I hear often that mining is not worth it anymore for newcomers, is this true?

[dreamer2008]

I just discovered Bitcoins a short while ago, and I would like to able to mine a little too.

I am not thinking about farms, just to upgrade my PC and mine, and try to earn back the money from my investment and maybe get a little profit. Is this realistic right now, or truly I am too late to start mining?

[killer2021]

I just discovered Bitcoins a short while ago, and I would like to able to mine a little too.

I am not thinking about farms, just to upgrade my PC and mine, and try to earn back the money from my investment and maybe get a little profit. Is this realistic right now, or truly I am too late to start mining?

No I don't think you are late. However, at this point you have to have good rig design + cheap electricity.

If your electricity is higher than 10c/kwh then definitely don't even bother mining. You'll probably want a rate around 6-7c/kwh.

You'll also have to do some research into which setup is able to convert electricity into hashes at a high efficiency. Also factoring in cost of equipment.

[mouser98]

I just discovered Bitcoins a short while ago, and I would like to able to mine a little too.

I am not thinking about farms, just to upgrade my PC and mine, and try to earn back the money from my investment and maybe get a little profit. Is this realistic right now, or truly I am too late to start mining?

No I don't think you are late. However, at this point you have to have good rig design + cheap electricity.

If your electricity is higher than 10c/kwh then definitely don't even bother mining. You'll probably want a rate around 6-7c/kwh.

You'll also have to do some research into which setup is able to convert electricity into hashes at a high efficiency. Also factoring in cost of equipment.

this is true if the current price of BTC holds ($15-16) but if the price moves up in response to scarcity resulting from higher difficulty, then BTC mining will be potentially as profitable as it has been up until now.  personally i believe btc are way undervalued.  but, if i am right, then it might be simpler at this time just to speculate by buying up btc.

[dreamer2008]

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately I have to pay 15 cents for power, that means its not worth it?

I planned to buy 2 cards hd 6970 and this calculator (http://98.200.247.249:81/btc_calc.php) shows that I might be able to still make some profit, even get the return of my investment in 100 days.

[Grouver (BtcBalance)]

Its buying time now.

So yeah for begninners its not an ideal time to start mining.
Buy when they are low and start mining when they are high (or/and the difficuly drops).

[Nicksasa]

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately I have to pay 15 cents for power, that means its not worth it?

I planned to buy 2 cards hd 6970 and this calculator (http://98.200.247.249:81/btc_calc.php) shows that I might be able to still make some profit, even get the return of my investment in 100 days.

The current difficulty
The estimated difficulty change

And since there's a difficulty change every ~12 days, it will be a lot longer then 100 days. That calculator only uses the current difficulty and the estimated difficulty and uses it in the calculations like it will be the same estimate every time. Currently it's around 15% increase, but we've had enough 50-60% increases before.

[CNMOH]

I just discovered Bitcoins a short while ago, and I would like to able to mine a little too.

I am not thinking about farms, just to upgrade my PC and mine, and try to earn back the money from my investment and maybe get a little profit. Is this realistic right now, or truly I am too late to start mining?

No I don't think you are late. However, at this point you have to have good rig design + cheap electricity.

If your electricity is higher than 10c/kwh then definitely don't even bother mining. You'll probably want a rate around 6-7c/kwh.

You'll also have to do some research into which setup is able to convert electricity into hashes at a high efficiency. Also factoring in cost of equipment.

this is true if the current price of BTC holds ($15-16) but if the price moves up in response to scarcity resulting from higher difficulty, then BTC mining will be potentially as profitable as it has been up until now.  personally i believe btc are way undervalued.  but, if i am right, then it might be simpler at this time just to speculate by buying up btc.

There won't be any "scarcity". The supply of bitcoins is almost constant.

[zerokwel]

well my plan is to upgrade and build using little to no money. I have seen plenty people getting in a hole then they realise the return is not as good as they expected due to mining downtime. hardware failure etc.

yes I could of made a lot more but I like to limit my risks. Mining is good as long as you don't expect the return to pay for xyz. for any new miners I would say start small and expand for there and don't be greedy. I have seen plenty of people here mass buy then they are not able to make as much as they thought.

Or do not think of how damm hot your house gets when you have 4+ gpu's blowing out 90c around the house etc.

so is mining worth it YES. as long as you consider the above.

[talldude]

To build a rig from scratch, you'll have to put down minimum $300 for peripherals (psu, mobo, ram, cpu, hdd) and then about $200-250 per 6950 (they net around 350mhash). So you're looking at an investment of $500 for 350mhash. That will produce a whopping .25 BTC per day right now. Assuming a steady difficulty and BTC price and free electricity, it would take 133 days to pay back your investment. And then you have price risk, and difficulty risk. In other words, if you want to play with BTC and don't already have the hardware, better to just buy them.

[bitrain]

Bottom line: I does worth it only if you have good equipment or unlimited free electricity...

[Cluster2k]

I've been mining for a while now, but am about to sell most of my hardware (6950s, etc).  Keeping the most efficient PC running as it has paid for itself.  The question for me in regards to whether or not to continue mining was that keeping $1200 of hardware pumping out $5 a day after costs didn't seem like a brilliant idea.  The hardware is likely to depreciate almost as fast as I'm making bitcoins.  Few gamers will care about a 6950 next year.  Counting on a bitcoin's value increasing some time in the future is risky.  Difficulty has increased over 100% in the last few weeks yet the price has actually fallen.

One of my dual 6950 PCs burns 300kWh per month.  Sure it's still profitable, but using so much power for so little return seems like such a waste of resources.

Cheap 6950s on eBay if anyone wants them :-)

[kokojie]

I just discovered Bitcoins a short while ago, and I would like to able to mine a little too.

I am not thinking about farms, just to upgrade my PC and mine, and try to earn back the money from my investment and maybe get a little profit. Is this realistic right now, or truly I am too late to start mining?

No I don't think you are late. However, at this point you have to have good rig design + cheap electricity.

If your electricity is higher than 10c/kwh then definitely don't even bother mining. You'll probably want a rate around 6-7c/kwh.

You'll also have to do some research into which setup is able to convert electricity into hashes at a high efficiency. Also factoring in cost of equipment.

this is true if the current price of BTC holds ($15-16) but if the price moves up in response to scarcity resulting from higher difficulty, then BTC mining will be potentially as profitable as it has been up until now.  personally i believe btc are way undervalued.  but, if i am right, then it might be simpler at this time just to speculate by buying up btc.

How long have you been mining? for the millionth time, PRICE DOES NOT MOVE IN RESPONSE TO DIFFICULTY, the only thing that determines the price of BTC, is the people's demand for it.

[Nicksasa]

I just discovered Bitcoins a short while ago, and I would like to able to mine a little too.

I am not thinking about farms, just to upgrade my PC and mine, and try to earn back the money from my investment and maybe get a little profit. Is this realistic right now, or truly I am too late to start mining?

No I don't think you are late. However, at this point you have to have good rig design + cheap electricity.

If your electricity is higher than 10c/kwh then definitely don't even bother mining. You'll probably want a rate around 6-7c/kwh.

You'll also have to do some research into which setup is able to convert electricity into hashes at a high efficiency. Also factoring in cost of equipment.

this is true if the current price of BTC holds ($15-16) but if the price moves up in response to scarcity resulting from higher difficulty, then BTC mining will be potentially as profitable as it has been up until now.  personally i believe btc are way undervalued.  but, if i am right, then it might be simpler at this time just to speculate by buying up btc.

How long have you been mining? for the millionth time, PRICE DOES NOT MOVE IN RESPONSE TO DIFFICULTY, the only thing that determines the price of BTC, is the people's demand for it.

Indeed, the last 2 jump's it didn't increase but even dropped.

[dreamer2008]

Well, I guess that my dreams of mining end here then .

Thank you all very much for saving me from taking a bad decision.

[Cluster2k]

Well, I guess that my dreams of mining end here then .

Thank you all very much for saving me from taking a bad decision.

It's not quite over yet.  If someone releases an efficient FPGA design on an affordable board then power costs won't matter at all.  FPGAs consume a lot less power per Mhash than any graphics card available today.  I recall reading on another forum section that an 80Mhash/s design is available and consumes only 10 watts of power, but requires a $600 development board.  40 watts for 320Mhash/s handily beats my 6950 which is about as fast and requires over 200 watts per card.

This however assumes two things: that someone will make publicaly available a cheap FPGA board, and the software to make it work.  If someone gains a huge advantage by employing FPGAs to hash then I don't expect them to cheaply share their knowledge or design.

[dreamer2008]

Actually I decided to buy for now one 6950 for my gaming needs, but since most of the time I have to spend time on my laptop to study, I will use it for mining. I found a great offer of the 1GB version with a game present, so I think I will most certainly buy it, even if I won't make any profit from mining.

[mouser98]

I just discovered Bitcoins a short while ago, and I would like to able to mine a little too.

I am not thinking about farms, just to upgrade my PC and mine, and try to earn back the money from my investment and maybe get a little profit. Is this realistic right now, or truly I am too late to start mining?

No I don't think you are late. However, at this point you have to have good rig design + cheap electricity.

If your electricity is higher than 10c/kwh then definitely don't even bother mining. You'll probably want a rate around 6-7c/kwh.

You'll also have to do some research into which setup is able to convert electricity into hashes at a high efficiency. Also factoring in cost of equipment.

this is true if the current price of BTC holds ($15-16) but if the price moves up in response to scarcity resulting from higher difficulty, then BTC mining will be potentially as profitable as it has been up until now.  personally i believe btc are way undervalued.  but, if i am right, then it might be simpler at this time just to speculate by buying up btc.

How long have you been mining? for the millionth time, PRICE DOES NOT MOVE IN RESPONSE TO DIFFICULTY, the only thing that determines the price of BTC, is the people's demand for it.

well, you are half right.

[fascistmuffin]

Actually I decided to buy for now one 6950 for my gaming needs, but since most of the time I have to spend time on my laptop to study, I will use it for mining. I found a great offer of the 1GB version with a game present, so I think I will most certainly buy it, even if I won't make any profit from mining.

That's a good way to go. I upgraded my graphics card in January, and the one I got happened to be one a good mining card, and I didn't realize that at the time since I wasn't aware of bitcoin. I don't consider that a investment into bitcoin since my desktop is my gaming rig I've built over the last few years. Getting a free game is always great too.

[dreamer2008]

And the free game is Shogun Total War 2 . A good game that I planned to buy in the future anyway.

And as a greater incentive I think that my old video card is broken. I had this surprise an hour ago.

[Btcvilla]

ohhh you guys were so wrong.