Profitability

[jtphenom]

Looks like mining profitability is going down, and fast. Is there any reason to think it will still be profitable to mine altcoins one month from now, and/or that profitability will go back up?

[anderl]

Looks like mining profitability is going down, and fast. Is there any reason to think it will still be profitable to mine altcoins one month from now, and/or that profitability will go back up?

Mining is very volatile and for most of the time the profit margins are very tight.  The large profitability you saw recently was an anomaly because of the increased public interest.  There are times I have to stop mining because it costs more to pay electricity than I could profit off of alt coins.  The low hanging fruit has been picked.  Prepare for several months of pain.

[jtphenom]

Only several months? lol  Wouldn't this be a permanent decrease in profitability? It's dropped from an average of roughly $7 or $8 a day per card to about $6 a day per card. I don't understand how the market works well enough to understand why or how the profitability would go back up..

[anderl]

Only several months? lol  Wouldn't this be a permanent decrease in profitability? It's dropped from an average of roughly $7 or $8 a day per card to about $6 a day per card. I don't understand how the market works well enough to understand why or how the profitability would go back up..

No, profitability is price relative to difficulty.  I mined with a GPU farm at 200Mhs between May and Nov where the average profit per card was $1.50.  That is typical.

[jtphenom]

200MHs/sec? Was that the farm speed or yours? And was that BTC or LTC?

[Hellionator]

Profitability depends on how much hashing power is mining a coin and how much the coin it's worth.  As more people begin mining with more powerful hardware the difficulty will continue to rise and profit margins will shrink.  The silver lining is that the alt market still has tons of room to grow, the key is to figure out which coins will survive and increase in value.  The other strategy is to mine new coins that you think will be successful as the difficulty is very low on new coins.

[anderl]

200MHs/sec? Was that the farm speed or yours? And was that BTC or LTC?

It is a scrypt GPU farm and it is mine.  I was mining BTC until I noticed LTC was more profitable.  I still run it even as difficulty increases.  I've been growing it over the last 16 months.  Operating costs are .10/kWs plus lease, insurance, security.

[jtphenom]

200MHs/sec? Was that the farm speed or yours? And was that BTC or LTC?

It is a scrypt GPU farm and it is mine.  I was mining BTC until I noticed LTC was more profitable.  I still run it even as difficulty increases.  I've been growing it over the last 16 months.  Operating costs are .10/kWs plus lease, insurance, security.

Wow, nice! Mind if I ask how many rigs it has, number of cards each, etc? And is it more profitable than not most of the time, or vice versa?

[jtphenom]

The silver lining is that the alt market still has tons of room to grow..

In your opnion, does that mean that the altcoins that come on the scene in the future and do well will possibly be as profitable to mine as some are now, such as DGC, DOGE, WDC, etc.?

[anderl]

200MHs/sec? Was that the farm speed or yours? And was that BTC or LTC?

It is a scrypt GPU farm and it is mine.  I was mining BTC until I noticed LTC was more profitable.  I still run it even as difficulty increases.  I've been growing it over the last 16 months.  Operating costs are .10/kWs plus lease, insurance, security.

Wow, nice! Mind if I ask how many rigs it has, number of cards each, etc? And is it more profitable than not most of the time, or vice versa?

The majority of the time it is profitable.  Profitable is relative to what you expect.  Returning 5% per month is profitable to me.  So I continue to operate.  70 rigs with 5 GPUs each.  Hash rate is variable. Some of them operate better than others.  Winter in my region helps performance.  Summers makes it difficult and I have to reduce intensity.  In November I had to shut down my rigs for 1 month because the cost of running them was higher than the profit returned on LTC.  If I knew that LTC would go from 2.50 to 50.00 I would have kept mining but hindsight is 20/20.

In summary you need to know your break even point and what your risks are and how long you are willing to take risk to return a gain.

[mikeybit]

200MHs/sec? Was that the farm speed or yours? And was that BTC or LTC?

It is a scrypt GPU farm and it is mine.  I was mining BTC until I noticed LTC was more profitable.  I still run it even as difficulty increases.  I've been growing it over the last 16 months.  Operating costs are .10/kWs plus lease, insurance, security.

Wow, nice! Mind if I ask how many rigs it has, number of cards each, etc? And is it more profitable than not most of the time, or vice versa?

The majority of the time it is profitable.  Profitable is relative to what you expect.  Returning 5% per month is profitable to me.  So I continue to operate.  70 rigs with 5 GPUs each.  Hash rate is variable. Some of them operate better than others.  Winter in my region helps performance.  Summers makes it difficult and I have to reduce intensity.  In November I had to shut down my rigs for 1 month because the cost of running them was higher than the profit returned on LTC.  If I knew that LTC would go from 2.50 to 50.00 I would have kept mining but hindsight is 20/20.

In summary you need to know your break even point and what your risks are and how long you are willing to take risk to return a gain.

You keep mentioning LTC, but why not mine alt coins?

[anderl]

You keep mentioning LTC, but why not mine alt coins?

Yes I understand your question.  Its relative and profitability of other alt coins can be higher than LTC at times.  However liquidity on alt coins is a fraction of LTC and LTC is a fraction of BTC.  I have a proprietary application that monitors Cryptsy and daemon difficulty to determine what to mine.  Again it is about YOUR strategy to maximize profitability.  Design it to suit your risk levels.