Question for GPU miners

[lucasjkr]

With the jump in difficulty and the recent slump in Bitcoin prices, GPU mining seems like it's just about over with. Wondering what everyone's going to do? Sell their GPU's? Mine an alt coin? Which one? Seems any SHA coin can be overtaken by ASIC's, so will everyone be moving over to Litecoin?

Serious question.

I have a jalapeno pre-ordered since last early fall, and some friends were recently saying we should just go and buy a few Radeons while we waited, but I'm now quite happy that we didn't, especially now that Butterfly apparently is making big progress processing their order queue.

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[os2sam]

I think I will finally finish Unreal.

[juggalodarkclow]

I'm keeping 2 of my gpu's to put in a gaming pc for my kids, the other 7 gpu's I'm selling locally unless the buyer backs out

[Xian01]

With this last difficulty increase, I don't see GPU mining as being profitable any longer if you are looking to invest in PC hardware. Will probably be phasing, parting-out, and selling my GPU rigs by Christmas.

Disclosure: Was mining at a loss for a while over the last two years and ended up paying for all my GPU purchases + current ASIC hardware purchases, so YMMV.

[PeeJWeeJ]

There's no reason why they wouldn't switch to litecoin or some other scrypt coin. Many already have, and as it is currently more profitable even without too many ASICs, I think that's what will happen sooner rather than later.

[Hippie Tech]

Why are you guys letting a small dip in the price and diff jump scare you ??

Its not hard to imagine that there are many who regret selling off or shutting down their farms during the latter part of 2012.

I plan to expand as soon as the 78/79xx prices drop a little more..

[lucasjkr]

Yes, the price dip could be temporary. But the difficulty increase isn't, and will only be going up and up and up....Friedcat will continue adding capacity to ASICMiner, and Butterfly Labs sounds like they are actually working through thei backlogs...  Put those miners in peoples hands and lets see where difficulty is in August or September..

For people with big GPU investments (or any GPU investments), the short term course of action would seem like they should keep going for the time being, but when the difficulty flies up even more, they might be forced to take their machines offline, at least until the prices catches up.

Me, I'm crossing my fingers that BFL gets my units tot me in short order. But i simply can't imagine investing in a new Radeon card at this point in time. At least not for mining Bitcoins. The game definetly looks like it's changing.

Another thought I had is, lots of farms take themselves offline, ASICminer might find itself unintentionally in control o 51% of the network. What happens then?

[Hippie Tech]

Hey Lucas

I have a hunch that asics were developed with 51% attack mentality in mind. The easiest way to take BTC down would be to centralize it's hashpower.

With so many of these in the hands of the relatively few, the last thing we need right now is another alt coin diverting more gpus.

[wpgdeez]

I will keep my GPU's on until they are loosing me money, even at the current difficulty I am still making decent money off GPU's. I think if you want to be in the BTC mining game you need to get ASIC asap and keep reinvesting your BTC's in growing your farm to keep up with the hash rate. Eventually things will level out, it's in no ones interest to keep driving it up everyone looses out it the long run due to the increased cost of doing business (power and space) which is universal.

[azw409]

I agree with Hippie Tech, the only salvation for Bitcoin is to prevent ASIC's from getting a stranglehold which is already happening.

This could be done by changing bitcoin clients to allow two proof of work algorithms :-

 sha256 so that all the existing blocks are still valid and those with ASIC's can continue to mine using low power devices.

 scrypt so that those with GPU's i.e. the vast majority can continue mining for blocks using a different difficulty.

The new client will accept either, so it's the miner's choice which to use. This approach would allow those who've invested heavily in ASIC's to realise their investment but it prevents them owning all mining which will happen very soon otherwise. Perhaps it would also encourage the ASIC companies to actually ship their devices to their customers rather than hoarding them for their own benefit.

Altcoins will never wash with the public that have already invested in bitcoin since they'll lose all faith and won't know which coin is the 'official' replacement. I know bitcoin isn't perfect but it would be a shame to see it die now and damage the prospects for any future p2p currency.

[PCMiner]

This could be done by changing bitcoin clients to allow two proof of work algorithms :-

 sha256 so that all the existing blocks are still valid and those with ASIC's can continue to mine using low power devices.

 scrypt so that those with GPU's i.e. the vast majority can continue mining for blocks using a different difficulty.

The new client will accept either, so it's the miner's choice which to use. This approach would allow those who've invested heavily in ASIC's to realise their investment but it prevents them owning all mining which will happen very soon otherwise. Perhaps it would also encourage the ASIC companies to actually ship their devices to their customers rather than hoarding them for their own benefit.

You think thousands and thousands of GPU's dropping off SHA and switching to Scrypt won't massively increase the difficulty rate of Scrypt coins?

[Lolbbqcabbage]

Lets face it, BTC is going to die sooner or later for GPU miners. As a few have said, anything SHA based is pretty much stuffed.

Then scrypt will face similar problems with the increase of GPU miners switching, difficulty will increase making it harder for small time miners to stay in. Only the heavy hitters will stay afloat.

[-ck]

Lets face it, BTC is going to die sooner or later for GPU miners. As a few have said, anything SHA based is pretty much stuffed.

Then scrypt will face similar problems with the increase of GPU miners switching, difficulty will increase making it harder for small time miners to stay in. Only the heavy hitters will stay afloat.

The surprise for scrypt miners will come when mining scrypt is not profitable either. Who would trade ASIC earned BTC for GPU earned LTC at an effective loss? Yes I do believe the LTC economy is just an accessory to the BTC economy and can't stand up on its own right.

[kuzetsa]

Lets face it, BTC is going to die sooner or later for GPU miners. As a few have said, anything SHA based is pretty much stuffed.

Then scrypt will face similar problems with the increase of GPU miners switching, difficulty will increase making it harder for small time miners to stay in. Only the heavy hitters will stay afloat.

The surprise for scrypt miners will come when mining scrypt is not profitable either. Who would trade ASIC earned BTC for GPU earned LTC at an effective loss? Yes I do believe the LTC economy is just an accessory to the BTC economy and can't stand up on its own right.

There's always the possibility of scrypt-based litecoin being a healthy and/or more stable cryptocurrency than bitcoin...

What if:

• Bitcoin fails because of internal political disputes among devs and/or userbase, or perhaps a critical flaw is discovered which scrypt is not affected by
• Litecoin thrives because of adoption because of some arbitrary organization, social and/or political advocacy, etc. etc. etc.

Either scenario seems plausible to me... Or maybe they could just coexist like VHS and DVD, or sega dreamcast and sony playstation.

[jhansen858]

The old argument I always go back to is, show me one place I can spend litecoins besides just trading them for bitcoins or fiat and I'll believe they are a real thing.

[azw409]

You think thousands and thousands of GPU's dropping off SHA and switching to Scrypt won't massively increase the difficulty rate of Scrypt coins?

Yes, of course it will but this isn't about difficulty it's about democracy. I know mining scrypt will be just as competitive and probably only marginally profitable at best but it will prevent the elite ASIC owners gaining a stranglehold and killing bitcoin. I'm not whining that my low-end ATI card isn't making me a profit anymore, I'm concerned about the bigger picture in that thousands of GPU miners will soon be abandoning and basically leaving just BFL and ASICMiner to do all the mining between them. One of them could easily gain a 51% share but even less than this makes bitcoin a dangerous place.

[gnarl]

The old argument I always go back to is, show me one place I can spend litecoins besides just trading them for bitcoins or fiat and I'll believe they are a real thing.

Cablesaurus.com has a cool Bitcoin\Litecoin\USD checkout system. You can check the price in each type and pay in whatever is best at the moment. Its the coolest one I have seen so far.

[GSnak]

Why are you guys letting a small dip in the price and diff jump scare you ??

Its not hard to imagine that there are many who regret selling off or shutting down their farms during the latter part of 2012.

I plan to expand as soon as the 78/79xx prices drop a little more..

15,605,633
Next difficulty (estimate): 17,805,768

Currently payoff time for a GPU is about 400 days. There should be lots of used GPUs for you to buy.

[Hippie Tech]

Why are you guys letting a small dip in the price and diff jump scare you ??

Its not hard to imagine that there are many who regret selling off or shutting down their farms during the latter part of 2012.

I plan to expand as soon as the new/used 78/79xx prices drop a little more..

15,605,633
Next difficulty (estimate): 17,805,768

Currently payoff time for a GPU is about 400 days. There should be lots of used GPUs for you to buy.

I usually buy new because most people are asking for too much for their used gear or they seem sketchy. lol The warranty and the $$$ from selling the game codes, makes spending the extra 10-30% a no brainer.

[gregyoung14]

Why are you guys letting a small dip in the price and diff jump scare you ??

Its not hard to imagine that there are many who regret selling off or shutting down their farms during the latter part of 2012.

I plan to expand as soon as the 78/79xx prices drop a little more..

15,605,633
Next difficulty (estimate): 17,805,768

Currently payoff time for a GPU is about 400 days. There should be lots of used GPUs for you to buy.

How is payout time for a GPU 400 days? Wow, that number is really off. At a modest estimate 180 days, at a good estimate 120, anywhere in between is fair game.

If you have serious GPU power, then you just hop on every morning, check how the alt coins are doing, have a scrypt/bat file setup for each type of coin, I just hop on my ssh tunnel from my laptop, 3 lines later I'm mining whatever coin is most profitable, and I ride it till it changes, I usually stay on a coin for 24-48 hours. If some of the alt coins are being flakey with exchange prices (ie digitalcoin) then maybe I'll hop on LTC for some stable income to pass the time, and then when something flys back up in profitability, hop over.

Obviously mining isn't as glorious as it was say 45 days ago, when I could have easily made $120/month per 7950 with LTC, now that number is about $84 if I hop alt coins every day which is pretty sad, but hey, I'm still making plenty.

Especially because I don't pay for electricity and have infinite access to all the power I could ever need lol

Put it this way, $12,500 deep. 5 rigs, x6 cards each, each card hashes at 675. That returns $2500-3000

And even if I was paying for power, that would shave off about %35.

I don't think that's bad at all.