Question for the old miners regarding the period before ETH.

[dacutey1023]

Question for old timers here.

What was the money making coin for AMD GPUS before ETH and how long it lasted.
Did you put your miners to sleep until ETH came along when the profit went really low or you just migrated to ETH because it was more profitable?

[Vann]

The marketcap for Alt coins was much smaller before ETH came out. It sat at less than one billion for years. Back in 2014 when I started mining most coins were direct clones of BTC or LTC with little or no difference in features or innovation. After ASIC"S came out for Scypt, X11 and the crash of BTC to $200, all coins were unprofitable after power. Like myself, most people stopped mining. Those that kept mining even at a loss, were able to accumulate lots of coins for when the market turned back around. In hindsight, that was the right thing to do. The Crypto market is much bigger and diversified now than it was just a few years ago and there is also much more innovation than in the recent past. ETH is what brought the whole Alt coin market forward IMO.

[adaseb]

Nov 2013-June 2014 was very profitable mining LTC/DARKCOIN

From June 2014 till like Feburary 2016 pretty much put all GPUs in storage. Nothing to mine back then.

When ETH launched in Aug 2015 it was very profitable but only for 1 month.
Also there was Sharkcoin in May 2015 which was also very profitable but for only 1 month.

[RentGPU]

Mining got alot of attention this period than before , ppl mine and hold , i think this strategy made the mining unprofitable , if you would like to hold then why not just buy some coins , if you want a lambo and you have the money you should buy it , why would you like to build it from scratch , mining and trading are diffrenet jobs , miners sell thier coins with a some profit to the trader so he can make some money too , what make every coin unprofitable after a month or two is that ppl like to play it safe , they think it's safer to mine than trading , so they like trading by mining with intial cost thrown in hardware , but they don't know that taking the risk is a part of trading.
Give me any reason why ppl should get to mining or not selling thier rigs this days.

[philipma1957]

The rise started in spring of 2016

I had ended all my gpu mining but had a few mobos in mothballs

and 1 7970  rig.

I saw that asics in btc would  flat line with the s-9.

What I mean was the s-9 was not going to be outdated in  6 months and we would have   the ½ing of btc.

I felt GPUs would rise up again and I kept some asics for btc but went strong into gpus.
I gave up on eth this spring selling all my rx 480's

and moving to nvidia's.

The dynamics of mining changed again this summer with the bcc /bch fork and look to do so again with the btc gold fork.

I now mine BCC/BCH  and use my gpus to mine zec to btc  via nicehash.

I will be looking at btc gold very soon.

[Littledragons]

Yeah, as was stated above, mostly it was litecoin.
Dogecoin too - though that wasn't terribly profitable, it was more just for fun. Also nice to be a millionaire.
Litecoin was a huge thing much like eth is now - tons of other scrypt coins aswell. FGPAs really started to crap things out but then when ASICs hit, we were doomed.
I actually sold out of everything at that point as it was unprofitable to keep it all running, but Im kicking mysefl for ditching those LTC at 2-5 bucks each

[Za1n]

The year or so before ETH came along were very dark days for many miners. There were numerous stories of miners jumping off of bridges with a mining rig lashed to each leg using Cat 6 cable to help weigh them down. Sad times indeed, hopefully the slow times after ETH becomes unprofitable to mine are not as depressing as back then.

[davemanet]

The marketcap for Alt coins was much smaller before ETH came out. It sat at less than one billion for years. Back in 2014 when I started mining most coins were direct clones of BTC or LTC with little or no difference in features or innovation. After ASIC"S came out for Scypt, X11 and the crash of BTC to $200, all coins were unprofitable after power. Like myself, most people stopped mining. Those that kept mining even at a loss, were able to accumulate lots of coins for when the market turned back around. In hindsight, that was the right thing to do. The Crypto market is much bigger and diversified now than it was just a few years ago and there is also much more innovation than in the recent past. ETH is what brought the whole Alt coin market forward IMO.

I can't imagine mining for a loss.  Do you think people will still do that when ETH becomes unprofitable?

[Za1n]

The marketcap for Alt coins was much smaller before ETH came out. It sat at less than one billion for years. Back in 2014 when I started mining most coins were direct clones of BTC or LTC with little or no difference in features or innovation. After ASIC"S came out for Scypt, X11 and the crash of BTC to $200, all coins were unprofitable after power. Like myself, most people stopped mining. Those that kept mining even at a loss, were able to accumulate lots of coins for when the market turned back around. In hindsight, that was the right thing to do. The Crypto market is much bigger and diversified now than it was just a few years ago and there is also much more innovation than in the recent past. ETH is what brought the whole Alt coin market forward IMO.

I can't imagine mining for a loss.  Do you think people will still do that when ETH becomes unprofitable?

Mining at a loss is just plain stupidity. At no point does mining at a loss make any sense, as you are essentially paying more to mine the coin than if you were to outright buy it.

I am not saying buying and accumulating coins when the market is down is not a good thing to do, especially if you believe in a coins future, but to pay more to mine it than to outright buy it on the market is just silly.

[khufuking]

I know this question is probably related to the upcoming ETH change of alg to POS , I was not mining back in old days  but the time now is very different and I hope/sure it will not be like old days after ETH go to POS  , Even now ETH is not the most profitable to mine for a lot of cards , I do not think rig owners should be worry about what will happen next  .

[Vann]

The marketcap for Alt coins was much smaller before ETH came out. It sat at less than one billion for years. Back in 2014 when I started mining most coins were direct clones of BTC or LTC with little or no difference in features or innovation. After ASIC"S came out for Scypt, X11 and the crash of BTC to $200, all coins were unprofitable after power. Like myself, most people stopped mining. Those that kept mining even at a loss, were able to accumulate lots of coins for when the market turned back around. In hindsight, that was the right thing to do. The Crypto market is much bigger and diversified now than it was just a few years ago and there is also much more innovation than in the recent past. ETH is what brought the whole Alt coin market forward IMO.

I can't imagine mining for a loss.  Do you think people will still do that when ETH becomes unprofitable?

Mining at a loss is just plain stupidity. At no point does mining at a loss make any sense, as you are essentially paying more to mine the coin than if you were to outright buy it.

I am not saying buying and accumulating coins when the market is down is not a good thing to do, especially if you believe in a coins future, but to pay more to mine it than to outright buy it on the market is just silly.

That would be the case IF you couldn't accumulate more coins through mining than you can by buying the coins outright. Given your fixed costs are essentially the same for any coin you mine, the current profitability is irrelevant as long as you can accumulate more of those coins through mining for the same cost. Which obviously must be the case or there would be no incentive to keeping the network going through POW. In fact when profitability is low, it could be the best time to accumulate coins through mining vs buying, as the difficulty will also be much lower than it would be when profitability is high and everyone is mining.

A perfect example of this was in December of last year when the price of ETH was at $7-8 and mining ETH was less profitable than it is now. With an average difficulty of 80 TH and 15 second block times back in December 2016, a single six card RX 470/480 rig could mine almost 1 ETH a day. If you kept mining and accumulating coins, once ETH went parabolic last June you would have been in a much better position to profit.

https://99bitcoins.com/advanced-ethereum-mining-calculator/?eth_hash_rate=175&eth_hash_rate_grade=MH%2Fs&eth_difficulty=80482816705750&eth_block_time=15&eth_exchange_rate=7.50&eth_power_watts=900&eth_power_cost=.11&eth_hardware_costs=&eth_action=calculate

The same scenario played out for LTC and many coins that were unprofitable to mine back in 2014-2015. Those that kept mining and kept what they mined made out the best once the Alt coin market grew exponentially. Unfortunatley I only kept mining a few months after it was no longer profitable for me back then. The good news is I did keep most of what I mined and many of the coins went up 1000% since then, so I'm glad I did.

[dacutey1023]

Thank you guys for taking your time to answer my questions. Great information.

[davemanet]

The marketcap for Alt coins was much smaller before ETH came out. It sat at less than one billion for years. Back in 2014 when I started mining most coins were direct clones of BTC or LTC with little or no difference in features or innovation. After ASIC"S came out for Scypt, X11 and the crash of BTC to $200, all coins were unprofitable after power. Like myself, most people stopped mining. Those that kept mining even at a loss, were able to accumulate lots of coins for when the market turned back around. In hindsight, that was the right thing to do. The Crypto market is much bigger and diversified now than it was just a few years ago and there is also much more innovation than in the recent past. ETH is what brought the whole Alt coin market forward IMO.

I can't imagine mining for a loss.  Do you think people will still do that when ETH becomes unprofitable?

Mining at a loss is just plain stupidity. At no point does mining at a loss make any sense, as you are essentially paying more to mine the coin than if you were to outright buy it.

I am not saying buying and accumulating coins when the market is down is not a good thing to do, especially if you believe in a coins future, but to pay more to mine it than to outright buy it on the market is just silly.

That would be the case IF you couldn't accumulate more coins through mining than you can by buying the coins outright. Given your fixed costs are essentially the same for any coin you mine, the current profitability is irrelevant as long as you can accumulate more of those coins through mining for the same cost. Which obviously must be the case or there would be no incentive to keeping the network going through POW. In fact when profitability is low, it could be the best time to accumulate coins through mining vs buying, as the difficulty will also be much lower than it would be when profitability is high and everyone is mining.

A perfect example of this was in December of last year when the price of ETH was at $7-8 and mining ETH was less profitable than it is now. With an average difficulty of 80 TH and 15 second block times back in December 2016, a single six card RX 470/480 rig could mine almost 1 ETH a day. If you kept mining and accumulating coins, once ETH went parabolic last June you would have been in a much better position to profit.

https://99bitcoins.com/advanced-ethereum-mining-calculator/?eth_hash_rate=175&eth_hash_rate_grade=MH%2Fs&eth_difficulty=80482816705750&eth_block_time=15&eth_exchange_rate=7.50&eth_power_watts=900&eth_power_cost=.11&eth_hardware_costs=&eth_action=calculate

The same scenario played out for LTC and many coins that were unprofitable to mine back in 2014-2015. Those that kept mining and kept what they mined made out the best once the Alt coin market grew exponentially. Unfortunatley I only kept mining a few months after it was no longer profitable for me back then. The good news is I did keep most of what I mined and many of the coins went up 1000% since then, so I'm glad I did.

Can you explain this in mathematical terms?

Say you could mine 1 coin a day, worth $10.  Let's say that it cost you $10 in electricity.  So technically, that coin is "unprofitable".

Why would you therefore mine the coin, when you could just outright buy the coin for $10?

[DevelopmentBank]

The year or so before ETH came along were very dark days for many miners. There were numerous stories of miners jumping off of bridges with a mining rig lashed to each leg using Cat 6 cable to help weigh them down. Sad times indeed, hopefully the slow times after ETH becomes unprofitable to mine are not as depressing as back then.

I'd say you are very creative sir. I wish you never get depressed about mining.

Mining at a loss is just plain stupidity. At no point does mining at a loss make any sense, as you are essentially paying more to mine the coin than if you were to outright buy it.

I am not saying buying and accumulating coins when the market is down is not a good thing to do, especially if you believe in a coins future, but to pay more to mine it than to outright buy it on the market is just silly.

However, i disagree with you blatantly saying that mining at a loss is stupid, when mining at loss can definitely profitable. What if lets say a miner never stopped mining LTC since the beginning? His temporary losses back then would have earned him quite a large sum by now. It really just depends on each and every person's situation. Someone who has just invested all his money in building a rig is better off mining at a loss with a potential gain in the future rather than selling the mining rig at a loss then buying less of a coin.

[dragonmike]

The year or so before ETH came along were very dark days for many miners. There were numerous stories of miners jumping off of bridges with a mining rig lashed to each leg using Cat 6 cable to help weigh them down. Sad times indeed, hopefully the slow times after ETH becomes unprofitable to mine are not as depressing as back then.

I'd say you are very creative sir. I wish you never get depressed about mining.

Mining at a loss is just plain stupidity. At no point does mining at a loss make any sense, as you are essentially paying more to mine the coin than if you were to outright buy it.

I am not saying buying and accumulating coins when the market is down is not a good thing to do, especially if you believe in a coins future, but to pay more to mine it than to outright buy it on the market is just silly.

However, i disagree with you blatantly saying that mining at a loss is stupid, when mining at loss can definitely profitable. What if lets say a miner never stopped mining LTC since the beginning? His temporary losses back then would have earned him quite a large sum by now. It really just depends on each and every person's situation. Someone who has just invested all his money in building a rig is better off mining at a loss with a potential gain in the future rather than selling the mining rig at a loss then buying less of a coin.

No, you and Vann are not understanding the basic principle. You're trying to justify a higher cost.

If a coin costs $10 and you buy it, you pay $10.
If a coin costs $10 and it costs you $12 to mine it, you are overpaying the coin by $2. So if you mine it, you pay $12.

Let this sink in for a second.
It does not matter what that coin will be worth down the line. If it costs you more to mine it than to buy it outright, mining makes no economical sense. You're just trying to justify the use of your machine.

[antantti]

From summer of 2014 to summer 2015 you needed nvidia or private amd miner to be profitable.  

I sold most of my amd's to buy nvidia after scrypt gpu mining was done, the rest went to gather dust for more than one year. ETH launch was 8/2015 that's when my amd's were back online. In late 2015/ early 2016 I was selling my nvidia's to buy back old amd's...

Can you explain this in mathematical terms?

I'm interested in hearing this too. There have been some very profitable shitcoins to mine (usually nvidia algos) that I would never pay a single penny for. But they don't last long, usually days or weeks. Or some good projects that are not on exchanges yet. Those are the two cases were buying isn't an option so mining wins.

Someone who has just invested all his money in building a rig is better off mining at a loss with a potential gain in the future rather than selling the mining rig at a loss then buying less of a coin.

That miner cannot pay his/ her first power bill because it's bigger than mining profits, really bad business.

It gets even worse if rigs were bought on credit, there is cc bill too, really really really bad business.

It gets close to catastrophic if rigs were bought on credit and with inflated prices.