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

[fraktall]

My option is straight: lost very first wave of cryptocurrencies (BTC), also lost second one (LTC, PPC, NMC), now is third wave going to it's end (more than 50 approved by coinmarketcap cryptocurrencies), so the only chance to make profit by mining is to mine new coins only.

[Wheatley24]

I only just started mining a little over two weeks ago, I made 6 BTC off of the MaxCoin release. So I wouldn't be discouraged as a new miner, it may seem confusing at first, but you will begin to understand what is going on eventually.

[puipamchi21]

mining is not possible without mining rigs

[Sonny]

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

Welcome Michael.

Apart from SHA256 and scrypt based coins, they are many others like SHA3, PoS (Proof-of-stake), PoW (Proof of burn), etc.

You can use CPU/GPU to mine SHA256 and scrypt based coins.
ASIC is used to describe those specially designed hardware for mining.
The Antminer or other existing ASICs are specially designed to do SHA256 computations.
We will have some scrypt ASICs as well soon.
For example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421921.0

Don't forget to take the difficulty adjustment into your profit calculation.
Bitcoin Profit calculator: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator
Litecoin Profit calculator: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/litecoin/calculator

[Sonny]

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.   

Apart from checking the profitability on conwarz, you could join middlecoin or multipool, and you will be able to mine the most profitable coin automatically.

[MichaelNZ]

Don't forget to take the difficulty adjustment into your profit calculation.
Bitcoin Profit calculator: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator
Litecoin Profit calculator: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/litecoin/calculator

Hi Sonny
Thanks for your reply.
I have been and had a look at the profit calculators and I don't understand what they are telling me. I inputed what I thought were the correct figures based on what my limited understanding allows and all I saw were profit figures in red with a - sign in front. To me that says this will never make a profit and you've done your dough ... is that correct ?

[Sheldor333]

It's never too late. Invest some smaller amount for start if you don't have much then go from there. Mine some alt coins, exchange and go from there. You have to start somehow.

[MakeBelieve]

You need a lot of money to invest or have access to free electricity to get any good profit.

[leannemckim46]

Time to start understanding about bitcoin difficulty before you start mining. You soon realized that only ASICs manufacturer is making money.

[MichaelNZ]

I'm not going to pretend to understand the way difficulty works, but from what I've read from others it seems that the more people there are processing, the faster the blocks are discovered and the faster the difficulty increases.
If that is correct it would from an untrained eye that very soon it is going to be impossible to make a profit from mining for any form of coin as the return on money invested plus the cost of energy to run it will far outweigh the returns.
So effectively it becomes a self destroying market, which is madness.
And to think I was contemplating buying a Terraminer IV !

[Sonny]

Hi Sonny
Thanks for your reply.
I have been and had a look at the profit calculators and I don't understand what they are telling me. I inputed what I thought were the correct figures based on what my limited understanding allows and all I saw were profit figures in red with a - sign in front. To me that says this will never make a profit and you've done your dough ... is that correct ?

You are welcome.
Yup, you are right. It is very unlikely for you to get your investment back....

[MichaelNZ]

I've been to coinchoose and looked at what appears to be the most profitable coins to mine and they all seem to be scrypt coins. At time of writing bitbar seems to be the most profitable as it shows 4000+% profitability.
To my naive eye it would seem that mining them and as has been suggested earlier in this thread, trading them into an alternative, such at bitcoin or litecoin immediately might be viable.
If that is the case I would think to abandon the idea of buying a Terraminer IV and instead look at constructing a 4 x GPU system.

There are any number of sellers out of China offering USB ASIC's ... BTC, Antminer etc the cost of buying a few of those and a decent multiport USB hub is minimal, as it the cost to run it ... quoted power consumption seems to be around 1.2 watts per device ... not much at all. The question then becomes will a minimal rig like that ever make a profit ? What I don't know is at what level the payout from a pool would be with a rig like that. Is there anyone who could give me a guiding heads up on what they achieve ?

[Omikifuse]

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

Some example which coins to mine please?

[coinglomerate]

Mine duckduckcoin

[duhosnyul]

I think you can earn more by mining this new coins.

[MichaelNZ]

I'm sure I'm covering old ground, but I've found this two sites very useful ...

http://www.coinchoose.com/
http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

Working on the information from those sites, it seems that it is still possible to make profit from mining.

I haven't jumped on the band wagon yet, I'm still debating what hardware to use, but a 4 x GPU rig using fast but not bleeding edge, cutting edge, but leading edge cards that are at better pricing ...

Radeon R9 280 or 270 for example ... 50% or less than Radeon R9 290X

[Sonny]

I haven't jumped on the band wagon yet, I'm still debating what hardware to use, but a 4 x GPU rig using fast but not bleeding edge, cutting edge, but leading edge cards that are at better pricing ...

Radeon R9 280 or 270 for example ... 50% or less than Radeon R9 290X

You will get better hashrate with R9 290x, but definitely not 50% better lol. 
FYR: https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison

[MichaelNZ]

I've found that website extremely useful in helping me make a cost/benefit analysis of available GPU's

Still lots more work to do before I make a final decision, but based on what I've seen a Terraminer IV do, it's looking highly likely that is where my money will be going ... But, anything from Cointerra is unlikely to be available until June, at the earliest, maybe, delivery dependent on availability, not a strong point with Cointerra it appears currently !

I can get my hands on graphics cards no problem, so I could be up and running on scrypt mining straight away. I haven't got enough funds available to do both types of miners immediately, so I need to look at the return from scrypt and see if I can recover enough to be into a Terraminer for June ... decisions decisions LOL

[Flashman]

Call this a heads up, KNC just announced a motherfuckin' SERIOUS scrypt ASIC, see link in sig.

Y'all got about 6 months of GPU mining left. Make the most of it!

Don't forget when the ASICs kicked in on bitcoin the price ended up going up by 10x, so SAVE every coin you can.

[Yuki1988]

Call this a heads up, KNC just announced a motherfuckin' SERIOUS scrypt ASIC, see link in sig.

Y'all got about 6 months of GPU mining left. Make the most of it!

Wow, it looks really good, minimum 100 MH/s and shipment begins in Q2/Q3 of 2014 
If these asics are shipped in Q2/Q3, those buying GPUs today will probably not be able to get ROI...