How does a new person break into bitcoin mining?

[nexus99]

I am curious about opinions.

Just say you have a person today that wants to start bitcoin mining. How do they start and be able to at least ROI their investment? Just curious about what your plan would be.

[Meizirkki]

The only way to break even is to buy a crowbar, break into a miner's house and steal their miners.

[Mitchell]

The only way to break even is to buy a crowbar, break into a miners house and steal their miners.

That is the best description I have ever read. Mining is getting more and more expensive, so you would be better off buying and selling BitCoins / Altcurrency.

[Trongersoll]

The only way to get into Bitcoin mining now is as a HOBBY. ROI isn't likely. That being said, ASICminer USB Block Erupters are an easy, expensive way to get started. ASICminer Blades are a little less expensive but cost more over all. GPUs seem to be acient history.  everything else seems to be a dream.

[ScaryHash]

Well, I can tell you my plan as of 3 months ago. Piss away a bunch of money on ASICS that never got delivered. The only thing that actually worked was getting the block erupter usb up and learning how to use it.

BFL hasn't delivered and neither has Avalon. Don't order preorder stuff.

The GPU is dead as of 65 million difficulty. It's not really worth the power it burns.

Get yourself a couple of cheap block erupters and make them work. Then decide what you wanna do. Hash rate is addicting, I can tell you that.

I've learned a lot and it has been fun. Just don't expect to actually make gobs of cash.

[metal_jacke1]

If you speculate the price of Bitcoin to increase along with the difficulty level then you will see a ROI (eventually)

Good beginner site would be minersource.net or buy from the forums or some other trusted seller of bitcoin mining hardware that have the hardware actually in stock.

I agree with the above statements. No preorder crap.

[darksoft]

Or you can mine altcoins (scrypt) using GPUs and convert to bitcoin.

[Rannasha]

If you speculate the price of Bitcoin to increase along with the difficulty level then you will see a ROI (eventually)

If you speculate on BTC price to rise, just buy and hold BTC. Don't mine unless you're betting that you will mine more BTC than the BTC-value of your investment at the time you make the investment.

[mgio]

Same as what others said. You can't ROI right now.

Best thing to do is to read this forum everyday. Wait till a new company announces a new pre-order miner and be the first in line to take a big risk and pre-order. Then pray it wasn't a scam and that they actually deliver on time. That is what everyone who made money since ASICs took over has done. You might get lucky and make some money.

[OtaconEmmerich]

Short term(Less then a year) ROI will never happen unless you happen to sell off your ASIC, If you want to get into Bitcoin mining the best way right now it to mine LITECOINS or any other scrypt based coin, It's not a big profit but it's a profit. If you want to invest a moderate amount of money in bitcoin, I'd buy and Hold onto BTC and maybe sell it off in 1-3 months.

[tom_o]

I am curious about opinions.

Just say you have a person today that wants to start bitcoin mining. How do they start and be able to at least ROI their investment? Just curious about what your plan would be.

Buy used 5 series GPUs, get free electric, mine altcoins, trade to BTC.

[Bitweasil]

Same as what others said. You can't ROI right now.

Best thing to do is to read this forum everyday. Wait till a new company announces a new pre-order miner and be the first in line to take a big risk and pre-order. Then pray it wasn't a scam and that they actually deliver on time. That is what everyone who made money since ASICs took over has done. You might get lucky and make some money.

That's pretty much it.  There's so much hashrate in the preorder pipeline (and nobody actually knows how much) that any bet on buying an ASIC miner right now is a gamble that is highly unlikely to pay off.

You could always buy some FPGA miners cheap, but even the 800MH boards are still going for $200+ on eBay (insane, but... maybe people use them for other things - no idea).

[Xyver]

Buy a few Block Eruptors (maybe a 5 pack to get a bit of a discount), get a Raspberry Pi, and a nice powered USB hub. 

Hook it all up into a rig that will consume <30 watts of power, so you can run it for pennies a day, and leave it on for a year.  You might get lucky and make ROI.

The good thing about Block eruptors is that they take so little power, you can run them until the difficulty hits about 750 million, before they start consuming more power money then they produce.  If you can set up a super power efficient rig, you may get lucky.

This is a small investment suggestiong, assuming you have ~200$ to burn, and are OK with maybe only making 100$ back.  From my calculations, you can make ROI on block eruptors still, assuming you can run them for a year.  the difficulty can't rise forever, it has to level off sometime, and I'm placing my bets that it will level off under 750 million at least until you can make ROI on the eruptors.  Maybe next year, when the next gen ASICS hit the market, the difficulty will skyrocket too high.

And yes, you could just buy a few bitcoins and hold onto them, but that's boring If you want to get in as a hobby, go for a few eruptors and be content with only making half ROI (that's realistic, though I believe you'll make full ROI).

If you want to get into serious business mining, try to buy an early BFL preorder (back from late 2012) and hope that you get lucky on getting it delivered. Otherwise, pick a new company and hope you can get an early preorder.  I've got an Xcrowd preorder in, I'm hoping I can get some good stuff going with that.

[frankenmint]

Buy a few Block Eruptors (maybe a 5 pack to get a bit of a discount), get a Raspberry Pi, and a nice powered USB hub. 

Hook it all up into a rig that will consume <30 watts of power, so you can run it for pennies a day, and leave it on for a year.  You might get lucky and make ROI.

The good thing about Block eruptors is that they take so little power, you can run them until the difficulty hits about 750 million, before they start consuming more power money then they produce.  If you can set up a super power efficient rig, you may get lucky.

This is a small investment suggestiong, assuming you have ~200$ to burn, and are OK with maybe only making 100$ back.  From my calculations, you can make ROI on block eruptors still, assuming you can run them for a year.  the difficulty can't rise forever, it has to level off sometime, and I'm placing my bets that it will level off under 750 million at least until you can make ROI on the eruptors.  Maybe next year, when the next gen ASICS hit the market, the difficulty will skyrocket too high.

And yes, you could just buy a few bitcoins and hold onto them, but that's boring If you want to get in as a hobby, go for a few eruptors and be content with only making half ROI (that's realistic, though I believe you'll make full ROI).

If you want to get into serious business mining, try to buy an early BFL preorder (back from late 2012) and hope that you get lucky on getting it delivered. Otherwise, pick a new company and hope you can get an early preorder.  I've got an Xcrowd preorder in, I'm hoping I can get some good stuff going with that.

that sounds wishy washy super wishful thinking - you could buy those things...maybe...but thats money to burn...people thrive from high selling the block eruptors you will not find fair value outside of using groupbuys here ... instead buy gpus and do alts then resell those gpus later instead. 

[zvs]

If you speculate the price of Bitcoin to increase along with the difficulty level then you will see a ROI (eventually)

Good beginner site would be minersource.net or buy from the forums or some other trusted seller of bitcoin mining hardware that have the hardware actually in stock.

I agree with the above statements. No preorder crap.

yes, but if you speculated that, then you should just buy bitcoins, not buy ASICs.. buying the ASICs would leave you with less on hand funds to buy bitcoins at market price

right now, there are not any asics worth buying.  you could 'break into bitcoin mining' by just using your existing graphics card and wasting some electricity for a while just for kicks

[Xyver]

Buy a few Block Eruptors (maybe a 5 pack to get a bit of a discount), get a Raspberry Pi, and a nice powered USB hub. 

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If you want to get into serious business mining, try to buy an early BFL preorder (back from late 2012) and hope that you get lucky on getting it delivered. Otherwise, pick a new company and hope you can get an early preorder.  I've got an Xcrowd preorder in, I'm hoping I can get some good stuff going with that.

that sounds wishy washy super wishful thinking - you could buy those things...maybe...but thats money to burn...people thrive from high selling the block eruptors you will not find fair value outside of using groupbuys here ... instead buy gpus and do alts then resell those gpus later instead. 

Good thing group buys are easy to get into. Contact Canaryinthemine or teek

[Operatr]

It depends on your personal goals with mining, really.

If you just want to be a part of it but not a serious mining operation, units like the USB Erupters are perfect for this. However for the current price, and difficulty, you would likely not see the device pay for itself anytime soon, but you would still generate a sliver of Bitcoin with it and help the overall network. And since you just have to plug it into an available USB slot and start mining, setup and maintenance is almost non existent.  

If you want to get into it with a more serious eye, it takes a lot of planning, projecting, and money to buy enough gear to see ROI quickly at this point.


However either way, Bitcoin's market price has simply not risen enough to offset the rush of ASICs coming online. Though at some point I think we will see a fresh Bitcoin rally, in which seeing ROI with even a USB Erupter could be realistic again. Either that or ASICs reach saturation, and the hashpower/difficulty increase would plateau a bit, though it doesn't appear this will be the case anytime soon.


I would say if you want to start out with something simple, a USB ASIC would be a good choice for mining Bitcoin. You could also buy a few decent graphics cards and mine Litecoins also, which has a low barrier to entry as graphics cards are plentiful.

A good place to get ROI figures would be mining.thegenesisblock.com

[Thirtybird]

I am curious about opinions.

Just say you have a person today that wants to start bitcoin mining. How do they start and be able to at least ROI their investment? Just curious about what your plan would be.

Buy used 5 series GPUs, get free electric, mine altcoins, trade to BTC.

I had to LOL... exactly what I did.  Until the price of YAC tanked, I was making .07 BTC/day with just 3 cards.  Ah, the good ole days 

[stefffe]

I still see some profit in mining alt-coins tbh... atm I make about ~$270/month mining different alt and selling them at cryptsy. My rig is 4x7950.

[Mitchell]

I still see some profit in mining alt-coins tbh... atm I make about ~$270/month mining different alt and selling them at cryptsy. My rig is 4x7950.

Total invested? ROI?