Newbie's question about mining on 2018 [useful for other newbies]

[Mesquito]

Personally I think Bitcoin needs near-free electric energy available and high investment. But my focus on this topic is the altcoins.

Mining Ethereum (or other more profitable criptos) now also requires very cheap electricity? Or solar/eolic energy can make it work? They need big investment?

I'll compile and credit all replies, and help other newbies about it

Thanks in advance for all your replies

[Mike011]

It all depends on at which price you sell the mined coins.

[Mesquito]

It all depends on at which price you sell the mined coins.

Market value, so it depends on the mining rig and on the coin itself

[xxcsu]

..... Just because this topic for newbies ..... let me quote myself
Original topic HERE

I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY NEWBIES KEEP ASKING THE SAME QUESTION " ITS TO LATE TO START MINING , IT IS STILL PROFITABLE ? WHY MY EARNING IS LESS THAN ALL THOSE ONLINE CALCULATORS TELLING ME? WHAT IS THE BEST COIN TO MINE ? WHAT IS THE MOST PROFITABLE COIN TO MINE"

No one can tell you !
Always going to be a 2 group of ppl who telling you it's ok go for it , or dont bc you just wasting ur money and time !
You have to make a decision for yourself !
Do your own research !
No one can tell you for sure what's going to happen with cryptocurrency !
No one can tell you it's going to be profitable for you or not !
No one can tell you how much profit you going to be able to make ! ( if you can make any at all )
No one can tell you the ROI ( return of investment) time !
No one can tell you what is the best coin to mine !
No one can tell you what is the most profitable coin to mine! Coins profitability always changing, what is best to mine today, maybe going to be the worst to mine tomorrow !
None of those calculators you are seeing on the web can tell you what's coming tomorrow , months later or 6 months later !
Those calculators telling you about today , at that moment when you typing in your information !
None of those online calculators calculating pool luck !
None of those online calculators calculating your stale/rejected or invalid shares !
None of those online calculators able to predict difficulty growth !
None of those online calculators can predict what would be the coin/$ exchanges rates a minutes later, a hour later,  tomorrow, next week,  months later, 6 months later or a year later !
It's little bit of gambling , you must to decide you want to play on the lottery or not  
YES some of us got lucky , made some money with mining
YES some of us got unlucky , lost some money , bc when price started to fall , sold they coins , miners...

! INVEST ONLY WHAT YOU'RE WILLING AND ABLE TO LOSE !
! INVEST WITH THE UNDERSTANDING , THAT YOU COULD LOSE EVERYTHING !

[Mesquito]

..... Just because this topic for newbies ..... let me quote myself
Original topic HERE

I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY NEWBIES KEEP ASKING THE SAME QUESTION " ITS TO LATE TO START MINING , IT IS STILL PROFITABLE ? WHY MY EARNING IS LESS THAN ALL THOSE ONLINE CALCULATORS TELLING ME? WHAT IS THE BEST COIN TO MINE ? WHAT IS THE MOST PROFITABLE COIN TO MINE"

No one can tell you !
Always going to be a 2 group of ppl who telling you it's ok go for it , or dont bc you just wasting ur money and time !
You have to make a decision for yourself !
Do your own research !
No one can tell you for sure what's going to happen with cryptocurrency !
No one can tell you it's going to be profitable for you or not !
No one can tell you how much profit you going to be able to make ! ( if you can make any at all )
No one can tell you the ROI ( return of investment) time !
No one can tell you what is the best coin to mine !
No one can tell you what is the most profitable coin to mine! Coins profitability always changing, what is best to mine today, maybe going to be the worst to mine tomorrow !
None of those calculators you are seeing on the web can tell you what's coming tomorrow , months later or 6 months later !
Those calculators telling you about today , at that moment when you typing in your information !
None of those online calculators calculating pool luck !
None of those online calculators calculating your stale/rejected or invalid shares !
None of those online calculators able to predict difficulty growth !
None of those online calculators can predict what would be the coin/$ exchanges rates a minutes later, a hour later,  tomorrow, next week,  months later, 6 months later or a year later !
It's little bit of gambling , you must to decide you want to play on the lottery or not  
YES some of us got lucky , made some money with mining
YES some of us got unlucky , lost some money , bc when price started to fall , sold they coins , miners...

! INVEST ONLY WHAT YOU'RE WILLING AND ABLE TO LOSE !
! INVEST WITH THE UNDERSTANDING , THAT YOU COULD LOSE EVERYTHING !

I'm sure you're a moralist FUD/chill: I did a quick lookup on your post, then I readed you calling the crypto universe as "gambling", then I stopped reading.
"Gambling" is one of the first argument of chills against cryptocurrencies.

[Mesquito]

The key questions to help newbies, that doesn't let them to lose money on risky investments:

- What is the error margin of some mining calculators? What is the best ones of them and why they are created? What is the purpose of the fair mining calculators?
- What is the investment to mine Bitcoin on 2018, and about the electricity and monthly earning, and in which [ESTIMATED] months the investment could be paid taking in consideration the ASIC and the energy costs? The same about Ethereum?
- Ethereum is yet profitable with powerful GPUs of 2016/2017?
- What is the best suitable cryptocurrency to work on GPUs?

Those are really basic questions that doesn't needs replies with exacts things, but appointments instead of letting users to risky investments

[bkbirge]

Just because mining is not profitable now doesn't mean it won't be in the future.

Or it may never be again, who knows. Point being is that you may not like xxcsu's delivery but he/she isn't far from the truth there. I'm still mining Eth but it costs me more to mine it that I make right now.

If, as I base my strategy on, Eth prices recover then all that mining I did under water will suddenly be profitable.

It's an investment. It may not work out but I'm not pegging my mining yes/no decisions on the current market but rather on the market I expect there to be in the future.

[Mesquito]

Just because mining is not profitable now doesn't mean it won't be in the future.

Or it may never be again, who knows. Point being is that you may not like xxcsu's delivery but he/she isn't far from the truth there. I'm still mining Eth but it costs me more to mine it that I make right now.

If, as I base my strategy on, Eth prices recover then all that mining I did under water will suddenly be profitable.

It's an investment. It may not work out but I'm not pegging my mining yes/no decisions on the current market but rather on the market I expect there to be in the future.

Which GPU do you use and how many? Your rig is with good setup? GPUs are properly overclocked?

[bkbirge]

Just because mining is not profitable now doesn't mean it won't be in the future.

Or it may never be again, who knows. Point being is that you may not like xxcsu's delivery but he/she isn't far from the truth there. I'm still mining Eth but it costs me more to mine it that I make right now.

If, as I base my strategy on, Eth prices recover then all that mining I did under water will suddenly be profitable.

It's an investment. It may not work out but I'm not pegging my mining yes/no decisions on the current market but rather on the market I expect there to be in the future.

Which GPU do you use and how many? Your rig is with good setup? GPUs are properly overclocked?

They are setup about as well as can be expected, overclocked for good performance but not so much so that I have frequent crashes. I've got a mix of NVidia and AMD on a few machines, running windows, pretty stable overall.

It's just that the crash of the Eth price has put the cost of getting each 0.11 Eth right at that line of energy costs. And that's after having shopped for the best energy prices available in my region. Like I said, I can run this way with no worry as long as price recovers in the mid term. If not then I'll just write off the costs as a bad investment.

So I think for newbies they absolutely need to pay attention to the total costs of running rigs and weigh if that is worth their time vs. just investing directly in Eth or whatever coins they like via fiat. I would say a good rule of thumb is to expect about 80% of the performance advertised by those mining calculator websites, due to downtime, reboots, messing with the setups/overclocking, invalid/rejected shares, your service provider having bad connection speeds from time to time, etc. Then use that number and add up the cost of your equipment, the cost of energy, and how much time you are willing/able to devote to learning and maintaining.

There are definitely fewer people mining these days, you can see that just from the GPU's that have flooded the market at a fraction of the cost they would have been a year ago. If Eth recovers all those GPU's will disappear and rise in price again though.

It's a calculated risk, and that's why it's really up to each person to weigh their own tolerance and situation.

[Mesquito]

Just because mining is not profitable now doesn't mean it won't be in the future.

Or it may never be again, who knows. Point being is that you may not like xxcsu's delivery but he/she isn't far from the truth there. I'm still mining Eth but it costs me more to mine it that I make right now.

If, as I base my strategy on, Eth prices recover then all that mining I did under water will suddenly be profitable.

It's an investment. It may not work out but I'm not pegging my mining yes/no decisions on the current market but rather on the market I expect there to be in the future.

Which GPU do you use and how many? Your rig is with good setup? GPUs are properly overclocked?

They are setup about as well as can be expected, overclocked for good performance but not so much so that I have frequent crashes. I've got a mix of NVidia and AMD on a few machines, running windows, pretty stable overall.

It's just that the crash of the Eth price has put the cost of getting each 0.11 Eth right at that line of energy costs. And that's after having shopped for the best energy prices available in my region. Like I said, I can run this way with no worry as long as price recovers in the mid term. If not then I'll just write off the costs as a bad investment.

So I think for newbies they absolutely need to pay attention to the total costs of running rigs and weigh if that is worth their time vs. just investing directly in Eth or whatever coins they like via fiat. I would say a good rule of thumb is to expect about 80% of the performance advertised by those mining calculator websites, due to downtime, reboots, messing with the setups/overclocking, invalid/rejected shares, your service provider having bad connection speeds from time to time, etc. Then use that number and add up the cost of your equipment, the cost of energy, and how much time you are willing/able to devote to learning and maintaining.

There are definitely fewer people mining these days, you can see that just from the GPU's that have flooded the market at a fraction of the cost they would have been a year ago. If Eth recovers all those GPU's will disappear and rise in price again though.

It's a calculated risk, and that's why it's really up to each person to weigh their own tolerance and situation.

Thanks for your detailed and kind response, very good for beginers to understand about it.
Sorry for entering on personal things, but which miner you use on Windows? Windows is better because of GPU drivers?
There is a coin better than Ethereum for GPU mining? Is normal that overclock causes crashes? But what is the minimum clock for those GPUs?

[xxcsu]

You totally dont understand anything about mining calculators at all
I created that post for members like you who try to make decisions based on mining calculators
If you looking your answer in mining calculators you failed already
You have to do a very detailed market research, learn, discover the coins whitepaper, roadmap..
You must to believe in that coin what you going to mine.

The key questions to help newbies, that doesn't let them to lose money on risky investments:
- What is the error margin of some mining calculators? What is the best ones of them and why they are created? What is the purpose of the fair mining calculators?
Those are really basic questions that doesn't needs replies with exacts things, but appointments instead of letting users to risky investments

I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY NEWBIES KEEP ASKING THE SAME QUESTION " ITS TO LATE TO START MINING , IT IS STILL PROFITABLE ? WHY MY EARNING IS LESS THAN ALL THOSE ONLINE CALCULATORS TELLING ME? WHAT IS THE BEST COIN TO MINE ? WHAT IS THE MOST PROFITABLE COIN TO MINE"
No one can tell you what is the best coin to mine !
No one can tell you what is the most profitable coin to mine! Coins profitability always changing, what is best to mine today, maybe going to be the worst to mine tomorrow !
None of those calculators you are seeing on the web can tell you what's coming tomorrow , months later or 6 months later !
Those calculators telling you about today , at that moment when you typing in your information !
None of those online calculators calculating pool luck !
None of those online calculators calculating your stale/rejected or invalid shares !
None of those online calculators able to predict difficulty growth !
None of those online calculators can predict what would be the coin/$ exchanges rates a minutes later, a hour later,  tomorrow, next week,  months later, 6 months later or a year later !
! INVEST ONLY WHAT YOU'RE WILLING AND ABLE TO LOSE !
! INVEST WITH THE UNDERSTANDING , THAT YOU COULD LOSE EVERYTHING !

[Mesquito]

You totally dont understand anything about mining calculators at all
I created that post for members like you who try to make decisions based on mining calculators
If you looking your answer in mining calculators you failed already
You have to do a very detailed market research, learn, discover the coins whitepaper, roadmap what you thinking you going to mine ...

I'm not talking about mining calculators.
You're suggesting to reinvent the wheel. And what the need for smile emojis on every phrase?
Another funny thing is your caps lock on your topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2208927.msg42982897#msg42982897

[xxcsu]

I'm not talking about mining calculators.

Really ?
then sorry i misunderstand your questions  
so then its not your key questions .. i got it .. language barrier right ?
Im deeply apologize for my mistake , i really thought you are asking question about mining calculators, when you typing " mining calculators " My Bad..Sorry 

The key questions to help newbies, that doesn't let them to lose money on risky investments:
- What is the error margin of some mining calculators? What is the best ones of them and why they are created? What is the purpose of the fair mining calculators?

Another funny thing is your caps lock on your topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2208927.msg42982897#msg42982897

Thats for people like you ... Thats the way someone can help newbies so they "doesn't let them to lose money on risky investments "

My suggestion for you is read one of my other "funny" post, so you can see some numbers
There you can see how things changing in this crypto word within a day
Antminer E3 vs Innosilicon ETH Master (485 MH/s) updated a day later

[xxcsu]

- Ethereum is yet profitable with powerful GPUs of 2016/2017?

I created a topic about ETH mining profitable 2 months ago. Its about my own experience, with the current market situation ( as of October 5th )
I did not done any calculation in the past few weeks, but my miners income are still covering my electricity bills and generating a few extra dollars a months
So read this topic :
Why its still worth mining ETH ( or other coins) for me
Mining ETH is ok for me ..
I got back already that money what i invested...
If you have to buy hardware now , well... thats a different story ...

[Mesquito]

- Ethereum is yet profitable with powerful GPUs of 2016/2017?

I created a topic about ETH mining profitable 2 months ago. Its about my own experience, with the current market situation ( as of October 5th )
I did not done any calculation in the past few weeks, but my miners income are still covering my electricity bills and generating a few extra dollars a months
So read this topic :
Why its still worth mining ETH ( or other coins) for me
Mining ETH is ok for me ..
I got back already that money what i invested...
If you have to buy hardware now , well... thats a different story ...

Gtx 1080 8GB is good? Overclock is secure?
Solo mining or pool? Do you personally know trustworthy mining pools?

[arpon11]

Personally I think Bitcoin needs near-free electric energy available and high investment. But my focus on this topic is the altcoins.

Mining Ethereum (or other more profitable criptos) now also requires very cheap electricity? Or solar/eolic energy can make it work? They need big investment?

I'll compile and credit all replies, and help other newbies about it

Thanks in advance for all your replies

Electricity is very important in blockchain technology and the technology is build around electricity and because of this if you cannot get it as cheap as you can you may not be able to make it in mining. Coins like ethereum can be mine using your phone and google app but the reality is that you make just little profits from mining it.  Ethereum is good and less cost in minining it than bitcoin but still it is capital intensive to buy most of the hardware need to mine it.

[kelkel112]

Well seems like mining won't be profitable in 2018
And for newbies they probably can't have a low cost of electricity
Just look forward to 2019!!!

[madnessteat]

In the history of mining there were already such periods when the profitability of mining did not exceed the cost of electricity and equipment was turned off or sold. Now we are witnessing such a period again. So now it is better not to start mining and wait for better times.

[xxcsu]

I'm sure you're a moralist FUD/chill: I did a quick lookup on your post, then I readed you calling the crypto universe as "gambling", then I stopped reading.
"Gambling" is one of the first argument of chills against cryptocurrencies.

Yeah , lot of "moralist FUD/chill" real smart people on this word 
Don't read my post

Cryptocurrencies are like lottery tickets that might pay off in future

Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies Nothing More Than a ‘Lottery Ticket’: Harvard Economist

[VasilyS]

Personally I think Bitcoin needs near-free electric energy available and high investment. But my focus on this topic is the altcoins.

Mining Ethereum (or other more profitable criptos) now also requires very cheap electricity? Or solar/eolic energy can make it work? They need big investment?

I'll compile and credit all replies, and help other newbies about it

Thanks in advance for all your replies

Of course, mining needs cheap electricity. I think that in the near future mining rigs and ASICs will be not simple miner machines, but will have a double useful purpose, for example, as heaters.