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

[Wusolini]

never too late to start mining ... just too late to make some profit 

[nick_a]

It is not too late to start today. If you want to buy ASIC Miner, you might need to consider ROI.

[kalman]

It is not too late to start today. If you want to buy ASIC Miner, you might need to consider ROI.

And shipping times.

[ottobene]

You can mining a new altcoin, they appear almost every day. My single Asus 7870 working non-stop since december 2013

[CountBlood]

Regarding whether it is too late to make profit:

It totally depends on your time frame and WHERE you think the value of bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) will end up.

If you take the view that spending say X amount on some mining hardware is the same as going to a casino and putting your money on a random number at the roulette wheel, and you can afford to lose X, then you should be fine no matter what happens. Winning your bet is just the upside for some short-term excitement/fun.

If you believe fervently that the currency has massive long-term potential and 1BTC might be worth $1m USD in the future, then the ROI in the short-term is irrelevant. The question then becomes how much you can afford to 'risk' on your bet and how long can you 'stomach' the ride until BTC reaches a value that you want to 'exit' at.

Short answer: what is your attitude to risk vs reward and your time horizon.

[amicelli]

If you're talking about the major coins than yes, probably a little too late. You could however mine the new alt coins that pops up just about everyday.

[over1977v]

You can mining a new altcoin, they appear almost every day. My single Asus 7870 working non-stop since december 2013

Yes, but many new altcoins become worthless quickly. Only few will pay your time

[ucerpucerp]

If you're talking about the major coins than yes, probably a little too late. You could however mine the new alt coins that pops up just about everyday.

Sure but you will have to choose the right ones as many of them are some flash in the pan.

[tompa555]

Only way to earn some money is to mine most profitable alt coin at this moment because they lost value very fast.
I think i heard there is a way to set it up to mine most profitable coin .
I will try to find that post and . . .   

[tompa555]

I foun it It's on croatian but i will try to translate it right.

Original post:
odes na multipool.us, ukljucis multiport tj. auto switching to mine most profitable coin. I onda na criptsy stavis opciju autosell i nebrines se nista. Minas cijelo vrijeme najprofitabilniji coin i prodaje se sam na criptsy-u ako stavis da mulipool sam isplacuje coine.

Translation:
You go on multipools.com and you turn multiport on (auto switching to mine most profitable coin). Then you go to criptsy and put auto sell option on and you don't have to worry. All time you mine most profitable coin and auto selling it on crptsy if you set option for multipool to autosell that coins

[Hark33]

I started mining in november 2013 and it was "late", but it is still profitable. I'm mining btc and alt-coins now and looks as good investment. If you have good hw for good price, never is late!

[Thom]

If you're talking about the major coins than yes, probably a little too late. You could however mine the new alt coins that pops up just about everyday.

Sure but you will have to choose the right ones as many of them are some flash in the pan.

Multipool and others do coin switching based on profitability for SHA and scrypt coins, and a Cryptsy account can be set up to auto-sell most altcoin types as soon as it receives funds. If you have a decent lump of mining speed, you can alternate that way without having to do it all by hand.

Or for another entry level option use Cex.io to mine without hardware, and combine it with trading on the highs and lows, hopefully using an automated trading bot for profitability.

After I started out in november with a handful of ASICs from ebay and got dismayed at difficulty rising and rewards diminishing, I've done all of the above to the point where my daily coin earn is now steadily rising against diff.

I started mining in november 2013 and it was "late", but it is still profitable. I'm mining btc and alt-coins now and looks as good investment. If you have good hw for good price, never is late!

Precisely.

Friends ask me: "is it too late to get into BTC?"
I'm all like: "is it too late to get on an escalator?"

[nastybit]

If you can earn more than what you spend then yes, it's worth mining, any time.
ASICs can become useless in relatively short time so you need to speculate on the price to get an idea of the return. Also factor in *estimated* delivery date and difficulty.
I would stick to GPUs on alts, better availability and resell value

[imamanandyou]

GPU Scrypt mining is profitable, but the situation may change relatively quickly, cheap electricity helps here

[chrisnippz]

I started mining 2 months ago. Like yourself posted on the a forum (Litecoin) asking was it to late to get in the game. Let me tell you I went against all and said stuff it I'm getting into this, more of a hobby than quit my day job etc. Forked out $1500 to build a 2100kh/s gpu miner. Small time miner but none the less has been fun. I mine alt-coins and trade up to BTC or LTC. On the forums everyday checking for new launches of coins etc. Haha and I tell you there are plenty released each week - just got to decide which one you think will make it. Most are pump and dump  coins - but hey you want to make profit here? Others I mine for a couple of days and just hold them. I mined Dogecoin when it first got released, there was about 50 of us on one pool for 3/4 days until it went bat shit crazy. I kept mining then jumped off. Sold a % when they were at .00000180 and made 10BTC. Still holding about 10,000,000 DOGE until the block reward halves, prices should go up again and get rid of some of the major pools. Now if that's not return on investment I don't know what is?

It's never to late. I am in it for the long run, holding onto BTC/LTC. Mining for 2 months and if I was to mine LTC by itself I would have about say 36 LTC or 1 BTC. Once again mining the alts I have 105 LTC and 10BTC. Can't complain on a net worth of around close to $10k?

I would say spend what you can afford. Play around and just have fun and make some money whilst you're at it and help build the Bitcoin community. The more people using it the more it's going to be worth.

[Kemicall]

I just bought two r9 290's last week.
It's never too late 

[brokedummy]

I just spent my whole paycheck getting in line for preorder hosting from butterfly labs. Hope it pays off well, but I have to wait until they come online. Now I still have some available credit on my credit cards to invest. I have around a thousand or two in available credit spread out on a few cards. What do you think would be the best, most profitable thing, GPU or ASIC or whatever, to buy right now to start mining alts and stuff so that I can pay off 10k on my credit cards in a year or two? At this point I need to use my credit to pay off my credit, and if worse comes to worse I have to sell some stuff.

[dhenson]

Now your just trolling.

[chrisnippz]

I just spent my whole paycheck getting in line for preorder hosting from butterfly labs. Hope it pays off well, but I have to wait until they come online. Now I still have some available credit on my credit cards to invest. I have around a thousand or two in available credit spread out on a few cards. What do you think would be the best, most profitable thing, GPU or ASIC or whatever, to buy right now to start mining alts and stuff so that I can pay off 10k on my credit cards in a year or two? At this point I need to use my credit to pay off my credit, and if worse comes to worse I have to sell some stuff.

ASIC miners only mine SHA-256 and not scrypt coins. Most of the alt-coins coming out at the moment are scrypt based. GPU, cheaper and easier to setup - but power hungry. Mining is a 24/7 job. You will always be wanting to check on your miners status, making sure it is working. There is a lot of tweaking as well depending on the GPU cards that you buy. 7950 or 290 are best for buck at the moment. But with the massive media coverage at the moment the prices for the cards have skyrocketed. When I bought the cards just before every man and his dog jumped onto the scene you could get the cards for around $250/300. Now you are looking anywhere upwards of $500.

Mine alts and trade up! Be ready for the dumps. You have to be watching the exchanges and see when new coins are added and get in quick. Once it's been dumped it's all down hill from there for most coins.

[black_swan]

Mine alts and trade up! Be ready for the dumps. You have to be watching the exchanges and see when new coins are added and get in quick. Once it's been dumped it's all down hill from there for most coins.

This, it's not late to start mining but you need to put some effort on it, have a lot of time to join the pump and dump and trade a little bit.
Be conservative at the beginning until you understand the market better or you will lose! Good Luck :-)