For the first time in a while... seems like there is a shortage of miners

[Eyedol-X]

Just my .02

I see an impact when ETH goes POS.

...I see miners switching to ETC when that happens and then a new bubble will form.

ZEC is a big ? right now, will it stagnate for years like XMR did and then take off or will it just die?

In any regard, I'm waiting for the difficulties to drop off as values fall then I'm going to mine and baghold to see what happens

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[xxcsu]

I remember the old days ... when bitcoin price started to go up ... people had a skeptical attitude about bitcoin ... dont buy it , you going to lose all your investment ... when the btc was around 20-30-50$ ... the bubble will pop soon , sell you btc as soon as you can ... btc price today is over 1000$ ...
Everybody need to do they own research , and make a decision .

There is a lot of "things" out there what can keep the virtual currency business alive... or destroying .... Probably some newbies will be disappointed soon, when they going to find out the mining business is not that easy and changing day by day .Your calculated ROI can jump from 8 months to 1.5 years easy.

What going to happen with Zcash , XMR , ETH , BTC  and all another coins No one know for sure ... In the mining "business" there is always ups and downs with high risk.

When ETH goes to PoS no one know exactly what will happen. Your gear still need be online and you still going to get rewards , your mining rig going to use much less electricity.The concept of "mining" will be removed entirely, and replacing it with a different mechanism . Your presence keep ETH (and all the coins ) alive and help reducing centralization risks .

This topic might need to be move to the "Speculation (Altcoins) section
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=224.0

[Za1n]

People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a year ago.... yet it still is


People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 2 years ago.... yet it still is


People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 3 years ago.... yet it still is

People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 4 years ago.... yet it still is

People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 5 years ago.... yet it still is

People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 6 years ago.... yet it still is


People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 7 years ago.... yet it still is


People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 8 years ago.... yet it still is


I think the only time when mining was very unprofitable was for GPUs during 2014-2015, but you could of bought ASIC and mined BTC back then since the BTC difficulty was flat-lined that year. Antminer S5 /SP20  was a pure winner that year.

That's bullshit, even by your own assertions.

still, adverb: up to and including the present or the time mentioned

To say that mining is still profitable after 8 years means it has been continuously profitable, and you say that it wasn't during 2014-2015.  Fall 2015 wasn't even that great for BTC mining either with the S7 driving difficulty up faster than the price increase.

In 6 months from now ETH mining won't be as profitable as it is now.  I'd even bet that ZEC and XMR won't be as profitable in 6 months as ETH is now.
And when I say bet, I mean it.  Even odds, power @US10c/kWh, and with a trusted party or trusted escrow.  PM me if you wager I'm wrong.

I would have to go with adaseb on this one and say that mining has been consistently profitable for the past 8 years. I mined most of that entire time and even in 2014-2015 there were always profitable coins to mine.

The key was to stay on top of current developments and hop from coin to coin during some of the slower periods, but I always made more than my costs. I will admit that if I hadn't already had the hardware during some of those periods, it would not have been viable to purchase new hardware at those specific points in time, but that was not what was implied.

I actually have old GPU rigs that were originally purchased when you could still mine BTC with them, that now run quite nice when mining Zcash. They have been paid for many times over as far as ROI and their only operating cost is the electricity they need to run.

As far as 6 months from now, hard to say. I know when I was buying rigs last March (2016) people said the same thing, "6 months from now you will not be making what you are now". Well guess what, they were correct. Six months ago Ethereum was less profitable than it was last March or even now, so the market goes in cycles, which if you been mining for any length of time you are quite familiar with already. If Ethereum keeps going up over time, even with dips in between, the price will keep up with the hash rate. Next year we may need to be at $80 or even $100, but who knows what will happen. The whole crypto game could collapse at any point as well so there are no guarantees one way or another.

[adaseb]

People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a year ago.... yet it still is


People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 2 years ago.... yet it still is


People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 3 years ago.... yet it still is

People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 4 years ago.... yet it still is

People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 5 years ago.... yet it still is

People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 6 years ago.... yet it still is


People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 7 years ago.... yet it still is


People have been saying that mining will not be profitable anymore about a 8 years ago.... yet it still is


I think the only time when mining was very unprofitable was for GPUs during 2014-2015, but you could of bought ASIC and mined BTC back then since the BTC difficulty was flat-lined that year. Antminer S5 /SP20  was a pure winner that year.

That's bullshit, even by your own assertions.

still, adverb: up to and including the present or the time mentioned

To say that mining is still profitable after 8 years means it has been continuously profitable, and you say that it wasn't during 2014-2015.  Fall 2015 wasn't even that great for BTC mining either with the S7 driving difficulty up faster than the price increase.

In 6 months from now ETH mining won't be as profitable as it is now.  I'd even bet that ZEC and XMR won't be as profitable in 6 months as ETH is now.
And when I say bet, I mean it.  Even odds, power @US10c/kWh, and with a trusted party or trusted escrow.  PM me if you wager I'm wrong.

And what happened in Fall 2015?

As I recall price went from $250 all the way to $1300.

[groovy1962]

ZEC is a big ? right now, will it stagnate for years like XMR did and then take off or will it just die?

ZEC and the other Z coins are very profitable right now.  If this is stagnation, may we have years of it!  (Of course your results with RADEON may be different.)

I will say this -- Z.cash is one of the first genuinely memory hard coins.  IT marks the direction of the industry in my opinion.

[Bameras]

ZEC is a big ? right now, will it stagnate for years like XMR did and then take off or will it just die?

ZEC and the other Z coins are very profitable right now.  If this is stagnation, may we have years of it!  (Of course your results with RADEON may be different.)

I will say this -- Z.cash is one of the first genuinely memory hard coins.  IT marks the direction of the industry in my opinion.

It is memory hard, but not as hard as expected.

[nerdralph]

That's bullshit, even by your own assertions.

still, adverb: up to and including the present or the time mentioned

To say that mining is still profitable after 8 years means it has been continuously profitable, and you say that it wasn't during 2014-2015.  Fall 2015 wasn't even that great for BTC mining either with the S7 driving difficulty up faster than the price increase.

In 6 months from now ETH mining won't be as profitable as it is now.  I'd even bet that ZEC and XMR won't be as profitable in 6 months as ETH is now.
And when I say bet, I mean it.  Even odds, power @US10c/kWh, and with a trusted party or trusted escrow.  PM me if you wager I'm wrong.

And what happened in Fall 2015?

As I recall price went from $250 all the way to $1300.

That's a pretty bad memory you have.  By this time last year (spring 2016) BTC was only up to the low US$400 range.  It may have peaked as high as $450, but was nowhere near $1300.
I bought a S7 in early 2016, and almost lost money mining BTC.  There were times in early 2016 that Bitmain was dropping the price of the S7 by the amount you'd make mining with the rig.  What kept me from loosing money was that I purchased the S7 direct from Bitmain, and was able to re-sell it in Canada for more than what Bitmain had dropped the price to.  Had I purchased from a Canadian reseller, I would've lost money.

[brian_notgrr]

Difficult discussion to follow without a clear understanding of what business yall are in.  Are you investing, turning capital into cash flow, or making an arbitrage play?

Say I have $20K sitting in the bank doing nothing. I want to buy a house a year from now and would like to make as big a down payment as possible.  Here are my options:

1.  Buy $20K in bonds for $19,400.  

I'll make $600, which is cool, but I lost $1800 in purchasing power due to inflation.  Which is not cool.  

2.  Buy gold.

I lose money in transaction fees and storage costs, but gold will tend to hold its real value over time.  Note, I don't really care what the exchange rate will be for gold a year from now.  If the price of gold doubles due to inflation, then I can expect the price of the house to double as well.    

3.  Buy a hot dog stand and work my fanny off.  

I figure I can make about $21K gross, $14K net, and can sell the stand a year from now for $10K.  I come out $4K ahead nominally, and a bit more than $2K net of inflation (until the IRS catches up with me).  

But I don't want a hot dog stand, I want an XMR mine.  And why not?  The numbers are the same, and I get to stay indoors and play xbox all day.  

Here's why.  My problem is, I can buy USD at a discount from a bond broker, and I can buy hot dogs at a discount from a distributor, but I can't get XMR at a discount.  So in other words, currency doesn't have a coupon. (Neither does gold.)

I can add value to the hotdogs by cooking them.  You can't add value to XMR.  Theoretically you could go down to Publix and  pay retail for hot dogs; they aren't worth as much raw as cooked.  You can't pay retail for XMR and expect to make money.  (Note: the definition of "exchange rate" is "retail price.")  

The similarity between the hot dog stand and the cryptocurrency mine is you're hoping to make money by moving things in time and space.  You can move hotdogs in space, from a distributer to a convenient sidewalk location.  You move XMR in time, from now, when it's illiquid, to the future, where we expect it to be quite a bit more liquid.  People will pay for convenience, or liquidity.  

"Arbitrage" refers to making money by moving things in time or space.  Speculating in currencies is neither investing, nor is it working.  It's making arbitrage plays.

You could say that by mining you are adding value, by digging that gold out of the ground, or by hashing transactions.  Fair enough.  But it doesn't follow that it's always a simple matter of dollars in minus dollars out.  

For a US citizen, mining, as it turns out, is a nifty sort of arbitrage "double play" on the Yuan.  Chinese want USD, and they are willing to give us computer equipment at a substantial discount to get their hands on some.  Interesting thing is, I think in a couple of years they are going to want to get their hands on XMR, to get around capital controls.  If I buy the mine at a discount, and sell the XMR at a premium, I make money coming and going.  Well, maybe.   Point being, that arbitrage is typically only a small part of turning capital into cash flow; adding value is the name of the game.  It's a huge part of currency trading.  

I don't mean to harp on XMR.  I am long XMR, but the same arguments apply to any cryptocurrency.  You gotta buy low AND sell high AND figure out where the arbitrage opportunities are, without getting confused by exchange rates and nominal prices.  The question is always --

1.  When to acquire coin.  What does the supply (emission) curve look like in light of present demand?
2. How to acquire coin.  Mine or buy?  If you buy, with what?  USD?  JPY? ZWR? (Don't say "ZEC" cuz I'll ask how you acquired the ZEC, and at what cost in terms of transaction fees and exchange rate risk)
2.  What is your exit strategy.  Who is gonna buy it from you, why, and when?  What does the supply (emission) curve look like in the future, in light of developing demand?

Right now, XMR is inflationary.  Meaning, the supply is increasing rapidly.   That will tend to keep its value low.  

The traditional way of looking at things is, you don't want to be long an inflationary currency.  You're better off borrowing.  In an inflationary environment, you borrow money to buy a house, with the idea being, your payments go down over time in real terms.  (How much stuff can you buy with $1200 today?  What about 20 years from now?)  

Cryptocurrency is different.  We know it won't be inflationary forever; in fact we have a pretty good idea of when the inflection is going to happen.  We know that demand for cryptocurrency tends to be low at first; it's illiquid, nobody knows about it, it has to "catch on" before it's worth anything.  But as we've seen with BTC, the demand is out there, and we even have a road map to see it coming.  

We know that it's easier and less expensive to mine when it's in its inflationary phase.

And we know that inflation isn't always bad.  The gold example shows classic economic thinking; that inflation is a global process that has no effect on real prices.  But that's not true.  Inflation can be sector-specific; we've seen sector-specific inflation in securities, housing, and health care costs recently.  And we've discovered that there's a "first-in" advantage; it takes time for new money to percolate through the economy.  If you can get your hands on it before everybody else does, you can buy stuff with it.  If you're the last to get  your hands on it, you can't buy squat with it, because by then nominal prices have gone up to reflect the increased number of dollars (or XMR, or ZEC) chasing around a given number of goods and services.  

First-in effect is a good argument for mining ZEC.  You don't really care why it's inflationary, all you know is, it'll be a long time, maybe forever before it's in general circulation.  It was also a good argument for moving to California in 1848.  Gold was inflationary but all it took was a pick-axe and a donkey and you could be first-in.  

I definitely think the answer to the  "when" question is, during the inflationary phase.  But my theory on XMR is that it's not really like mining gold, and you don't really need to bank on the first-in effect.  To me, mining XMR is like mining lithium.  Whether it's a good idea to go through the trouble depends on whether you think Tesla is going to take off.  If you think half the cars on the road are going to be dragging around fifty pounds of lithium in a couple of years, you don't really give a rats ass what they are charging you for electricity.  Your job is to fill that warehouse ASAP, and you kind of want to keep the market price low while you're filling it to discourage other miners, keep a lid on supply until you're ready to sell.  

The interesting thing is, an efficient market will take that expectation into account.   In a commodity market, where there is no expectation of future profit, there is little threat from new entrants.   If there is an expectation of great profits at some point in the future, competition can afford to drive short-term cash flow well into negative territory.  Profit expectation varies with time, certainty, and magnitude.  The more certain the outcome, the greater the future cash flow, and the sooner it starts coming in, the more of a short-term loss well-capitalized entrants can tolerate.  

This is what I find remarkable about XMR.  If you're mining say PASC, you probably don't care about future demand, you're probably flipping it as soon as you mine it.  If you're mining and holding XMR, theoretically you should be willing to take a loss now to acquire it.  The fact you can right now today get permission from your wife to mine and hold says some or all of these things are true:

1.  Barrier to entry is high.  People would get in if they could, but they can't.   And I think it is.  It only seems like everybody and their grandma is mining right now.   It ain't that hard to load claymore on your game computer, but not every dope can set up and run 20 or 40 or 100 gpu clusters.  There are people doing research in GPU computing who are trying to figure that stuff out right now.  It's not just a matter of learning facts already in evidence, or buying someone who knows them.  It's a matter of being way out on the bleeding edge of parallel computing. (For now, anyway.)
2.  Uncertainty levels are high.  And they are, but it's at least possible you guys understand stuff your average MBA doesn't have access to, right?  It's not just the ease with which you can slap together a rack of computers and make em work.  It's also the ability to see who the winners are, either because the math side of your brain can see where one currency will fail and another will succeed, or because you have enough "street smarts" or cross-competencies to see the leading indicators.  
3.  Demand is rising faster than supply.  I have a decent background in economics, and a fair amount of "street smarts."  Don't know squat about computers or cryptography.  But just looking at this thing strictly from a technical viewpoint, that's the one relevant fact in this entire discussion.  It's not that some people seem to want cryptocurrency.  It's that there's a humungous demand out there that's being partially eclipsed by inflation.  Go back and look at the emission/price relationship for BTC and you'll see what I'm talking about.  This demand exists in spite of entry barriers and uncertainty, both of which affect customers just like they affect miners.  I find that remarkable.  

I think I'm wrong about the lithium thing.   We are in the gold rush, brothers.  

I agree with OP.  We are living in remarkable times.  

-------------

(ETA: while I was writing this, NerdRalph posted a fantastic example of arbitrage.  Whether he made money or not depends on whether he held or dumped his BTC.  I would simply assert that it was good that he was just barely keeping his head above water while he was mining, because of *when* he was mining.  It's OK to break even or lose money if you're getting BTC at a discount because nobody knows what it is, or how to use it.  If you can sell it when the debit cards come out, and everybody wants some, you bought low and sold high.  Mining BTC right now is an example of the "greater fool hypothesis," where you buy high and figure some dope will pay an even higher price shortly.  Ralph did it right on so many levels.  That's where XMR is right now.  Only question in my mind is, what I'm gonna do next year, if anything.  Got my eye on them cannabis coins, they just need a non-tokin clear-headed MBA -- and a mathematician, and a programmer -- to lead them in the right direction.  Yo Ralph, I got the MBA, and if my kid ever graduates I'll have a mathematician.  If I can scare up a million bucks, are you in?)  

[acostaja]

Gentlemen, I'm new this forum, but I've about 2yr on criptocurrency after being a bitcoin adversary (I'm very conservative about money) by about 4yr, now I´m a bitcoin-criptocurrency advocate.

I like to read analysis and predictions but rarely I consider, becuse these most of the time these fails or are biased on purpose to handle some market or build matrix.

IMHO AltCoins specially ETH and XMR will raise faster in price than Bitcoin, key factor in favor to ETH/XMR is TRANSACTION COST (also transaction speed), Monero also as addon has its extra annonimity but on the long run this annonimity maybe it achiles heel.

At some point the network will rise ETH and XMR difficulty this is the only redflag I see on the upcoming months, but that willonly means less coins that sure will sell twice than today, Mining with GPUs and ALTc wont ever be the same as it was with Bitcoin, alcoins only will raise difficulty in proportion to GPU efficiency while rewards may down (I speculate a dynamic reward system will raise at anytime along alll the alt coins).

Current profitability wont last, that's true, since money attracts money this mean the hashrate to rise (and later the difficulty), but also the transactions will raise fast because Bitcoin's ills -mining, speed, safety privacy -, the time ETH and XMR where seeing as failed experiments left far behind.

I dont mention Zcash and others since I haven stuty it enough, but I'm confident with this prediction: AltCoins RISE its inminent will last unles *unlikely* Bitcoing solves its mining I'lls.

Factors Pushing AltCoins:

• Bitcoin Mining Ills (neither B.U. nor SegWit will solve the root cause: chinese mining hogs),
  
• Bitcoin Transaction Cost (collateral from Mining Ills)
  
• Trust (now ETH and XMR and Others arent seen as experiments)
  
• Transaction Speed (Ok it depends on how much Atl Coins Grew and its mining grew but with balance it will be favorable by long time)
  
• Privacy

[RentGPU]

Seems like ppl forget about mining and instead are buying coins all alts are pumping

[kurbeks]

Most likely just alt pump/bubble. ZEC and Dash will get dumped soon. This pump is effect of recent BTC instability SEC decision and BTU movement.

[antantti]

I do want to see where btc flows if it gets to 600-800 area. Fiat or 'alt'? If it goes to 'alt' it makes btc the biggest 'alt' there is.

Happy mining!!!

[Za1n]

Seems like ppl forget about mining and instead are buying coins all alts are pumping

There is some probably some truth to that. I have a few rigs mining and have contemplated adding more, but I have also been trading quite a bit lately and making a fair bit more that way.  Either method is risky, so sock away some profits when you can for when times get bad.

[64dimensions]

Here is the nuclear scenario, the Swiss national bank gets into cryptocurrency. As it is, people buy Swiss bonds for safety. These bonds have a negative interest rate.

 This move would crush gold, BTC, the euro and the USD not to mention the alts. I'm also little surprised that someone doesn't go after BTC by having a SF based crypto currency.

[greaterninja]

The best time to mine is during doom and gloom.  So when things are hot, take some earnings and set it aside.  Then create a continuity and contingency plan for when it does crash and rebound.
Furthermore, global crypto market capital is growing as time goes on.  Crypto is becoming an emerging market of tremendous growth and volatility.

Right now, I actually plan on investing in sustainable infrastructure for mining and hosting.  The plan will be for 5-25 years of operations and minimize any disruptions.

[PovertyByte]

Most likely just alt pump/bubble. ZEC and Dash will get dumped soon. This pump is effect of recent BTC instability SEC decision and BTU movement.

ZCash DumpCash will pop and dump. Its value is all about people speculating that it will go big with no particular reason since there are rising alts doing its job better and without the special interest centralization

[groovy1962]

ZCash DumpCash will pop and dump. Its value is all about people speculating that it will go big with no particular reason since there are rising alts doing its job better and without the special interest centralization

It is actually the bitcoin of privacy-- it has the mind share and the technical chops to deliver a solid product.  It has the development team that no other coin can match, except Bitcoin Core.  Etherreum's development team isn't as good as the Z.cash one.

It may be having a run up because of a whale, or it may just be speculation-- but the truth is, everything is speculation right now, even bitcoin.  Actual day to day use of these currencies far lags their price rises.

There are no alts that do the Z.cash job as well as Z.cash, except its clones, and thy all suffer the same way litecoin suffers in bitcoins shadow.

I don't know what you mean about "special interest centralization" but having a good development team is a good thing-- it means keeping up with bitcoin core, for instance (look at how bitcoin unlimited is doing such a poor job of that, while z.cash is porting cores improvements over reasonably quickly.)

[philipma1957]

Most likely just alt pump/bubble. ZEC and Dash will get dumped soon. This pump is effect of recent BTC instability SEC decision and BTU movement.

ZCash DumpCash will pop and dump. Its value is all about people speculating that it will go big with no particular reason since there are rising alts doing its job better and without the special interest centralization

once again  they are the easiest coin to pump since they have a small market cap.

pc  companies and component companies  can easily boost the price of it so that miners continue to buy gear.

[LoneRangir]

ZCash DumpCash will pop and dump. Its value is all about people speculating that it will go big with no particular reason since there are rising alts doing its job better and without the special interest centralization

It is actually the bitcoin of privacy-- it has the mind share and the technical chops to deliver a solid product.  It has the development team that no other coin can match, except Bitcoin Core.  Etherreum's development team isn't as good as the Z.cash one.

It may be having a run up because of a whale, or it may just be speculation-- but the truth is, everything is speculation right now, even bitcoin.  Actual day to day use of these currencies far lags their price rises.

There are no alts that do the Z.cash job as well as Z.cash, except its clones, and thy all suffer the same way litecoin suffers in bitcoins shadow.

I don't know what you mean about "special interest centralization" but having a good development team is a good thing-- it means keeping up with bitcoin core, for instance (look at how bitcoin unlimited is doing such a poor job of that, while z.cash is porting cores improvements over reasonably quickly.)

Can ZCash advancements by its developers be easily incorporated into its clones?  ZCL does not have a dev fee, and no pre-mine (I may be wrong about this part).  I would think this would make it more popular than it is.

[PovertyByte]

@groovy1962

ZCash is alluring for many reasons but it is developed by a company. It's growth and development is less organic than how Bitcoin came up. ZEC just got propped onto Poloniex on day 1 with a hype train for it is Bitcoin 2.0 and we all know the Poloniex effect by now. That slow start emission was a way to jack the price up early. Honestly looking at it if I was a dev I'd be selling all my ZEC early while the price was effectively manipulated and pumped up early for lots of BTC and than buy back in when it is cheap. 10% of all ZEC to ever be mined going to a small group of people is a very high amount of wealth if this were to reach world changing high value. 20% of the first 4 years of mining is 10% of all ZEC to exist due to the halvenings upon halvenings every 4 years. It's something how saying 20% for the first 4 years only downplays the magnitude.

The clones do not suffer in the same way LTC does. LTC only offered 4x quicker block time to speed things up. There was no special interest and possible centralization motives in the development in either coin so LTC just became silver compared to gold.

ZEC devs are a closed group. It's not for the people by the people. It's for the little people, by the big people. ZCL is more of a community coin. Without any radically high founders tax on ZCL they managed to develop a windows wallet before the super professional and well compensated ZEC team. Why are these guys paid so much to continue developing the coin?

Oh one more thing. People like to attack Dash over the instamine and how Evan has 500,000 instamined coins. Well 500k out of 18 million when Dash hits its total circulation is only 2.7% of the total Dash circulation actually. That's nearly 1/4th of 10% in the case of ZEC's pseudo dev instamine