Is profitable bitcoin mining screaching to a halt?

[spinnaker]

I'm not exactly new to bitcoins, but I am new to the hardcore mining side. I've got a few hundred Mhash/second coming in on about 100 computers I have mining on a pool almost 24/7, but I'm sick of it. I want to start raking in the G/hashes and am tired of using shitty computers.

The great thing about where I am is that there is an unlimited supply of power everywhere... Don't ask how or why. It just is.

Seeing that I don't have electricity bills, would BTC mining be worth it in the long run? Or would the coming difficulty hikes crush my dream of being a bitcoin millionaire?

If I had heard about BTC earlier I would probably be rich right now. I'm an IT guy and a self-taught computer whiz. One person said by the next difficulty change, I will likely see my daily BTC's cut in half. Is that true? If so, does that mean the next will be 1/4th? How is that even remotely profitable for long-term miners?

Lots of questions. If you could help answer a few, I would be eternally grateful.

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[Dargo]

There are very many "Is mining worth it?" threads on this board - I suggest you start by reading through them rather than starting yet another one. I hope I don't come off as being mean, because I don't intend to be, but this topic has just been beaten to death IMO. And, really, nobody knows for sure - it all depends on where the price of Bitcoin goes (and how fast the difficulty increases).

[Stormalong]

I think we are at a point where it isn't really profitable to START mining (ie investing in equipment) but it is still profitable to CONTINUE mining. I've been mining for about 2 months, when I got rolling I was earning ~6BTC/day. I'm now around 0.5BTC/day. I figure electricity costs are about $1.50/day, so currently I'm mining at about $3/BTC, and I can sell them for ~$15/BTC, so its still profitable.

[spinnaker]

There are very many "Is mining worth it?" threads on this board - I suggest you start by reading through them rather than starting yet another one. I hope I don't come off as being mean, because I don't intend to be, but this topic has just been beaten to death IMO. And, really, nobody knows for sure - it all depends on where the price of Bitcoin goes (and how fast the difficulty increases).

Hey there,

Sorry to plague the site with a duplicate thread. I was just trying to post something in the noob section to get my account rolling. This was the first to come to mind.

I'm pretty sure, what with my free electricity, it could be profitable to start mining, but I'd have to do it EXTREMELY efficiently. i.e. used or wholesale prices, and lots more of this CPU mining that I have right now to accelerate my payoff.

Speaking of difficulty, what determines it?

[botlove]

I'm going to guess that it's not worth it.  Because there's a lot of suckers that will receive outdated information, and they will all try to make money from bitcoins for at least a day or two, even though if they did their homework they'd know that they'd be losing money.... and suckers that will get infected with a mining virus and their system will be a bot that sends a few MH/h into a rogue mining pool.. and combined, there will be increases in difficulty while the prices don't reflect the honest cost of electricity, anyhow. Then, besides that, CPU mining is just not competitive with hardcore GPU mining, and on top of that some secret group of elites will sell their original batch of 1 mil BTCs for startup capital to make a batch of ASICs and then even GPUs won't be competitive any more.

[Dargo]

spinnaker,

No worries, it is a natural issue to raise. I'm just getting tired of it, that's all. You will have to look up the exact details on how difficulty is determined, but the basic idea is that bitcoins are designed to be created or mined according to a precise mathematical curve, independently of the hashing power used to mine them. If there is enough hashing power to get ahead of the curve a bit, then the difficulty increases to compensate for this and keep the bitcoins rolling out at the rate they were intended to. That is my understanding, at least, screening out all the technical details.

[bitcoinaddict]

I think it is still profitable to continue mining and even start mining, as long as you realize it isn't a one month ROI.  If you know going in that it may be 6 months to a year for break even then you will be ok.  This is assuming that you can get electricity for cheap.