Europe out of the mining game?

[MiningBuddy]

From someone in the UK paying £1.40/litre for petrol and £0.18/kWh I can't express how jealous I am right now.  

Mining for me will become unprofitable very soon but that doesn't phase me, I will still continue to support the network, sometimes it not always about the money. I've been running F@H for near on 3 years now.

[1714095007]

1714095007

[1714095007]

1714095007

[1714095007]

1714095007

[1714095007]

1714095007

[zerokwel]

From someone in the UK paying £1.40/litre for petrol and £0.18/kWh I can't express how jealous I am right now. 

I feel your pain apart from its £1.30/litre where I am

[ercolinux]

From someone in the UK paying £1.40/litre for petrol and £0.18/kWh I can't express how jealous I am right now. 

I feel your pain apart from its £1.30/litre where I am

you lucky guys 
Petrol is "only" 1.35£/litre  but energy is over £0,22/Kwh here
And mine is only really a matter of faith in a future jump of BTC value (mine with a 400MHash/sec hw can produce 5-6BTC/month at current difficulty but costs you easily 50-60£/month)

[minero1]

you guys are lucky too, here i f i want to buy a high-end graphics card i need to spend 20days of income

[BombaUcigasa]

So you could spend 60£ ($96) on electricity and mine 6 BTC for a cost of $16 per BTC.
Alternative you could stop mining take the $96 and simply buy BTC (currenly $6.7ea) getting 16BTC.

Same expenditure one yield 10 more BTC.  So why are you mining again?

The core point of mining is not yielding BTC.

[minero1]

You got me in one thing, i don't know how to calculate power usage, i just tried to figure it out on my own, i thought that since it is the amount of kW consumed in an hour then it must be KW/h. is that wrong? please correct me if it is.

Non-snarky answer.  kW is a measure of power.  No different than horsepower for cars. kWh is a measure of work.

kW by themselves do nothing.  It is an instantaneous measurement.  So if you have a video card which draws 300W continually then at any point it time it drawing 300W of power.  Power without time doesn't accomplish anything.  Freeze time.  How much work is your video card doing?  In exactly 0 seconds how many hashes can your video card compute?  None right.  Work requires time.

Work = (power) * (time)

For electrical work will call it energy:
Energy = (power) * (time)
Energy = (KW) * (hours)
Energy = kWh

You definitely have the gift of teaching, thanks for your explanation, i knew i'd heard it somewhere b4... high-school feels like it was a million years ago

[EskimoBob]

That doesn't make any sense.

If you think bitcoins are going to go up in value why mine at a loss when you can buy "at cost"?

Simply put mininig isn't "free" bitcoins you are buying bitcoins indirectly via electrical power (and ammortized hardware costs).

Lets pretend hardware is free.  If your cost to mine 1 BTC is $7.20 and you can buy one for $7.00 why would you mine one?

Even if you believe BTC will go to $50 next year it would be more profitable to simply buy BTC rather than buy electricity and turn them into BTC at a loss.

And mine is only really a matter of faith in a future jump of BTC value (mine with a 400MHash/sec hw can produce 5-6BTC/month at current difficulty but costs you easily 50-60£/month)

So you could spend 60£ ($96) on electricity and mine 6 BTC for a cost of $16 per BTC.
Alternative you could stop mining take the $96 and simply buy BTC (currenly $6.7 5.70 ea) getting 1616.84BTC.

Same expenditure one yield 10 more BTC.  So why are you mining again?

+100 :)

And if diff keeps going up (lets say only 2% a month), you will dig less and less BTC every month.

Let me give you a depressing calculation here (BTC price is kept same for simplicity)
This is calculation is based on a 400Mhas 24/7 mining.  http://striketeam.ath.cx/btccalc/btccalc.php

Code:

Month 	BTC 	USD 	Difficulty
1	6.69	38.133	1849596.57107
2	6.39	36.423	1924320.27255
3	6.11	34.827	2002062.81156
4	5.83	33.231	2124605.07213
5	5.57	31.749	2210439.11704
6	5.33	30.381	2299740.85737
7	5.09	29.013	2440503.39577
8	4.86	27.702	2539099.73296
9	4.65	26.505	2641679.36217
10	4.44	25.308	2803371.27257
11	4.24	24.168	2916627.47198
12	4.05	23.085	3034459.22185

 
Total 	63.24 BTC  	360.468 USD  

     

All that bullshit for 360.468 USD minus expenses? :)

[BombaUcigasa]

Let me give you a depressing calculation here (BTC price is kept same for simplicity)
This is calculation is based on a 400Mhas 24/7 mining.  http://striketeam.ath.cx/btccalc/btccalc.php

Code:

Month 	BTC 	USD 	Difficulty
1	6.69	38.133	1849596.57107
2	6.39	36.423	1924320.27255
3	6.11	34.827	2002062.81156
4	5.83	33.231	2124605.07213
5	5.57	31.749	2210439.11704
6	5.33	30.381	2299740.85737
7	5.09	29.013	2440503.39577
8	4.86	27.702	2539099.73296
9	4.65	26.505	2641679.36217
10	4.44	25.308	2803371.27257
11	4.24	24.168	2916627.47198
12	4.05	23.085	3034459.22185

 
Total 	63.24 BTC  	360.468 USD  

     

All that bullshit for 360.468 USD minus expenses?

www.bitcoinx.com/charts/

How did your difficulty reach 3 million, when it is currently dropping? You can pull numbers out of the assholes and make it appear any way you want. You will NEVER know the future difficulty or the future bitcoin price, your assumptions are based on telling me you know both factors withing marginal error. What you could do at most is offer a probabily scenario involving some possible value ranges for the two factors and offer analysis for specific values.

[EskimoBob]

....
www.bitcoinx.com/charts/

How did your difficulty reach 3 million, when it is currently dropping? You can pull numbers out of the assholes and make it appear any way you want. You will NEVER know the future difficulty or the future bitcoin price, your assumptions are based on telling me you know both factors withing marginal error. What you could do at most is offer a probabily scenario involving some possible value ranges for the two factors and offer analysis for specific values.

BombaUcigasa, no need to get all hysterical and start stuffing dynamite up your ass.

...are based on telling me you know both factors withing marginal error

Are you on crack? I just posted a scenario, where diff crawls 2% per month. Relax, adjust your tinfoil hat and next time read the post twice, before you start screaming. 

How did your difficulty reach 3 million...?

Lets me write that out for you in larger letters and let me also add some nice bold fonts for you.

And if diff keeps going up (lets say only 2% a month), you will dig less and less BTC every month.

Its just a prediction and as good/bad as any other hypothetical scenario.
5 months ago diff was around ~0.7mill, now its at ~1.7 mill! ~245%? in 5 months.
5 months ago people where certain that by September 2011, the price will be 60+ USD IF the diff keeps going up at same rate.
Doh. we are at sub 6 USD bid

Go and have fun with this calculator and if you have problems with the results,  go and act like a shit bird over at this thread. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=17350.0

Here is one more cool calculator http://bitcoinx.com/profit/index.php

[BombaUcigasa]

[bla bla bla....]

And if diff keeps going up (lets say only 2% a month), you will dig less and less BTC every month.

[bla bla bla...]

But it is going down now... You clearly lack reading skills. Please review my post again.

Your mining calculator link is useless because of the reasons I explained. Please use the chart I linked instead to get an overview of when/how mining is profitable. "Any prediction" is not equal to any other prediction, so don't beat on my prediction then claim yours are superior somehow, even after you agree with me that the price and difficulty are unpredictable. What is predictable is the profitability ratio, clearly seen in the graphs I linked to. I predict that the average mining costs will not exceed long term values 200% of a bitcoin's value, and they will also not go below 20%.

It is thus IRRELEVANT how much absolute BTC your machine makes and using bitcoin value (as your bitcoin supply is absolutely fixed) as an indicator if it's good or bad to do x or y, is an exercise of imagination and should not be used in a rational decision.

It is completely RELEVANT to know the ratio of price/cost of your produced BTC to make decision calls about your present and future mining activities, as this ratio is co-dependent of both the price and network hash rate.

And please, refrain from being a dick, I did not ask you to leave nor did I imply that you are a substance abuser.

[skull88]

my parents pay my electricity bills (i'm 13!)

100% profit lol!

And I think your allowance will drop a little bit when they get their electricity bill 

[Herodes]

According to my rough figuring at the price of electricity in Europe (18 - 40 cents/kWH?) shouldn't there be a lot of European miners turning off their rigs now?

Either you lose money or hope and pray that Bitcoins move back up in price again before too long.

I'm in Scandinavia, I'm at 0.06USD/kWH. Break even point for me is USD/BTC = 2.2.

[AngelusWebDesign]

my parents pay my electricity bills (i'm 13!)

100% profit lol!

And I think your allowance will drop a little bit when they get their electricity bill 

i don't get allowance

Your parents might not notice the extra electricity cost, as you only have 276 MH/s.

But neither are you making very much -- only 1/7th of a BTC per day. What, about 80 cents?

Don't spend it all in one place kid

[Chucksta]

my parents pay my electricity bills (i'm 13!)

100% profit lol!

And I think your allowance will drop a little bit when they get their electricity bill 

i don't get allowance

Your parents might not notice the extra electricity cost, as you only have 276 MH/s.

But neither are you making very much -- only 1/7th of a BTC per day. What, about 80 cents?

Don't spend it all in one place kid

Hell, better than nothing... one coin's worth per week to blow in the local arcade or mall... nice

[AngelusWebDesign]

It says he's mining at BTC guild, but he's offline right now.

Maybe he's grounded today, or mom & dad got their first post-mining electric bill?

[Nagle]

There are essentially two core mining strategies; mine and liquidate or mine and hold....

There's no reason to mine if you're in a loss situation. Might as well just buy what you would spend on electricity investing in bitcoin.

If you're mining and holding, you're speculating. You should view yourself as being in two separate businesses = producing and speculating - and should account for each of those separately. Each may be profitable or unprofitable, and should be continued or stopped on its own merits.