Which one is better at the moment? Cloud mining investment or hardware purchase?

[Stedsm]

My fellow brother was looking to mine BTC through AWS and as well tried his hands on mining BTC with his laptop. He made me laugh a lot when he told me that he got only a few Satoshis while mining through his PC and that's when I told him that he cannot earn anything through such hardware and needs to buy something extremely expensive to mine.

I've heard that Bitmain guys have announced about their upcoming mining beasts loaded with 7 nm chips. What do you think will they cost? I've come to know that they might be delivering around 48-50 TH/s at nearly 1500 Watts which looks quite impressive. Don't ask me about the electricity costs, it's free at his place.

On the other ✋, I'm aware of few of those cloud mining and some rig rental websites like https://www.nicehash.com
I checked there and it pretty much gives almost the same gains as invested per day + very less amounts in profit.

So, during these times when Bitmain is going to launch something which may actually boost difficulty to an all new higher level, should I suggest him to take risk of getting a rig online on rent, or should I ask him to wait for Bitmain to release those miners and ask him to purchase them and mine? Can anyone predict the possible outcome when mining through their upcoming hardware and when will he ROI?

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[Steamtyme]

Unfortunately no one can predict the future... man would things be different.

We can however reasonably assume that Diff is going to increase because of the more efficient hardware with large hashrates. Phil has a nice discussion thread about the difficulty speculation. Personally just based on the hardware upgrades, I would expect Diff to increase a minimum of 25% by the end of the year. That's just on people upgrading with improved efficiency.

More hashrate fitting into the same power footprint.

For the hardware part there is at least one other option that is competitive with price and efficiency, MicroBT. I keep this list fairly up to date so you can see if there is any gear that fits heir needs.

Personally I will never suggest cloud mining. The returns are minimal unless being propped up with some introductory bonus. All terms and conditions are set in favor of the service provider, in that they can cancel contracts if it is unprofitable for a certain amount of time. You have no choice in the matter.

In the end I guess it would come down to does your friend want to be a miner, or are they just interested in accumulating BTC. If his electricity costs are truly free to him, with no implications of eviction. Your friend should buy older generation equipment for a fraction of the cost, just to get their feet wet and then decide if they want to go with newer models or expand a few older models. They could pick up cheap 9 or 8 series Avalons, or they could grab some S9's.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Please read the 1st time/small miner guide here and pay particular attention to the quoted part from -ck regarding miners. Be aware that these are LOUD and HOT industrial devices. Free power is great BUT you still have to deal with the noise and have a way to exhaust the considerable heat miner produce.

As for cloud mining - virtually all of them are scams. Avoid them like plague.

[sarcheer]

If I absolutely had a pick a cloud-mining operator, as in gun to my head pick, I would probably take Bitmain's offering. Simply because its being run by a known entity that will likely be around for some time to come.

As for buying into the mining market now, I would ask the two most important questions (the second one is new):

1.) What is your electrical cost?

2.) Do you have 200-240V power available?

Given his costs are free, the second one is all that remains. I ask about have this type of power available because it would appear that with the ever-increasing demand for more efficient miners that manufacturers are moving away from separate PSU's which would allow you to use 120V to integrated PSU's which only run in that range. If the answer to #2 is no, then the only machines available to him are previous-gen machines.

Going with the assumption he only has 120V available, his options are quite expansive and cost-effective. S9's with AB fw on them are cheap and relatively quiet thanks to the reduced power consumption. The Avalon 8 series has a high degree of control by which the user can lower the power consumption and therefore the heat and noise. The Innosilicon miners I believe only have integrated PSU's (with the exception of their alt-coin miners).

Recommendations:
S9(i,j, variants) (put the AB FW on it)
841
R4 if you want peace and quiet (also has AB fw)

Good luck!

[numismatist]

BUT you still have to deal with the noise and have a way to exhaust the considerable heat miner produce.

Sorry, your nick "NotFuzzyWarm" has beaten me pointing at this: Piping the heat into living room areas would be fuzzy warm

Unsure if the company on picture does that, pipe diameters are typical for airflow. Theoretically a cloud mining collocation could install everything ranging from liquid cooling up to reusing the energy for chemical processings, whatever. In a far future they will have to invent that since margings are getting tight.

Most of them don't own any mining equipment, just running on a ponzi.

[mikeywith]

you seem to be confusing hash power rental vs cloud mining.

when you refer to something like nicehash, it's more of a pay-as-you-go thing.

could mining usually means a contract, you buy x amount of hash power for x amount of time,price is static regardless of market condition, if coin price goes up, you win, and you lose if it goes down, or more accurately you will likely lose either ways because as others have mentioned , the probability of it being legit is slim to nothing.

so now you are left with either using something like nicehash or buying your own gear.

nicehash and the alike services are now officially a bot-zone,  relying on your human abilities to beat the odds of getting more coin mining than actually buying it straight of some exchange is not that smartest thing to do, there are a few exceptions here and there , but overall it's all run by bots to make a very small profit % wise, so i'd say, ditch it.

so now you are left with either buying some real mining gears or not, and this question my friend is the million $ question that nobody has a right answer for.

[philipma1957]

op  you have not replied.

free power rules = you will make money

so how much free power do you have?

also where do you live?

country is enough.

here is the breakdown

an s9 with brains software can do 10 th at 800 watts fairly quiet 

an s9 on bitmain firmware does 13th and 1200 watts loud

10 th is 48 a month so 192 in 4 months
13 th is 62 a month so 248 in 4 months

the l3+ burns 700 watts on low power setting  it can do 500 mh

500 mh is 48 a month so 192 in 4 months

all based on free power.

I run a mix of both

[numismatist]

so now you are left with either buying some real mining gears or not, and this question my friend is the million $ question that nobody has a right answer for.

Oh, it's a little more easy. There will be a halving at 24 May 2020 00:28:09 and there will be new 7nm chip structures on market, some are available now, others are not.

Try to pick up some 7nm miners right before May 2020. Bad news for today, but what can you do else? Timing and patience. Ditch the Cloud.

Not mining related is "Dreams" which will have an impact end of next month probability like 50% to 80% I am not sure about.

[Artemis3]

My fellow brother was looking to mine BTC through AWS and as well tried his hands on mining BTC with his laptop. He made me laugh a lot when he told me that he got only a few Satoshis while mining through his PC and that's when I told him that he cannot earn anything through such hardware and needs to buy something extremely expensive to mine.

I've heard that Bitmain guys have announced about their upcoming mining beasts loaded with 7 nm chips. What do you think will they cost? I've come to know that they might be delivering around 48-50 TH/s at nearly 1500 Watts which looks quite impressive. Don't ask me about the electricity costs, it's free at his place.

On the other ✋, I'm aware of few of those cloud mining and some rig rental websites like https://www.nicehash.com
I checked there and it pretty much gives almost the same gains as invested per day + very less amounts in profit.

So, during these times when Bitmain is going to launch something which may actually boost difficulty to an all new higher level, should I suggest him to take risk of getting a rig online on rent, or should I ask him to wait for Bitmain to release those miners and ask him to purchase them and mine? Can anyone predict the possible outcome when mining through their upcoming hardware and when will he ROI?

I don't agree, cloudmining is a pure waste of money, you will never ROI, never. If you can't buy an Asic miner (which could go as low as $50 for an used 11T M3), then easiest is to just buy bitcoin and hold.

Yes they are loud, and you are not supposed to have them at home, but still some people do, put them in noise insulating boxes etc.

You can't mine bitcoin with computers (cpus), smartphones or gpus, you'd get a few satoshis at best per month like your brother did, so don't bother.

You should try buying a single Asic miner and get experience from it. It is like buying an AC unit, it has higher electricity demands, 220v, etc. An used one with a failing board or two may even be cheaper and easier to make quiet, such as an S9 with two boards instead of three.