Difficulty level predictions - is mining toast - Is everyone heading into war

[tiagusbc]

nice

[Septimus]

I dont think you CAN get ROI..

After mining for about a week at a decent speed, I'm starting to seriously doubt I'll ever make ROI. The difficulty just keeps rising...even without the new generation miners. That 3 billion difficulty mark is almost assured by the end of February. Even 2 TH/s rigs are going to be challenged. The whole concept of mining is very tempting, but unless you get your miner for free, or very very cheap...it'll never pay off. The market moves far too quickly to keep up.

[Sonny]

I dont think you CAN get ROI..

After mining for about a week at a decent speed, I'm starting to seriously doubt I'll ever make ROI. The difficulty just keeps rising...even without the new generation miners. That 3 billion difficulty mark is almost assured by the end of February. Even 2 TH/s rigs are going to be challenged. The whole concept of mining is very tempting, but unless you get your miner for free, or very very cheap...it'll never pay off. The market moves far too quickly to keep up.

Yup.
Before buying the hardware, people should really check the profitability (there are tons of profit calculator out there), and take the uprising difficulty and electricity cost into consideration.

[Septimus]

Yup.
Before buying the hardware, people should really check the profitability (there are tons of profit calculator out there), and take the uprising difficulty and electricity cost into consideration.

Even with profit calcs, it's very deceiving on what you're really going to make. I projected a 35 day return on my miners with difficulty and electricity adjustments which has now turned into 100 days thanks to the surprising rise in difficulty. You can't calculate that X factor to a solid number unless you know exactly what the thousands of other miners' circumstances are. It's just not a winning endeavor unless you get a miner for absolutely nothing...or if coin values quadruple in the next few days. Neither scenario seems likely.

[stompix]

Yup.
Before buying the hardware, people should really check the profitability (there are tons of profit calculator out there), and take the uprising difficulty and electricity cost into consideration.

Even with profit calcs, it's very deceiving on what you're really going to make. I projected a 35 day return on my miners with difficulty and electricity adjustments which has now turned into 100 days thanks to the surprising rise in difficulty. You can't calculate that X factor to a solid number unless you know exactly what the thousands of other miners' circumstances are. It's just not a winning endeavor unless you get a miner for absolutely nothing...or if coin values quadruple in the next few days. Neither scenario seems likely.

Since August the increase in difficulty has been quite stable around the 25-30% mark , with a spike to 40 in late october but followed
 by under 20% for the next 2 adjustments.
If you didn't take this into account , then you wasted your time with a wrong profit calculator or you get the numbers wrong.

[Septimus]

Since August the increase in difficulty has been quite stable around the 25-30% mark , with a spike to 40 in late october but followed
 by under 20% for the next 2 adjustments.
If you didn't take this into account , then you wasted your time with a wrong profit calculator or you get the numbers wrong.

Spikes aren't predictable, and they're not nice to get in your foot. Treading lightly doesn't help much in the mining game, because you're bound to find one eventually...which was the point of that post; there's nothing predictable about difficulty and calculators offer false reassurance.

[Sonny]

there's nothing predictable about difficulty and calculators offer false reassurance.

Of course, no one can make a 100% accurate prediction, but at least you can have some idea on your mining profitability.

Also, apart from just guessing the future difficulty solely from the historical %increase, miners have spent time to estimate the future hashrate by checking the ASIC pre-order and delivery status of different manufactures.
(FYI: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=387533.0)

[chocomav]

With the coming dump of massive ASIC hashing power in the next 3-4 months (Cointerra Terraminers, Kncminer Neptunes, etc.), it is going to be very difficult to ROI in a decent timeframe. Cointerra is starting to ship their 1.66Th/s machines and have beaten Kncminer to the punch. Probably won't see any Kncminer Neptunes until end of April or early May. If you have sufficient capital, would probably be wise to spend half just investing in bitcoins (which will probably double in value by year's end) as a hedge against the further increases in mining difficulty.

[Septimus]

With the coming dump of massive ASIC hashing power in the next 3-4 months (Cointerra Terraminers, Kncminer Neptunes, etc.), it is going to be very difficult to ROI in a decent timeframe. Cointerra is starting to ship their 1.66Th/s machines and have beaten Kncminer to the punch. Probably won't see any Kncminer Neptunes until end of April or early May. If you have sufficient capital, would probably be wise to spend half just investing in bitcoins (which will probably double in value by year's end) as a hedge against the further increases in mining difficulty.

Anything under 1 TH is going to be effectively useless. I managed to dump my operation before it got any worse. At this point, I'd say mining really isn't profitable any more unless you've got a huge farm running or planned. Although if you have that kind of money, you're probably not worried about much. I would definitely move to investments. It's much safer that way.