A case study in entry-level mining

[LogicalUnit]

Uptime

My Antminer S1 has been whirring away in the cupboard for over 136 days now, with absolutely no issues whatsoever (unless you count maybe three restarts of the miner process). Dare I say it, I might actually make ROI on this hardware!

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[zdaz14]

Uptime

My Antminer S1 has been whirring away in the cupboard for over 136 days now, with absolutely no issues whatsoever (unless you count maybe three restarts of the miner process). Dare I say it, I might actually make ROI on this hardware!

I just read through this whole thread. God, if anyone deserves ROI it's you lol.

Getting my first mining machine tomorrow! A Fury I got for $16 Hope I can at least hit ROI on that...my electricity is dirt cheap.

[ChuckBuck]

Congrats Logical on your pending ROI!  

Threads like yours should actually be stickied so all newbies and newcomers to the mining scene can actually see how difficult it is to mine at home for ROI or profit, nevermind those industrial sized mining operations.

Great service you're doing for the community with your behind the scenes blog like study.

[BitcoinBadger]

BTC ATMs are getting opened at many places so there is a big chance of a fast users growth soon.

Yes,as the rise in bitcoin ATMs many people to whom bitcoin is just another internet story had also started trying and adopting bitcoin.But I haven't used bitcoin Atm till now.Heard it's lousy and takes a very while to complete the transactions.

[LogicalUnit]

Return On Investment

As of right now, my Antminer S1 has been hashing nonstop for 147 days. It has generated a shade under 1 BTC. That's good enough for ROI!! This marks an important milestone for my case study, as it proves that money can indeed be made from entry-level mining. Hopefully my ROI timeframe will provide a useful yardstick for other investors, who want to know roughly when they will start turning a profit.

[kabopar]

Return On Investment

As of right now, my Antminer S1 has been hashing nonstop for 147 days. It has generated a shade under 1 BTC. That's good enough for ROI!! This marks an important milestone for my case study, as it proves that money can indeed be made from entry-level mining. Hopefully my ROI timeframe will provide a useful yardstick for other investors, who want to know roughly when they will start turning a profit.

While I don't wish to discourage you, assuming that the electricity prices in the ACT are similar to NSW and that you have a 'time of use' meter, the S1 already consumes more in electricity during Peak and Shoulder times than it can theoretically make in BTC.  Most of my S1's are gone and the remaining pair are awaiting their upgrade to S3+.  Even the S3 is already in 'negative territory' during Peak electricity times (despite some compensation from solar panels).  Looks like we need to either co-locate the hardware to some cheaper electricity place, or say goodbye to mining

Cheers

[cowandtea]

Return On Investment

As of right now, my Antminer S1 has been hashing nonstop for 147 days. It has generated a shade under 1 BTC. That's good enough for ROI!! This marks an important milestone for my case study, as it proves that money can indeed be made from entry-level mining. Hopefully my ROI timeframe will provide a useful yardstick for other investors, who want to know roughly when they will start turning a profit.

Good for you, but you didn't state how much electricity you use. You might be paying more then 1BTC electricity....

[kabopar]

Return On Investment

As of right now, my Antminer S1 has been hashing nonstop for 147 days. It has generated a shade under 1 BTC. That's good enough for ROI!! This marks an important milestone for my case study, as it proves that money can indeed be made from entry-level mining. Hopefully my ROI timeframe will provide a useful yardstick for other investors, who want to know roughly when they will start turning a profit.

While I don't wish to discourage you, assuming that the electricity prices in the ACT are similar to NSW and that you have a 'time of use' meter, the S1 already consumes more in electricity during Peak and Shoulder times than it can theoretically make in BTC.  Most of my S1's are gone and the remaining pair are awaiting their upgrade to S3+.  Even the S3 is already in 'negative territory' during Peak electricity times (despite some compensation from solar panels).  Looks like we need to either co-locate the hardware to some cheaper electricity place, or say goodbye to mining

Cheers

Just looked up some ACT prices, and they are significantly lower than in NSW (Power companies don't want to upset the pollies?!), so you should be still in positive territory (but it may be worth factoring the electricity cost in future difficulty rises).  (Maybe someone in the ACT should start a miner co-location business?!)

Cheers

[iron man]

how this gonna work?tell me more about it.

[kabopar]

how this gonna work?tell me more about it.

If you are asking about co-location, there are already various data centres in the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) that offer co-location services.  I don't know how much they charge and if any of them accept Bitcoin miners.  It's just a thought that someone could do the maths, rent some warehouse/office space and using the relatively lower electricity costs there for co-location of mining.  There are probably places in the world with much lower electricity costs, but that would require shipping your miners to some other country, then retrieving them when the co-location contract runs out or is no longer profitable.

Cheers

[snowcrawl]

Home mining in general has been an incredible novelty for the person just getting in with their first piece of mining equipment.  The sense of novelty is enough to distract us from the fact that breaking even, no matter how loosely you define it, is the exception to the rule.  What you should congratulate yourself for is stopping yourself from buying more mining equipment to plug in.  With a finite amount of resources, we simply can't compete with companies in the bitcoin space who are able to use the multiple tools at their disposal to maximize their profits.  Since this is a losing game, if you scaled up the size of your investment you could really get yourself into financial trouble.  What's needed is a better way to invest in what works.  Home mining no longer works well for generating profit. If it ever did, it was for a very short period of time.

[johnnyrocket]

I'm glad to see you earned a return on your S1, although with declining Bitcoin prices that may not be entirely accurate if you include the conversion to/from fiat at the time of purchase and after the returns were earned.

[LogicalUnit]

Electricity Consumption

It has been correctly pointed out that I did not include energy costs in my ROI calculations. I have my latest power bill, and here are the details:

Firstly, I pay a supply fee of 75.79 Australian cents per day, tax included. This is fixed.
Secondly, I pay a usage rate of 18.304 Australian cents per kWh, tax included. This is variable.


According to this link an Antminer S1 consumes approximately 407 Watts of power. To be conservative, I'll use a figure of 420W or 0.420kW. My uptime is 150 days.

So to do the maths:

150 days * 24 hours/day * 0.420 kW * 0.18304 dollars/kWh = AUD$1.845/day, or AUD$276.75 total.

This significantly affects my profitability.

HOWEVER, my Antminer is placed in the patch cupboard in the hallway, which I believe is paid for by my apartment's body corporate ie I don't actually pay for it! 

[johnnyrocket]

This significantly affects my profitability.

HOWEVER, my Antminer is placed in the patch cupboard in the hallway, which I believe is paid for by my apartment's body corporate ie I don't actually pay for it! 

That's quite convenient, but probably doesn't scale up very well...

[STT]

Its a business plan Ive heard of before.   Like locally they have rigged up street lighting to trail electricity to a nearby manhole cover for a water mains and they placed a whole cannabis farm inside with high power lighting, full feed system.    If BTC gear didnt become so old so quick I guess people might do the same, though a live internet link is a bit of a push

[ASICSPACE]

Making ROI is all about electricity costs. Homeowners actually have some advantages over datacenters. They have pre-existing electrical and cooling infrastructure. Datacenters have to pay for that, but they have the luxury of being located in three cent electricity regions.

Let's say there's a 5 cent difference that a datacenter has over you. That means on a per kw basis, a datacenter earns $7.3/month. So as long as the cost for the datacenter to produce that kw is less than $87, then in one year the datacenter has an edge over the homeowner.

[Falkyire]

The value of sharing your experience which consists of your investment , time , method and setup is simply priceless which would benefit to the community as a whole

Even if we had a great setup, configuration is what unlock the hashing potential it seems , guess i have to study atleast half the forum before starting the mining but still skeptic about joining a mining pool 

[cryptomad]

Very Informative Thanks For this I will have A  good read up

[elgimpo]

Good read, great job on the free electricity. That cost is what keeps putting me off going back to hardware mining.

[Zawamiya]

Making ROI is all about electricity costs. Homeowners actually have some advantages over datacenters. They have pre-existing electrical and cooling infrastructure. Datacenters have to pay for that, but they have the luxury of being located in three cent electricity regions.

Let's say there's a 5 cent difference that a datacenter has over you. That means on a per kw basis, a datacenter earns $7.3/month. So as long as the cost for the datacenter to produce that kw is less than $87, then in one year the datacenter has an edge over the homeowner.

Not only that, because its datacenter you need to hire security guard and someone to look over it when server is down. More cost..