why do people mine crap coins?

[toefu]

I've always wondered this question, as it has never made sense to me. Why is profitability so much better on eth vs ubiq and ella, etc...

Eth consistently is about 10-20% more profitable to mine (as per whattomine).

zec/zen is almost always more profitable to mine than btcp/komodo

monero is almost always more profitable than ETN, etc.

Isn't mining the more profitable coin safer? or do people just constantly mine the less profitable coin and try to trade the volatility of it hoping to catch a swing? I get spec mining when you are mining a brand new coin and difficulty is non existent and value of a coin is completely unknown, but we're talking Ella and Komodo here.

you would think if most people just started mining the big coins only, the smaller coins would ultimately end start profiting within 5% of the big coins.

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[Xazax310]

Well if you cash out daily/weekly, then yes, it makes more sense to mine whatever is profitable. If you HODL "shit-coins" they can easily 10x during peaks/surges making more than if you would cashed in your ETH daily/weekly.

[philipma1957]

To illustrate I mined 12000 rvn coins.

I sold 7000 of them.  That sale turned a profit over power spent so much so that I now have 5000 free rvn coins and about a 50 usd profit.

So even if the coin zeros out I made 50 usd no matter what.

I listed the 5000 rvn at really high prices.

So if I catch a spike they sell for 1000 usd.

So certain 50 usd profit

Possible 1000

I did this with six other coins.

[mrstark89]

To illustrate I mined 12000 rvn coins.

I sold 7000 of them.  That sale turned a profit over power spent so much so that I now have 5000 free rvn coins and about a 50 usd profit.

So even if the coin zeros out I made 50 usd no matter what.

I listed the 5000 rvn at really high prices.

So if I catch a spike they sell for 1000 usd.

So certain 50 usd profit

Possible 1000

I did this with six other coins.

great plan bro
btw price of small-cap coins changes very fast, got double or more in hours. When a coin launched, difficulty still low, if people think that coin is potential to grow, they will mine and store an amount then move to another coin

[notaek]

It's all about "catching the big fish" and "riding the waves".

As soon as a coin is released its fresh out of the box. Miners mine and hoard them for a shorter period of time until the coin gets listed on an exchange. Then they place sell orders that are way above their overall profit margin.

or do people just constantly mine the less profitable coin and try to trade the volatility of it hoping to catch a swing?

Miners already leave the scene when a certain coin becomes less profitable.

[leowonderful]

All about speculation now that simply switching to the most profitable algo or mining one coin isn't incredibly profitable. Some low-cap coins go up high and crash right back down, some just sit for months and finally go up one satoshi. I've even heard a while back about a guy who was mining a fairly low-volume and unknown coin with all his rigs and managed to, in the end, break even on all his machines in one or two days. High risk but high reward because of volatility in pricing and all. You might get lucky and make thousands, you might just get a few pennies.

[jmigdlc99]

Isn't mining the more profitable coin safer? or do people just constantly mine the less profitable coin and try to trade the volatility of it hoping to catch a swing? I get spec mining when you are mining a brand new coin and difficulty is non existent and value of a coin is completely unknown, but we're talking Ella and Komodo here.

You got the right strategy in mind. Mining the most profitable coin is usually the simplest and the best because you can simply buy speculative coins with it anyway. The thing is some people go balls deep into speculation that they mine coins that aren't even listed on any exchanges yet. Those are the coins where people expect to gain significantly.

When you think of it, its almost like gambling already.

[toefu]

yeah, most examples here are brand new coins, and i've done just that numerous times, sometimes it works out, sometimes not, but that's the risk game you are playing...

but like komodo, this coin is consistently 15% less profitable than all other equihash coins to mine. And it's pretty much all over the place in terms of exchanges. The odds of riding a wave are pretty low here. I'd like to mine coins like komodo or btcp, but makes no sense to take a 15-20% drop in daily revenue to mine such coins in hopes of catching a wave. I could justify the speculative mining play for 5-10% less profit, but 15% is a bit outrageous.

[Vispilio]

mrstark89 gave the most reasonable approach here. The unknown no-name coins are mined and stored in case they do 50-100x later on; I don't think any serious miner is

consistently mining a less profitable junk coin. In the case of Komodo, it's a surprisingly versatile and robust project, so if people are mining it with relatively little profitability,

it's because of the uniqueness and strength of this particular coin.

[bigdude]

because miners believe in the pump of these crap coins.
As you can see price was very crazy for ETN and bring miners the most profit from it.
So if you have 20 rigs you should use 15 rigs to mine safe coin such as ETH, Monero etc. and use remain 5 rigs (as profit) to mine crap coin and wait for it pump

[realaccountakira]

mrstark89 gave the most reasonable approach here. The unknown no-name coins are mined and stored in case they do 50-100x later on; I don't think any serious miner is

consistently mining a less profitable junk coin. In the case of Komodo, it's a surprisingly versatile and robust project, so if people are mining it with relatively little profitability,

it's because of the uniqueness and strength of this particular coin.

The problem with this mrstark89's strategy is what if none of the coins you picked ever does gain value?

You not only not earn anything, you also LOSE the cost of electricity you spent to mine those coins. I still stick with what jmigdlc said about mining the most profitable coin then simply convert into low cap low value coins with great potential.

[maroom2000]

Iwant to howprice lite coin now pleas help me to know that

[rogerrobers]

quit mining crap coins and start mining turtlecoin 

[treanski]

many small miners just to speculativ mining, a 1 sat coin just needs to bump to 10sats or more and you have huge profit...happened many times with "crap" coins

[lolchina]

We are speculating because while mining sure thing coins like ethereum is bringing you constant profit shitcoins have way bigger chances for higher profit if you did you math correct,i used to be all amd eth miner but seeing what 1080ti as able to do and how much $ you can earn with them i went full nvidia.Most of those shitcoins are small cap coins and they can easily go x2-10 over night because they dont need a lot of $ to be pumped because of low marketcap

[mrstark89]

some coins were dead or never reached any exchange. It can be called bad luck. We can't avoid that but still reduce the chance by reading and investigating, start with ann thread, then the white paper or at least the website

[nsummy]

No one here has really answered OP's question.  He isn't talking about speculating with new coins and projects, he is referring to long term coins that may not necessarily be shit coins, but are consistently less profitable than other coins in a certain algo.  Coins like Orbitcoin that have been around forever yet are going nowhere.  Whattomine is only going to list an established coin on its front page.  If you look at the bottom, all of those coins are being mined despite much more profitable (sometimes 2x-3x) alternatives

[Scrotal]

Most coins coming out today are crap. I mine some of the newer ones just to exchange them to LTC. I don't know why people still mine the old crap ones though, especially if they aren't worth anything.

[grendel25]

first of all, every coin ever released has been a crap coin until it has been proven otherwise.  There are still plenty of people in the world who would say they are ALL crap coins.

Now, as to why anyone would mine such a thing... Well, there can still be profit involved regardless of the outcome or determination that any coin is crap or not crap.  There is a lifecycle for all coins that often times includes hype.  The trick is to find coins with obvious hype and to capitalize on that... at least to some degree.  If you really believe in the coin you might hodl all of it until it is a value of your choosing.

I know a guy who always said bitcoin would be $10,000 before he sold it.  You can imagine all the rofl he got from people... right up until 2017 hehehehe.   Yeah, that guy is pretty rich right now and I'm like telling this guy, "I'll follow you anywhere!"  lol

And I will also add that any coin I choose to advertise in my signature is going to live far beyond the usual hype cycle. 

[olumyd]

Maybe because it's way cheaper than buying or humping on speculation. If they do mine and it turns out to be shitty, well, it's all a gamble then. I think people tend to think the lesser of the two evil is mining than having to regret you bought a coin that was headed no where in the first place. Usually, they may think merge-mining is a way out.