Is Mining Viable Anymore?

[jimdrake]

Hi,

I'm new here, but I have been reading a lot and looking at the numbers. It seems that for someone starting out, mining doesn't make any sense?

Using this calculator:
http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator

Given the current difficulty and value of a bitcoin, it seems that you need to be mining at minimum 50-100 GH/s NOW in order for it to be worth anything.

But in order to be running a rig NOW running at 50-100 GH/s or a mining contract, it just seems so expensive. At around $50-60 per GH/s.

Lots of places offering $10 per GH/s, or maybe down to $3 per GH/s. But this is ALL pre-order, nothing that's actually available now.

And it seems that at the rate difficulty is increasing, by them time you would receive such hardware or contracts then it would not be worth it, UNLESS the value of the bitcoin increases dramatically.

So as far as I can tell, unless you are a manufacturer currently running the new hardware which is available PRE-ORDER, then nobody at home can get started now and make anything?

[koshgel]

yea it's too late to jump on the mining train for bitcoin.  You could try to mine an alt like primecoin instead?

[drewforte]

For the most part, you are correct. Mining is becoming increasingly difficult and less profitable as the network difficult raises.

Many bitcoin miners are mining fractions of what they first were when they received the machines.

However, if the price of bitcoins raises considerably, they may get an ROI on their mining investment.

My favorite calculator is http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/, check it out and see what you think.

Keep in mind though, it is possible that mining an alternate currency, even for CPU miners, may be profitable, such as Litecoin, Primecoin, Feathercoin, or Protoshare. These can convert on exchanges to bitcoins.

[AbcAbcwebd]

I've heard some people say litecoins are the most profitable at the moment. Any thoughts on whether or not that's true?

[BTC_GHD]

Mining alone is not something to make a profit with unless you do something other than bitcoin

[zosi]

Yes scrypt alts seem to be the most profitable at the moment, I'm trying LTC and Quark atm seem to be doing decently.

[GloryHole]

You can absolutely make money mining alt coins. Instead of throwing lots of money at cloud mining, your best bet is to build a GPU miner for $1000-$2000 (or less). You can mine alt coins and then trade them up for BTC or fiat...or just sit on them and wait for them to increase in price. You can even sell off your hardware down the line and recoup some money. Something you also cant do with cloud mining.

Still tons of money to be made in this industry.

[Wipeout2097]

You can absolutely make money mining alt coins. Instead of throwing lots of money at cloud mining, your best bet is to build a GPU miner for $1000-$2000 (or less). You can mine alt coins and then trade them up for BTC or fiat...or just sit on them and wait for them to increase in price. You can even sell off your hardware down the line and recoup some money. Something you also cant do with cloud mining.

This is precisely how I see it.

Choose ATI 7950 videocards if you still find them for decent price; reference, Sapphire or MSI Twin Frozr if you can (for the price, hash rate, modable, low power). 7970s or 280x are a bit better but more expensive. 7870s, 270x or 6950 if you can get them for 100€ or less.

I have now an additional Asrock 970 Extreme4 motherboard, a 6-core AMD FX 6100 CPU, a XFX Core 850W PSU and some cards. I can say they work.

[reactive4ce]

Mining alone is not something to make a profit with unless you do something other than bitcoin

You can mine profitable bitcoin if you get cheap ASIC unit, electricity cost only about 10%

[pontiacg5]

I made well over $100 bucks today mining LTC, with less than $3.5 grand in hardware.

Or, 4.25mh + 1.5mh = 3.3 LTC day. Around 2000W total, so only lost around $3 bucks to electricity at $0.06. Double to .12 and you still made more than $100 in a day.

Mining is more complicated than calculators. A week ago you would have had no idea that I would be making this today, and by the time you get a miner set up you might only make $50 a day. Diff has already jumped from 1200 to 1700+.

Crazy, but fun 

[rammy2k2]

its not late for anything, do your math, do your plan, and u will be ok

[jimdrake]

Hi,

Thanks for all the points.

I have been looking at the pages here:
http://www.cryptobadger.com/2013/04/build-a-litecoin-mining-rig-hardware/
http://www.coinminingrigs.com
http://dustcoin.com/mining

It seems that mining scrypt based coins at around 2000 kH/s is similar to mining bitcoins at 50-100 GH/s.

I thought the value of bitcoins is increasing partly to keep up with the cost of mining hardware. But the scrypt based mining seems much more affordable for a similar income. How is this? It seems that the value of litecoin is linked to bitcoin, how/why? And how are the rates set for all the other coins?

How important is the motherboard and CPU for scrypt-coin mining? I already have an i7 based PC that is not used much, but without a good graphics card. Would buying one or two of the graphics cards mentioned (eg the AMD R9 280x) and just hooking them up to my current system be a good way to get going?

What considerations are there when choosing motherboard and CPU? Case considerations are of course due to airflow!

[jones31]

Hi,

Thanks for all the points.

I have been looking at the pages here:
http://www.cryptobadger.com/2013/04/build-a-litecoin-mining-rig-hardware/
http://www.coinminingrigs.com
http://dustcoin.com/mining

It seems that mining scrypt based coins at around 2000 kH/s is similar to mining bitcoins at 50-100 GH/s.

I thought the value of bitcoins is increasing partly to keep up with the cost of mining hardware. But the scrypt based mining seems much more affordable for a similar income. How is this? It seems that the value of litecoin is linked to bitcoin, how/why? And how are the rates set for all the other coins?

How important is the motherboard and CPU for scrypt-coin mining? I already have an i7 based PC that is not used much, but without a good graphics card. Would buying one or two of the graphics cards mentioned (eg the AMD R9 280x) and just hooking them up to my current system be a good way to get going?

What considerations are there when choosing motherboard and CPU? Case considerations are of course due to airflow!

All alt-coins are linked to bitcoin . Because they are clones.
You can't do anything with smc,ppc, bbqc, cnc,mghts,hulalac , just exchange them to cash and bitcoin.
They have no practical use.

[jimdrake]

Are there any considerations when mixing graphics cards?

I am thinking about buying one or two to start, and adding later. But I do know that graphics cards seem to come and go, so in a couple of months you probably can't buy the same model again.

[kuzetsa]

Hi,

Thanks for all the points.

I have been looking at the pages here:
http://www.cryptobadger.com/2013/04/build-a-litecoin-mining-rig-hardware/
http://www.coinminingrigs.com
http://dustcoin.com/mining

It seems that mining scrypt based coins at around 2000 kH/s is similar to mining bitcoins at 50-100 GH/s.

I thought the value of bitcoins is increasing partly to keep up with the cost of mining hardware. But the scrypt based mining seems much more affordable for a similar income. How is this? It seems that the value of litecoin is linked to bitcoin, how/why? And how are the rates set for all the other coins?

How important is the motherboard and CPU for scrypt-coin mining? I already have an i7 based PC that is not used much, but without a good graphics card. Would buying one or two of the graphics cards mentioned (eg the AMD R9 280x) and just hooking them up to my current system be a good way to get going?

What considerations are there when choosing motherboard and CPU? Case considerations are of course due to airflow!

All alt-coins are linked to bitcoin . Because they are clones.
You can't do anything with smc,ppc, bbqc, cnc,mghts,hulalac , just exchange them to cash and bitcoin.
They have no practical use.

It's not that simple. There are some minor and major differences for most of the alt-coin designs.

As an example, the litecoin blockchain period was explicitly designed to have faster confirmation times than bitcoin. That alone is considered to be a practical use. I'm not trying to suggest that litecoin is automatically going to be more widely adopted or accepted, or that it is "the best alt-coin" ... I don't even like all these alt-coins, but it's important to note that aside from using a blockchain to store transactions & being distributed / replicated in a similar way as bitcoin, there are several alt-coins which aren't linked to bitcoin in their design.


Not just litecoin with the faster transaction confirmation times, and radically different (harder to build ASICs for) scrypt-based proof-of-work system, but what about namecoin?

...bitcoin itself wasn't able to be used as an alternative to the world's globally resolvable DNS architecture... namecoin seems to show some real promise compared to some of the past attempts at creating alternative top-level domains (I've never seen any of those projects catch on like namecoin has, at least not in a sustainable way, and certainly none which are completely zero-trust in design like namecoin)

That said, I don't much like namecoin either. It has it's novelty for now, but unless it somehow becomes globally resolvable, I won't feel comfortable adopting such a domain name system for anything mission-critical.

The only "direct" clone of bitcoin I'm aware of is ixcoin. It's basically an unmodified version of the bitcoin network, except for very minor changes like using a different TCP/IP port, storing the transactions in its own blockchain, and changing the addressing scheme (namely, starting with an "x")


As for the topic of this thread... yes, mining is viable. Most of the newer bitcoin mining hardware can remain profitable until the bitcoin network difficulty starts to reach into the tens of billions (currently it's not even up to 1 billion) ... and if the exchange rate continues to stay close to or over $1000 USD (or pick whichever currency you use to pay your electric bill) there is hardware coming soon which might even manage to remain profitable when network difficulty is in the 100s of billions.

I don't have a crystal ball though. I can't see the future so I can't say for certain how much profit a person will have at X electricity cost for X hardware with X efficiency and for how long they'll have that level of profitability until the network difficulty increases due to X even newer hardware coming out with even better energy efficiency...

It really comes down to considering how much energy it's costing you to run your mining... There are quite a few bitcoin (and alt-coin) miners out there who are still able to profit from mining.

Yes. It's viable, and over the coming years it will still be viable, but maybe not for any and all alt-coins. Do some research and check your math, and at least try to figure out your profit margin and what it'll take for your profits to drop to zero BEFORE you invest into hardware, time, and electrical energy for mining a crypto-coin.

[Tebro]

Mining IS viable. Unfortunately, estimating the difficulty for when/after you build a miner is extremely difficulty. You always run the risk of building a miner and having the profitability take a downward spiral just as you get things running. Either way, I'd encourage you to look into it!

[vabtcinvestor]

If mining was no longer viable, nobody would be doing it.. and thousands of people are doing.  So it is viable.

[jones31]

So , they are different , but  serve no actual purpose not are they used ...

[Wipeout2097]

You can absolutely make money mining alt coins. Instead of throwing lots of money at cloud mining, your best bet is to build a GPU miner for $1000-$2000 (or less). You can mine alt coins and then trade them up for BTC or fiat...or just sit on them and wait for them to increase in price. You can even sell off your hardware down the line and recoup some money. Something you also cant do with cloud mining.

This is precisely how I see it.

Choose ATI 7950 videocards if you still find them for decent price; reference, Sapphire or MSI Twin Frozr if you can (for the price, hash rate, modable, low power). 7970s or 280x are a bit better but more expensive. 7870s, 270x or 6950 if you can get them for 100€ or less.

I have now an additional Asrock 970 Extreme4 motherboard, a 6-core AMD FX 6100 CPU, a XFX Core 850W PSU and some cards. I can say they work.

Bump, just in case someone took my advice regarding the Ascrap motherboard. I had to ditch it due to random lockups. Replaced by a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3

[Itun]

Yes, because of the difficulty increase, it's almost impossible to reach ROI.

The only way you can do that is if you can get about $10/GHs.

Unless you get a good deal like that immediately, don't start mining btc.