As a newbie, is mining worth the effort?

[joe9439]

Since Zealot seems to be concerned with profit, here's a personal example in favor of mining LTC over BTC right now using the calculator quoted above assuming no cost for electricity and no fees:

GTX 570
BTC:
Hashrate: ~140 MH/s
Coin Per Day: .008 BTC
Profit @ Current Price per day: $0.726

LTC:
Hashrate: 220 kH/s (0.220 MH/s)
Coin Per Day: .613012 LTC
Profit @ Current Price per day: $1.554

As you can see, mining LTC with a GPU is more profitable than BTC (right now at current market prices)

I'm mining on my A10-5800K. I'm getting 85MH/s SHA-256 and 55KH/s Scrypt. So that's $0.44 a day for bitcoin mining and $0.38 for litecoin. So it just depends on your hardware I think. A lot of cards do about an equal amount of MH and KH so in that case litecoin would be worth it.

I've been mining bitcoin and exchanging for litecoin. I think it's a better position to be in. Bitcoin is overvalued and litecoin is undervalued in my opinion.

One thing that I have a problem with litecoin is the mining pools available. They're not as well developed as with bitcoin yet and they're not really clear on some things like whether or not they share transaction fees. I'll personally be staying with bitcoin even if it's 5 or 10% less profitable than litecoin because the litecoin pools are a lot more shady and likely to collapse for now, taking your earnings with them. I wish bitminter would hurry up and start doing litecoins!

[pandapeluche]

buy some coins. let it value

[joe9439]

Here is a real noob question, what is "merged mining"?

Merged mining enables you to earn namecoins along with bitcoins. They don't require any extra effort if the pool has them enabled. They're not worth much but it's a nice bonus because you can trade them for at least some bitcoins.

I use bitminter as my pool because they share transaction fees and have merged mining. They have really nice stats too.

[Zealot]

Since Zealot seems to be concerned with profit, here's a personal example in favor of mining LTC over BTC right now using the calculator quoted above assuming no cost for electricity and no fees:

GTX 570
BTC:
Hashrate: ~140 MH/s
Coin Per Day: .008 BTC
Profit @ Current Price per day: $0.726

LTC:
Hashrate: 220 kH/s (0.220 MH/s)
Coin Per Day: .613012 LTC
Profit @ Current Price per day: $1.554

As you can see, mining LTC with a GPU is more profitable than BTC (right now at current market prices)

Thank you for that but in the mean time I was so frustrated by the "check the calculator" answer that I googled "litecoins MHs 6950" and eventually found out the MH/s value for my Radeon 6950 2GB.

So I'd be doing 350 MH/s in Bitcoin and 0.42 MH/s in Litecoin. That would be $1.068 net profit for Bitcoin and $2.178 in Litecoin with electricity at 0.10 $/KWh. But here's the funny thing. I have two Radeon 6950 (I only used one in the calculator). And I think one of them doesn't crash with the 6970 bios. So when I hit 710 MH/s I hit parity. Except if my electricity cost in not higher. Because if it's 0.12 $/KWh then I still won't hit net profit parity with Litecoin.
So what do you recommend me?

[lpshowboat0099]

Thank you for that but in the mean time I was so frustrated by the "check the calculator" answer that I googled "litecoins MHs 6950" and eventually found out the MH/s value for my Radeon 6950 2GB.

So I'd be doing 350 MH/s in Bitcoin and 0.42 MH/s in Litecoin. That would be $1.068 net profit for Bitcoin and $2.178 in Litecoin with electricity at 0.10 $/KWh. But here's the funny thing. I have two Radeon 6950 (I only used one in the calculator). And I think one of them doesn't crash with the 6970 bios. So when I hit 710 MH/s I hit parity. Except if my electricity cost in not higher. Because if it's 0.12 $/KWh then I still won't hit net profit parity with Litecoin.
So what do you recommend me?

Test it out. Your cards will likely differ from the hashrate values listed for the cards. Download a miner, preferably one that supports both SHA256 and Scrypt, make two copies of it (one for BTC and one for LTC), configure a mining pool for each, then test out each one to see the real-world hashrates you get for BTC and LTC. Do the test for the 6970 bios as well. I personally would think that with the real-world values, you'll still make more from mining LTC than BTC. Just note that the prices of BTC and LTC, as well as the ratio between the two, are EXTREMELY volatile and swing dramatically each day (especially for BTC). Just this month alone, BTC has adjusted from over $250 per coin down to $100, then down briefly to the $60-$70 range, and has ended up back up in the $90 range today. LTC was at $4.50 and is now down to $2. In truth, it is very worthwhile exploiting the volatility of the market while mining away the most profitable currency.

[Prototype]

Thank you for that but in the mean time I was so frustrated by the "check the calculator" answer that I googled "litecoins MHs 6950" and eventually found out the MH/s value for my Radeon 6950 2GB.

So I'd be doing 350 MH/s in Bitcoin and 0.42 MH/s in Litecoin. That would be $1.068 net profit for Bitcoin and $2.178 in Litecoin with electricity at 0.10 $/KWh. But here's the funny thing. I have two Radeon 6950 (I only used one in the calculator). And I think one of them doesn't crash with the 6970 bios. So when I hit 710 MH/s I hit parity. Except if my electricity cost in not higher. Because if it's 0.12 $/KWh then I still won't hit net profit parity with Litecoin.
So what do you recommend me?

Find your card power output here in terms of wattage and Mhash for BTC  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

If you don't want to scroll hit ctrl+f and type in your model to search

Then go here http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

Plug in your numbers

Calculate and then determine power costs.

Analyze the numbers and determine if you can make profit under BTC.

If you cannot profit from BTC look at this site to determine if other coins would be worth their value mining. http://dustcoin.com/mining

It can provide insight to BTC vs other crypto currencies

You will know what to expect and can make an educated decision.  Haven't seen anybody else make it any easier to figure out, but you still need to put in like < 10 min of work. Nobody is going to do it for you, so if you can't get that done then perhaps it isn't for you.