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

[YipYip]

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.

This forum has gone to the dogs....

I understand the buzz that ppl get when it first bites .........crypto fever ...but and heres the but

It would be nice that all the kids and noobs would at least listen to their peers instead of giving us lectures on how it is.....or how we just dont understand

The original OP is talking about his fear (IMHO) and the diff curve...and how he wants to buy GPU's from the greed gland but his logic and saftey is saying look at the last 5 mins and telling him not to...

This game is about long term and being there when the oppurtunitys arise.... and they do

Like tacotime I bought some ltc from some refunded shipping costs from a failed purchase...this shipping i sold out for $2500 which was a 8000% profit ...so as i was saying yeah......... short term winter IS comming......... but so is christmas and global warming ....the key point being that what goes up must come down or when its that low the only way is up

So OP ...dont buy GPU's and leave this hard game for the adults because crypto..... is not easy ....mining is not easy....keeping 10 rigs stable is not easy ...getting  a template rig working is not easy....getting supply of teh same components for your template is not easy....building and securing your transactions is not easy ...write code to support the community is not easy ... and finanly listening to noobs tell u how it is ...its not easy ...

[Schrankwand]

Like tacotime I bought some ltc from some refunded shipping costs from a failed purchase...this shipping i sold out for $2500 which was a 8000% profit ...so as i was saying yeah......... short term winter IS comming......... but so is christmas and global warming ....the key point being that what goes up must come down or when its that low the only way is up

LTC buyback time is coming right now. Winter is coming, let's buy firewood.

[BBQKorv]

Do not buy GPUs so I can make a bigger profit  
Thats a serious advise to all of you.

[FloridaBear]

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.

You have no clue what I'm interested in, so don't pretend to know. And I think I'll stick around for awhile...thanks for the warm welcome though.

[pikeadz]

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.

You sound angry.  Why are you so angry? 

This is the post I was talking about.  If you disagree, you could just say that.  No need to put other people down to inflate your own ego. 

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1dogrx/announcement_block_erupter_usb_300mhs_asic_miner/c9sc0wx

[FloridaBear]

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.

When discussing the future, you have to make some assumptions. I think mine are conservative (e.g. likely). If you have specific issues, let's discuss them.

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?

Never said anything like that.

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

So a 7990 gives about 3 MH/J, so maybe a tad better than a 7970. Not exactly revolutionary efficiency.

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.

I bow to your superior math skillz.

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.

Nope, we have not yet even seen the ASIC build-out. If anything, the slope will increase instead of flatten out.

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.)

Here: http://t.co/MyMiZln8HE Scroll down. Four percent. And I have no idea what you are talking about when you say "The harder the difficulty, the more transactions are in a block," Where is your source for that?

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.

The hardware goes where the profit is. Prices of the coins don't have anything to do with mining--it's supply and demand.

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!

Yup, not buying GPUs will really slow that growth down. ASICMINER has rolled out 14 TH of new hashing in the last 2 weeks. That's the equivalent of 28,000 7950s coming online. In two weeks.

[FloridaBear]

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.

Under-exaggeration maybe. We've been averaging 17%; next retarget is at about +19% right now. If you have evidence that we will suddenly slow to under 10%, I'd like to see it. How many tens of thousands of Avalon chips have sold already?

Look at the way alt-coin profitability gets beat down so fast now--miners are clued in now. The days of alt-coins persistently outperforming BTC are over, IMO.

[FloridaBear]

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.

Even if BTC does increase exponentially, I seriously doubt it can keep up with difficulty. Hence, by your own argument, you should not buy GPUs; just buy BTC instead.

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.

Yes, and using at least 10% more power. Personally, I have trouble maintaining even 600KH on my card due to temps; I can't be the only one. In any case, you're talking about a roughly 10% improvement in hash vs. Bitcoin--that to me is a "wash" considering 8% bonus for NMC and 4% bonus for fees. LTC is currently at 101% profitability vs. LTC. It's a wash.

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).

I disagree. Price of any coin is primarily determined by supply/demand. Miners are secondary--they will move to where the profit is.

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.  

What? That makes no sense at all. I'm saying that the rampant success of bitcoin has made GPUs obsolete, that's all.

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

Yes, but with the exception of those with free power, there will be no GPUs mining BTC in a year. Only ASICs.

[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.

Under-exaggeration maybe. We've been averaging 17%; next retarget is at about +19% right now. If you have evidence that we will suddenly slow to under 10%, I'd like to see it. How many tens of thousands of Avalon chips have sold already?

Look at the way alt-coin profitability gets beat down so fast now--miners are clued in now. The days of alt-coins persistently outperforming BTC are over, IMO.

7 Months isn't all that sudden. People will stop buying ASICs in large amount once the electricity costs become significant again.

[Geez]

Yeah it's getting kind of pointless. My 7950 is earning me barely anything anymore.

[kendog77]

Right now it is a wash to mine LTC instead of BTC, but historically, LTC has been ~30% more profitable to mine than BTC. I don't have a crystal ball to see if this trend will continue or not, but LTC has treated me very well in the past.

The main problem with your argument it the fact that it relies on so many assumptions. If anyone of your many assumptions are wrong, your entire conclusion is wrong.

1.) The price of BTC/LTC could go up or down. Assuming a fixed price is guaranteed to be wrong. I doubt many folks would have thought that the price of BTC would have increased by 10x in the past year, but it did, and kept GPU miners in the game. The price of LTC also increased dramatically over the past year, which was great for GPU miners.

2.) BTC happens to have the largest market cap at the moment because it was the first coin to implement a great idea and is the most well known. LTC, or some other alt coin could surpass BTC in the future. Suppose a large retailer, like Amazon.com, decided to support LTC before BTC because of faster transaction times. What do you think would happen to the value of BTC/LTC then? I am almost positive that adding LTC to Mt. Gox will increase the value and awareness of LTC, which should push the price up. Also, some other alt coin that doesn't even exist yet could come out and surpass both BTC and LTC. The future is unclear, crytocoins are in their infancy, and mining is a risky business.

My crystal ball is foggy, and the future is unknown, so I'll continue mine as many coins as possible (and diversify between coins) until it becomes unprofitable to do so. GPU miners can easily switch between coins to mine whatever is the most profitable at a given time. Also, I like mining because it provides a nice hedge against a price collapse and is a good way to continually acquire coins gradually over time. If I buy BTC directly, and the value crashes, I'm pretty much out of luck. Hardware can be resold following a crash to minimize a loss.

[jacoby0419]

I'm doing alright so far... Only been doing it about 3 weeks and just last night added enough to get me to 1.5 Gh/s.  New cards bought on sale with rebates and selling game cards brings the cost way down.  Installing them in a handful of systems I had laying around- I've brought in about $140 for $700 in expense so far.

I'm having fun, and it looks like I'm going to do alright- no it won't make me rich, but especially when it comes time to sell cards I think I'll come out ahead by a fair bit.

PS- I did pre-order a BFL Jalapeno a 6 weeks ago.

[SlyFoxy12]

Right now it is a wash to mine LTC instead of BTC, but historically, LTC has been ~30% more profitable to mine than BTC. I don't have a crystal ball to see if this trend will continue or not, but LTC has treated me very well in the past.

The main problem with your argument it the fact that it relies on so many assumptions. If anyone of your many assumptions are wrong, your entire conclusion is wrong.

1.) The price of BTC/LTC could go up or down. Assuming a fixed price is guaranteed to be wrong. I doubt many folks would have thought that the price of BTC would have increased by 10x in the past year, but it did, and kept GPU miners in the game. The price of LTC also increased dramatically over the past year, which was great for GPU miners.

2.) BTC happens to have the largest market cap at the moment because it was the first coin to implement a great idea and is the most well known. LTC, or some other alt coin could surpass BTC in the future. Suppose a large retailer, like Amazon.com, decided to support LTC before BTC because of faster transaction times. What do you think would happen to the value of BTC/LTC then? I am almost positive that adding LTC to Mt. Gox will increase the value and awareness of LTC, which should push the price up. Also, some other alt coin that doesn't even exist yet could come out and surpass both BTC and LTC. The future is unclear, crytocoins are in their infancy, and mining is a risky business.

My crystal ball is foggy, and the future is unknown, so I'll continue mine as many coins as possible (and diversify between coins) until it becomes unprofitable to do so. GPU miners can easily switch between coins to mine whatever is the most profitable at a given time. Also, I like mining because it provides a nice hedge against a price collapse and is a good way to continually acquire coins gradually over time. If I buy BTC directly, and the value crashes, I'm pretty much out of luck. Hardware can be resold following a crash to minimize a loss.

Well just news coverage alone is great I swear during the "bitcoin boom" the BBC here in the UK did an article per week which helped drive value up, Bitcoin is very volatile so can swing either way quickly, I think the lack of easy to get ASIC Miners ( price and availability being a difficult balance) will drive up prices again pretty soon as more dependancies run on the currency.

[abbyd]

Some strong opinions on this topic. Stay cool - ultimately this is just a math problem with lots of variables. The next step is to estimate the probabilities of changes in each variable, then write a grand formula...

OK people has anyone considered how much money the VIDEO CARD INDUSTRY is putting into buying cryptocoins? 
I know that if 20% of my sales of high end OpenCL cards were to miners, I'd spend 20+% of my profits ensuring that their value didn't crash...

I'd like to see breakdown stats of video card utilization: gaming, cryptocoin, decryption, etc... anyone?

[coincepts]

Some strong opinions on this topic. Stay cool - ultimately this is just a math problem with lots of variables. The next step is to estimate the probabilities of changes in each variable, then write a grand formula...

OK people has anyone considered how much money the VIDEO CARD INDUSTRY is putting into buying cryptocoins? 
I know that if 20% of my sales of high end OpenCL cards were to miners, I'd spend 20+% of my profits ensuring that their value didn't crash...

I'd like to see breakdown stats of video card utilization: gaming, cryptocoin, decryption, etc... anyone?

Interesting to think about AMD investing in crypto. Good point.

I think the OP just doesn't mine like the % of us who are ear to the ground, ready to pack up and move to the next big thing before its big, etc. Mining is about risk. We are all prospectors afterall are we not?

[abbyd]

Some strong opinions on this topic. Stay cool - ultimately this is just a math problem with lots of variables. The next step is to estimate the probabilities of changes in each variable, then write a grand formula...

OK people has anyone considered how much money the VIDEO CARD INDUSTRY is putting into buying cryptocoins? 
I know that if 20% of my sales of high end OpenCL cards were to miners, I'd spend 20+% of my profits ensuring that their value didn't crash...

I'd like to see breakdown stats of video card utilization: gaming, cryptocoin, decryption, etc... anyone?

Interesting to think about AMD investing in crypto. Good point.

I think the OP just doesn't mine like the % of us who are ear to the ground, ready to pack up and move to the next big thing before its big, etc. Mining is about risk. We are all prospectors afterall are we not?

OP might be FUDing, but he seems somewhat earnest, also he cites an interesting report on pool mining yields.

Given how huge they are, I don't think AMD is giving that much thought to cryptocoins, but from a strictly business
perspective it would make sense to subsidize the sector. Of course, they just make the chipsets, and then a manufacturer
builds the actual cards. If these manufacturers are smart, they'll do stuff like incentivize bulk purchases, include better stock
cooling solutions, etc.

[traderman]

Look at all the fortune tellers battling it out. IF you asked someone a few years ago if Bitcoin will go to $250 almost everyone would have said NO. LOL Just keep mining fellas and stop arguing.

[coincepts]

Look at all the fortune tellers battling it out. IF you asked someone a few years ago if Bitcoin will go to $250 almost everyone would have said NO. LOL Just keep mining fellas and stop arguing.

QFE +1

[MinerLT]

Look at all the fortune tellers battling it out. IF you asked someone a few years ago if Bitcoin will go to $250 almost everyone would have said NO. LOL Just keep mining fellas and stop arguing.

When btc price per block was 50BTC, remember ? Last days to 25BTC per block and everyone was in panic that mining will be unprofitable. My biggest mistake was that i don't buy cards then.. 
Just keep mining.

[buddrulez]

If you use your gpu's for gaming and make a bit of coin on the side then its ok. But buying them just for mining is kind of pointless at the moment!