Is Mining REALLY worth it?

[aid2action]

I see people post videos on youtube about how they paid off thier equiptment in the first month, and i see the uploaded date in youtube saying it was just 1 month ago.... Right now, I have about the same specs as that guy, and I don't see me paying this equiptment off for at LEAST 4 months if not more as the Diff level increases.

1.) The guy posted, and had well over 300 BitCoings for 1 month of mining..
2.) He showed the Mt. Gox website at $28 per Bitcoin.


I know this doesn't exist anymore... Just really discouraged today i guess... Wanted to get everyones input on the future of mining.

what is the real value of a bit  coin

aid2action

[ruski]

The price is NOT tied to the difficulty. The two are only remotely related, and if you're telling yourself otherwise, you're joking.

The amount of bitcoins being traded in the entire economy is related to the price, and still only loosely. When the difficulty increases, less coins are generated - but it's only a drop in the bucket compared to the amount that already exist.

There are things called lagging indicators, and leading indicators - look them up. Difficulty is a distant lagging indicator, at best. Price at this point is determined by speculation and utility.

[weirdgod]

I am also mining just with my existing equipment as profitability is too low to justify new hw investments. I think that in fewweeks a lot of people will notice this and stop mining as it will be a net loss unless you have free electricity. Even now growth rate of mining is flattening... so next few weeks wil show us whether to mine or stop.

[RandyFolds]

I am also mining just with my existing equipment as profitability is too low to justify new hw investments. I think that in fewweeks a lot of people will notice this and stop mining as it will be a net loss unless you have free electricity. Even now growth rate of mining is flattening... so next few weeks wil show us whether to mine or stop.

If the growth rate is flattening, it only follows that anyone currently turning a profit will continue to do so as the difficulty will not increase. Your logic is flawed, and power is essentially subsidized by the government. I need to see difficulty quadruple or the value drop 75% to get near the 'unprofitable' mark, and that is factoring in Tier 3 energy costs.

[bitebitebite]

I am also mining just with my existing equipment as profitability is too low to justify new hw investments. I think that in fewweeks a lot of people will notice this and stop mining as it will be a net loss unless you have free electricity. Even now growth rate of mining is flattening... so next few weeks wil show us whether to mine or stop.

If the growth rate is flattening, it only follows that anyone currently turning a profit will continue to do so as the difficulty will not increase. Your logic is flawed, and power is essentially subsidized by the government. I need to see difficulty quadruple or the value drop 75% to get near the 'unprofitable' mark, and that is factoring in Tier 3 energy costs.

 How many TH/s are you pushing out of curiousity?

 Personally I think most people have only one or two mid range cards (many with much less), and feel its a waste of time having a computer on 24/7 - mining all week for $30 (£19 here), never mind much less. Iv got a 6990 and am about to pack it in (have started switching it off during the day). I mean it's profitable, but not worth it in my opinion - unless your pushing some major hashes.

 From a standpoint of what my time is worth; its been a negative investment

[NathanEO]

Currently I run two dedicated mining rigs 2,5GHash combined.
The miners are located at my office with the luxury of an electricity flatrate.
With the current exchange rate of 15.- USD/Btc it will take several month for me to reach the break-even with my investment into hardware.
If I had to pay for elektricity of the rigs things would be even worse.

All in all I will earn money some day. And the hardware - which makes for an excellent gaming rig - is paid for.

Even if do not count in the time it took to build and setup the rigs bitcoin mining is still some sort of a gamble.
Also the mining rigs need to be actively monitored.

So if you want to start mining only for the money you need to bring patience.
Only dedicated mining rigs are worth the effort. You will never make real money with your home computer and a single graphics card.

[bitebitebite]

Only dedicated mining rigs are worth the effort

 You would get more BTC by just buying BTC with the money required to build a rig (its lifetime ROI, hardware depreciation etc) from all the calculations I'v ever seen. Could you please provide one that proves otherwise (non static difficulty guestemation if possible) as I would find this very interesting, and have yet to see one (maybe I'v just been unlucky in that regard)

[Miner99er]

Honestly, I plan on flipping rigs after 30 days. The hardware has made me money, the depreciation on the hardware is just about nil over a month period from purchase price, and there will always be someone looking to buy up end computer parts a few dollars lower than retail if they can.

Also you gotta know when to expect newer hardware to enter the market. End of july and into mid august would be the WORST time to invest in mining cards due to AMD's next Gen cards coming out.

Alternatively, we don't know how well nVidia's cards will perform also, though I think both cams are running a die shrink of their current generation (40nm to 28nm.)

By that time, If I were to speculate... 5830's will flood the market as soon as we get to see what the HD7850 and HD7870 can do, and for a decent dollar at that.

I know I'll have sold the two 5830's I have before then end of august and hold onto cash for those guys, even if they're $300 a pop.

[joulesbeef]

I will say it's easier to find the hardware. Newegg isnt selling out of its cards as fast.(you see a few people bitten by this, expecting to turn over cards immediately for a profit)

lots of big rig sales in the market here in the forums.

Cards on ebay arent going for a premium anymore, and all the ads mention bitcoin and hash rates.

I believe a lot of people have already quit mining, but that their hardware is now in use by new miners who heard all the quick rich stories. The only reason why growth is flat is the new people are matching the old people leaving and optimization of the mining software.

the nice thing though, is if growth actually starts to decline we will see difficulty decreases. Right now it can go either way on the next difficulty change, and if it goes up it will be even smaller than the last time which wasnt much.

Probably didnt help but it isnt as profitable as it was, it isnt as easy as it was, but prices can change and so can difficulty

[Einewton]

I guess it's worth it long term, next year at this time, we will see what really happens, and that will be able to determine if it's really worth it.

I would imagine only the large operation farm's will be successful in the future.

[NathanEO]

Hi bitebitebite,

Only dedicated mining rigs are worth the effort

 You would get more BTC by just buying BTC with the money required to build a rig (its lifetime ROI, hardware depreciation etc) from all the calculations I'v ever seen. Could you please provide one that proves otherwise (non static difficulty guestemation if possible) as I would find this very interesting, and have yet to see one (maybe I'v just been unlucky in that regard)

Since the OP is about mining my answer also is about mining and not about trading.
What I mean is that a standard home PC will never make you happy when used for mining. Only dedicated bitcoin rigs will earn you some money.

In the past with ever rising exchange rates trading surely was an easy way to make BC. But I do not like the volatile nature of markets in general. Bitcoin mining is "just" a nerd thing and a gamble for me. With mining there is no need to monitor exchange rates all the time. After the break-even I can go ahead making profit. The mining rigs on Linux run super stable. Setup and forget more or less.
I think the days of the big gold rush in BC are over. It's more of a longterm thing now. If it would be only for the money I would probably invest in something else than bitcoins.

Greetz,
NathanEO

[cinos11]

Comes down to your power usage+video card.
You have to find a balance between the 2 to get a good profit.

[peps1c0la]

I'm currently mining at a little over 1 Gh/s and it just feel's discouraging i guess.. I'm trying to think of products/services I can provide for people willing to pay in BitCoin. I guess I shouldn't put all of my eggs in one basket (mining)...

Over 1Gh/s? Think about us poor folk who can only manage to mine at 1/5 of that 

ppssshhh...  My GPUs won't handle mining, so I am on a pool and was THRILLED to get 3mh/s!  I am destined to be BCP (bitcoin poor) for life.  As the real world leads, it looks as though my digital world shall follow... 

[Dargo]

Mining for profit is and always has been a highly speculative venture. The only miners *guaranteed* a profit are those who have already payed off their rigs and are selling their mined BCs at current prices. As with any highly speculative venture, you shouldn't do it if you can't take the risk. Mining is riskier now than it was even a few months ago, but nobody knows for sure when it will be "too late" to get in. A few months from now BC could be selling for $60 or more and people will be saying how they wished they had started a few months back when it was still profitable, and going on to say that they wouldn't start now because of the difficulty level and the surely unsustainable BC price. We could go through several cycles like this before mining finally is a bust. If I ever see infomercials selling BC mining rigs to the general public at inflated prices, I will take this as a sure sign that the game is finally up. But my instinct from trading stocks tells me that the dumb money hasn't arrived yet, and if so, there may be profit left in this for a little while yet (I could be wrong of course). I'm just mining as a fun side hobby, and if I end up with some profit, that will be a nice plus. Those who started mining BCs from the start probably had similar motivations, since it didn't look like a profitable venture then either.

[Einewton]

If I ever see infomercials selling BC mining rigs to the general public at inflated prices, I will take this as a sure sign that the game is finally up.

Here is the infomercial selling rigs and mining power to the general public...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb3sCcDkKcE



Game Over??

[r00tbeer]

I can't imagine what would happen to mining if BTCs get coverage on mainstream media. Perhaps the already-flooded mining community will flood even more?

[Einewton]

I can't imagine what would happen to mining if BTCs get coverage on mainstream media. Perhaps the already-flooded mining community will flood even more?

I hear about BitCoin on CNN, isn't that mainstream??

[thefussydutchman]

Not worth it anymore. Sorry 

[Dargo]

If I ever see infomercials selling BC mining rigs to the general public at inflated prices, I will take this as a sure sign that the game is finally up.

Here is the infomercial selling rigs and mining power to the general public...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb3sCcDkKcE



Game Over??

Lol, well a youtube infomercial with a little over 1k views isn't quite what I had in mind, so it may not be game over yet.

[Einewton]

Now I’ve been doing it for only 1 week. So based on my little experience and from what I have researched, it is pretty much over for someone without a stable financial background or mining less than 1 Gh/s that is not a pool owner.  You need to be able to pour some large sums of cash into it; you will be able to stay in the game. It's a constant uphill battle that I have to keep growing my equipment weekly or bi-weekly in order to stay up with the growth of the market.

If I can stay up with it consistently, I can see myself making some good BTC’s by the end of 2012, because the value of BTC will be higher, and finding a block and getting a reward of 25 may be the same value (or higher) as what you’d pay for 50 BTC’s today.

Thank everyone who has replied, and I hope all of the miners out there are having a great journey as I am.