No ROI on future Mining, its a FACT!

[PolkRB]

What's PoW?

Proof of Witchcraft, which is very well known for its energy efficiency.

Got ya! thanks!

[Mr.V]

It would be funny if companies started working on building machines that could harvest huge amounts of free energy instead of developing machines that could produce more hashing power. All because of Bitcoin baha

[CoinDaddy]

Obviously for it to make any sense to mine, which must continue in order for there to be new coins, the price of bitcoin must rise.

I don't think the price is overinflated at all, and I think miners that have been in this game since day 1, that have a good portion of the coins should hold out for an even higher price to sell at. Sellers can pretty much determine the value just by holding at that value.

Hobby miners only have a coin here and there to sell, so are pretty ineffectual at affecting the market.  That leaves miners and speculators who both want to see higher prices, to watch their fortunes rise.  Although I guess traders do love those crazy huge dips and swings.

It would be a good idea to start a bitcoin marketing group, where we could do things like democratically vote to sell at certain prices, to allow all involved to recoup mining costs and make a little profit.  I think this would go far towards furthering the stability/legitimacy of bitcoin and the careers of miners.

[chesthing]

I decided I would buy a 7950 and a 7850 (this was middle of May, 2013). That was ~$500 bones in graphics cards (not including another computer, but I needed one anyway, so that doesn't count). Those graphics cards started hashing at about 1.6 million difficulty, and mined all summer long, for about 1.5 BTC.

So you turned 5 BTC into 1.5 BTC?

What is it with people that think mining and speculating is an either/or proposition? He probably didn't want to risk buying btc at the time and wouldn't have bought them anyway. It makes perfect sense to me to mine and buy/sell. Mining pays off at any level above the cost of electricity, buying only pays off if the price rises. Also, if it all goes to hell you at least have some cards to sell. It's so easy to see black and white but investing in crypto just isn't that simple.

[Zeal0t]

I like mining for its fun factor, and to me there is nothing wrong with having a hobby that fails to pay the bills.

[ScaryHash]

 
Why can't you understand that taking 5 BTC, or funds equal to it, and turning it into a machine that will only mine 2 BTC before the cost of operating it exceeds the revenue from mining is a bad plan?

Mining hardware is an option on future coins.  If you can buy equivalent coins now cheaper than the mining hardware it's a bad investment.  It might ALSO be a bad investment to buy coins but that is an independent decision.  The first question is can I acquire more coins in the future buying this gear?  And if so, does the gain in coins at some point in the future justify giving up access to the funds, and the risk of hardware failure, late or non-delivery, and pay for the work of operating the equipment.

So how is that different than buying Catterpillar stock, or IBM stock, or dumping $500/month into your mutual funds for retirement, hoping they will go up and you'll have enough to live on, assuming the government does not devalue the hard earned money you have saved up?

20 years from now, if the printing presses (or digital ones), keep rolling like they are now, you won't be able to buy a burger with $10,000, and your retirement will be worth crap.

I'd rather take my chances with Bitcoin than with the Federal Reserve and crappy government social security promises. Veteran's pensions just got cut, on the whims of Congress. What's to say that won't happen again, and again, and also with Social Security?

[Zeal0t]

20 years from now, if the printing presses (or digital ones), keep rolling like they are now, you won't be able to buy a burger with $10,000, and your retirement will be worth crap.

I'd rather take my chances with Bitcoin than with the Federal Reserve and crappy government social security promises. Veteran's pensions just got cut, on the whims of Congress. What's to say that won't happen again, and again, and also with Social Security?

That sounds terrible...

[edgar]

20 years from now, if the printing presses (or digital ones), keep rolling like they are now, you won't be able to buy a burger with $10,000, and your retirement will be worth crap.

I'd rather take my chances with Bitcoin than with the Federal Reserve and crappy government social security promises. Veteran's pensions just got cut, on the whims of Congress. What's to say that won't happen again, and again, and also with Social Security?

That sounds terrible...

thats about the state of things right now, and it isnt getting any better!!

just for the sake of it i'll share a small story with you...

when Zetacoin was released, i put all my feeble mining power on it and mined a few million coins in a matter of weeks

worthless at the time. today theyre worth about 300 BTC... (i actually sold 2 million a month or so ago and put some of those coins down onto neptune pre-orders)

who can tell me that was a bad move??

no-one!

i did the same with Asiccoin & a few others which im waiting on gaining value eventually.

BTC is not the be all & end all of mining with ASICs.

dont forget there are those among us that dont want you to mine, successfully or at all.

do what you think is right, and take the rough with the smooth, its not ALL unicorns!

AGAIN - dont believe the mouthiest critics, they may well have vested interests.

one of them 'kindly' (and rudely) offered me 2.5btc for a rig i paid 78btc for and was (and still am) unhappy with...

tbh, it seems the biggest critics and the biggest fanboys are not to be trusted at all!!

i am neither.

EDIT2ADD - dont trust me either, i might be making it all up!!

[ScaryHash]

That's an awesome story Edgar.

I do have to pay more attention to the other namecoins.

Thank you.

[Nemo1024]

Some buy it for fun.

Exactly. Or to do a small altruistic contribution towards support of the network, fully aware that it will not give a positive ROI.

Everyone should stop mining. And buy bitcoins instead. 

In theory that would mean that the network will collapse, but it won't. See below.

Asics are about to make them selfs extinct,you have been warned

No, it's a self balancing system. Give it time to balance on the edge of profitability.

In conclusion if you plan to buy a miner for any other reason, than revenue, then go ahead with complete disregard to profitability calculators as they are not relevant with your altruistic goal in mind; otherwise, just buy BTC.

[ScaryHash]

Since you have no interest in a discussion based in reality, go do whatever you want.

Hand waving about dollar depreciation is meaningless when inflation is 4% a year and your are comparing to mining difficulty which inflates 30% every 2 weeks.

You may want to check your statistics.

Inflation is running at WAY more than 4% a year (the data below is for the US), and lots of other places, like Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and just about everywhere else in the world.

Seehttp://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

As for the reality of rising mining difficulty, it makes BTC harder to get.

This means increasing difficulty runs opposite that of inflation, thus the rising difficulty level is a measure of deflation.

Increasing difficulty is a good thing, it makes BTC more scarce, and leads to a balance between inflation (the increasing number of BTC), and deflation (rise in difficulty, making new BTC harder to get). You can't print BTC, unlike every other fiat currency out there.

[glendall]

Been saying this for awhile. Bitcoin is so popular now that we are on a big race to the bottom.

What's the bottom? Well someone always is willing to do something for less, globally.  Like I charge 10$ to jump around my house, someone, somewhere will offer to it for 5$, Then some other dude will offer to do for only a dollar ! Then and so and so, until:

For Bitcoin you are going to need next to free power, and a large amount of money to get into, and for those people, they'll be making just pennies profit a day. That's where we are going. That's just globalization.

Bitcoin wasn't as popular before so it wasn't the case, but now that it is much more widely known, we are racing to the bottom. It doesn't matter the industry that much, its the same in most fields.

I definitely don't think we are there yet. But I do think the good days of mining are over , and that is where we are headed.

[pjviitas]

or I am missing a very crucial point somewhere.

Basically, I was thinking of investing in 2T miners from various suppliers.

Lets take the most optimistic example, solar panels, electricity is free, all items gets shipped in time, lets say in March 2014 and also take the predicted end of Feb 2014 difficulty level of 5.4 mill as a base for March 2014

(http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincharts.php)

it means I can mine 0.18 coins a day till about 10 days, when the difficulty jumps to 7.1mill what makes 0.14 coins a day for 10 days:

0.18 BTC 10 days = 1,8 BTC - diff 5.4mill - 1 March 2014
0.14 BTC 10 days = 1.4 BTC - diff 7.1mill - 11 March 2014
0.11 BTC 10 days = 1.1 BTC - diff 9.1mill - 21 March 2014
0.08 BTC 10 days = 0.8 BTC - diff 11.1mill - 1 April 2014
0.06 BTC 10 days = 0.6 BTC - diff 15.1mill - 11 April 2014

Total 5.7BTC mined in a bit over a month in a very very optimistic scenario, now the cheapest 2Th is from black arrow for over $5k, what is over 7+BTC.

If I do the very same calculations with a 60Gh BFL mining rig, I get exactly the very same poor result.

It is just make no sense to buy any mining rig, rather than to buy the BTC instead, not mention lot less stressful and simple solution with better ROI.

Can someone pls enlighten me what I am missing from the calculations? how come that these rigs are sold? (neptunes for example?) and the BFLs are still selling way over priced on ebay?

Thanks much
Regards
Pete

Regardless of whether mining is profitable or not is irrelevant...without it there would be no Bitcoin.

[pjviitas]

Regardless of whether mining is profitable or not is irrelevant...without it there would be no Bitcoin.

There is a world of difference between operating existing gear, and buying new hardware.

For the existing gear, your capital is already spent.  All you need to do is cover power, network and labor.  Any earnings above this level recover some portion of the capital you investing into the hardware, so you run it until your power costs exceed income.  Even if all you manage is to reduce the amount of your initial investment that is lost, a rational actor runs the gear.

For a rational person to buy new equipment there needs to be an expectation that all of the required funds will be recovered, and a profit commensurate with the risk will be earned.

With the current difficulty growth rate, and hardware costs, rational people are standing back.

Well I guess its the end of Bitcoin then

[SomeoneInNeed]

I agree that an ROI on the mining rigs is possible with the current difficulty.
What I see with the future is, big "mining corporations" coming up, which will mine most of the coins.
We need an improvement in the protocol if we want to prevent this from happening.

[Sonny]

Regardless of whether mining is profitable or not is irrelevant...without it there would be no Bitcoin.

There is a world of difference between operating existing gear, and buying new hardware.

For the existing gear, your capital is already spent.  All you need to do is cover power, network and labor.  Any earnings above this level recover some portion of the capital you investing into the hardware, so you run it until your power costs exceed income.  Even if all you manage is to reduce the amount of your initial investment that is lost, a rational actor runs the gear.

For a rational person to buy new equipment there needs to be an expectation that all of the required funds will be recovered, and a profit commensurate with the risk will be earned.

With the current difficulty growth rate, and hardware costs, rational people are standing back.

Well I guess its the end of Bitcoin then

Are you unable to read?

Existing miners will continue to operate their hardware and verify transactions regardless of difficulty.  There is no 'end of bitcoin'.  Just an end of the gold rush.  

Some are mining for profit.
Some are mining for fun.
Some are mining to support bitcoin solely. (core dev? someone enthusiastic in bitcoin? big whales?)

[mwizard]

Its interesting that in January the initial thread author expected that by now (March) the difficulty would be approaching 9 billion.  It seems the author used more than 30% as the ongoing difficulty increase.   No wonder he saw no ROI.

In fact just 10 weeks later difficulty has only risen about half what the author expected with a current difficulty about 4.5 billion rather than 9 billion.

Difficulty increases between 10-15% seem much more realistic in the current environment when calculating ROI.   

[zerk89]

Its interesting that in January the initial thread author expected that by now (March) the difficulty would be approaching 9 billion.  It seems the author used more than 30% as the ongoing difficulty increase.   No wonder he saw no ROI.

In fact just 10 weeks later difficulty has only risen about half what the author expected with a current difficulty about 4.5 billion rather than 9 billion.

Difficulty increases between 10-15% seem much more realistic in the current environment when calculating ROI.   

No substantial miners have come online yet, wait for the peroid of April-July, you will eat a shoe.

[mechew]

Isn't the real problem here the fact that these are prices and difficulty as of today and these miners won't arrive for an unquestionable amount of MONTHS?

[klondike_bar]

I bought new equipment last week because i know it will be profitable. I expect to see a 20% gain over electricity costs by the end of the year