n00b trying to find a strategy

[sweater]

Mining sort of blew up at work in late November, with a bunch of us jumping on GPU buys (7950's for ~$230? YES PLEASE) and utilizing some spare compute power that we have lying around the server room.

So far a few of us have headed off in different directions, some building their own pools, some solo mining, but I've got two rigs at a combined of about 3MH/s running for about a month now. I was trying to target specific coins (WDC, LTC, even DOGE when it was released and was stupid profitable) but have now settled down on multi-pool mining.

What's cool is that if this keeps up* I stand to cover the costs of my co-pay for our baby due in June with all associated jokes about how, in America, it's damn expensive to have a kid.

 - mike

*which I'm not convinced it will, yet

[Hypnoise]

better just trade, you will make more per year.

[riggityroche]

Trade at the exclusion of mining you're saying? Or pay attention to the market and trade what you're mining?

[Autobot]

Which pool did you finally settle on?

[riggityroche]

Also, OP, this is great to hear. I'm in a similar position. It's pretty fun yeah?

[ZombieWoof]

I, too, am in a similar position.  The opportunity to get in on Bitcoin mining is long gone unless you have deep pockets, so LTC looks like what i may get into next.  I'm also curious as to what pool you joined!

[sweater]

better just trade, you will make more per year.

I have a day job that pays quite well but also demands a helluva lot of my attention.. not thinking that trading is for me unless I put more effort/time into it (that I don't really have at the moment). If there were a way I could learn and get up to the same daily profit I'm making quickly, I'm all for it though.

Which pool did you finally settle on?

...starting throwing everything at Hashcows right before Christmas.

That was awesome.

Now mining middlecoin with backups set to the multipool / cryptsy combo. Been having a rough time with middlecoin over the last few days, however, possibly due to the influx of people like me who came over from Hashcows. Getting inconsistent reports of what my rigs are doing vs. what's being accepted at the pool.

 - mike

[aulonocara]

I have only just got into this whole mining game in the last 24 hours (a bit late eh?) but so far I am enjoying the trading aspect. I'm up over 30% from about 6 hours of trading. I just wish my capital was bigger.

[jongameson]

I have only just got into this whole mining game in the last 24 hours (a bit late eh?) but so far I am enjoying the trading aspect. I'm up over 30% from about 6 hours of trading. I just wish my capital was bigger.

invest in feathercoins
u heard it here first

[thaReal]

I have only just got into this whole mining game in the last 24 hours (a bit late eh?) but so far I am enjoying the trading aspect. I'm up over 30% from about 6 hours of trading. I just wish my capital was bigger.

invest in feathercoins
u heard it here first

Hmm, what makes you say that?? I'm relatively new to Crypto although I've been putting a lot of time into learning all I can over the last ~month or so. Initially, FTC was what I was first mining and it was making me a pretty good profit. At the time I remember it trading somewhere around 0.00110 to 0.00120 (on btc-e) so it was making be a pretty good profit since I was converting straight to bitcoin.

After a little while I started bouncing around in hopes of finding more profitable coins and since then, the price has been on a pretty steady decline. I've frequently checked back into the FTC market but I still haven't been able to get a good read on it's future. I'd like to be optimistic since I think its a much stronger coin compared to a lot of the crap that's been getting dumped on the exchanges lately, but with sell orders stacked so high against just one point of movement, it's going to take something major to break all the upwards resistance that exists. Hopefully you know something I don't know

So my curiosity is piqued... Can you give me a solid reason to pick up some FTC right now? If you can and you're right, I definitely won't forget where I heard it from when I take some profit

[jongameson]

So my curiosity is piqued... Can you give me a solid reason to pick up some FTC right now? If you can and you're right, I definitely won't forget where I heard it from when I take some profit

The main reason is.  From a technical perspective, it seems to have levelled off in the 0.00045000-0.00047500 range..  seems to have consolidated

[Smileyftw]

better just trade, you will make more per year.

How to trade ?

[rig1]

Its, easyier to do cryptsy trading, ping/pong.

[sweater]

Its, easyier to do cryptsy trading, ping/pong.

No it isn't, not even in the slightest. Not when you have someone hop onto a thread and say "Its, easyier to do cryptsy trading, ping/pong" and nothing else.

So you've posted your opinion with nothing to back it up. Yay. You're helping no. one.

Ping/pong what? How? What are your methods, considerations, strategies, tools?

Care to elaborate... without having someone ask you to elaborate? Actually - don't answer that. Already have an idea of how much stock to put in your advice. 

 - mike

[thaReal]

So my curiosity is piqued... Can you give me a solid reason to pick up some FTC right now? If you can and you're right, I definitely won't forget where I heard it from when I take some profit

The main reason is.  From a technical perspective, it seems to have levelled off in the 0.00045000-0.00047500 range..  seems to have consolidated

So after reading this, I'm looking at some charts and I have to say that I'm beginning to agree with you. Here's my issue: Since I don't have a huge line to move and I'm spread out in a bunch of different coins right now, the issue comes down to more so: in what timeframe will FTC recover? I'm confident in a few months the price will definitely have rebounded, but it could happen tomorrow or it could happen in February.

With a lot of quickmine / scam coins being released now, I think mining those short term is more profitable. I'm sure this is very debatable, but  those coins get the most hype, get released on exchanges the quickest, and ultimately see a lot of movement in a very small timeframe. I don't plan to actually hold onto many of these coins for longer than a few days, but I think mining those -> trading for FTC is more profitable than just mining FTC straight up (but obviously more risky).

Any thoughts?

[Olano]

Seems like you know what you are doing, what do you think the best budget gpu is right now?

[sweater]

Seems like you know what you are doing, what do you think the best budget gpu is right now?

I wouldn't go that far as to say I know what I'm doing - I know how to make some hash rates and I'm pointing my rigs to some stable-ish pools to rake in some $$$.
 
The only cards I personally have experience with are the 7950's and R9 280's (which I believe are rebranded 7970's). I run MSI's in one rig and Gigabyte GV-R928XOC-3GD's in the other and the Gigabytes are crap. Already severely overclocked and apparently pretty unstable, I've already got one down and waiting to find a spare motherboard/proc to try and troubleshoot it without taking down a whole 'nother rig for the duration.

But for right now? I don't think there are any good budget GPU's out there. I bought 3 of those 7950 MSI's for $230/each and 3 R9 280's for $300/each and I got damn lucky doing so. If I had to go out and buy a card today, it'd be

a) anything available

b) the fastest thing I could find for the price

Cards are so marked up right now that the barrier to entry and subsequent return on investment takes A LOT longer, sort of where ASIC/SHA-256 mining was a few months ago. Sorry for that bubble burst...

 - mike