Economics of mining today

[Wagner2014]

Question: if you buy one of these:

50 GH/s Bitcoin Miner
BitForce 50 GH/s Miner
$2,499.00

http://www.butterflylabs.com/

Turn it on 24/7/365...

How many coins could you mine per month (roughly)?

How much electricity would it cost (roughly)?

This is an economic question, as I am primarily trying to understand the motives and likely actions of miners - i.e., hording or selling of bitcoins.

[Rodyland]

http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

[Wagner2014]

http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

Thanks a lot. That's what I was looking for. 

[bigdata]

Remember the difficulty will increase from now and you will be in a queue when you order at butterflylabs...

http://blockchain.info/de/charts/hash-rate

[Rodyland]

Remember the difficulty will increase from now and you will be in a queue when you order at butterflylabs...

http://blockchain.info/de/charts/hash-rate

A loooooooooooooong queue.

[TheBanker]

All signs point to NEVER doing business with Butterfly Labs . . .

[Adrian-x]

Not often do people plan your business for you.

Here is a link: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

Bitcoin difficulty: you need to guess how it will change (doubling in the coming year would be conservative)
Conversion rate: you have to guess for a projection
Hash rate (MHash/s): 50,000 = 50GH
Electricity rate (USD/kWh): Phone your utility company my cost is around $0.06.
Power consumption (W): ask Butterfly Labs (probably up of 750W)

I would recommend reading a few Butterfly Labs reviews and talking to past customers before ordering.

[jamesc760]

Another sucker being born...

[Rodyland]

I would recommend reading a few Butterfly Labs reviews and talking to past customers before ordering.

I personally have vowed to never deal with butterfly labs.  IMO their incompetence and misinformation has been so outstanding, so outlandish, that they have not merely screwed their own customers, but they have arguably put the entire bitcoin asic mining industry back by 6 to 12 months.  Add to this their utter disdain for their own (pre-) paying customers and laughable customer service, and frankly it makes me sad this company is still in business.

But that's just me, you make your own call.

[johnyj]

BFL mass shipping now, network hashrate over 200TH, multiple mini-rigs appeared in BTC guild

[DrGregMulhauser]

This is an economic question, as I am primarily trying to understand the motives and likely actions of miners - i.e., hording or selling of bitcoins.

In an article called The Economics of Investing in Bitcoin Mining, I suggested that many Bitcoin enthusiasts are deeply attracted by the idea of mining their own, and that there is certainly value in that, but that at the same time, there is significant opportunity cost associated with investing in mining rather than investing in Bitcoins themselves.

As in the nineteenth century, some of the forty-niners traveling to California soon after the discovery of gold in 1848 became rich, especially the early ones, but many others wound up going home again with little or nothing to show for it.

[Albert Speer]

Do not buy you will lose in the longterm

[cdog]

The motives of the miners are highly varied. Some people mine and immediately convert to fiat to pay expenses or buy more mining gear, others mine and hold, some mine and trade the BTC for other currencies (fiat and crypto) on sites like BTC-e, and some mine and gamble with the proceeds on sites like Seals With Clubs...

Then there are people like me who would mine even if it had a negative expected value, just to help secure the network and retain the value of the coins I already hold...

[johnyj]

In a traditional investment, a great investment could get a 100% annual return during several years' period. But in mining investment, a profitable investment should get a 100% return in just 3 months and then it died after 1 year, means the investment frequency are much higher

[Albert Speer]

Economics are so complicated..

[Adrian-x]

Economics are so complicated..

If you're a Keynesian, it is simple otherwise, you need to think of it as the result of the measurement of the voluntary exchanges.

[corrow]

Do not buy you will lose in the longterm

Explosie yourself!

[danhu]

none of the pre order bitcoin miner out there can give you profit . see calculation http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php

[balanghai]

Better buy cex shares which mines right now, and not those items you wait forever. Cloud mining is way to go if you can't afford the cheapest $/GHs machine which sells at around $5,000 each.

[Shallow]

Mining is just not profitable these days