Hi all,
I'm a long time lurker but today I bit the bullet and made an account.
I live on a military camp and I don't pay for electricity, I'm thinking of buying an s7 (only one I can afford right now) and leaving it running. Noise isn't a issue, connectivity is a bit of an issue due to third party software but not insurmountable, heat is an interesting one but I think I have a solution for it.
Is it a good idea to get into mining bitcoin still given I won't be paying for electricity? Or would an altcoin be more appropriate?
Altcoin mining might give you a better profit, but you'll have to keep an eye on the altcoin markets and diff to decide what to mine at that particular time, since you'll have to mine GPU-minable altcoins, and those networks fluctuate in diff quite often, new coins hit the market often and prices fluctuate to (an altcoin ASIC is more expensive than a second hand S7, so you won't be able to afford it, you'll be bound to a GPU rig... Basically an old PC with 1 or 2 GPU's).
Bitcoin mining is more of a setup-once, then forget kind of deal.
An S7 hashes at 4.86 Th/s and seems to be more reliable than the (newer, and more efficient) S9:
At current diff and BTC price, an S7 will make you ~$136/month
https://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator/?h=4860&p=2600.00&pc=0.0&pf=1&d=1103400932964.29000000&r=12.50000000&er=4137.40000000&hc=0.00Do be carefull, in my opinion, there is no such thing as "free electricity". In the end, somebody is always paying the bill.
It might be possible that the one paying the bill does not care if you use a couple Kwatt's, but i wouldn't assume they're not going to care about the power bill unless i'd asked them first...
A couple hundred bucks is not worth losing your job over