Best strategy for a newbie with about $10k to invest

[bitintheghetto]

Total newbie.

Should i go for ASICS?
Are the advertised hash rates on these ASICS accurate?
Anyone has experience with hardware durability?
What is the expected trend for difficulty projection of the bitcoin protocol?
Should I just buy Bitcoins directly?
How long is the current bubble going to last?

Thanks!

[Itun]

Welcome to the forum.

With that much to invest, I would buy a mining rig with cheap USD/GHs ratio.

If you can't find one low enough, buy some bitcoins.

However, currently, the second way is a bit risky because the prices are fluctuating.

[viktormarkin]

What about cloud hashing?
is it risky?
is it better to buy my own equipment and join pool?

[Itun]

It's not risky, but there are Pros and Cons to it.

I think the only two good things of cloud hashing is that

Pros:
- You don't have to manage your mining rig
- You can easily sell off your GH
- It's immediate (you don't have to wait for shipping)

Cons:
- It's more expensive than buying devices.
(If you buy mining devices, you'll probably get it for a lower price, but delivery/shipping wait might be long)

Check both out for yourself and see what you like better.

Here is a popular cloud hashing site: cex.io

[Itun]

Because cloud hashing is immediate and convenient like that, if I were you, I would buy a few GH/s worth of cloud mining first to test it out.

If you like it, you should invest more into it.

If you don't, you can sell your GH and buy some massive mining devices.

In short, don't go all in in either side until you try either or both of them.

[odolvlobo]

Please don't invest in mining without first learning how to compute your expected return. Too many newbies blindly invest and end up losing money.

For example, on cex.io, a popular cloud mining site, 1 GH/s costs 0.074 BTC, but 1 GH/s will never mine more than 0.05 BTC. For every GH/s you buy on that site at that price, you will lose up to 0.024 BTC.

[maxxoccupancy]

Honestly, I'm looking at a similar scenario.  You might consider buying a few bitcoins, but also diversify by buying a few hundred dollars of each of the altcoins (litecoin, namecoin, peercoin, quarkcoin, protoshares).  You could also invest in small outfits like Neo Bee, that offer a promising business strategy.  For your altcoins, I would just buy the coins and hold them long term.

[bitintheghetto]

Thanks odolvlobo.

I doubt I'm the average noob.
I took one look at the GH/BTC ratio on the cex.io site and left the site as quickly as I could close a browser tab.
It looked to me that 0.074 GH/s costs 1 bitcoin and not the other way around. no?
If I read cex.io right and taking the current bitcoin price into consideration, they are asking you to cough up ~$1000 for 74MH/s
So even if i dump $10k in there, my numbers show that I'll make about $120 in a year with constant bitcoin difficulty. lol

No Offense Itun but cloud mining isn't for me.
I would rather wait for a heavy duty rig.
Most of my research would be focused on device durability of different ASIC setups.
If cex.io are interested in paying me for some GH/s then we can talk  

So let me ask again.
Anyone here have an ASIC miner and can you provide mining numbers and boards problems you might have faced?
What brand and how long did shipping take?

Thanks!

[Itun]

Thanks odolvlobo.

I doubt I'm the average noob.
I took one look at the GH/BTC ratio on the cex.io site and left the site as quickly as I could close a browser tab.
If I read cex.io right and taking the current bitcoin price into consideration, they are asking you to cough up ~$1000 for 74MH/s
So even if i dump $10k in there, my numbers show that I'll make about $120 in a year with constant bitcoin difficulty. lol

No Offense Itun but cloud mining isn't for me.
I would rather wait for a heavy duty rig.
Most of my research would be focused on device durability of different ASIC setups.
If cex.io are interested in paying me for some GH/s then we can talk  

So let me ask again.
Anyone here have an ASIC miner and can you provide mining numbers and boards problems you might have faced?
What brand and how long did shipping take?

Thanks!

Lol. No offense taken.

I just wanted to give you info I knew of cloud mining.

But I don't get your first question.

The shipping varies. If you buy the rig from ebay or amazon, shipping is fast, but the cost of the rig is expensive.

If you buy it from the manufacturing companies, like the slower-than-snail-up-to-the-point-of-scamming BFL, shipping can take months, but the cost of the rig is much cheaper.

[vrm86]

IMHO beware of all ASIC preorders with shipping by 3-4 months.
Today it looks like great deal to buy xxx GH/s machine, but in few months it's gonna be unprofitable.
Especially if several companies release their 3TH/s devices (e.g. KnC Neptune).
Bitcoin difficulty gonna rise to the moon in the first half of 2014

If you had over 13000$ order 3TH/s ASIC miner, if less build decent GPU miner (not for ASIC-coins ofc).
 

[Itun]

IMHO beware of all ASIC preorders with shipping by 3-4 months.
Today it looks like great deal to buy xxx GH/s machine, but in few months it's gonna be unprofitable.

Exactly.

Maybe you can preorder some scrypt ASICs.

If you can get a hold of a few really early in the game by preordering and waiting, you can probably make tons.

[bitintheghetto]

IMHO beware of all ASIC preorders with shipping by 3-4 months.
Today it looks like great deal to buy xxx GH/s machine, but in few months it's gonna be unprofitable.

Exactly.

Maybe you can preorder some scrypt ASICs.

If you can get a hold of a few really early in the game by preordering and waiting, you can probably make tons.

From what I understand about the SCRYPT algorithms, they don't lend themselves to ASIC chips.
Isn't that the entire point of the algorithm to keep miners from having significant advantage with specialized hardware?
It is supposed to be more memory intensive than parallelized computations intensive.
Is there an ASIC provider that claims to produce hardware for SCRYPT crypto?

[vrm86]

IMHO beware of all ASIC preorders with shipping by 3-4 months.
Today it looks like great deal to buy xxx GH/s machine, but in few months it's gonna be unprofitable.

Exactly.

Maybe you can preorder some scrypt ASICs.

If you can get a hold of a few really early in the game by preordering and waiting, you can probably make tons.

Yes, if you be the really first one. If hashrate rises dramatically, the prices of coins gonna fall same way.
Bitcoin was the only one when ASIC started, now cryptocurrencies market is crowded by many types and clones of BTC/LTC.
Some of them will remain scryptASIC-proof I think.

Is there an ASIC provider that claims to produce hardware for SCRYPT crypto?

Something like this: http://scryptasic.org/ ,but it doesn't look much legit for me, but maybe I'm wrong.

[surya39]

Best strategy would be to invest in Cloud Mining, as you have the option to opt out anytime you feel like.

[Bobbydiggital]

why not just buy BTC directly? I mean its becomming very difficult to mine BTC, with a 10k investment you would get close to 10 BTC right now, how long would it takes with a 10k set up to mine 10 BTC? Id like answers from BTC pros cause im thinking if he buys them directly he might get a better ROI even more so if doing a bit of trading am i wrong or missing something here?

[MegaKill]

i think BTC mining is gonna be very very hard, like some said. unless you have this 
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/2/5165428/bitcoin-mine-in-hong-kong-uses-jelly-to-keep-cool

[Swoos]

buy 10 bitcoin and keep them for half years

[fartbags]

Definitely invest in mining scrypt only.

ASICS have shown how weak the sha256 algorithm is. sha256 is from 2001 which is ancient in computer years.

[Sparky_eMunie]

With most asics your return will be minimal. Invest in Bitcoin, or some promising altcoins like Datacoin, Securecoin or Protoshares.

[bitintheghetto]

With most asics your return will be minimal. Invest in Bitcoin, or some promising altcoins like Datacoin, Securecoin or Protoshares.

I was thinking this too. Looking at a long list of ASICS that can be reordered, they all seem to be popping up at points where the increased difficulty in the bitcoin algo would make them next to unprofitable.

I'm thinking I would just build a GPU cluster and mine some SCRYPT based coins. They are apparently ASIC resistant, this should make their difficulty curve less disruptive. I really want to do some real mining as opposed to downright coin purchase. My ideal scenario would be coming up with a solution that scales with corresponding difficulty increase in the altcoin algo while remaining profitable.