DO NOT BUY GPUs to mine! You will not get your money back!

[Quix]

I think the biggest thing to remember here is that right now Litecoin is dying out, just like all the other altcoins. I suppose if everyone GPU mining Bitcoin moves over to Litecoin it might pick up, or die entirely. I don't think anyone has an idea at this point. Litecoin values are so tied to Bitcoin that it's difficult to think of it as an actual currency. This whole thing is completely unknown at this point, even the financial "experts" are stumped. But your main point is valid, buying GPUs now with the idea that you can switch to Litecoin afterwards is not a safe plan.

So, newbies, don't buy a bunch of Radeons right now. ASICs will be readily available to all very soon. Avalon, ASICminer and BFL apparently all have products available or close to available. Of course those ASICs are priced crazily high, I expect that eventually prices will come down.

[favelle75]

LOL at OP.  I guess we are now assuming that these video cards are going to be worth $0 in 3 months?  And the 2-4 games they come with CERTAINLY can't be sold for ~$20 each.  /rolleyes.

[FloridaBear]

last year, bitcoins were at around $5-$8 most of the summer.  even with current difficulties, the profit margin is higher right now than it was then.  so scrypt does alright, as the bots do their thing.   did litecoin drop in value about 10-15% since last difficulty change a day or so ago?   nobody wants litecoin, except to exchange it for bitcoins or some other currency

anyway, i said buying a GPU farm was dumb in early feb, when those first avalon asics shipped.. i was wrong.   if you bought w/ any clue as to what you were doing, you'll have a very good profit.  esp if you find the right time to sell those 5830's, 5870's, and 5970's that were selling used back then for about 50% of the value they do now

i also said it was foolish to pre-order this BFL crap last year, when bitcoins were at $7 or $8 and that you'd be better off just buying the currency itself (you wouldn't be pre-ordering if you didn't think the price was going up)

Obviously if BTC were to rise by a factor of 10 or 20 as it did over the last year, that changes the math completely, but it only prolongs the inevitable. For example, let's take our 500/200 card (7950), and assume that BTC increases a healthy 0.5% per day, making it $716 in a year. In that scenario, the card will stay viable until ~1.5 years from now when 1 BTC is $1639, and yet its total earnings will still only be $433. You're way better off just buying BTC. And this is in a scenario where BTC hits $1,000,000 in 5 years (let me just say that I'm ok with that LOL). In a more reasonable 0.15% per day BTC gain (e.g. BTC is $200 in a year), that card earns $203 total, and is only viable for about 8 months.

On the flip side, if BTC declines by 0.15% per day, our card earns $139 in 167 days and has to be resold when BTC drops to $90.

I'm assuming a 12% bi-weekly hash rate gain in these examples

[FloridaBear]

LOL at OP.  I guess we are now assuming that these video cards are going to be worth $0 in 3 months?  And the 2-4 games they come with CERTAINLY can't be sold for ~$20 each.  /rolleyes.

I acknowledged early on in this thread (I know, TL;DR) that they have resale value. I would argue that you still may not make a profit. You keep laughing and buying them GPUs, but don't say I didn't warn you. Do you seriously expect the hash rate to flatten out going forward after averaging a 17% increase every two weeks over the last 3 months? 

[hax0red]

I agree it's not really profitable like the calculators I've found online point out that it will be. To me its more of a hobby plus I love gaming with 4 cards! Instead of selling my cards I plan to take the profits and put it towards 3 to 5 27-32" LCD's setup vertically for gaming.

 For those expecting to sell the cards for 60% profit, if you do so soon you might but once the new generation of cards releases the value will fall like GPU's have historically....like a ROCK. lol.

 
 Good luck guys, this surely isn't for everyone.

[tacotime]

I think the biggest thing to remember here is that right now Litecoin is dying out, just like all the other altcoins. I suppose if everyone GPU mining Bitcoin moves over to Litecoin it might pick up, or die entirely. I don't think anyone has an idea at this point. Litecoin values are so tied to Bitcoin that it's difficult to think of it as an actual currency. This whole thing is completely unknown at this point, even the financial "experts" are stumped. But your main point is valid, buying GPUs now with the idea that you can switch to Litecoin afterwards is not a safe plan.

So, newbies, don't buy a bunch of Radeons right now. ASICs will be readily available to all very soon. Avalon, ASICminer and BFL apparently all have products available or close to available. Of course those ASICs are priced crazily high, I expect that eventually prices will come down.

Come back in six months, you should see something interesting happen to LTC price.

I already made about 3500% mining Litecoins from 2011 onwards, so I won't worry.  There's still time to be an early adopter on the Litecoin network before BTC is made totally unmineable by the presence of ASICs, though.

[ISAWHIM]

You are forgetting a few major components...

1: Alt coins = FAD = SO was/is bitcoins. That point is moot. If it is "cheap" to produce bitcoins, the price will drop. Since it is harder (more overhead) to produce alt-coins, that alone is what gave coins the actual value, and will give them value when we all go there and start using them. You have to remember, there are millions of US and only a few hundred or thousand with large quantities of ASIC's that will be still in the game here. Thus, they can have all the coins. They can trade them with themselves. We will go where the actual gains are. We are the majority they stole it from. We will just up and leave.

2: You are forgetting "transaction fees", which are increasing, and will eventually be larger than any "rewards". As long as the pool-operators are not squandering them, and just feeding us "treasure-hunt coins". (That is where solo mining pays-off, and rewards for coins are just a bonus.)

3: If the hardware lasts only a few months, it has been paid off. Provided the coin value does not fall, and you didn't cash-out... or provided you did cash out now, while the value is still on the high end.

4: OMG THE SKY IS FALLING... Didn't they say all this when GPU mining became "new"... OMG the value will plummet! OMG you are going to loose everything! OMG Its going to crash! Um... No, we just buy ASIC's instead of GPU's and we retire the GPU's, or move them to a profitable alt-coin. The sky is not falling.

lol.. or... we just "change the code" to add security that asic's can't handle. It wouldn't break anything behind the scenes, but it would surely keep all the people holding coins from loosing value to the ASIC corporate-manufactures... Who will NOT be us.

Plus the 7990's will be $800 soon, and consume less power, again. For those still doing the GPU thing.

Bitcoins are the new "Linden", the new "paypal", the new "myspace", the new "facebook". People won't put-up with all the massive synchronization and oversized wallets and account theft, unless someone with real structure manages all this correctly. (With less loss, and cutting out all the childish bickering.)

[FloridaBear]

You are forgetting a few major components...

1: Alt coins = FAD = SO was/is bitcoins. That point is moot. If it is "cheap" to produce bitcoins, the price will drop. Since it is harder (more overhead) to produce alt-coins, that alone is what gave coins the actual value, and will give them value when we all go there and start using them. You have to remember, there are millions of US and only a few hundred or thousand with large quantities of ASIC's that will be still in the game here. Thus, they can have all the coins. They can trade them with themselves. We will go where the actual gains are. We are the majority they stole it from. We will just up and leave.

No idea what you are trying to say here.

2: You are forgetting "transaction fees", which are increasing, and will eventually be larger than any "rewards". As long as the pool-operators are not squandering them, and just feeding us "treasure-hunt coins". (That is where solo mining pays-off, and rewards for coins are just a bonus.)

Fees are currently ~4% of rewards. I did not include them at this time. However, since BTC block rewards will not halve for nearly 4 years, I expect fees to stay at 4%. On the flipside, I also neglect pool fees (and some pools do not even distribute fees to miners).

3: If the hardware lasts only a few months, it has been paid off. Provided the coin value does not fall, and you didn't cash-out... or provided you did cash out now, while the value is still on the high end.

Please read the OP. It is NOT paid off in a few months--that's the whole point of this thread.

4: OMG THE SKY IS FALLING... Didn't they say all this when GPU mining became "new"... OMG the value will plummet! OMG you are going to loose everything! OMG Its going to crash! Um... No, we just buy ASIC's instead of GPU's and we retire the GPU's, or move them to a profitable alt-coin. The sky is not falling.

Umm, ok, I'm not trying to say bitcoins are going to 0 or the value will plummet, etc. All I am trying to say is that it is unwise to buy GPUs at this time to mine.

lol.. or... we just "change the code" to add security that asic's can't handle. It wouldn't break anything behind the scenes, but it would surely keep all the people holding coins from loosing value to the ASIC corporate-manufactures... Who will NOT be us.

Will never happen. Way too much invested in ASICs now to change the BTC hash algorithm. That's what alt-coins are for.

Plus the 7990's will be $800 soon, and consume less power, again. For those still doing the GPU thing.

Yes on the $800, no on consume less power. Same MH/J as 7970 (as it's basically same GPU)

Bitcoins are the new "Linden", the new "paypal", the new "myspace", the new "facebook". People won't put-up with all the massive synchronization and oversized wallets and account theft, unless someone with real structure manages all this correctly. (With less loss, and cutting out all the childish bickering.)

Relevence?

[joshki]

I am not 100% convinced there won't be a market for ASICs after the difficulty makes mining BTC unprofitable.  I saw a guy on reddit that said he is going to try and use the Erupter USBs to develop an ASIC for Litecoin.  If it can be done on the USB version, I am sure someone will do so for the larger ASICs as well.  Alt coins are a big question mark, but if there is still interest down the line, there will be a resale potential in that market.  Litecoins were supposed to be GPU-proof.  They weren't.  So they are most certainly not ASIC-proof either.

That statement makes no sense at all.  The Avalon ASIC is a chip designed to hash SHA-256 and only SHA-256.  It's not going to hash scrypt.

[Miner99er]

OP is absolutely right, you should get rid of your GPU's today.

Send me a PM and I'll give you an address to a place that recycles them for free. They'll even pay for the shipping of your old card so you don't have to worry about any costs what-so-ever of getting rid of your excess GPU's.

[Nemesis]

I am not 100% convinced there won't be a market for ASICs after the difficulty makes mining BTC unprofitable.  I saw a guy on reddit that said he is going to try and use the Erupter USBs to develop an ASIC for Litecoin.  If it can be done on the USB version, I am sure someone will do so for the larger ASICs as well.  Alt coins are a big question mark, but if there is still interest down the line, there will be a resale potential in that market.  Litecoins were supposed to be GPU-proof.  They weren't.  So they are most certainly not ASIC-proof either.

That statement makes no sense at all.  The Avalon ASIC is a chip designed to hash SHA-256 and only SHA-256.  It's not going to hash scrypt.

Gosh this forums is now filled with bunch of retards. It must be due to all the rick quick scheme that media hyped up over the past couple months i bet.

I'm talking about the guy that you quoted.....

Next: I read on reddit that by stretching my dick every night my dick will be huge and i'll become a chick magnet.

[ScaryHash]

Well, I needed new graphics cards anyway for gaming. 

I really don't care if the 3x7950's pay for themselves or not. It will be a killer crossfire rig anyway. 

So, if I mine some coins with them, that just means that I will be offsetting their price a little bit.

Amortize that over a period of a year, and it's not so bad.

They are called General Purpose Graphics Processing Units for a reason, to do more than one thing.

According to my simple calculations plugged into any bitcoin calculator, graphics cards will probably be good enough until the difficulty hits about 25 million, probably in about 5-6 months.

[ISAWHIM]

That's a lot of assumptions, without any actual knowledge or proof, other then speculation on hypothetical possibilities.

Thus, useless. That was the point of my prior post.

Who are you warning? Yourself? Why do you care what others do? Obviously your point of view is as limited as your knowledge, but I may just be assuming that. (Irony)

So, should we all buy "non-existent, non-shipping", ASIC's that won't be here until after Christmas?

How will a purchase NOT pay itself off? It would only take four to five months, even with some slopes. Switching to any alt-coin covers any losses here. Reselling hardware that is only 3-months old, previously new, used little, is not hard to do. Used, these cards still sell for $380-$480 each.

What, the 7990's are just a 7970! Where the hell did you learn to read?
1x 7970 = 600-750MHs @ 220-260w
1x 7990 = 1200-1400MHs @ 300-400w

Here is a math problem for you...
1 bitcoin today
+1 bitcoin tomorrow
+1 bitcoin the next day =
more than 0 bitcoins for the next five months, which is the projected arrival date of most "only 2 more months" ASIC's.

It will take them MONTHS to amass any destructive value. More than half the coins are already "valued", and only 1/4 of the remaining coins will be MINED in the next four years. Even if they released 100THs of machines, it still wouldn't be more than 50% of the GPU's power running now.

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

That Peak, is about to turn into a plateau. It was just a rise for the "next gen", which is not only ASIC's, but GPU builders building ROOMS of computers, not just a single computer in a bedroom.

Income is only 4% from transactions... Who the hell told you that shit? Obviously you are being played by your Pool! Try solo mining. It wasn't profitable with CPU's or a year ago, with GPU's, but OBVIOUSLY... the growing number of solo miners is nearing a large volume for a reason. (The harder the difficulty, the more transactions are in a block, and the greater the fee-rewards are. Look at the block chart data.)

The "defense" was that alt-coins were a FAD...Yea, they WERE, so were bitcoins. Bitcoins didn't make bitcoins valuable, we did, and where we go, the value goes. With our hardware.

But anyways... Don't buy GPU's. That leaves more hashing for me, here or there... On a plane, on a train, in Spain, or in the rain. I don't give a flying f**k, as long as it turns green, and comes from my f**king machine!

[favelle75]

LOL at OP.  I guess we are now assuming that these video cards are going to be worth $0 in 3 months?  And the 2-4 games they come with CERTAINLY can't be sold for ~$20 each.  /rolleyes.

I acknowledged early on in this thread (I know, TL;DR) that they have resale value. I would argue that you still may not make a profit. You keep laughing and buying them GPUs, but don't say I didn't warn you. Do you seriously expect the hash rate to flatten out going forward after averaging a 17% increase every two weeks over the last 3 months? 

My turn around time for profit, not including selling the free games that come with the cards, and not including the resale of the cards themselves for 80% of their value, AND not including Bitcoin going up in price, is 2.5 months. How can I possibly NOT profit?

[ISAWHIM]

Thanks for the warning, now leave... since you have no interest in bitcoins, or alt-coins. Obviously a fanboy for the hype of ASIC's, which are just flying off the shelves faster than they can be invented! lol.

[peewee]

FloridaBear has clearly made way too many assumptions to have any credibility...this is just more button pushing to try and curb the flood of new miners coming to the market.

Lets address the fallacy of his assumptions:

The assumption that Bitcoin will not go up is fundamentally and historically broken.  Infrastructure is getting better, the first convention/limited government is poised to add stability, and the its nowhere near public adoption yet, media coverage is expanding, and most importantly the capital expenditure in equipment and electricity supporting the network is growing exponentially.

He can't possibly be here trying to sell the idea that cryptos are going away, right?  Everything points to the opposite the same as Google, Facebook, apple, etc. etc.  So if Bitcoin is staying then we can easily (and more accurately) make the assumption the other way, that Bitcoin values will increase, and probably exponentially (as it catches on), and then linearly (linear growth will only be the norm when the global market is affected significantly by Bitcoin).   We can reliably look at the last 20 years of significant innovations growth models to arrive at this conclusion.

Granted you're analysis seems to have overlooked all of these core points.  Nonetheless, let me address a few of your other "assumptions".

"Altcoins are a fad" - certainly you'd have a case for unoriginal copies of Bitcoin being "doomed" in the long term

However, to ignore innovations like Litecoin, PPcoin, and other fundamentally different alt coins is ignoring the fundamental nature of new innovations (sometimes the first one to market doesn't always have the best product or the product that will dominate the marketplace).  It also ignores the fact that Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. etc...do not control 100% of their respective markets just because they were the first/biggest/etc.   Please at least demonstrate some basic market / economics knowledge before spreading the doom and gloom.  You're assumption's basis is purely opinion and lacks support.

"Altcoin profitability is a wash at best "-

 I think I read that you have a 7970 and if you do it suits you because its the one card that doesn't appreciably outperform its Bitcoin hash #'s when turned to scrypt mining.  However, even your 7970 does better (if we move the standard order of magnitude down mhash to khash) at mining scrypt than straight SHA 256.... GPU's are particularly good at scrypt in fact because of their high frequency memory and now increased mem capacities (thanks to graphics demands in larger screens/resolutions).   Most cards achieve up to 20% more khash on scrypt than on Bitcoin mining (Ex. a 7950 will usually do around 550-580 Mhash at stable temps and reasonable overclocking,  a properly setup 7950 on scrypt will be in the 670's on khash).  Given the conversion rate currently in place most educated scrypt miners are producing 15-30% more equivalent value on Litecoin today with the same hardware.

You've also failed to acknowledge that roughly 30THash worth of GPU's are or were running on the Bitcoin network and have been making their way over to Litecoin.   Guess what happens when all those resources and energy expenditures fortify Litecoin....the value goes up (Just like Bitcoin).

Every single one of your arguments really only holds water if:  All crypto currencies fail....and sorry to say but that's tin foil hat territory now.  Will there be economic shifts, government intervention, market crashes, etc?... Absolutely.   However, this genie isn't going back in the bottle and trying to scare off investments in mining serves zero purpose.  

Every mining rig in operation strengthens the integrity and the valuation of the cryptos.

Market cap for Bitcoin or the leading crypto will most likely reach 1 trillion in the next few decades....if that's the case even your 7970 will have been worth its weight in gold....but by all means go back to surfing porn if that's you're preferred use for your valuable GPU time.

[ElectricMucus]

10% over 7 months is an exaggeration.
The supposed death of alts and their non-profitability too.

There might be a brief period where mining will be unprofitable but that would be due to declining prices of BTC.

[Amph]

did you know that a vga, can let you... dunno how to say.... PLAY GMAES, other than mining?
so if i have a crossfire of 7970 and i'm mining, right now, when the thing become not profitable, i just play games with them, they always keep their value

[ewitte]

How about just using 100% true statements - this would be better

You will never get your money back if your not making profit

If your still making profit keep at it stop when your not simple as that.  BTW I've got 75% of the equipment at work that is why its free I'm only limited to not blowing the breaker lol with other people having other devices connected.

[Schrankwand]

I have bought an awesome Graphics card for mining. And the only reason I did was that I guessed, if I can have an awesome GPU that pays a lot of itself off and then I can play with it.