, because way back then, people talked about different ways to use Bitcoin rather than using it to gamble against USD/EUR/etc, so we looked at it as a long-term investment.

You kids these days want everything handed on a silver platter. Back in my day, though, Faygo cost $1 per 2 bottles. I went to Walmart yesterday... $1.19 per bottle! What the fuck, man! Faygo's a ponzi, and I'm too late, and I don't even like Faygo, so...

... What were we talking about?

I thought Faygo was a colonic cleanser used by juggalos to....uh.... clear any blockages after a 3 day bender of malt liquor and heroin.

[hamiltino]

If you are serious about mining, you need to invest in 2 High performance ATI cards(5970 - 6990 - 7970(1st preference)). And then you should think about mining. Any Less is quite disappointing in terms on BTC mined over time.

[brinebold]

This is why reading is important. Any reading at all on the subject of mining would reveal that unless you are using equipment specifically made to mine bitcoins you are wasting your time. The time for mining with your PC is gone.

Not really.

The time to buy a bunch of GPUs just to mine bitcoins is rapidly closing if it isn't already gone.
The time to throw your othersise idle gaming rig on to mine a few dollars is still here but probably disappearing after a few runs of the BFL miners ship unless you don't pay your electric bill (utilities-included apartments, you electric heat almost year-round, etc).

I made around $20/mo worth of BTC at current prices on my old GPU and it doesn't cost me anything but a bit of time setting the miners up to autorun at low priority. My computer would otherwise be idle and I don't pay the electric bill here. if I paid electric then I probably wouldn't do it for $10/mo.

Go in with reasonable expectations of what you get for having your computer do a marginal amount of work and you'll probably be OK.

[getrichquack]

What the hell is trolling???.sorry im new to these forums  

Trolling is saying something stupid or offensive deliberately just to get an enraged response from someone, at which you proceed to laugh. But I can assure you I am dead serious, and I never intended to get rich or any stupid shit I just hoped every now and again I could get myself an 8th of bud but it seems it would take me a month or 2 just to get a few measly grams, whoever makes that 25 coins has sure as hell got to be keeping 24 of them because the payout is an absolute joke. They are straight up scamming us, im not trolling, that's how it is, deal with it. I could go around looking for change on the floor and make money faster.

ok thanks anyway