BTC Mining is dead IMO

[williamj2543]

Hey,
I am a regular bitcoin user. No, I do not own a ridiculous 10 Ph/s bitcoin mining farm in Antarctica with liquid nitrogen cooling. I have a normal computer with your standard r9 280x (7970) GPU. I can hash at around 700Mh/s and for scrypt I can hash at 720kh/s. I am here to tell you very bad news. If you are in this for profits, leave now, right now. I can generate 27 cents a day with BTC with my over average GPU that most regular people will not have. Or, I can mine scrypt coins and depending on the coin make at least 8$ a day, which could get you some good quality free beer every day . Even standard ASICs are getting to be unprofitable. The BFL Jalapeno is 230$, and mines at 5 gh/s. That is probably the most popular ASIC for its attractive price, and noob friendliness. With one of those, I would make approximately 2$ a day. A BTC ASIC, made for mining BTC and nothing else, makes only 2$ a day, and then theres power costs (although fractional). Once mining is irrelevant, that machine is useless. All it does is generate heat, waste electricity, and looks good in the corner of your room. Buying a graphic card for 1.5x the price, will mine 5x more money in a day (yes take up more power, but this is only 1$ a day of power), and once scrypt mining is obsolete, you will have a very very nice GPU to play games with, edit video, or do other things. At least you could do something with your miner!
All I really wanted to say in this post, is that I don't reccomend mining BTC at all, even if you are going to buy an ASIC. And even if you already have a nice GPU like mine, and even want 26 cents a day, just don't. It makes noise, destroys your graphic card quickly, and generates tons of heat. Even if I had the capital to invest in a very nice ASIC, I probably wouldn't because, what if BTC crashed the next day, and all I had was some stupid brushed metal box. At least if I spent twice that much for the same hash rate in GPU's, I would have a ridiculous amount of gaming power, and could sell those cards, or build a supercomputer or use them as a heater for your house. I don't know what you want to do with 100 GPU's. The possibilities are endless!
Thanks for reading this, and please take my advice to stop mining those stupid BTCs. We need to start using it as a currency!

[Xyver]

Boo hoo.  If mining was get rich quick, everyone would be in on it.

Oh look, it was advertised as get rich quick, and now everyone's in on it.  We shot ourselves in the foot.

Even still, its not dead. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=361566.0

[HellDiverUK]

If you're mining BTC with a GPU, you're doing it wrong.

[williamj2543]

Haha I remember the days when a CPU miner was relevant... Those days...

[quone17]

I think it's a real gamble to invest heavily to mine BTC at this point.  I mean the price could go down, or it could go up, but really that's what will matter to you.  If anything, BTC price has shown us that it won't be the same 6 months from now.  You'd have to bank it's going up and then it will cover your investment and electricity.   Unless you're getting free electric or doing it as a hobby.

[williamj2543]

Yea, BTC is definetly very very long term. To avoid stress (and suicide) buy some, and just wait. Don't check the price of bitcoin. Only check it on christmas every year. When there are no bitcoins yet to mine, the demand will surge, and I beleive that BTC will become a curency.

[williamj2543]

Boo hoo.  If mining was get rich quick, everyone would be in on it.

Oh look, it was advertised as get rich quick, and now everyone's in on it.  We shot ourselves in the foot.

Even still, its not dead. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=361566.0

Replying to that, yes there was massive news on this mining, and how "Man makes 700$ a day on BTC" articles are taking over the web ads. Yes the profitability definetly declined, but because of this massive user base, we have a much more reliable network, with a much faster transaction confirmation rate. If BTC wasn't this public, it would not be nearly as popular, and wouldn't have a chance of being what it is today, or some day, a real currency used in real stores.
Mining is needed definetly, but I'm just saying for the average joe mining isn't really a good thing. I guess if you use BTC a lot, you could "donate your hashing" so you are supporting the network in a tiny way. We will see an increase in mining, which is awesome for the network, but again, not for the average Joe who mines. Now, mining is really for big buisinesses, and it is benifiting the BTC economy.

[crocko]

Hello !

What do you mean by "average joe" ?
What is your opinion: how much hashing power must have this "average Joe" to be back in the mining business ?  1GH/s ? 10 ? 100 ? 1 TH/s ?

[Easy2Mine]

The average Joe now will become more important over a year or 2 if he keep using his brains.
Everyone starts small in Bitcoin, but that doesn't mean you won't be able to become bigger.

[Xyver]

The average Joe now will become more important over a year or 2 if he keep using his brains.
Everyone starts small in Bitcoin, but that doesn't mean you won't be able to become bigger.

^^^ This.  So much of this.

[Nemo1024]

Hello !

What do you mean by "average joe" ?
What is your opinion: how much hashing power must have this "average Joe" to be back in the mining business ?  1GH/s ? 10 ? 100 ? 1 TH/s ?

Next year: 3 TH/s or more.

Those who still think in GPU terms, comparing 1st gen ASIC with 4th gen ASIC is like comparing 6550 to 7970.

To give you a clue on what next gen miners are going to deliver:
https://www.kncminer.com/products/neptune

I have one from the early batch preordered. Its unofficially estimated power draw will be between 3000W and 3500W. You can run it at home with a dedicated 240V @ 16A circuit and sufficient air conditioning, but it's going to be a stretch.

The keyword here is hosting.

[williamj2543]

Hello !

What do you mean by "average joe" ?
What is your opinion: how much hashing power must have this "average Joe" to be back in the mining business ?  1GH/s ? 10 ? 100 ? 1 TH/s ?

Well 1gh/s is becoming irrelevant now. 100gh/s or even 1000gh/s is now needed to get and stay into this business for more than a few weeks.

[Operatr]

Another day, another "Bitcoin mining is dead" thread.

No it isn't. Bitcoin itself is probably dead for the little guy with the hopes of profit and fame. That time is long past and was only amazing for the first few that had Avalon machines.

But Bitcoin isn't little anymore either. We will need full scale, professionally operated mines to support a worldwide network, and there is no way around that. Such mines will be expensive to set up and run in dedicated facilities with ample cooling and power. Unless you are prepped to jump in at that level to be a profitable miner, you may look elsewhere. If BTC mining is a curiosity and a hobby that you know full well you probably won't see much return on if any, then by all means do.

However, there are 100 other blockchains to mine using the same gear, why not hop on board with one or several of those? They need your help more than Bitcoin does if you only have a few Erupter USBs on hand to mine with, big dogs have the Bitcoin network covered. You never know which one of those will rise to the top of the heap.

[ScaryHash]

I highly doubt it is dead.

I got into in the middle of May 2013, with my GPU's.

Added a 7950, a 7850, and my old Nvidia gpus.

Added a few block erupters.

Switched the GPUs to Litecoin, and enjoyed the ride.

Ordered some Asics, so I went up to 130 Gh/s


Sold off 50 GH/s ASICs on E-bay.

Still held onto 80 Gh/s, and while that barely makes 0.04 BTC/day, I'm screwing around with Litecoin to keep me entertained.

If you're doing it because you think you're gonna make $50,000 extra a year, you are seriously in for a dissapointment. I'm sure people who took a chance and bought Jupiters made some money, and that's great for them.

But, that's not gonna be everybody's experience. Do it for the enjoyment, pay for a fancy dinner with Bitcoin. Now, that's satisfaction.

Get laid because of Bitcoin. It don't get no better than that.

Just enjoy it.

[theGECK]

You realize that if people do as you request in your last sentence and stop mining, transactions will stop and you won't be able to send your Bitcoins anywhere? The elegance of the solution to convincing people to process transactions is to reward them for doing so by mining. Satoshi created the incentive to produce the required behavior correctly; not enough people would have done the computational work necessary to really secure the blockchain without it. The fact that we now need ASICs to efficiently go through the mining process means that it is difficult and expensive for any one person/organization to do a 51% attack on the network.

[mthomassack25]

i remember when everyone was saying there was no point in buying block erupters and you would never roi. i bought 2 when they were around 12 bucks each and i've made over double what i've spent and its only been around 2 months. i also don't have to pay for electricity though but 2 block erupters don't cost too much to run.

[Frozenace]

My mining rigs are keeping my flat nice and warm. The heaters are electric anyway here, so I think I can discount the electricity costs.

[FreedomCoin]

My mining rigs are keeping my flat nice and warm. The heaters are electric anyway here, so I think I can discount the electricity costs.

Exactly, come spring and summer i will stop mining but right now better than turning on my electric coils that use 2.4kw!!!

I think im just going to start mining altcoins in the winter and buy in the spring and summer.

[williamj2543]

 Haha my house no longer needs any heating because of my computer spewing out 70 degree Celsius hot air mining litecoins

[mpattison]

its not dead thats for sure.
price of btc will go up, makingg the mining i do now worthwhile.
i think it's dead for those who have less than 50gh/s.  if you have a 1th/s+ pool, hell no btc mining ain't dead.

price of power is also an important factor.