At what price point people will stop mining?

[badfad]

Once you have coins in hand you know exactly what your break even point is - the price at which you bought in at plus exchange fees. People who bought ETH last year at $300 should have sensibly sold some (if not all) at $1200 to $1500. Once simple click would have resulted in 5x fiat profit, and should they like - they could always rebuy the ETH now and get 5x as much.

Of course this is all hindsight - but it does show the dichotomy - the strengths and weaknesses of both. If you had lots of capitol and were willing to take 100% loss people should have bought coins and not mining eq. If they wanted to just put 1 foot in the crypto ocean - they build rigs.

Here's hindsight - ETH had fallen all the way to $10, even $7 during last January when DASH starting during it's insane rise. Nobody wanted ETH (well except the believers - Polo trollbox chat showed this). If you bought then you would be up 30x from just holding 6 months longer than somebody buying in July. That's why it makes sense to look at the big picture.

ETH is the perfect of example of a coin that you shouldn't have mined (even though I did). If you bought the coin at launch is was sub 1 penny. You could never mine as much ETH with a single RX 480 going full tilt to today as if you had spent all the money on the coin at ICO.

So - if you expect the coin to fail mine it. If you expect it to succeed buy it (at least well timed buys - doesn't take a genius to not buy ETH at 1500 or BTC at 20K+).

Miners really should spend time reading the speculation and investing parts of this forum. Sticking your head into the mining forums 12 hours a day seeing if they can eek out 1 more sol out of 1060 by changing drivers or tweaking with settings are missing the forest through the trees.

Buying eth at ICO is the best case scenario. But if you missed the ICO? what then? A 200 $ rx480 bought in the summer of 2016 has mined a shitload of eth and on top of that it gives you other opportunities. In the end it comes down to individual preferences, some people mine other people trade.

[gotminer]

I understand it depends on electricity cost and other "future value" thinking but at what price point of ETH, people plan to stop rig?

yes, people "who might mine Ethereum will continue to do, for example they still have capital for electricity costs, and even though Ethereum prices are currently down and for example the results do not match the costs incurred, but a miner has thoughts and hopes that Ethereum prices will rise even higher.

That just doesn't make sense, if you mining and plan to hodl ETH you must think positive about its future price right?  Then why not buy with fiat and get more ETH out of it.

because they are stupid, same can be said about farmers, who are farming something and spending 25% or more instead of buying the thing they are farming. I myself have never seen a farmer farming something that cost more to produce than to buy. Farmers only farm things which are profitable around where i live.

Don't farmers in the United States get govt subsidies that more than cover their loses?

[Metroid]

Don't farmers in the United States get govt subsidies that more than cover their loses?

only if they can prove their harvests are mainly for the internal market.

[kijuy]

I understand it depends on electricity cost and other "future value" thinking but at what price point of ETH, people plan to stop rig?

yes, people "who might mine Ethereum will continue to do, for example they still have capital for electricity costs, and even though Ethereum prices are currently down and for example the results do not match the costs incurred, but a miner has thoughts and hopes that Ethereum prices will rise even higher.

That just doesn't make sense, if you mining and plan to hodl ETH you must think positive about its future price right?  Then why not buy with fiat and get more ETH out of it.

because they are stupid, same can be said about farmers, who are farming something and spending 25% or more instead of buying the thing they are farming. I myself have never seen a farmer farming something that cost more to produce than to buy. Farmers only farm things which are profitable around where i live.

Wait, you forgot hehe.

[DrG]

I read that post that you're referring to. The problem is that you are either denying or not acknowledging the lost of opportunity. Mining is a hedge against a coin failing. Essentially you can say that can sell the equipment (well GPUs anyway) for nearly purchase price in the event of a coin failing. On the contrarian position - somebody who buys the coin doesn't have to sit there everyday to make sure stupid Win 10 update hasn't taken a miner offline or that the pool you're mining at is skimming of the top or even worse running away with your crypto. The person who bought it can spend the time saved earning more money to pay for the gamble or has the chance to exit quickly if they need to.

Once you have coins in hand you know exactly what your break even point is - the price at which you bought in at plus exchange fees. People who bought ETH last year at $300 should have sensibly sold some (if not all) at $1200 to $1500. Once simple click would have resulted in 5x fiat profit, and should they like - they could always rebuy the ETH now and get 5x as much.

Of course this is all hindsight - but it does show the dichotomy - the strengths and weaknesses of both. If you had lots of capitol and were willing to take 100% loss people should have bought coins and not mining eq. If they wanted to just put 1 foot in the crypto ocean - they build rigs.

Here's hindsight - ETH had fallen all the way to $10, even $7 during last January when DASH starting during it's insane rise. Nobody wanted ETH (well except the believers - Polo trollbox chat showed this). If you bought then you would be up 30x from just holding 6 months longer than somebody buying in July. That's why it makes sense to look at the big picture.

ETH is the perfect of example of a coin that you shouldn't have mined (even though I did). If you bought the coin at launch is was sub 1 penny. You could never mine as much ETH with a single RX 480 going full tilt to today as if you had spent all the money on the coin at ICO.

So - if you expect the coin to fail mine it. If you expect it to succeed buy it (at least well timed buys - doesn't take a genius to not buy ETH at 1500 or BTC at 20K+).

Miners really should spend time reading the speculation and investing parts of this forum. Sticking your head into the mining forums 12 hours a day seeing if they can eek out 1 more sol out of 1060 by changing drivers or tweaking with settings are missing the forest through the trees.

Bitcoin sat dead after hitting $1200 for 4 years with most of the world saying it was dead. It dropped from $1200 to $100. With all that idiotic ICO money thrown at scams last year, the ETH demand is just going to keep going down - it's a race to the bottom.... until some major trigger.

Buying coins vs buying hardware is a debate as old as the moon. I have never bought a single coin with my money. I only bought hardware. Sure, would I have bought ETH at 20$ instead of an entire rig that, before the ice-age, would have brought in like 0.5 ETH a day, I'd still be up 1000% today.

But what you are forgetting in you analysis, is that in contrary to coins/tokens, hardware like GPU is something tangible. People are much more likely to be ok to fork out 300$ for a GPU they can hold in their hands than some coins they can never actually touch or hold. you can't deny that cryptos, all of them, are still a very risky venture. Even ETH at 200$ is still risky. Hardware on the other hand has a value depreciation you can estimate pretty easily over a period of time. Hell I'm sure I could sell mine easily for a 100$ today while they will have paid for themselves numerous times.

Also not everyone is a trader and not everyone has a capacity to evaluate a good entry position (or exit position). Trading is not idiot-proof, far from that.

I'm not forgetting it in my analysis. Read the previous post I made. I said if a person enjoys watching the fans spin and is genuinely entertained by mining well then more power to him/her. You can't buy happiness, but you can buy enjoyment by subsidizing bad mining practices  I'm not here to take away anybody's enjoyment, but if you are in mining to make money it does not make sense to mine during a loss period.

Again please refer to my previous post where I said mining equipment is used a hedge against a coin's failure. You should mine coins that you think will fail. The ones you genuinely believe in you should buy because you're not going to let some market manipulation dissuade you from being part of it.

I've been mining since 2011. I'm old as dirt compared to most of you. I once had a farm that approached 0.5% of the BTC network when BTC was "dying". I know how much fun and headache mining can be. BUT... almost every mistake I've made so far can be attributed to emotional reactions and deviating from my plan I set forth. Crypto miners need to think with their heads and not their hearts for maximal profits.

[Piskeante]

absolutely agree with Metroid and DrG

my 12 cards (around 376.8mh/s ETH) would be giving me now about 14$ per month profit after electricity costs. And this is only after having changed my price x KWh to the slowest in my hole country for my purpose.

Is it worth to continue mining for 14$??. This is not the question. the question is "DO I BELIEVE THAT ETH WILL RECOVER??". the answer for me is NO.

If you think ETH will increase in price overtime, you´ll probably recover your bills (payed from your packet). So, that's why even this situation recommends TO STOP MINING RIGHT NOW, the network hashrate is still increasing.

People believe in ETH and that it's price will pump. There is NO ACTUAL REASON TO BELIEVE THAT, rather than "yolo". BTW yolo, is a part of a Spanish phrase: Porque "yo lo" valgo (which means, because i deserve it).


are we debating if you have to stop mining and buy the coins, or just mine?? Well, Mining i get around 0.75 ETH per month, with a cost of around 150$ per month in electricity. So, even investing 150$ to buy ETH, i would still not be getting the same amount as mining. If i want the coins, i'm better off mining than buying.

But my problem is that I DON'T BELIEVE IN ETH ANYMORE. Specially having known that yesterday the DEVS, talked about future difficulty bomb, and profit reduction per block from 3 to probably 2 or even 1. EIP-858 would reduce block rewards to 1 ETH per block, EIP-1234 would reduce block rewards to 2 ETH, while EIP-1295 would keep rewards to 3 ETH.

Constantinople Hard-fork will be launched in october (so every 8 months a fork, devs have said). It's not officially announced, but it's almost done that with this latest fork, they will apply EIP 1234, so 2ETH per block instead of 3. If there is no pump in price, ETH will definetely be a NO GO FOR MINERS AT THAT POINT.

ohh, btw, some stupid people said that i had lost money because i bought cards at high prices. Well, in fact, all of my RX 570 and 580 were bought at 200 to 250€ brand new, so way lower than highest prices, and even below msrp prices at launch.  


My main idea of mining was to get a monthly profit of about 300€ (even if you don't believe me, i was certain ETH would not be able to keep it's prices, and predicted a drop of around 25% to 35% in the price and i accepted that situation). i never thought it was going to be an 80% as it is now. Noone expected that. Not to that extent. The idea was to sell coins after having mined them, pay electricity and enjoy the bonus.

The drop in prices has forced all of us to pay our bills from our pocket, and get nothing monthly, and just hope for a day to come that the situation gets better. That is not happening and the future is very black for crypto. i decided not to invest more money, because i have terrible doubts to get the money back.

If you want to burn your money on a camp fire, you are entitled to do it. But don't tell the others what to do, specially if the situation is the worst ever lived by crypto and you have no clue of what will happen the next year. I bet this will crash. i will hold my ETH already mined and go till the end with it with loses. But i will not put more money in this shitty and manipulated market .

[DrG]

Once you have coins in hand you know exactly what your break even point is - the price at which you bought in at plus exchange fees. People who bought ETH last year at $300 should have sensibly sold some (if not all) at $1200 to $1500. Once simple click would have resulted in 5x fiat profit, and should they like - they could always rebuy the ETH now and get 5x as much.

Of course this is all hindsight - but it does show the dichotomy - the strengths and weaknesses of both. If you had lots of capitol and were willing to take 100% loss people should have bought coins and not mining eq. If they wanted to just put 1 foot in the crypto ocean - they build rigs.

Here's hindsight - ETH had fallen all the way to $10, even $7 during last January when DASH starting during it's insane rise. Nobody wanted ETH (well except the believers - Polo trollbox chat showed this). If you bought then you would be up 30x from just holding 6 months longer than somebody buying in July. That's why it makes sense to look at the big picture.

ETH is the perfect of example of a coin that you shouldn't have mined (even though I did). If you bought the coin at launch is was sub 1 penny. You could never mine as much ETH with a single RX 480 going full tilt to today as if you had spent all the money on the coin at ICO.

So - if you expect the coin to fail mine it. If you expect it to succeed buy it (at least well timed buys - doesn't take a genius to not buy ETH at 1500 or BTC at 20K+).

Miners really should spend time reading the speculation and investing parts of this forum. Sticking your head into the mining forums 12 hours a day seeing if they can eek out 1 more sol out of 1060 by changing drivers or tweaking with settings are missing the forest through the trees.

Buying eth at ICO is the best case scenario. But if you missed the ICO? what then? A 200 $ rx480 bought in the summer of 2016 has mined a shitload of eth and on top of that it gives you other opportunities. In the end it comes down to individual preferences, some people mine other people trade.

OK, forget ICO. Let's pick Jan 1st 2017. You could have bought about 30 ETH for the price of a RX 480. Even with cheap 0.05cent power you still come out ahead by buying because ETH was successful. Its fiat price accelerated faster than miner could accumulate it.

You would need to look at a coin like LTC which mooned in 2014, crashed severely, then mooned again, then crashed again - there the fiat gains are less than what would one would have accrued from mining. But the whole ASIC thing throws monkey wrenches into the prediction.

Basically you would need to mine a coin that other people have given up on or had not taken interest in for you to come out ahead in the long run. In narrow windows like 3 months or 6 months it can go either way.

[DrG]

absolutely agree with Metroid and DrG

my 12 cards (around 376.8mh/s ETH) would be giving me now about 14$ per month profit after electricity costs. And this is only after having changed my price x KWh to the slowest in my hole country for my purpose.

Is it worth to continue mining for 14$??. This is not the question. the question is "DO I BELIEVE THAT ETH WILL RECOVER??". the answer for me is NO.

If you think ETH will increase in price overtime, you´ll probably recover your bills (payed from your packet). So, that's why even this situation recommends TO STOP MINING RIGHT NOW, the network hashrate is still increasing.

People believe in ETH and that it's price will pump. There is NO ACTUAL REASON TO BELIEVE THAT, rather than "yolo". BTW yolo, is a part of a Spanish phrase: Porque "yo lo" valgo (which means, because i deserve it).


are we debating if you have to stop mining and buy the coins, or just mine?? Well, Mining i get around 0.75 ETH per month, with a cost of around 150$ per month in electricity. So, even investing 150$ to buy ETH, i would still not be getting the same amount as mining. If i want the coins, i'm better off mining than buying.

But my problem is that I DON'T BELIEVE IN ETH ANYMORE. Specially having known that yesterday the DEVS, talked about future difficulty bomb, and profit reduction per block from 3 to probably 2 or even 1. EIP-858 would reduce block rewards to 1 ETH per block, EIP-1234 would reduce block rewards to 2 ETH, while EIP-1295 would keep rewards to 3 ETH.

Constantinople Hard-fork will be launched in october (so every 8 months a fork, devs have said). It's not officially announced, but it's almost done that with this latest fork, they will apply EIP 1234, so 2ETH per block instead of 3. If there is no pump in price, ETH will definetely be a NO GO FOR MINERS AT THAT POINT.

ohh, btw, some stupid people said that i had lost money because i bought cards at high prices. Well, in fact, all of my RX 570 and 580 were bought at 200 to 250€ brand new, so way lower than highest prices, and even below msrp prices at launch.  


My main idea of mining was to get a monthly profit of about 300€ (even if you don't believe me, i was certain ETH would not be able to keep it's prices, and predicted a drop of around 25% to 35% in the price and i accepted that situation). i never thought it was going to be an 80% as it is now. Noone expected that. Not to that extent. The idea was to sell coins after having mined them, pay electricity and enjoy the bonus.

The drop in prices has forced all of us to pay our bills from our pocket, and get nothing monthly, and just hope for a day to come that the situation gets better. That is not happening and the future is very black for crypto. i decided not to invest more money, because i have terrible doubts to get the money back.

If you want to burn your money on a camp fire, you are entitled to do it. But don't tell the others what to do, specially if the situation is the worst ever lived by crypto and you have no clue of what will happen the next year. I bet this will crash. i will hold my ETH already mined and go till the end with it with loses. But i will not put more money in this shitty and manipulated market .

Well just chalk it up as a learning experience. But I will tell you this. I have been there. I watched BTC go from $33 down to $2 and proudhon kept spouting off everyday that BTC was going to die. When BTC recovered to $5 I sold off a lot thinking wow, I just saw a 2.5x increase from $2 - biggest mistake ever.  Just sit on your holdings. Enjoy your life. Try not to struggle with bills (hopefully you didn't go into debt to pay for the miners which everybody was warned not to do). If you can mine at a profit and don't mind the heat/noise go ahead.

Having been in this circus for 7 years and seen multiple boom/bust cycles - I knew I had to dump most of my hardware earlier this year. I still have a few (70 card farm) but I will use my assets to buy back coins I like once I feel most of the dumping cycle is completed. I think those ICOs are still dumping their ETH looking at the wallet movements.

Remember, don't get emotional with this. Pretend it's like buying Walmart or Revlon stock - can't really get too excited doing that lol.

Get excited about what crypto can do to make this world better.

[Piskeante]

absolutely agree with Metroid and DrG

my 12 cards (around 376.8mh/s ETH) would be giving me now about 14$ per month profit after electricity costs. And this is only after having changed my price x KWh to the slowest in my hole country for my purpose.

Is it worth to continue mining for 14$??. This is not the question. the question is "DO I BELIEVE THAT ETH WILL RECOVER??". the answer for me is NO.

If you think ETH will increase in price overtime, you´ll probably recover your bills (payed from your packet). So, that's why even this situation recommends TO STOP MINING RIGHT NOW, the network hashrate is still increasing.

People believe in ETH and that it's price will pump. There is NO ACTUAL REASON TO BELIEVE THAT, rather than "yolo". BTW yolo, is a part of a Spanish phrase: Porque "yo lo" valgo (which means, because i deserve it).


are we debating if you have to stop mining and buy the coins, or just mine?? Well, Mining i get around 0.75 ETH per month, with a cost of around 150$ per month in electricity. So, even investing 150$ to buy ETH, i would still not be getting the same amount as mining. If i want the coins, i'm better off mining than buying.

But my problem is that I DON'T BELIEVE IN ETH ANYMORE. Specially having known that yesterday the DEVS, talked about future difficulty bomb, and profit reduction per block from 3 to probably 2 or even 1. EIP-858 would reduce block rewards to 1 ETH per block, EIP-1234 would reduce block rewards to 2 ETH, while EIP-1295 would keep rewards to 3 ETH.

Constantinople Hard-fork will be launched in october (so every 8 months a fork, devs have said). It's not officially announced, but it's almost done that with this latest fork, they will apply EIP 1234, so 2ETH per block instead of 3. If there is no pump in price, ETH will definetely be a NO GO FOR MINERS AT THAT POINT.

ohh, btw, some stupid people said that i had lost money because i bought cards at high prices. Well, in fact, all of my RX 570 and 580 were bought at 200 to 250€ brand new, so way lower than highest prices, and even below msrp prices at launch.  


My main idea of mining was to get a monthly profit of about 300€ (even if you don't believe me, i was certain ETH would not be able to keep it's prices, and predicted a drop of around 25% to 35% in the price and i accepted that situation). i never thought it was going to be an 80% as it is now. Noone expected that. Not to that extent. The idea was to sell coins after having mined them, pay electricity and enjoy the bonus.

The drop in prices has forced all of us to pay our bills from our pocket, and get nothing monthly, and just hope for a day to come that the situation gets better. That is not happening and the future is very black for crypto. i decided not to invest more money, because i have terrible doubts to get the money back.

If you want to burn your money on a camp fire, you are entitled to do it. But don't tell the others what to do, specially if the situation is the worst ever lived by crypto and you have no clue of what will happen the next year. I bet this will crash. i will hold my ETH already mined and go till the end with it with loses. But i will not put more money in this shitty and manipulated market .

Well just chalk it up as a learning experience. But I will tell you this. I have been there. I watched BTC go from $33 down to $2 and proudhon kept spouting off everyday that BTC was going to die. When BTC recovered to $5 I sold off a lot thinking wow, I just saw a 2.5x increase from $2 - biggest mistake ever.  Just sit on your holdings. Enjoy your life. Try not to struggle with bills (hopefully you didn't go into debt to pay for the miners which everybody was warned not to do). If you can mine at a profit and don't mind the heat/noise go ahead.

Having been in this circus for 7 years and seen multiple boom/bust cycles - I knew I had to dump most of my hardware earlier this year. I still have a few (70 card farm) but I will use my assets to buy back coins I like once I feel most of the dumping cycle is completed. I think those ICOs are still dumping their ETH looking at the wallet movements.

Remember, don't get emotional with this. Pretend it's like buying Walmart or Revlon stock - can't really get too excited doing that lol.

Get excited about what crypto can do to make this world better.

not only that, my two rigs are using an ASUS P5QC (so socket 775 platform) with a Xeon x5460 undervolted and modded with 6 gpus in a splitter (since the mobo only has 4 pcie slots) and the other one is an ASUS P5KC with a E6750 dual core also undervolted also with pcie slot splitter. I mean, i looked at the money for the investment to everysingle penny. I even built my two mining frames to save like 20$ from both.

I also agree with you in that ICOS are overselling ETH as technical analysis suggests. and if this situation stays flat for about 24 hours more, it's possible that we see a dump in price to around 200$ ETH.


Someone said it before. many people are ignoring FACTS and believing on FAITH. I've already used all my faith, and look where we are. Now i will stick to reality and facts. I will not put more money on this market unless situation gives me real profit.

[vodafone228]

I read that post that you're referring to. The problem is that you are either denying or not acknowledging the lost of opportunity. Mining is a hedge against a coin failing. Essentially you can say that can sell the equipment (well GPUs anyway) for nearly purchase price in the event of a coin failing. On the contrarian position - somebody who buys the coin doesn't have to sit there everyday to make sure stupid Win 10 update hasn't taken a miner offline or that the pool you're mining at is skimming of the top or even worse running away with your crypto. The person who bought it can spend the time saved earning more money to pay for the gamble or has the chance to exit quickly if they need to.

Once you have coins in hand you know exactly what your break even point is - the price at which you bought in at plus exchange fees. People who bought ETH last year at $300 should have sensibly sold some (if not all) at $1200 to $1500. Once simple click would have resulted in 5x fiat profit, and should they like - they could always rebuy the ETH now and get 5x as much.

Of course this is all hindsight - but it does show the dichotomy - the strengths and weaknesses of both. If you had lots of capitol and were willing to take 100% loss people should have bought coins and not mining eq. If they wanted to just put 1 foot in the crypto ocean - they build rigs.

Here's hindsight - ETH had fallen all the way to $10, even $7 during last January when DASH starting during it's insane rise. Nobody wanted ETH (well except the believers - Polo trollbox chat showed this). If you bought then you would be up 30x from just holding 6 months longer than somebody buying in July. That's why it makes sense to look at the big picture.

ETH is the perfect of example of a coin that you shouldn't have mined (even though I did). If you bought the coin at launch is was sub 1 penny. You could never mine as much ETH with a single RX 480 going full tilt to today as if you had spent all the money on the coin at ICO.

So - if you expect the coin to fail mine it. If you expect it to succeed buy it (at least well timed buys - doesn't take a genius to not buy ETH at 1500 or BTC at 20K+).

Miners really should spend time reading the speculation and investing parts of this forum. Sticking your head into the mining forums 12 hours a day seeing if they can eek out 1 more sol out of 1060 by changing drivers or tweaking with settings are missing the forest through the trees.

Bitcoin sat dead after hitting $1200 for 4 years with most of the world saying it was dead. It dropped from $1200 to $100. With all that idiotic ICO money thrown at scams last year, the ETH demand is just going to keep going down - it's a race to the bottom.... until some major trigger.

Buying coins vs buying hardware is a debate as old as the moon. I have never bought a single coin with my money. I only bought hardware. Sure, would I have bought ETH at 20$ instead of an entire rig that, before the ice-age, would have brought in like 0.5 ETH a day, I'd still be up 1000% today.

But what you are forgetting in you analysis, is that in contrary to coins/tokens, hardware like GPU is something tangible. People are much more likely to be ok to fork out 300$ for a GPU they can hold in their hands than some coins they can never actually touch or hold. you can't deny that cryptos, all of them, are still a very risky venture. Even ETH at 200$ is still risky. Hardware on the other hand has a value depreciation you can estimate pretty easily over a period of time. Hell I'm sure I could sell mine easily for a 100$ today while they will have paid for themselves numerous times.

Also not everyone is a trader and not everyone has a capacity to evaluate a good entry position (or exit position). Trading is not idiot-proof, far from that.

I'm not forgetting it in my analysis. Read the previous post I made. I said if a person enjoys watching the fans spin and is genuinely entertained by mining well then more power to him/her. You can't buy happiness, but you can buy enjoyment by subsidizing bad mining practices  I'm not here to take away anybody's enjoyment, but if you are in mining to make money it does not make sense to mine during a loss period.

Again please refer to my previous post where I said mining equipment is used a hedge against a coin's failure. You should mine coins that you think will fail. The ones you genuinely believe in you should buy because you're not going to let some market manipulation dissuade you from being part of it.

I've been mining since 2011. I'm old as dirt compared to most of you. I once had a farm that approached 0.5% of the BTC network when BTC was "dying". I know how much fun and headache mining can be. BUT... almost every mistake I've made so far can be attributed to emotional reactions and deviating from my plan I set forth. Crypto miners need to think with their heads and not their hearts for maximal profits.

I agree with most of your points, and even the buying coins not mining coins part - to some extent.  Mining is more like financial planners tell you to do, dollar averaging in your investment.  You never know what will happen to the market, and at what point in a cycle we currently at.  What if the market is slowly dropping for 2-3 more years, and after that back to bull market.  You will be hodling a large bag if you sell your equipment now and buy coin directly, you would be better off to buy it next year, or 2020?  This is how dollar averaging works better for market fluctuation.    But of course if you see the market recovering very shortly you should sell all your rigs and buy coins right now. 

Anyhow mining with loss is always a dumb choice, unless the guy enjoy happiness from it like you said.

[btcprospecter]

Simply once profits are no longer there or people lose interest in mining. If there is no value any longer than rigs will get turned off. There will always be a contingent that will mine speculatively in the hope a coin does really take off

[mineshop.eu]

I read that post that you're referring to. The problem is that you are either denying or not acknowledging the lost of opportunity. Mining is a hedge against a coin failing. Essentially you can say that can sell the equipment (well GPUs anyway) for nearly purchase price in the event of a coin failing. On the contrarian position - somebody who buys the coin doesn't have to sit there everyday to make sure stupid Win 10 update hasn't taken a miner offline or that the pool you're mining at is skimming of the top or even worse running away with your crypto. The person who bought it can spend the time saved earning more money to pay for the gamble or has the chance to exit quickly if they need to.

Once you have coins in hand you know exactly what your break even point is - the price at which you bought in at plus exchange fees. People who bought ETH last year at $300 should have sensibly sold some (if not all) at $1200 to $1500. Once simple click would have resulted in 5x fiat profit, and should they like - they could always rebuy the ETH now and get 5x as much.

Of course this is all hindsight - but it does show the dichotomy - the strengths and weaknesses of both. If you had lots of capitol and were willing to take 100% loss people should have bought coins and not mining eq. If they wanted to just put 1 foot in the crypto ocean - they build rigs.

Here's hindsight - ETH had fallen all the way to $10, even $7 during last January when DASH starting during it's insane rise. Nobody wanted ETH (well except the believers - Polo trollbox chat showed this). If you bought then you would be up 30x from just holding 6 months longer than somebody buying in July. That's why it makes sense to look at the big picture.

ETH is the perfect of example of a coin that you shouldn't have mined (even though I did). If you bought the coin at launch is was sub 1 penny. You could never mine as much ETH with a single RX 480 going full tilt to today as if you had spent all the money on the coin at ICO.

So - if you expect the coin to fail mine it. If you expect it to succeed buy it (at least well timed buys - doesn't take a genius to not buy ETH at 1500 or BTC at 20K+).

Miners really should spend time reading the speculation and investing parts of this forum. Sticking your head into the mining forums 12 hours a day seeing if they can eek out 1 more sol out of 1060 by changing drivers or tweaking with settings are missing the forest through the trees.

Bitcoin sat dead after hitting $1200 for 4 years with most of the world saying it was dead. It dropped from $1200 to $100. With all that idiotic ICO money thrown at scams last year, the ETH demand is just going to keep going down - it's a race to the bottom.... until some major trigger.

Buying coins vs buying hardware is a debate as old as the moon. I have never bought a single coin with my money. I only bought hardware. Sure, would I have bought ETH at 20$ instead of an entire rig that, before the ice-age, would have brought in like 0.5 ETH a day, I'd still be up 1000% today.

But what you are forgetting in you analysis, is that in contrary to coins/tokens, hardware like GPU is something tangible. People are much more likely to be ok to fork out 300$ for a GPU they can hold in their hands than some coins they can never actually touch or hold. you can't deny that cryptos, all of them, are still a very risky venture. Even ETH at 200$ is still risky. Hardware on the other hand has a value depreciation you can estimate pretty easily over a period of time. Hell I'm sure I could sell mine easily for a 100$ today while they will have paid for themselves numerous times.

Also not everyone is a trader and not everyone has a capacity to evaluate a good entry position (or exit position). Trading is not idiot-proof, far from that.

I'm not forgetting it in my analysis. Read the previous post I made. I said if a person enjoys watching the fans spin and is genuinely entertained by mining well then more power to him/her. You can't buy happiness, but you can buy enjoyment by subsidizing bad mining practices  I'm not here to take away anybody's enjoyment, but if you are in mining to make money it does not make sense to mine during a loss period.

Again please refer to my previous post where I said mining equipment is used a hedge against a coin's failure. You should mine coins that you think will fail. The ones you genuinely believe in you should buy because you're not going to let some market manipulation dissuade you from being part of it.

I've been mining since 2011. I'm old as dirt compared to most of you. I once had a farm that approached 0.5% of the BTC network when BTC was "dying". I know how much fun and headache mining can be. BUT... almost every mistake I've made so far can be attributed to emotional reactions and deviating from my plan I set forth. Crypto miners need to think with their heads and not their hearts for maximal profits.

I agree with most of your points, and even the buying coins not mining coins part - to some extent.  Mining is more like financial planners tell you to do, dollar averaging in your investment.  You never know what will happen to the market, and at what point in a cycle we currently at.  What if the market is slowly dropping for 2-3 more years, and after that back to bull market.  You will be hodling a large bag if you sell your equipment now and buy coin directly, you would be better off to buy it next year, or 2020?  This is how dollar averaging works better for market fluctuation.    But of course if you see the market recovering very shortly you should sell all your rigs and buy coins right now. 

Anyhow mining with loss is always a dumb choice, unless the guy enjoy happiness from it like you said.

Mining is built in such way that if you do have one of the cheapest power and equipment prices, you'll always be winner. Cause if like you referring to switch off mining rigs network difficulty drops and you get more coins. Of course if you like mining shitcoins, they could never recover.

The same thing are for the miners if you have bought miners year ago you could sell your profit at 1200-1500 . It all about making right decisions in right time.
Look at for example ethereum network hashrate, it hast dropped even the coin has dropted even more then 5x , so many people are mining still at loos.

There is plenty of reasons why we could debate about what people calls mining at loss , same for traders can make a bad deal. Buying coin at 300 selling at 500 , then pannicing seeing the price at 800 and buying back in and then price drops back to 300 in you are in loos now.

[Metroid]

There is plenty of reasons why we could debate about what people calls mining at loss , same for traders can make a bad deal. Buying coin at 300 selling at 500 , then pannicing seeing the price at 800 and buying back in and then price drops back to 300 in you are in loos now.

this happened to many and whoever hedged the risk must conform they dont win all the time, that is life and if they decide to sell now then they are really losing it, so need to be strong and wait for a reversal and be positive about it.

[badfad]

Once you have coins in hand you know exactly what your break even point is - the price at which you bought in at plus exchange fees. People who bought ETH last year at $300 should have sensibly sold some (if not all) at $1200 to $1500. Once simple click would have resulted in 5x fiat profit, and should they like - they could always rebuy the ETH now and get 5x as much.

Of course this is all hindsight - but it does show the dichotomy - the strengths and weaknesses of both. If you had lots of capitol and were willing to take 100% loss people should have bought coins and not mining eq. If they wanted to just put 1 foot in the crypto ocean - they build rigs.

Here's hindsight - ETH had fallen all the way to $10, even $7 during last January when DASH starting during it's insane rise. Nobody wanted ETH (well except the believers - Polo trollbox chat showed this). If you bought then you would be up 30x from just holding 6 months longer than somebody buying in July. That's why it makes sense to look at the big picture.

ETH is the perfect of example of a coin that you shouldn't have mined (even though I did). If you bought the coin at launch is was sub 1 penny. You could never mine as much ETH with a single RX 480 going full tilt to today as if you had spent all the money on the coin at ICO.

So - if you expect the coin to fail mine it. If you expect it to succeed buy it (at least well timed buys - doesn't take a genius to not buy ETH at 1500 or BTC at 20K+).

Miners really should spend time reading the speculation and investing parts of this forum. Sticking your head into the mining forums 12 hours a day seeing if they can eek out 1 more sol out of 1060 by changing drivers or tweaking with settings are missing the forest through the trees.

Buying eth at ICO is the best case scenario. But if you missed the ICO? what then? A 200 $ rx480 bought in the summer of 2016 has mined a shitload of eth and on top of that it gives you other opportunities. In the end it comes down to individual preferences, some people mine other people trade.

OK, forget ICO. Let's pick Jan 1st 2017. You could have bought about 30 ETH for the price of a RX 480. Even with cheap 0.05cent power you still come out ahead by buying because ETH was successful. Its fiat price accelerated faster than miner could accumulate it.

You would need to look at a coin like LTC which mooned in 2014, crashed severely, then mooned again, then crashed again - there the fiat gains are less than what would one would have accrued from mining. But the whole ASIC thing throws monkey wrenches into the prediction.

Basically you would need to mine a coin that other people have given up on or had not taken interest in for you to come out ahead in the long run. In narrow windows like 3 months or 6 months it can go either way.

Eth bottomed at 6 $ in jan'17, then an RX card made a bit over 1$ if I remember correctly, good times in hindsight.

Having gpus also gives some opportunities straight buying coins doesn't. Anyone who mined Ravencoin when it launched with the buggy gpu miner (network hashrate was around 600Mh-1.5Ghs) ROI'd their rigs in a few days. Those opportunities are few and extinct in this bearmarket now.

I also crypto has a bit of an identity crisis right now. Tons of people got in in december, but for all the wrong reasons, now their main incentive(when moon?) is gone.

I still belive eth will make a rebound some time.At the current price most miners have to sell a large chunk of their eth to pay for expenses, this only sends the eth supply in the hands of the few who are buying..
Who is buying?

[mineshop.eu]

Once you have coins in hand you know exactly what your break even point is - the price at which you bought in at plus exchange fees. People who bought ETH last year at $300 should have sensibly sold some (if not all) at $1200 to $1500. Once simple click would have resulted in 5x fiat profit, and should they like - they could always rebuy the ETH now and get 5x as much.

Of course this is all hindsight - but it does show the dichotomy - the strengths and weaknesses of both. If you had lots of capitol and were willing to take 100% loss people should have bought coins and not mining eq. If they wanted to just put 1 foot in the crypto ocean - they build rigs.

Here's hindsight - ETH had fallen all the way to $10, even $7 during last January when DASH starting during it's insane rise. Nobody wanted ETH (well except the believers - Polo trollbox chat showed this). If you bought then you would be up 30x from just holding 6 months longer than somebody buying in July. That's why it makes sense to look at the big picture.

ETH is the perfect of example of a coin that you shouldn't have mined (even though I did). If you bought the coin at launch is was sub 1 penny. You could never mine as much ETH with a single RX 480 going full tilt to today as if you had spent all the money on the coin at ICO.

So - if you expect the coin to fail mine it. If you expect it to succeed buy it (at least well timed buys - doesn't take a genius to not buy ETH at 1500 or BTC at 20K+).

Miners really should spend time reading the speculation and investing parts of this forum. Sticking your head into the mining forums 12 hours a day seeing if they can eek out 1 more sol out of 1060 by changing drivers or tweaking with settings are missing the forest through the trees.

Buying eth at ICO is the best case scenario. But if you missed the ICO? what then? A 200 $ rx480 bought in the summer of 2016 has mined a shitload of eth and on top of that it gives you other opportunities. In the end it comes down to individual preferences, some people mine other people trade.

OK, forget ICO. Let's pick Jan 1st 2017. You could have bought about 30 ETH for the price of a RX 480. Even with cheap 0.05cent power you still come out ahead by buying because ETH was successful. Its fiat price accelerated faster than miner could accumulate it.

BTCYou would need to look at a coin like LTC which mooned in 2014, crashed severely, then mooned again, then crashed again - there the fiat gains are less than what would one would have accrued from mining. But the whole ASIC thing throws monkey wrenches into the prediction.

Basically you would need to mine a coin that other people have given up on or had not taken interest in for you to come out ahead in the long run. In narrow windows like 3 months or 6 months it can go either way.

Eth bottomed at 6 $ in jan'17, then an RX card made a bit over 1$ if I remember correctly, good times in hindsight.

Having gpus also gives some opportunities straight buying coins doesn't. Anyone who mined Ravencoin when it launched with the buggy gpu miner (network hashrate was around 600Mh-1.5Ghs) ROI'd their rigs in a few days. Those opportunities are few and extinct in this bearmarket now.

I also crypto has a bit of an identity crisis right now. Tons of people got in in december, but for all the wrong reasons, now their main incentive(when moon?) is gone.

I still belive eth will make a rebound some time.At the current price most miners have to sell a large chunk of their eth to pay for expenses, this only sends the eth supply in the hands of the few who are buying..
Who is buying?

There is no doubt that mining is much more profitable then buying crypto. Well at least  these 3 years since im mining. Sure it is slower process then buying , also you have to look after your farm and spend time on it. Im just saying this cause i actually have mined more coins then i actually would buy them in last 3 years with my farm.

Only smart investors buys at these prices, "dumb" investors waits, and when they will see crypto pumping they will buy. Its human nature Greed $$$

[h311m4n]

Well just chalk it up as a learning experience. But I will tell you this. I have been there. I watched BTC go from $33 down to $2 and proudhon kept spouting off everyday that BTC was going to die. When BTC recovered to $5 I sold off a lot thinking wow, I just saw a 2.5x increase from $2 - biggest mistake ever.  Just sit on your holdings. Enjoy your life. Try not to struggle with bills (hopefully you didn't go into debt to pay for the miners which everybody was warned not to do). If you can mine at a profit and don't mind the heat/noise go ahead.

Having been in this circus for 7 years and seen multiple boom/bust cycles - I knew I had to dump most of my hardware earlier this year. I still have a few (70 card farm) but I will use my assets to buy back coins I like once I feel most of the dumping cycle is completed. I think those ICOs are still dumping their ETH looking at the wallet movements.

Remember, don't get emotional with this. Pretend it's like buying Walmart or Revlon stock - can't really get too excited doing that lol.

Get excited about what crypto can do to make this world better.

You are a wise person DrG! 

I like your thinking.

Haven't been in crypto as long as you, but I have learned the lesson of selling ETH when it was 10$ thinking the fun was over, better cut my losses...shoulda woulda coulda hodled, but hey, lesson learned.

People forget that crypto is just another asset that reacts to human emotions. Cryptos are not dead. The boom we saw end of 2017 was just due to common greed and the hope to get rich quick scheme that worked for a few yet failed for many. This bearish period is just a natural correction. It happens for every type of market. Just look at the stocks early 2000 with the internet bubble.

Take the chart of any crypto that is older than 2 years and you'll see it is still in an upwards movement once you cancel out all the noise.

Been hodling since the bubble pop, no doubt in my mind that cryptos will pick up again. It might take a little while, but the revolution they bring can't be stopped now (you can make a parallel with Google, Amazon etc...).