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

[Seppelpeters]

It is not too late yet for Gridcoin, if you hop in now, you will make some good profits. The coin is slowly gaining in momentum and its price has been stable since the first transaction took place, a sign of long-term profit.

[wwzsocki]

What about cloud mining?Is it possible to mine all curencies?Sorry a little off topic but it would be nice to hear actual opinion.

[TookDk]

I would recommend to invest in a small setup to get some experience before blowing your hard earned fiat.

If you have an old desktop computer then you can slowly start building a small mining rig.

To get started you only need a powerful graphic card and a good power supply:

Here is an example:
MSI R9 280X  (~$360)
Corsair HX750 (~$140]

The power supply will support two graphics card, so later you can upgrade your rig with one more card.

You don't need to build a fancy rig to start with, just open the desktop chassis and leave the side open.

This setup will only cost you ~$500, and give you 720 kH/s

Right now you can mine altcoin worth ~$10 / day

So in approximate 50 days, you will have ROI.
You can use the income to upgrade your rig, or build a new one.

Don't have to much focus on investing on the newest gear, keep your focus on reaching ROI for all your investments.
Slowly build up experience, when you have about 1/2 experience in mining then are you ready to pull the trigger for bigger investments.

That is my advice.

Cheers!

[TookDk]

What about cloud mining?Is it possible to mine all curencies?Sorry a little off topic but it would be nice to hear actual opinion.

No I don't think that is profitable.
You will only get ROI if the bitcoin rate increase a lot, but in that case you might as well have bougth bitcoins and hold' em, then would profit have been larger.

[Sonny]

What about cloud mining?Is it possible to mine all curencies?Sorry a little off topic but it would be nice to hear actual opinion.

No I don't think that is profitable.
You will only get ROI if the bitcoin rate increase a lot, but in that case you might as well have bougth bitcoins and hold' em, then would profit have been larger.

Exactly.

Before buying any hardware or hashrate, please double check with a profit calculator (tons out there) and don't forget to take the uprising difficulty and your electricity cost (if not cloud mining) into consideration.

Also, be careful of scammers, especially if you see some "too good to be true" deals.

[CryptoBarterExchange.com]

A lot of times it is easier and more efficient to just purchase some BTC, and from there, invest in whatever kinds of cryptos you are interested in.

But mining is fun!  It really is fun to be able to point your gear at different coins, especially as they are released, and it adds some variety to things.

If you can, I might suggest investing some money directly, but setting up a small mining rig as well. Even something as basic as one video card with 300 k/hashes or more is enough to start producing a trickle of scrypt coins.

There is something truly exciting about going off to work for the day, coming back later to see how many coins your system has produced.

And with a little bit of trading savvy, you can make that video card pay for itself in a month or two.

[coinium.org]

thanks bro

[studio1one]

low investment mining:

Buy a 280X

Watch Coinwarz.

Mine Alt Scrypt coins

quickly flip them to BTC

[techgeek]

Just like others have mentioned, Alt coins are your best option.

Most can barely keep up with the performance levels to mine btc directly, so at least hold them as long you can.

I`d buy some before prices hike.

[Mobo]

I wouldnt bother!

[chocomav]

Coinbase allows you to buy bitcoins with your bank account and credit card. You'll probably ROI quicker simply buying bitcoins at this point.

[Sonny]

You'll probably ROI quicker simply buying bitcoins at this point.

Agree.
If your mining profitability comes from the expected uprising btc price, you could get better profit by directly buying bitcoin.

[Kenshin]

Don't mine, it is really not good for your health. The addiction of getting more hashing power. Is as bad a crack, cocaine or heroin. 

[peruana]

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).

Excellent point, math don't lie, as much as you want 1 + 1 to equal 3 it never does. I have been buying contracts from this really cool site that seems to be automated. I found it on eBay after winning one of their auctions. It is called mBigas.com although it redirects to mining.mBigas.com for some reason.

May not be profitable now but like you said its better then doing nothing. I have my hands on 4 coins and I am just ridding them out for a while to see how much they go up.

[shinratensei]

Its not too late, just purchase a powerful mining device  from here: https://products.butterflylabs.com/

[Sonny]

Its not too late, just purchase a powerful mining device  from here: https://products.butterflylabs.com/

Be careful with all BFL pre-orders, unless you want to have a terrible delivery delay.

[D05GTO]

Never to late to learn.  There's USB Antminers and Yellowjackets at a pretty descent price.  Sure, you won't make much with them but they are a start.   Good at getting your feet wet.

[jinjuro]

The best now is to mine new alt coins specifically cpu coins.

[MichaelNZ]

Hi everyone,
I'm new here. My name is Michael and I'm from New Zealand.
I've been reading this thread with great interest as I'm also keen on the idea of starting mining for coin.

I should point out that I have only a rudimentary knowledge of cryptocurrencies, so please excuse me if I make a dumb remark or ask a question others all know the answers too.

Am I right in thinking the following ...
There are two basic types of coin, SHA256 and scrypt ?
The hardware used to mine SHA256 coins cannot be used to mine scrypt coins ? Antminer etc
The hardware used to mine scrypt coins can also be used to mine SHA256 coins ? GPU's

Living down here in the South Pacific, it can be difficult to get hold of hardware at reasonable prices. For example I see prices quoted for GPU's in USD that I can only dream about. The newer more powerful cards are marketed as gamer cards and are sold at premium prices ... a Radeon R9 290X 5GB card sells here for USD$720 !

I've watched a number of how to videos and read a few too. It seems to me that a 4 x R9 280X rig with a 1200 watt PSU should be mining around 1 litecoin per day or 0.02 bitcoin ... does that sound correct ?
I could assemble a rig like that for around USD$2800 ... power is about USD$0.20 per kilowatt hour. If the prices I'm seeing for litecoin at USD$18.50 and bitcoin at USD$716.00 are correct, then mining can be profitable over the course of a year.

Am I correct or barking up the wrong tree ?
All thoughts and comments appreciated

MichaelNZ

[Tars_Tarkas]

IMHO, Folks should look at mining as a business investment.  Answer the fundamental questions about ROI (% and payback period both), risks, equipment utility, and variable costs.  The correct answer will always be one that reflects a profit and manages the risks.  All equipment decisions need to be filtered through that analysis.  There was some excellent advice earlier about using lower end cards/lower end motherboard & PC/ to mine alt coins; If you followed that conversation, that person didn't have a world class rig, but was able to pay for the initial investment in a month, and is now banking coin.  Risk has been reduced to zero---all profit now.   To me, that is a fabulous business model. 

I've mined BTC a couple years ago, paused and picked up again last fall.  From what I've experienced with current BTC mining, I'd say you best be prepared to invest substantially to recover your investment and reduce your risk.  Entering the BTC mining business now requires some jingle in your pocket---and to enter it with serious capability will require some serious jingle.   

I love the opportunities in alt coins right now---in both SHA-256 and Scrypt.  I just picked up a couple used BFL Jalapeno's off of ebay for ~$150 and will have some fun using them to mine some SHA-256 Alt Coins (my larger miners remain pointed at BTC).   Although, I am seeing dynamics (as mentioned earlier) where alt coins make an interesting hedge against BTC.   

One of the best places I've seen for analyzing coins is coinwarz.com---great data, and great tools (tip of the hat to them).   Know your hash-rates, keep it simple and profitable, and just get started.