How long mining can last?

[ebrain]

I am new to Crypto world. A friend of mine introduced me to Scrypt mining and I am looking to buy some rigs and get started.

My basic understanding is that mining can be profitable as long as difficulty is low for a coin.

Do you see that we can mine profitably for next 5 years?

My goal is to have a side income of $3k per month that can last for a few years. What kind of investment would you make if you want to get that return.

Thanks a bunch in advance for your input.

[Vann]

Once quantum computing becomes a reality, GPU mining may become irrelevant. Until then, the decentrailized nature of POW mining isn't going away any time soon IMO.

[Toxicable]

It's impossible to predict anything more than a month away from now, let alone 5 years. And don't expect that a single upfront investment will last you for 5 years, especially with ASIC coins, Bitmain will come out with a new ASIC and your one will be worthless.

[ebrain]

It's impossible to predict anything more than a month away from now, let alone 5 years. And don't expect that a single upfront investment will last you for 5 years, especially with ASIC coins, Bitmain will come out with a new ASIC and your one will be worthless.

Yes I realized this too. Its like you buy some rigs, use them and then replace them with the new powerful ones. You have to run the cycle so have to account for that in the business model. How often are the new powerful rigs introduced in your observation?

[philipma1957]

It's impossible to predict anything more than a month away from now, let alone 5 years. And don't expect that a single upfront investment will last you for 5 years, especially with ASIC coins, Bitmain will come out with a new ASIC and your one will be worthless.

Yes I realized this too. Its like you buy some rigs, use them and then replace them with the new powerful ones. You have to run the cycle so have to account for that in the business model. How often are the new powerful rigs introduced in your observation?

amd and nvidia are on 10-14 month cycles

but sometimes a new cycle like 470-480 to 570-580 is not a big deal.

translation  if you are lucky a card can make good money for 2 years.

[Tmdz]

5 years, at the rate difficulty is going up it is unlikely to be (very) profitable in 5 months.

In one month ether difficulty went from 254gh to 378gh

That is a 54% difficulty increase in a single month AND difficulty is shooting up past 400gh today.

You should be able to hit roi in a reasonable amount of time if you bought hardware today but don't expect to quit your job.  Times are good right now but in the future we will back to dollar a day per gpu.

[ebrain]

It's impossible to predict anything more than a month away from now, let alone 5 years. And don't expect that a single upfront investment will last you for 5 years, especially with ASIC coins, Bitmain will come out with a new ASIC and your one will be worthless.

Yes I realized this too. Its like you buy some rigs, use them and then replace them with the new powerful ones. You have to run the cycle so have to account for that in the business model. How often are the new powerful rigs introduced in your observation?

amd and nvidia are on 10-14 month cycles

but sometimes a new cycle like 470-480 to 570-580 is not a big deal.

translation  if you are lucky a card can make good money for 2 years.

Could you suggest a couple of GPU rigs on the market? I don't know how to build one unless its possible to just buy the card and attach them with laptop via USB

[Vaccinus]

to have that income you need minimum 6 rig or more, 36 gpu at least, mining is profitable as a long as there are buyers, has nothing to do with the diff, because the issued coins per day are limited

Once quantum computing becomes a reality, GPU mining may become irrelevant. Until then, the decentrailized nature of POW mining isn't going away any time soon IMO.

there will be quantum gpu too, so we only need to upgrade, nothing will be irrelevant, everything will just adopt and change like always happen in the past

[snowyNNN]

It's impossible to predict anything more than a month away from now, let alone 5 years. And don't expect that a single upfront investment will last you for 5 years, especially with ASIC coins, Bitmain will come out with a new ASIC and your one will be worthless.

Yes I realized this too. Its like you buy some rigs, use them and then replace them with the new powerful ones. You have to run the cycle so have to account for that in the business model. How often are the new powerful rigs introduced in your observation?

amd and nvidia are on 10-14 month cycles

but sometimes a new cycle like 470-480 to 570-580 is not a big deal.

translation  if you are lucky a card can make good money for 2 years.

Could you suggest a couple of GPU rigs on the market? I don't know how to build one unless its possible to just buy the card and attach them with laptop via USB

It´s easy to build a rig. Atleast easier than I think you think it is.
If you buy a ready rig it will be much more expensive.
Building a rig is just like putting together a pc. I had never done so until my first rig and it was easier than I thought.

Software can be tricky for uninitiated - for me it was but I hit my head to the wall until I got everything working.
There´s so much forum advice and diy-videos on youtube a blind rabbit could build a rig.

p.s. get plenty of excess risers!

[omonuyak]

I am new to Crypto world. A friend of mine introduced me to Scrypt mining and I am looking to buy some rigs and get started.

My basic understanding is that mining can be profitable as long as difficulty is low for a coin.

Do you see that we can mine profitably for next 5 years?

My goal is to have a side income of $3k per month that can last for a few years. What kind of investment would you make if you want to get that return.

Thanks a bunch in advance for your input.

Just the same way is very hard now to mining bitcoin I think it will also soonest very hard to mining some altcoins. But the beauty of it all is that New coins will be pumping every day and we hope that future will be better.

[dbc23]

To worry about quantum computing at this point is pure conjecture.  GPUs will advance FAR beyond where we are today on silicon before quantum computing becomes useful enough to impact this industry.

That, and there's techniques that I'm sure will be integrated into the algorithms that can delay quantum computing's effect on the field too.  Indeed it may be possible to even develop cryptographic techniques that are quantum proof, or at least difficult.

Our currently biggest challenge is the growth in the field as others have mentioned already.  As more and more miners come online, the profitability declines for all, unfortunately.

Short answer: if you're thinking of jumping in, the sooner you do, the more likely you are to hit ROI and profit.

[enzeperix]

It's impossible to predict anything more than a month away from now, let alone 5 years. And don't expect that a single upfront investment will last you for 5 years, especially with ASIC coins, Bitmain will come out with a new ASIC and your one will be worthless.

Yes I realized this too. Its like you buy some rigs, use them and then replace them with the new powerful ones. You have to run the cycle so have to account for that in the business model. How often are the new powerful rigs introduced in your observation?

amd and nvidia are on 10-14 month cycles

but sometimes a new cycle like 470-480 to 570-580 is not a big deal.

translation  if you are lucky a card can make good money for 2 years.

Could you suggest a couple of GPU rigs on the market? I don't know how to build one unless its possible to just buy the card and attach them with laptop via USB

It´s easy to build a rig. Atleast easier than I think you think it is.
If you buy a ready rig it will be much more expensive.
Building a rig is just like putting together a pc. I had never done so until my first rig and it was easier than I thought.

Software can be tricky for uninitiated - for me it was but I hit my head to the wall until I got everything working.
There´s so much forum advice and diy-videos on youtube a blind rabbit could build a rig.

p.s. get plenty of excess risers!

Hi. I also want to start , to be more precise to resume mining. I have 1 rig with 6 HD 7970 and i find it very difficult to stabilize it... I tried every possible OS that has support for the recommended AMD driver for these cards (Ubuntu 14, 15,16, Suse 13,Suse 42,  Suse Linux Enterprise, Windows 7, Windows 10) and  so far the best it worked with Ubuntu and Windows 10. With Ubuntu i mined 5 days in a row then it crashed and with Windows i mined much much less than that and also crashed . I think i'm going crazy soon ... I suspect what could be my problem : i have only first generation risers, just simple plain stupid risers non-powered. Rest of the components are : CPU is a simple intel G..something, 7 GB of RAM/rig, mobo is a MSI Z77A-GD55, HDD is a simple WD Black 250GB  and 3 PSUs with 700W each. This is my setup. Any suggestion/advice is welcomed.
45 days ago i ordered some USB risers from Aliexpress, model 006C which i heard is the best and most stable but the package has not arrived yet which is another reason to bitch about ...I can't wait to try these new risers and hopefully i will make it work !

[poby]

I'm thinking of building a 6 GPU rig as a hobby but it's not fun if it loses money.  What makes me pause is that later this year, ETH will switch to POS and can't be mined anymore.  I'm thinking when that happens I will start mining other altcoins.  But if a large proportion of current GPU miners are mining ETH and most of them switch to other altcoin mining, the result will be a massive increase in mining difficulty resulting in a substantial drop in profitability, probably to the point where only those with the cheapest electric rates can survive.

I think it's fair to say most altcoin GPU miners are mining ETH currently.

I'm very interested to hear if anyone can fault my logic or if my assumptions are likely to be incorrect.  All those rigs currently mining ETH suddenly switching to other altcoins is a scary prospect, especially for those of us who don't have dirt cheap power.

[philipma1957]

.....

Could you suggest a couple of GPU rigs on the market? I don't know how to build one unless its possible to just buy the card and attach them with laptop via USB

What country are you in?

If USA what state?

What does power cost you?

Lastly  what do you want to spend?

this is a gamer rig  it has a nvidia  1070 in it.  it may earn 3 bucks a day

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-omen-by-hp-desktop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-1tb-hard-drive-brushed-aluminum/5759917.p?skuId=5759917

I could build a better rig  with 2 cards in it and earn 6 bucks a day  for less cost.

[TimeTeller]

Once quantum computing becomes a reality, GPU mining may become irrelevant. Until then, the decentrailized nature of POW mining isn't going away any time soon IMO.

It's already a reality - http://research.ibm.com/ibm-q/
So we are not far from the quantum revolution stage. Technology is very fast, so there might be a chance that in 5 years, quantum computers will be everywhere.

-snip-
Do you see that we can mine profitably for next 5 years?

My goal is to have a side income of $3k per month that can last for a few years. What kind of investment would you make if you want to get that return.

Thanks a bunch in advance for your input.

Before you jumped into mining, you need to consider these -

What country are you in?

If USA what state?

What does power cost you?

Lastly what do you want to spend?

this is a gamer rig  it has a nvidia  1070 in it.  it may earn 3 bucks a day

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-omen-by-hp-desktop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-1tb-hard-drive-brushed-aluminum/5759917.p?skuId=5759917

I could build a better rig  with 2 cards in it and earn 6 bucks a day  for less cost.

And to think that you want $3k/month-income, it means that you need a good number of miners to build.
And one more thing, electricity bill will kill you at the end of the month. So you need to consider alternative source of energy, like solar. But, that depends on where you are.
Just to start, you can calculate your profitability by using some online crypto mining calculator such as - 
http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency
https://whattomine.com/
So you can already check if mining is for you or not.

[Elder III]

I try to factor in 20% lower returns then what I see from a profit calculator. I figure that downtime is inevitable at best, so that's 10% less profit and I take another 10% off just to be safe. With the current sky high prices of many altcoins I would try to factor even less of a profit 6-12 months from now, but the truth is that nobody really knows. I would rather calculate low and be happily surprised with higher profits a year from now then to count on high profits and be in debt and mega stressed out because I was too optimistic.

Anyways, at current prices you could bring in ~$3,000 per month with 5 rigs that have 7 x GTX 1070s each, just as an example. Do remember that if you are in the USA this will likely count as self employment income and the Government will take 30%+ taxes from it..... the joys of being your own boss. :/

[vapourminer]

Do you see that we can mine profitably for next 5 years?

a 5 year old cards will be basically useless at that point, compared to current gen cards at that point.

2 years for a gpu before its too slow and energy inefficient is probably the norm.

some folks probably do mine on 5 years old cards but those have probably paid for themselves many times over. so they are being run on razer thin margins compared to the electricity they draw. barely making any profit at this point.

[topgeek]

Did you see the difficulty jump in Eth this week?

Expect a lot more of that as everyone tries to do the same.

[joblo]

There are a couple of interesting points that I would  like to comment on.

Mining scrypt algo requires ASIC rigs for any chance of making a profit. The ASIC market is competitive with newer
faster ASICs  becomming available limiting the usable life of any ASIC hardware purchase.

Using 5 year old GPUs willl likely not be profitable for any algo. They perform at about 30% of similarly priced current
generation GPUs and consume about twice the power. (made up stats but they're in the ballpark). Software support
is also more challenging. Newer versions may not support older hardware and older versions will be less efficient
(less optimized) and may not support newer algos. Being able to compile the software yourself could alleviate that.

Quantum computing is still just a dream. IBM is starting an "initiative" to build the first commercially available
qauntum computer, I saw no timetable. Quantum computing is still a long way from reality and even longer
beforre it reaches the the consumer market.

How long can mining last? I have been asking myself that question for 3 years and I still don't know the answer.
No one really does.