Seriously Looking Into Mining - Advice Needed

[Malusig]

Hi All

I would like to know the following:

I am looking to Mine bitcoins for "investment" purposes and not for day to day profits.

I.E. I am looking to start with between 5 ghs - 10 ghs and generate 12 months worth of BTC with that setup.

After which I will sell 25% of the BTC mined (either monthly or yearly ?) to partially cover costs.

My Goals:

- Mine as many BTC as I can with the intention of keeping them as investments for the long term i.e. (gold, shares, etc) (HIGHLY RISKY I KNOW)
- Based on my calculations running a 5 Ghs in the Slush pool I should be able to average out just over 1 to 1.5 BTC a month

My Electricity is currently free and my only investment would be the ASIC mining setups plus accessories (<- correct me here if I am wrong)

Assuming my logic above makes sense and you feel that it is sound.

I am looking at starting with the following setup:

3 x USB Fury based 2.2+ Ghs (generating 5.5Ghs+) on the slush pool.

Also where is the best place to purchase ? and any tips purchasing?
- Currently Ebay seems to be the only place.

Looking forward to your responses.

 

[Gator-hex]

Based on my calculations running a 5 Ghs in the Slush pool I should be able to average out just over 1 to 1.5 BTC a month

Your calculations are wrong 5GH/s would get you 0.0041 BTC per day or 0.123 BTC per month at current difficulty level.

If 1BTC per month is your goal you need at least 40 Gh/s and you would need a mining machine like this http://technobit.eu/index.php?id_product=52&controller=product&id_lang=1

of course difficulty will rise and this BTC production level will reduce over time.

If you're interested in the 40GH/s machine see this thread I wrote today https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=342086.0

[Firedreak]

lol wrong decimal place... 0.1BTC

[Malusig]

Thanks for the information. Really helpful. Seriously considering!

Is there a more definitive calculator out there ? for pooling calculations ?

[Gator-hex]

http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

[Malusig]

Hi

Looks like I missed out on the http://technobit.eu/index.php?id_product=52&controller=product&id_lang=1 product as it is now sold out.
Never got a response from the site owner so was a bit skeptical of purchasing.

Anyone else got other recommendations in the $300 - $700 range for ASIC miners.

Any other tips would be greatly appreciated.

[Jacce]

Also, keep in mind that the difficulty is increasing and you'll earn less and less bitcoins the more time that passes.

[Itun]

If I were you, I would not starting mining unless you are willing to invest thousands of dollars.
For small miners, it's going to be almost worthless
Just invest the money you are about to buy the miners with into bitcoins
Buy some now (or when prices go down) then sell later

[Wipeout2097]

My suggestion (as usual) is that you mine altcoins with ATI 7950 or 6950 videocards and trade for Bitcoins, or keep the coins and bet on their future (some will have it). A card keeps value when you end up selling to gamers unlike an obsolete ASIC, you can use them for gaming and other OpenCL yourself , there are plenty of altcoins out there worth mining, the difficulty doesn't raise to the stratosphere unlike bitcoins and so on. The disadvantages are that you need a CPU, mb, ram, GOOD psu, high power usage and noise. You can undervolt the cards though. Your choice of CPU depends if you only want to GPU mine; or also mine CPU-only coins, run software that pays(?) for idle time (and god knows what runs there), host, use as regular desktop pc, etc... If it's only for GPU mine, then a Sempron or Celeron is fine. Else, get a powerful cpu like the i7 4770k with AVX2 extensions

An alternative to the above for direct bitcoin mining is this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=329674.0

THEN, when you become experienced with the quirks of (pre-)ordering real bitcoin ASIC hardware, speculation on costs and difficulty, have an informed view, look for example at these: http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/prospero-x-1.html

For high-end, expensive, ready to be delivered ASIC hardware (that may or may not ROI bought now), people at this forum seem happy with KnC miners.

For "cheap", hobbyist hardware that will never ROI, look at bitfury USB miners

[odolvlobo]

You need to do more research. 5 - 10 GH/s will probably earn at most about 0.25 to 0.5 BTC over the next year.

A reasonable estimate for how much mining equipment will mine over the next year (starting now) is 0.05 BTC per GH/s. If you can get the equipment for less than that, you might make a profit. Otherwise, you should just buy the bitcoins directly.

http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

The problem with this calculator is that "Profitability decline per year" defaults to 0.61, which results in showing unrealistic gains. A reasonable value for "Profitability decline per year" is 0.004.  This is a better calculator: http://mining.thegenesisblock.com

[tzm]

I've been running a BFL Jally (30w) that is achieving similar results that you are looking for.

Here are the stats since starting on November 11th:

Pool:	BTCGuild
Start date:	November 11th
Avg speed:	6.5Ghs
24 hr earning (BTC):	0.00392740 (approx $3.23)
Total earnings (BTC):	0.07157687 (approx $59)
Total shares:	1,728k
Total rejects:	8,378 (0.48%)

Hope this is helpful.

-tz

[BobNash]

5Ghs == 0.0289 BTC/week atm (@609.5M difficulty)
2013-12-02 difficulty will change, and you will earn less (~0.0222 BTC/week)

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty

sort version:
difficulty changes every 2 week to compensate overal network hashrate changes
new/better miners join => increasing network hashrate => increasing difficulty => decreasing your mining device effinency

history for changes:
http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/

without energy cost you could run your miner forever
but there is a high chance your investment will never paid off, because difficulty increasing 20-40% / every 2 week

3 month later (6 changes) difficulty may be => 1,3^6 = 4,826809x higher!
so you will mine 4,826809x lesser with the same equipment


look around the forums
there are few incoming ASICs with brutal power, but making profit with them stil highly depend on release date/shipping time
1-2 month delay.. and they are worthless

[Discuss4Wisdom]

As said above even if you could get a profit from mining, most probably you would have made a higher profit just buying BC instead of buying mining equipment.
And there is a reason for that: Who would sell it's mining equipment if it would make still profit when running? People run the stuff until energy cost is higher than earnings and then try to find a unexperienced buyer. Same for new miners, especially on ebay: price rises above any profitable price especially right now with a lot of publicity attracting many newcomers.
So either you are living in a area with extremely low power costs - you are competing with areas with 2.5cent though (in the US, even lower in China. In germany you pay 10 times as much - and that is if you are lucky), or you start mining just for learning and the fun of it and see your investment like a movies ticket: it pays of with experience and fun, but the money is gone.

So my advice: start with only one fury for the fun of it and buy some BC directly.
(I like slushs pool by the way. Good choice. If you are in Europe bitstamp.net is a good place to buy BC)

[rp4prez2008]

I'm thinking the same thing. I found several 7970's on local craigslists that will make for excellent miners for cheap. Look there, should save you some start up.

[Malusig]

First off thanks for all the replies really helpful information.

The purpose I started this thread was purely to gauge the effectiveness or going into mining for

INVESTMENT PURPOSES!

i.e. Even if I end up with 1 BTC in 12 months of Mining at a cost of $2500 (hardware + accessories) I am willing to take the risk as I am betting on the fact that BTC will go beyond $2500+

Basically I am trying to get my hands on as many BTC as possible through buying now and possibly mining.

Yes I could buy 1 BTC now @ roughly $750 - $850 p/BTC and hold onto that in comparison to purchasing a $500-$1000 that can give me BTC through mining and the ability to increase mining operations if feasible etc.

I do see the difficulty / mining efficiency problem. And this whole buy now ship later defeats the purpose as the Difficulty would have increasedd 100%-300% by the time they arrive i.e. (Blackarrow Feb 2014 del.)

Keen to see your answers in respect of starting a mining operation for investment purposes and building on top of that.

[odolvlobo]

The purpose I started this thread was purely to gauge the effectiveness or going into mining for
INVESTMENT PURPOSES!

You are missing a crucial point. You are trying to obtain bitcoins (for investment purposes). There are two ways to obtain bitcoins -- mine or buy. In the current environment, it is generally cheaper to buy bitcoins than to mine them.

Because of the rapidly increasing difficulty you can't consider mining equipment as incoming generating capital. More than half of the income will be earned in the first month. Mining equipment should be considered to be a resource that is consumed much like mine or an oil field.