Why mining is not wort the time?

[niothor]

I wonder what is stopping the US government to buyout all the asics from the american manufacturers and mine the shit out of bitcoin. They could pull this off in a heartbeat if they would like to. 

Have you seen elephants killing ants?
Currently they don't care about it. And until the network is strong enough , god help them not to change their mind.

[odolvlobo]

If you are mining for fun and education, then go for it.

If you are mining for a profit, then you really need to do your research. Because of the expected rapid rise of the difficulty, the rate at which a device will mine bitcoins will drop very quickly. At some point, the amount of bitcoins that it mines each day will become negligible. My estimate is that each 1 GH/s will mine about 0.05 BTC over the next year. If you want to break even with a USB block erupter, you will have to pay less than 0.017 BTC for it.

yes but at the same time its the cheapest device out there and aslong as your willing to wait then you will make a ROI eventually

vm1990, you haven't done the math. I suggest that you sit down and figure out how long it will take. Depending on how much you pay for the mining equipment, "eventually" could means decades or centuries, or longer.

[po1992one]

I wonder what is stopping the US government to buyout all the asics from the american manufacturers and mine the shit out of bitcoin. They could pull this off in a heartbeat if they would like to. 

Have you seen elephants killing ants?
Currently they don't care about it. And until the network is strong enough , god help them not to change their mind.

With Bitcoin hashrate (and still growing), it would be hard to get 51%. They could test at altcoins though to get 51% there easily

[niothor]

I wonder what is stopping the US government to buyout all the asics from the american manufacturers and mine the shit out of bitcoin. They could pull this off in a heartbeat if they would like to. 

Have you seen elephants killing ants?
Currently they don't care about it. And until the network is strong enough , god help them not to change their mind.

With Bitcoin hashrate (and still growing), it would be hard to get 51%. They could test at altcoins though to get 51% there easily

Lots' of people have stated recently that it only cost around 10-40 mils to get that rate.
5PH means 5 mils GH , at a rate of lets say 6usd/gh (knc miner) do the math:D

[krystalwhite]

Not being particularly technical I looked at mining BTC but it appears to be quite expensive to start seriously now, ok if you got in at the beginning.  I start a small amount of cloud mining, which is fun but don't pop the champagne cork.

I have tried solo cpu mining on an old pc (windows vista) for a couple of alt coins but didn't get a sniff so I joined an alt coin pool and am now getting something.  If you get some alt coin you can then exchange it for BTC and drip feed your btc wallet, with the added advantage if your chosen alt coin/s take off then you might be in the money .  Spending thousands of dollars on mining equipment/ not to mention the electricity bill (although you could heat the house at the same time!!) when you now have some serious market competition doesn't make financial sense.

If you are investing in stocks/shares drip feeding your portfolio is quite a sound way to get long term returns.

(Disclaimer: do not class my comments as financial/professional advice etc etc).

[RaveOn911]

I mine for the fun of it as I know I will never make a ROI. Setting up the miner, Maintaining it, adding cooling and overclocking. I have more knowledge of Linux than I did before I started which is a bonus too. But looking at the prices of the asic miners on ebay I could sell it all now and come out with a small profit. I am going to start buying BTC now when the current bubble bursts  . I will use the income from the miners to offset the fees. If you never sell a bitcoin and they do go up in value a lot you would make a ROI in the end but it's a gamble.

[komar]

Everyone says that isnt worth the time to mine but why? I love this idea of mining and i want to get my hands on 3-4 USB Miners and start mining and selling contracs on ebay :)

Here's the chart for Avalon ASIC #2 profitability:


And the right bottom corner of this chart:


Profitability will getting lower and lower because of difficulty rising.

I could draw a chart for your miner if you want.

[cannachris]

in a 49-port hub the USB block erupters are quite profitable, i paid 150€ for 25 miners

[PenAndPaper]

in a 49-port hub the USB block erupters are quite profitable, i paid 150€ for 25 miners

How many bitcoins you could have bought with those 150 euros? How many bitcoins your 25 miners will ever made?
Do the math and you 'll see that it would have been better for you to buy bitcoins.

[peter0328]

Hello here is my first post since it a requirement here:

I think mining bitcoin at this point is useless. That is why my friends and I are starting to mine litecoins.  The ROI is great, especially with free power like we all have.  I am using CUDA Miner on my GTX 295 quad sli rig to get 100-125kh/s.  Cpminer on my laptop with amd 8750m for 60-90kh/s, and minerd on the 295 desktop for an extra 15kh/s.

I'm not here for bitcoins but I want to post in the cudaminer thread so here I am 

[PenAndPaper]

I think mining bitcoin at this point is useless. That is why my friends and I are starting to mine litecoins.  The ROI is great, especially with free power like we all have.  I am using CUDA Miner on my GTX 295 quad sli rig to get 100-125kh/s.  Cpminer on my laptop with amd 8750m for 60-90kh/s, and minerd on the 295 desktop for an extra 15kh/s.

Well you shouldn't put so much stress to your nvidia card and your laptop for so little returns. Still if you want to mine you may want to consider sites like http://www.coinchoose.com/.
You can mine some of the other crap coins out there and then trade them for btc or ltc to squeeze some profit.

[zamolxes]

In 6-8 months a new technology will be invented to mine at huge speed, and probably will cost the same as today flag ship of (insert company here). Minimum speed should be alt least 10 ph/s to compensate difficulty

[DeathAndTaxes]

In 6-8 months a new technology will be invented to mine at huge speed, and probably will cost the same as today flag ship of (insert company here). Minimum speed should be alt least 10 ph/s to compensate difficulty

Probably not.  28nm is very likely as good as it gets for 2014.   Even if a new 28nm chip was 2x more efficient than any other spec on paper it would still mean about 400W per TH, or 4 MW (as in a small power plant) for 10 PH/s.  In 2015 we may see 20nm chips but the days of 1000x the peformance are over.  20nm chips is going to offer maybe 30% higher efficiency for the same cost, or 20% higher speed for the same cost. 

Miners will get cheaper (maybe) and rigs will get larger but you really are limited to 2 TH/s on a "normal" US 120V outlet with current chips.  Even a break through chip would be lucky to triple that.  Prices may fall but they can only fall so far.   At $0.30 per GH/s (90% cheaper than anything offered) a 10 PH/s rig would be ~$3M USD.

[peter0328]

I think mining bitcoin at this point is useless. That is why my friends and I are starting to mine litecoins.  The ROI is great, especially with free power like we all have.  I am using CUDA Miner on my GTX 295 quad sli rig to get 100-125kh/s.  Cpminer on my laptop with amd 8750m for 60-90kh/s, and minerd on the 295 desktop for an extra 15kh/s.

Well you shouldn't put so much stress to your nvidia card and your laptop for so little returns. Still if you want to mine you may want to consider sites like http://www.coinchoose.com/.
You can mine some of the other crap coins out there and then trade them for btc or ltc to squeeze some profit.

So you think I should mine a crappy coin, hope I can trade it for LTC on an exchange and go from there?  What crappy coin do you recommend for this? 

I'm definitely OK with using my desktop GPUs, I have adequate cooling and they have barely done anything in the past 3 years.  I need to put them to work.

[PenAndPaper]

So you think I should mine a crappy coin, hope I can trade it for LTC on an exchange and go from there?  What crappy coin do you recommend for this? 

Well i can't name one because i 'm not up to date with the subject.
Start by checking out coinchoose.com.
Take in mind the avg. profitability over LTC, see in what exchange you can trade that coin and if the exchange is trusted. Consider exchange fees etc.
There isn't an easy answer and even if it was it might not be the right answer tomorrow.

As i said this is way to squeeze profit. If you don't want to bother just go with LTC 

[Rohks]

I think of Bitcoin mining as a hobby, and thus if I do end up turning a profit someday, so much the better. Over the past few months, I've purchased 6 BlockErupters, and have had a fun time getting them up and running with a Raspberry Pi. I have made back a little over .1BTC so far, but the goal for me is to have fun. I enjoy checking on the miner stats, tweaking settings, cooling, and the like, and watching a small trickle of BTC come in over time. Not to mention, being a part of the network itself.

Will I ever make a profit? It is possible with the recent increase in BTC exchange rates. But if I don't, I still consider it a fun and worthy investment.

[peter0328]

So you think I should mine a crappy coin, hope I can trade it for LTC on an exchange and go from there?  What crappy coin do you recommend for this? 

Well i can't name one because i 'm not up to date with the subject.
Start by checking out coinchoose.com.
Take in mind the avg. profitability over LTC, see in what exchange you can trade that coin and if the exchange is trusted. Consider exchange fees etc.
There isn't an easy answer and even if it was it might not be the right answer tomorrow.

As i said this is way to squeeze profit. If you don't want to bother just go with LTC 

Thanks again for your advice.  I will look into this if I get more serious about squeezing profit lol.  For now I'm just a n00b figuring it out.  Once I get a real handle on litecoins then I might venture into crappy coins 

That website doesn't seem to list order correctly when you change sorting to best price though for some reason.

[Mondy]

Unless you have A VERY powerful ASIC you will never get a ROI

[odolvlobo]

Unless you have A VERY powerful ASIC you will never get a ROI

Please do the math. ROI depends on both cost and return. You can get a positive ROI with a measly block erupter if you can find one cheap enough.

[peter0328]

Unless you have A VERY powerful ASIC you will never get a ROI

Please do the math. ROI depends on both cost and return. You can get a positive ROI with a measly block erupter if you can find one cheap enough.

Also is positive if you do not pay for electricity and use existing hardware.