Investing in altcoin mining

[Mitja123]

I want to invest 3000$ in mining,what is best option?
Is only option asic or we can make money with gpu mining?

[flip4flop]

You likely can find the answer by looking at some of the recent post in this forum but mining is at low right now due to the market and high price of GPUs. If you go there ASIC route you can run into a situation where you will pay a larger sum of money for a piece of equipment that could be useless if those coins fork or the algorithm becomes flooded with ASICS making the difficulty skyrocket and earnings tank.

Right now you are better investing directly into whatever coins you believe in. However, I won’t say don’t get into mining if you really want to. Take a look at the numerous posts here in the forum and they can point you in the right direction.  If you’re brand new to mining start at the link below and there is a good source of beginner articles to get you started. 


https://theminerhub.com/mining/newbie-guide-building-6-card-crypto-currency-mining-rig-part-1-decision-time/

[dhouse]

before you invest $1 you might want to do some more research. start slow, don't throw $3k at something you know literally nothing about. maybe buy a cheaper GPU and see if you can build a rig and get it mining. If you can, then maybe invest more.

[MinedTangerine]

before you invest $1 you might want to do some more research. start slow, don't throw $3k at something you know literally nothing about. maybe buy a cheaper GPU and see if you can build a rig and get it mining. If you can, then maybe invest more.

Sound advice. Thats what I did. I was not prepared to throw money into something I knew little about. So first I build 1 rig with two cheap AMD R9 380 cards so I could learn about it. Now I have 2 rigs with currently 8 cards between them and space for 2 more. I still have those 380 cards  (they still earn money after all) but I added some RX 470 and RX 580. All cards are used cards bought on ebay and localy second hand. Right now in my opinion this is the best way to start as new cards are just to expensive. I currently can do 220 MH/s on ethash or 7200 H/s on Cryptonight which is not bad at all. For now that is enough, I may fill that 2 spots I have left if I find cheap enough cards, but then that is it for some time. I will asses the profitability and see how it unfolds. I have no doubts I will at least pay off the investment sooner or later. But if it will pay off I am willing to enlarge the farm further.

[Tidsdilatation]

Right not its possible the worst time in crypto history to get into mining. Difficulty is all time high. Equipment is also at all time high prices and all time low supply. At the moment im selling my used 1070 for more than i bought them new 1 year ago.. its insane.

[MinedTangerine]

Right not its possible the worst time in crypto history to get into mining. Difficulty is all time high. Equipment is also at all time high prices and all time low supply. At the moment im selling my used 1070 for more than i bought them new 1 year ago.. its insane.

I agree, GPUs have insane prices right now. Buying them new is simply out of the question. Even used have insane prices, you need to be really patient to get some decend deals.
But I don't agree on dificulty. If dificulty on some coins is to high mine those that have low difficulty. For instance if ETH is problematic (which is not) there are many other ethash coins. Then you have Cryptonight, Equihash, Neoscrypt etc... There are so many coins to mine, some more profitable then otheres, but most are profitable (even if some just barely).

[Pennywis3]

Right not its possible the worst time in crypto history to get into mining. Difficulty is all time high. Equipment is also at all time high prices and all time low supply. At the moment im selling my used 1070 for more than i bought them new 1 year ago.. its insane.

True, except for the GPU low supply.
I've talked to a distributor in our country and it seems they have boat loads or GPU's, especially amd RX series ones. And so do some stores that buy GPU's in advance.
The problem is they can't move them, because greedy store owners are not lowering their prices.
Only thing that will drive the GPU prices down is low mining profit for at least a few months, combined with people panicking and selling on Craig's.

The prices have come down a bit where i live, but even the cheap Asus expedition rx570 4GB cards still cost 320 eur+ and im sure not paying that for a card that was 180 eur when it came out  

[Ultegra134]

before you invest $1 you might want to do some more research. start slow, don't throw $3k at something you know literally nothing about. maybe buy a cheaper GPU and see if you can build a rig and get it mining. If you can, then maybe invest more.

Couldn't agree more. Don't just throw $3000 tomorrow without solid research and so on. Start slow, buy something cheaper / more reasonable to see how it goes, spend less money, that way, your investment becomes less risky. I'd rather lose $1000 than $3000.

Moreover, I don't think it's the environment is suitable for investments right now, profitability is quite low, lower than the previous months, while there is a lot of volatility in the market which you could definitely take advantage of by investing your money into buying and selling (Trading). In the long run, it could be more profitable than building a mining rig right now. You could also do both, spend some money on both options.

[shield132]

Isn't bitmain going to produce Asic miners for ethereum? I have heared this many times. If this is truth, I would buy it in any way.
Otherwise GPU mining is great, you won't have to send damaged asic back to bitmain and wait a lot until it get repaired and then shipped back and etc, a lot of headache if your country's post is bad too.
Use website whattomine and see which gpu suits any coins the best but remember, this changes very often so don't make your GPUs profit dependable on one specific coin.
Also GPUs lasts a long and you can sell them or use for gaming.

[practicaltexan]

If you already have GPU, you should look into offsetting perhaps with an ASIC for Litecoin or maybe an A3. 

Those costs have gone down. 

However, I agree with above posts.  The benefit of GPU's and their associated PSU, memory, HDD, etc. is that they have resale value.

I have a 1080 I somehow got at newegg in January for $549.   Used on eBay today they are worth, $635. 

I am selling it because it will offset the cost of the other 5 GPU's I have while the price is lower.   It also doesn't hash as well out of the box as 1070's.

Personally,  I prefer AMD RX series.  They are much easier to use in a windows OS.  If you are using SMOS or something like that, you'll be fine with NVIDIA. 

If you are using Nicehash, then go with NVIDIA.    Using AMD RX you get an error if you use the most updated version of the RX series drivers.  They are incompatible with the nicehash legacy program. 



You could build a rig with 1-2 of the NVIDIA Titans.   Those would have even longer resale value than the 1070 or 1060's.

You're hash rate would be lower but in the event of an all out  crash back to April 2017 prices....those things would hold their value a lot more than the flood of 1070's or 1080's that would fill up ebay.

my 2 sats PT

[Rody81]

Right now is a horrible time to be getting into mining.  Like every else mentioned, equipment prices are high,  difficulty for all popular coins that are worth anything is high,  prices of all coins low. 

[NJB18]

Current crypto market isn't good which means higher days on your roi. Difficulty level is becoming higher and higher each day. $3,000 is not even enough to start to buy quality specs. Maybe wait until the market recovers.

[maxmeme]

Wait for the coins to drop in price and buy the coins directly. It nets more coins than mining.

[sst7]

The only bitmain asic machine i'd consider purchasing at this moment is the L3+! I agree it's not the best time to get into mining however if you decide to jump in i'd go with that machine as it has the best ROI.
Keep in mind that these units aren't really home office machines, the noise and heat created will be more than most newbie's understand

[Max Likelihood]

check this section of the forum, lots of threads recently  about this--general consensus, myself included, is that this not a good time. Wait for gpu prices to come down. Start small, see if you like it, feel out the market. Don't expect to get rich.