POLL: Will you mine at a loss?

[Peter Lambert]

There has been numerous mentions of what people think will happen if mining becomes less profitable. I thought it would be good to get an idea of what miners actually think.

[Mods: I think this may belong in mining, or economics, but I thought the subject comes up so often all over that I should just put it in the main bitcoin discussion board.]

[clonedone]

ill stop mining but i wont sell my machine cus i wanna watch the difficulty and prices

[Jack of Diamonds]

Have to pay for electricity and hardware costs, so when those surpass BTC value, no more mining.

Doesn't mean I'll sell of all my BTC, just means mining wont be worthwhile.
I estimate this to be around 8-10m difficulty if price stagnates

[bluefirecorp]

The only costs I have is the orginal price of the hardware, then the electricity. Hardware will last for 10+ years, life time warranty, so after card death, I get a new gaming card (obviously ATI won't have any 6870s in stock then, so free amazing card FTW? )

I live pretty near to renewable energy sources (dam+windmills), so my electric rates are cheap.
Currently they are $0.072

If I upgraded my connection to commercial AND used over 10,000 KwH, it'd only be $0.048..which is what? 1/4 the national average?

Doing some math now, it takes about 1 kilowatt to produce 1 gigahash (the power usage is including cooling and other factors).
Let's say it takes 1 week at 1 gigahash to produce 1 bitcoin, going 24/7...that's 12.096 USD in electricty.. I mean, seriously, I'd almost DOUBLE my money in a week from electricity, from doing NOTHING. Sure, I paid for hardware, but that was a single payment, it'll make it back in a few months.

[bluefirecorp]

The only costs I have is the orginal price of the hardware, then the electricity. Hardware will last for 10+ years, life time warranty, so after card death, I get a new gaming card (obviously ATI won't have any 6870s in stock then, so free amazing card FTW? )

I live pretty near to renewable energy sources (dam+windmills), so my electric rates are cheap.
Currently they are $0.072

If I upgraded my connection to commercial AND used over 10,000 KwH, it'd only be $0.048..which is what? 1/4 the national average?

How big of a mining rig would that be?

Erm, it'd be a huge cluster for 10,000 KwH. At 150 watts per card, 4 cards per machine..10,000 kWh/month requires 13.888 kWh/h (lawlz, kWh per hour..kekekekeke), anyways, 24 machines about.