Too late for mining?

[notung]

Hi there! I'm new in the forum so this is my first post. Just I wanted to say hello to the comunity. I am interested in mining. Is it too late to enter in the business? As I read more and more it seems that just ASIC miners will change everything: With such a machines coming into game the difficulty will go so hight that it will be nonsens to mine without them... am I right?

Thanks!

[wopwop]

no

it's never too late to make a life change

[torry28]

I believe your right, I would not invest in GPU farm anymore

[korsmi]

i think wenn bfl and the other producers will send out their asics then gpu mining will be useless.

[notung]

Any idea if is it currently possible to get asic mining devices? As far as I know it seems that there are long ques on orders and that some of the devices where paid long time ago (in advance) and not yet delivered.

High risk business looks to me... but tempting.

[theehat]

There are plenty of new companies coming out with plans to produce cheap(ish) asic miners.

KnCMiner is one of them and also TerraHash.

KnCMiner have just started taking pre-orders and I honestly believe they're not just another BFL story.

[staal]

Its never too late!

[siran]

I've started mining with GPUs recently (04.2013) and now i think about buying an ASIC chips machine. There will be no other machines than ASIC based in near future. We can only get smaller (65nm, 45nm) and slightly faster (not by order of 100 i think). So difficulty won't rise indefinitely.

[Keldel]

You should not buy any GPUs specifically for mining. An already bought GPU should be able to hash for a few months and recover some part of its price, but not all.

If you want to support the bitcoin network, keep looking for good deals to buy some ASICs.

[J35st3r]

You should not buy any GPUs specifically for mining. An already bought GPU should be able to hash for a few months and recover some part of its price, but not all.

If you want to support the bitcoin network, keep looking for good deals to buy some ASICs.

Yes, but do the math on the ROI and be sure to allow for the delivery time until you can start mining. ASIC's as currently priced will never pay for themselves.

A little worked example. The Blockfury Erupter is priced at 2BTC and mines at 300MHash/sec. Right now that earns you 0.01BTC/day and would pay for itself in 200 days. But difficulty is spiralling upwards. So let's take the figure of 20% every two weeks (a little high perhaps, but it makes the math easier and you can always plug in your own guess as to the future difficulty). After just 8 weeks the difficuty will have increased by 1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 = 2.1 times, so your return from mining is halved. And here's the sting, if you mined for the rest of eternity you will only make the same return as you got in those first eight weeks (checkout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes for nice read). Total reward less than 1BTC, you lost money.

Now the Erupter is the ASIC that perhaps you could get your hands on soonest. With BFL or Avalon you'll be waiting months, and all the while the difficulty spiral is eating into your earnings.

[coinsider]

The idea of mining is fascinating to many people and since BTC mining has got so difficult already, shouldn't we expect a brighter future for alt coins that give more mining opportunities to people even if they are not early adaptors? Should we be worried?

[PaperClip]

Yes, but do the math on the ROI and be sure to allow for the delivery time until you can start mining. ASIC's as currently priced will never pay for themselves.

Recenlty I was considering to invest into GPU mining rig, but ended up with the same conclusion. it's not possible to get money back after invest. But powerful ASICs like Avalon or BFL still can generate some profit.
Difficulty increase history is following (http://blockexplorer.com/q/nethash/2016):

Date                 Block Number    Difficulty           Difficulty increase        Difficulty increase (%)
08.01.2013        215712            3249549,58   269 913                     9,06%
23.01.2013        217728            2968775,33   -280 774                    -8,64%
05.02.2013        219744            3275464,58   306 689                     10,33%
18.02.2013        221760            3651011,63   375 547                     11,47%
01.03.2013        223776            4367876,00   716 864                     19,63%
14.03.2013        225792            4847647,15   479 771                     10,98%
24.03.2013        227808            6695826,28   1 848 179                   38,13%
05.04.2013        229824            7672999,92   977 174                     14,59%
17.04.2013        231840            8974296,01   1 301 296                   16,96%
30.04.2013        233856            10076292,88   1 101 997                   12,28%
12.05.2013        235872            11187257,46   1 307 161                   11,03%
25.05.2013        237888            12153411,70   1 307 161                   8,64%

Last year average increase every two weeks was 3,74%. This year it is already 12,87%. And it will go up after all Avalons will be delivered. And then there will be bunch of DIY miners from Avalon chips, and probably BFL. Very soon mining will be profitable only for miners with rare elite hardware.

[https]

Mine other coins

[Green Samurai]

It's depend how much GH's do You have and how much power it use

[J35st3r]

Last year average increase every two weeks was 3,74%. This year it is already 12,87%. And it will go up after all Avalons will be delivered. And then there will be bunch of DIY miners from Avalon chips, and probably BFL. Very soon mining will be profitable only for miners with rare elite hardware.

Which is why I chose 20% to illustrate my example, it may seem high now but once the next batch of Avalons and all those DIY chip miners come on stream it can ony go upwards. Perhaps the chip purchases will be profitable. Avalon is roughly 0.08BTC for 300MHash/s plus assembly costs, but you're still looking at up to 3 months delivery on new orders - 10 weeks for the chips, then all the business of getting them built onto mining boards. I'd have taken a punt if I had the BTC in hand, but the minimum order is typically 10 chips, and I'm a bit light on coin at the moment.

[Snub]

If you have some gpu's around that you still want to put to work than i would suggest mining LTC and than just trading it for bitcoin. Or you can just hold onto LTC in hopes the price goes up.

I wouldnt recommend gpus for bitcoin mining anymore sadly, just not up to snuff. Also the asic game as mentioned above is a bit sketchy to say the least so do your research before investing
as the only person who will lose money is yourself.

If your looking for a good LTC pool, checkout my pool at:

www.weloveltc.com

[boldar]

Yup, I've been doing more LTC now. I'm recently into the game and am starting to realize that to be successful you either have to be 1) The first person to the mines... (Sadly we missed that for BTC by about 2 years) or 2) the person selling the miners shovels.

I have some plans in the works for number 2. :-P

[Spectrome]

ASIC's cant mine Scrypt coins. i guess they saw this coming.

[weirdthall]

i have just made  5 replys

This is why the five post rule is stupid...

[OnkelPaul]

i have just made  5 replys

This is why the five post rule is stupid...

Well such a stream of useless replies just urges me to click on "ignore" - problem solved.
The 5 post rule also serves to show who does not have anything meaningful to say...

Onkel Paul