ALT Coin Mining (general questions)

[Dafar]

If I want to get into mining where can I start? I was thinking of something simple, a rig around $1000 with 2 video cards... and obviously I wouldn't mine BTC but I was thinking of mining LTC and other ALT coins and converting them to BTC. Few questions:

1. Can an average joe still profit form mining LTC and ALT coins?
2. Can you mine different ALT coins simultaneously... or do you have to mine 1 at a time?
3. When is LTC mining supposed to become too difficult or unprofitable? (ie-- are ASICS for LTC coming out soon?)
4. How do you guys figure out the cost of electricity associated with mining?

Anyway, I just wanted to know where I can start and whether you would recommend it even though I wouldn't be getting a top of the line rig. Thanks

[Operatr]

1. It just depends on what the market is doing. Scrypt coins have an added dark side in that using GPUs to mine eats up a lot of power. Recently with Litecoin's rise in market price GPU mining can be profitable, but do your homework.

2. You can't mine more than one at the same time unless you have several rigs, though with multi-pools like multipool.in, middlecoin.com, hashco.ws and others you can mine different types of coins automatically. They switch to mine the most profitable at the time. An added bonus to this is you diversify your coins a bit over relying entirely on one coin. With so many networks now it seems prudent to be diverse now.

3. Litecoin's network growth will not be nearly the steep climb Bitcoin's network has seen, due to the way Scrypt works. ASICs are coming out (Gridseed) that can hash Litecoin networks, but the benefit is not nearly what it was for Bitcoin. The only real advantage is power efficiency compared to GPUs. The cost of these new Scrypt ASICs is still unknown, it may be more worthwhile to GPU mine depending.

4. Your local power company should maintain a list of power rates for your area (domestic or industrial) that you can use to calculate your power costs using one of the mining calculators.

Currently there is nothing special about Scrypt mining, it is just common computer gear found in any gaming PC. Lots of guides and tutorials out there to show you the way.

It would be best to get an independent rig from your main computer, mining will make your PC worthless for anything else while it is hashing.

[vaporker]

Hi, I had some of the same questions and hoped you can answer some more. Would it be crazy to say you could invest in a total hash rate of 86M. Then mine Litecoin for example, and as soon as you hit ~55 litecoin exchange into bitcoin. i have pretty good evidence that supports this theory, yet alot of people seem to think mining is not profitable. I understand Bitcoin might not be so friendly for a ~10k investment but Litecoin mining or other altcoins, seem to work fine. I am new to this, and i'm pretty sure i'm missing info..

[railzand]

It can't be evidence as such, because of the unknowns. You can't know what will happen to litecoin difficulty if everyone buys these big asics. Or what will happen to its price. Or whether you're buying vaporware or a duff rig from a dubious mfg. who won't refund you.

You say it seems to work fine, but you're talking about what it might work like in the future.

10k is a great amount to put into btc right now this minute. Then read up on cold storage, and be patient, not greedy. Do not spend it, just hold.

[DolanDuck]

Maybe you should try to cloudmine to learn how mining works, the investment is really low and you will earn some experience with the altcoins.

[vaporker]

hey, thanks for your answers. i have actually seen this machine (the 10k one) work(otherwise i wouldn't even consider buying it) and the provider is safe and checked. so far it's passed my expectations. I understand and you are completely right about the "unknowns". It was very unclear to me why everybody would rather go for cold storage, and even with the data presented i have to say i still incline towards the miner.

[blumangroup]

1. Can an average joe still profit form mining LTC and ALT coins?

That depends on how much you can invest in your rig and how much you pay for electricity.

I believe that LTC was making around .0019 BTC per MH per day as of a few days ago. You should not expect to make much more then this. This comes out to be around $1.20 per MH per day.

2. Can you mine different ALT coins simultaneously... or do you have to mine 1 at a time?

SHA 256 coins (similar to BTC) can generally be merged mined with BTC. Most scrypt based coins need to be mined "one at a time"

3. When is LTC mining supposed to become too difficult or unprofitable? (ie-- are ASICS for LTC coming out soon?)

ASICs are in production as of now. The difficulty of LTC and other scrypt based coins will likely skyrocket in the next couple of months. Again profitability is based on your cost of electricity and how efficient your mining rig is.

4. How do you guys figure out the cost of electricity associated with mining?

You can look at your electric bill to see how much you pay per Kw/H. You can then use a Kill-a-watt meter to measure how much your mining rig uses.

[railzand]

hey, thanks for your answers. i have actually seen this machine (the 10k one) work(otherwise i wouldn't even consider buying it) and the provider is safe and checked. so far it's passed my expectations. I understand and you are completely right about the "unknowns". It was very unclear to me why everybody would rather go for cold storage, and even with the data presented i have to say i still incline towards the miner.

well i hope you turn out to be right. you may well do. look for suchmoon's thread on multipool profitability and get yourself on leaserig - see my sig