Smart Idea to Invest in a Mining Rig?

[TheDiamondMiner]

Hello fellow miners,

So the question is: Is it a wise investment to begin mining Bitcoin and other SHA-256 coins right now? What I mean is for a newbie to start mining today or in the near future, will they see any profit? If they do, what kind of equipment are we talking about? $100? $500 $1,000? $10,000? Or should a newbie invest in Bitcoin itself??


Thanks,
TheDiamondMiner

[2tights]

Hello fellow miners,

So the question is: Is it a wise investment to begin mining Bitcoin and other SHA-256 coins right now? What I mean is for a newbie to start mining today or in the near future, will they see any profit? If they do, what kind of equipment are we talking about? $100? $500 $1,000? $10,000? Or should a newbie invest in Bitcoin itself??


Thanks,
TheDiamondMiner

I think the consensus says Buy and hodl for your lowest risk (yet, still high risk) "investment" (spekulation)

Those of us who are either really smart, crazy or stupid spend as much as we can stomach on mining rigs. 

[crocko]

Hello !

You can:

- buy / build yourself a LTC rig, and start mining for the LTC and other scrypt based coins (DOGE, FTC)
- buy an (SHA based) Antminer S1 180 GH/s from China, but the delivery time is up to 45 days + 1 week for the shipping; I don't know if it safe to do this..
- buy a BTC rig, but the delivery schedule is a big problem... if you pre-order now (that mean to pay in advance with fiat or BTC), you will get your rig in March (the best case scenario).
- join a Group Buy to purchase mining equipment. You will receive shares proportional with your contribution. At this moment most of GBs are closed, that means they have purchased the mining gear and wait for delivery this spring/ they had receive it and start to mine and share the profit with the members
- trade for shares - some of the members of the GB's sell their shares
- purchase mining contracts - there are already huge datacenters who sell (=rent) you hashing power

You can consider other factors like:
- the raising difficulty, which can make an ASIC miner obsolete (he will don't get the ROI (Return OF Investment) in the end, an you must invest again and again)
- the power grid from your home, these devices need a lot of electricity
- the acclimatisation is important too, because these devices are getting hot (an electrical current which run through a wire will produce heat or even light - see your bulb-light)
- most of them require some technical knowledge, they are not just plug in'and'forget


And finally: it is not mandatory to be a 'MINER' !
- simply buy coins and wait for a good price to sell (my favorite)
- or just start a business with coins (BTC,LTC,PPC,..) based payment and you will prosper too! (dog food for BTC   )

If you find my post useful to you, please don't forget me !  
Good Luck !

[cad_cdn]

pretty safe to say unless you plan on being a 'whale' on the mining side, (you need TH's worth of mining power) a positive return on investment in sha256 based crypto currencies is difficult to realize.
You can mine alternative sha256 coins, and trade them to the many exchanges, but this does require continuous work and monitoring of prices, trends etc.
You can buy 'auto-trading software' but it's not that cheap either.

alt coins may be the way to go, ltc being the silver to bitcoin gold.

I'd say the safest bet is to invest in bitcoin or select few alt coins and hold onto them.

On the other hand, coin mining is sort of fun, and challenging, personally, it has become a hobby for me now; as opposed to something I had a passing interest in (from a techie standpoint)

and my garage is heated quite nicely in this current -30 degree polar vortex here in the frozen north.
 

Hello fellow miners,

So the question is: Is it a wise investment to begin mining Bitcoin and other SHA-256 coins right now? What I mean is for a newbie to start mining today or in the near future, will they see any profit? If they do, what kind of equipment are we talking about? $100? $500 $1,000? $10,000? Or should a newbie invest in Bitcoin itself??


Thanks,
TheDiamondMiner

[hyphenated]

Yep.

Maybe not financially, but at least you are really in the game, rather than just speculating.

Decide what your main driver is - greed, fun, money for nothing, being involved in potentially a vast rework and upheaval of the World's financial systems, or all of the above.

Decide your limits - finance, time, space, heat, power.

Building a modest rig from found parts can be cheap - a couple of Radeon GPUs on a cheap recycled mobo will get you in the game without breaking the bank.

Realise that there is a real limit to how many of these you can operate to start.  Power isn't free, even if you think it is; air con isn't free, even if you think it is; and so on.

The little guys like us do far better grinding than looking for the big kill - lots of horror stories on pre-ordering the next best thing.

Try Litecoin and maybe DigitalCoin until you truly understand altcurrency options - many will be gone with your investment, whether it is time, power or cash.

It may not be smart to mine, but it's fun, and people will have at least something to focus on when you tell 'em you are involved in cryptocurrency, otherwise it's about as interesting as announcing you've dropped a dime on pork belly futures - and there are plenty who decided it was to late, then the revaluation occurred.

Every day recite the mantra:  'Crypto currencies can go down as well as up'.

 

[TheDiamondMiner]

Thanks for all the great advice!! 

So I think I want to build the following rig:

I want to start with SHA-256 because I don't have the capital for Scrypt mining. Although, eventually I will buy a Scrypt mining rig.

So here it is:

ASIC Antminer U1 USB Miners
USB Hub
Connected to my computer first then a Rasberry Pi (when I can get it).

First I just want to get the miners and plug them into my computer without a USB hub. How many can I have? Also, is that a wise decision?
How many Antminers can I have plugged into my USB hub then into the computer. Basically, how many can my computer take and how many are safe to mine in the same hub.

Thanks!
TheDiamondMiner

[hyphenated]

Antminers are SHA256, so you may want reread your answers :-)

Low entry cost, but no return - Scrypt at least gives you a better chance IMHO.  However, you should pick up cheap erupters as users get out 

[mitty]

Thanks for all the great advice!! 

So I think I want to build the following rig:

I want to start with SHA-256 because I don't have the capital for Scrypt mining. Although, eventually I will buy a Scrypt mining rig.

So here it is:

ASIC Antminer U1 USB Miners
USB Hub
Connected to my computer first then a Rasberry Pi (when I can get it).

First I just want to get the miners and plug them into my computer without a USB hub. How many can I have? Also, is that a wise decision?
How many Antminers can I have plugged into my USB hub then into the computer. Basically, how many can my computer take and how many are safe to mine in the same hub.

Thanks!
TheDiamondMiner

Antminers should use less than USB spec max power consumption so you should be safe filling all your available USB ports with Antminers.

For hubs you need to be careful to select a hub that has ample power which always means using a powered hub (the hub should have an external power brick/wall wart). 
I don't own any Antminer U1s but based on reading other posts it seems that they use 1.2w of power each which is 240 mA of current.  If you want to overclock the USBs then allow some headroom.  USB spec max current is 500 mA per port so a hub with total available current=(500 mA * number of ports) is ideal.  Note that 1000 mA = 1 A (amp)

The cheap hubs usually don't provide this much power but some of the more expensive ones do.  These used to be really popular for running ASICMINER Block Erupters since they provide up to 900 mA current per port: http://www.amazon.com/Charging-Adapter-VL812-B2-Chipset-Firmware/dp/B005NGQWL2/

A decent and cheaper option for a few number of units is this Rosewill hub which should be able to run 10 Antminers: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004F38WT4/

You may want to provide some cooling if you're packing a bunch of units together in a hub.  This USB powered fan is pretty popular for cooling USB miners: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003XN24GY/

Happy mining!

[raskul]

if you are looking for any rate of return, try your best to get at least a 100gh rig

usb miners are just for fun unless you can set up over 100gh of them, -I have one single usb running on my laptop till at home, aside from my main rig - it even has a name 'loser' 
but it does make my gh round up, which may or may not make any, at pool difference at all.

contracts are always iffy because the large companies selling contracts will always take a premium, and private mining contracts are iffy because they are usually offered by individual miners who realise they can make more money from contracts than they can from hashing.

i did a lot of research prior to deciding what to buy (i'm quite new at mining) and soon realised that mining anything under 100gh, may buy you a beer every saturday night, but won't make any great return...

One thing I will say, is GREAT! you have decided to mine BTC, and the community will be better for it. stick by your desires and, happy mining!

[FreedomFeens]

What if you were heavily invested, for example 40 knc neptunes and hired an expert to run the rig(essentially on-call like a doctor)?  What could you expect then?  I am considering something like this but my biggest concern is the 21e6 group and others like them, essentially secretive mines that can put even my proposed speed to shame if they ever realize their goals.

[raskul]

What if you were heavily invested, for example 40 knc neptunes and hired an expert to run the rig(essentially on-call like a doctor)?  What could you expect then?  I am considering something like this but my biggest concern is the 21e6 group and others like them, essentially secretive mines that can put even my proposed speed to shame if they ever realize their goals.

big electric bills.

[FreedomFeens]

What if you were heavily invested, for example 40 knc neptunes and hired an expert to run the rig(essentially on-call like a doctor)?  What could you expect then?  I am considering something like this but my biggest concern is the 21e6 group and others like them, essentially secretive mines that can put even my proposed speed to shame if they ever realize their goals.

big electric bills.

Yes, something like 100,000W/hr. Par for the course IMO.  Selling a few btc would cover that.

What would you expect in terms of profit.  

Also, with regard to a company like knc dumping all that hashing power on the netork and how it will affect profitability-meaning I am not the only one with neptunes.  KNC has said they will release 2400 of these 3,000,000MHz units.  Do you know if any calculators take this kind of additional hashing power into effect?

According to my calculations, accounting for all expenses, buying 40 neptunes would be profitable for approx 20 weeks, but i should be looking to replace with completely new faster units after 25 weeks(to be safe and allow for manufacturer delays).  Hmm, i am getting a better picture of big money mining now.  4-5,000/month electric bills, paying an expert to run the setup and completely replacing hardware approx every 25 weeks due to difficulty outpacing profitability-which means at the minimum another 500,000 investment to mirror what you had before but im wondering if 6 months later the speed of the mining tech has increased enough against difficulty to allow for good roi.  I like this, im gonna lock myself in the bunker and read til my eyes dont work.

[hyphenated]

About fifteen years ago a company called UUNet (which was owned by the company for which I worked) owned a ridiculously high percentage of the internet core nodes.  Their business required equipment to be doubled every nine months.  Just think of that for a minute:  A typical site was in the 30 to 50 million mark with racks, fire suppression, power, all the good stuff.  These sites were scattered across the world, and we had to duplicate all the functionality every nine months, then do it all again with the bigger number.

It encouraged speed and precision over cost-savings, and the capital budget was in the billions.

Several organisations are in the same mindset, and as long as their capital lasts they will continue building - but all curves have a plateau.

[hulk]

Hello fellow miners,

So the question is: Is it a wise investment to begin mining Bitcoin and other SHA-256 coins right now? What I mean is for a newbie to start mining today or in the near future, will they see any profit? If they do, what kind of equipment are we talking about? $100? $500 $1,000? $10,000? Or should a newbie invest in Bitcoin itself??


Thanks,
TheDiamondMiner

My advice is not to invest in mining rig, bitcoin and litecoin difficulty is going up like mad. I suspect litecoin ASIC would be mass produced in a month time...