Is it too late for poor people to start mining? Jan2014

[brokedummy]

I know I am kind of late to the party. I never mined any coins before. I was wondering if this is still a possibility for me. I don't have large amounts of capital. I hold less than 1BTC and make 28k a year mining fiat before taxes. How much would I need to get started in this day and age? Either mining established coins or brand new coins. I'm not too concerned about electricity usage not paying for the coin value because I am still bullish on crypto and will hold for a while, plus my roommate will pay half the electric without question. ;-) What setup would you recommend for a newbie to get started without a big investment?

[odolvlobo]

People are going to be mining for as long as Bitcoin exists. It is never too late.

However, it might be difficult to make a profit right now because too many people are mining at a loss, and they bring down the profits for all miners.

If you want to start mining with little investment, you might try mining alt coins with your graphics card or CPU (depending on the coin).

[brokedummy]

I do have a graphics card, but it's old. I can just use whatever I have and mine at a loss? I'd like to do this for a little while to at least learn how. I have athlon II X2 2812 megahz and radeon HD 5670. Maybe I could mine some coinye west? Would you be willing to help me learn how to do this?

[cr1776]

I do have a graphics card, but it's old. I can just use whatever I have and mine at a loss? I'd like to do this for a little while to at least learn how. I have athlon II X2 2812 megahz and radeon HD 5670. Maybe I could mine some coinye west? Would you be willing to help me learn how to do this?

The Radeon should mine bitcoin and others okay. You won't mine much, but it will help you learn.

There are lots of guides to help get set up. As far as the coinye west, I haven't seen any details..

:-)

[stelam]

Its never late dude, but might be completely non-profitable..

[hinrg]

I think you might have missed the boat for bitcoin mining(SHA256) but for alt coins it not too late yet.. even with 2 cards you could make 30-40$ a day 

[brokedummy]

http://www.newslobster.com/random/how-to-get-started-using-your-gpu-to-mine-for-bitcoins-on-windows

I found this guide. Is there a way to substitute in a profitable alt coin? I already have exchange account at cryptsy. Help me out guys, just pick something for me, I learn quick. I installed OS before, linux command line a little. Then I will be ready for coinye. They are going to release the password for the files on the 11th I think. I'll just stick to buying the bitcoins with cash or the alt coins since the difficulty is so high.

[cbigtney]

^ That sounds pretty high. Not with the setup he has though right?

[axewater]

dont do it

[baneemmi]

http://www.newslobster.com/random/how-to-get-started-using-your-gpu-to-mine-for-bitcoins-on-windows

I found this guide. Is there a way to substitute in a profitable alt coin? I already have exchange account at cryptsy. Help me out guys, just pick something for me, I learn quick. I installed OS before, linux command line a little. Then I will be ready for coinye. They are going to release the password for the files on the 11th I think. I'll just stick to buying the bitcoins with cash or the alt coins since the difficulty is so high.

you have sites like coinwarz or coinchoose.. There u look and see what is most profitable coin at the moment and u mine that. But as soon you start mining lot of others will start so that coin won't be most profitable in hour or two, so you'll need to switch to more profitable one. You change all of them on Cryptsy to BTC or to LTC or if you think price will rise in upcoming days you can hold a little and then sell. If u see some new coin which still is not on exchanges but you predict that will be profitable you can start mining that, because sooner you start difficulty will be lower and you'll mine lot of coins which can be very valuable in couple of weeks - thats gamble, you need to pick right one, but you can earn much more then with safe plays mining well known coins. I don't know if that's right guide, but that's how i am doing it

Good luck and see you on the pools

[brokedummy]

Is it really a big gamble, how much does it cost you to mine? I'm in SE USA. North Carolina. I'll have to find the electric bill to get the exact rate. Do you win more than you lose doing this? It seems like a really good plan to me.

[b00m3rang]

I'd say you're better off using your GPU and CPU to mine LTC to trade for BTC, unless you have specialized mining hardware.  I just got a bottom of the line ASICMiner Block Erupter (Icarus) that does 333KH/sec.  It does 10x more hashing than my GTX660 for, maybe 1/5 the cost, and the i7 CPU combined.  Without an ASIC, I can pull in roughly 50x more by mining LTC than by mining BTC directly.

(I was mining DOGE for a while, while it was on the way up... got sick of all the brand new stratum servers going down constantly).

[brokedummy]

Well here goes nothing, I will try to mine some hobonickels. I really like the name. The program is now synchronizing with the network. The excitement is palpable. I think hobonickels could reach parity with bitcoin once more people hear about hobonickels.

[brokedummy]

Is the wallet separate from the mining program? Don't want to wait for it to sync and not even be able to mine...

[BassDuck]

You'll probably want to join a mining pool, do a google search for hobonickle mining pools, then get yourself a copy of cgminer and google cgminer altcoin tutorial and that should get you started.

[brokedummy]

yeah, you're right that's what I'm doing now. I've got a pool account, and now I am trying to get cgminer to connect. I'm installing AMD APP SDK which I am hoping will correct my missing opencl.dll error and my cgminer will start mining. crossing fingers.

[ninjaboon]

Grab some Antminer hardware and start mining Tigercoins. They could skyrocket in price in the next few months.

[Kenshin]

Buy bitcoin instead, you can get ROI in a week time.

[digitsmith]

personally i prefer buying BTC as a potential investment and mining scrypt coins as a hobby

[dhenson]

I will offer an alternative view.

Being broke (as you are), you don't have money available to buy bitcoin.  Buying bitcoin is not an option as credit card purchases aren't really possible currently.  However, if you can find an ASIC company willing to take CC (KNC used to but hasn't recently) then you could purchase an ASIC on a 0% credit card and pay it off with mining profits before the 0% expires.

I've done this multiple times and it has paid off so far.

For example... My Batch 1 KNC Jupiter(s) have netted an approximate 500% gain over their original CC purchase (USD) price.

It's true that had I had the liquid assets to buy BTC with the money rather than a miner, I would have been better off due to the exchange rate increase, but this has been better than the alternative (doing nothing).