Mining extinct?

[helioslemons]

Is bitcoin mining now forever extinct to new miners? With the more and more increasing difficulty level is it now unprofitable to start as a miner? Done a few calculations with one of the more powerful devices available (well almost), the Knc 550 ghps model. And looks like you'd be lucky to make a return on it, even with an optimistic rise in difficulty at 30%.

At about £3000 for the 550ghps model, looks like you'd only get a return of £775 profit after 6 months, at which point it would then no longer be worth turning on as it wouldn't cover the electricity costs.

Thoughts? Hoping I'm wrong, but isn't looking so with the rapidly increasing pool size.




Excel sheet: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1q7gleyq78uilj5/deeppockets.xlsx
(For non-british, excuse the £!)

[Birdy]

Nope, you are right.
Atm buying into Bitcoin mining is very risky and most likely will make you lose money or at least gain you less money than buying&holding Bitcoins.

[helioslemons]

Well, let's just hope the value of BTC is gonna keep going up then!!

[hellfrozenow]

Mining is not forever extinct, just the miner units need to have much smaller prices, or the Bitcoin price higher. Until then, I dont buy miner units. And if others buy now, its ok, they make Bitcoin security stronger 

[helioslemons]

Recon the next step is going home made? Perhaps buying chips (maybe group buys) and just creating your own miner from scratch to keep costs to an affordable level?

[ByronP]

This is one of the reasons people love scrypt alt coins. They can be mined for a reasonable profit still and better yet if you rent out the time on your equipment you can make even more. With the added bonus of being able to recoup quite a bit of the cost of the hardware by selling it once you want to upgrade or stop mining.

[Klubknuckle]

This is one of the reasons people love scrypt alt coins. They can be mined for a reasonable profit still and better yet if you rent out the time on your equipment you can make even more. With the added bonus of being able to recoup quite a bit of the cost of the hardware by selling it once you want to upgrade or stop mining.

Yes but not for long. People are starting to sell scrytp fpga.

[igail]

Since the start of the year, the Japanese yen has risen by about 12 percent against the dollar. The euro has fallen by about 1 percent. Then there’s bitcoin, a virtual currency that doesn’t even exist in the physical world. In the past few months, the value of bitcoin has risen by more than 1,000 percent many months ago to more than $200 today. On today’s show, we ask: Is a skyrocketing value a good thing or a bad thing for bitcoin?

[ByronP]

scrypt fpga but an fpga for something like xpm just wont work.

[CathalG]

Since the start of the year, the Japanese yen has risen by about 12 percent against the dollar. The euro has fallen by about 1 percent. Then there’s bitcoin, a virtual currency that doesn’t even exist in the physical world. In the past few months, the value of bitcoin has risen by more than 1,000 percent many months ago to more than $200 today. On today’s show, we ask: Is a skyrocketing value a good thing or a bad thing for bitcoin?

It has to be a good thing.  This indicates that people want it.  the difficulty lies in spreading the coin around so that it becomes accessible to the normal man in the street.  Then the currency will be worth so much more, but when only a few have so many bitcoins then this will stall the price rise.

[waltermot321]

scrypt fpga but an fpga for something like xpm just wont work.

Why not? FPGA can work on scrypt but they can also make it to work on prime number too right?

[Snail21]

scrypt fpga but an fpga for something like xpm just wont work.

Why not? FPGA can work on scrypt but they can also make it to work on prime number too right?

Making a XPM FPGA is theoretically possible but that would be a lot of research and work but XPM prices aren't too high at this moment, so that wouldn't be very profitable.

[waltermot321]

scrypt fpga but an fpga for something like xpm just wont work.

Why not? FPGA can work on scrypt but they can also make it to work on prime number too right?

Making a XPM FPGA is theoretically possible but that would be a lot of research and work but XPM prices aren't too high at this moment, so that wouldn't be very profitable.

I think few months down the road it would be very profitable to make XPM FPGA then cause too many competitor on scrypt FPGA now..

[mobile]

Well, let's just hope the value of BTC is gonna keep going up then!!

Well this is the idea. One may only be making 0.001 a day but if that was worth (lets say) a dollar. It would be worth it. I can imagine mining  slowly converting over to exclusive"big guns" with deep pockets. In the past you could invest $300USD & profit. Now I can imagine the future need to invest $30K-50K minimum with an (early shipping date) to even get into the game. As much joy as it brings me to own my own, manage, experiment & host my own hardware. After discovering CEX, I've finally come to grips thats its more profitable to buy (buy,sell or hold) leased out hashes from massive mining farms in the cloud. No intentions to spam because I am truly pumped about this but Ill leave my referral link here --> https://cex.io/r/0/mobile314/0/.

Hek of a concept, Bitcoin Mining in the cloud is here. Let me know if you had any questions about it. There is a lot of volume there already but the more volume the more profit for everyone.

[m00x!]

Mine alt coins instead.  Still plenty of room for growth there.

[Scorscribler]

It is still possible to enter into mining. There is the occasional gem of a piece of equipment on ebay, I was lucky enough to get a few 60gh/s, which i have traded and am now running free. I was lucky, right place at the right time.

The biggest hurdle, I think, in the UK is the liquidity of BTC.

[tondaS]

scrypt fpga but an fpga for something like xpm just wont work.

Why not? FPGA can work on scrypt but they can also make it to work on prime number too right?

Scrypt needs a lot of memory. You can make FPGA with a lot of memory, but its not much better than GPUs

[avalonmoney]

make asics be able to mine scrypt coins.. someone could figure it out I'm sure

[TheQuin]

It is still possible to enter into mining. There is the occasional gem of a piece of equipment on ebay, I was lucky enough to get a few 60gh/s, which i have traded and am now running free. I was lucky, right place at the right time.

The biggest hurdle, I think, in the UK is the liquidity of BTC.

The trading makes the money not the mining. I made a few £ as well, but only from buying and selling equipment at the right time and taking mining income inbetween.

The bottom line is if some hardware could be just plugged in and make money no one would sell it., they would keep it and mine.

[TheQuin]

make asics be able to mine scrypt coins.. someone could figure it out I'm sure

They could, but it would cost far more to develop and manufacture than it would ever make.