NEWB here!

[voss23]

I know this has probably been asked a million times, but I've been overwhelmed with information and can't seem to really fine a good answer on this.

Can it be profitable to mine if you have a "free" power source and some programming/hardware knowledge skills (not sure this even matter) ?

thanks,
voss.

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[Lunga Chung]

if its free electricity mine all you can get

[BitMaxz]

If you have free electricity or free power source mining for you is profitable and it depends on what mining machine you have because if you mine coins with GPU the ROI will take years before you reach the ROI. But if you are mining with ASIC miner I think you can reach the ROI fast.

You don't need a deep knowledge of Hardware/software. It is enough if you know how to maintain your miners or how to clean them and knowledge to set up the pool is enough.

[mikeywith]

Mining is not all about power cost, there are many other factors that would determine a successful mining business from a complete losing investment, some of those factors are:

1-Gear price
2-Timing
3-Luck

Luck itself involves many things, including but not limited to (gear failure / hashboard dying etc,,)

With all due respect , the fact that you are asking such a question - indicates that you are way too far from being ready to enter the business, while mining is plain simple to run and maintain, and as BitMaxz mentioned ,you really need no skills what so ever, but this does not discard the fact that mining is just another business, if treated otherwise you will probably end up losing money regardless of your power cost.

I am not trying to let you down, but I have seen people fail big time due to lack of simple knowledge, my friendly advice is  "read more"

[CoinFoxs]

If electricity is free then you will get some profit but profit is low as I came to know by talking to miners.

[pooya87]

If you have free electricity or free power source mining for you is profitable and it depends on what mining machine you have because if you mine coins with GPU the ROI will take years before you reach the ROI. But if you are mining with ASIC miner I think you can reach the ROI fast.

if we exclude bitcoin from the list then it depends on timing. there are years (like this year) that altcoins are dumping hard and everyone loses money even miners so they will have a much harder time reaching profit let alone ROI. of course with no electricity cost it will be better but not by a lot.
then there are years when we have lots of altcoin pumps like 2017 or 2013,... and mining coins, specially the GPU coins (since they are pumped a lot more) is more profitable than coins that are big enough to have an ASIC.

[hd49728]

Mining profits depend on so many factors, and power cost is just one of them.
Some major factors that affect mining profits:
- Power cost
- Block rewards
- Difficulty on network
- Price of coin you mine with your rigs in BTC and in fiat on market
- You rig's hashrate (hardware issues)
Let's start off with your rig's hashrate. If your rigs are very outdated, you can run them over days without any mining rewards, because your rigs are unable to find with others more advanced rigs on network to find blocks and get mining rewards from pools.

Beyond rigs' hardware issuses; block rewards and difficulty on network are other main factors. With same block rewards, lower difficulty will cause higher mining rewards; while with lower block rewards, and same difficutly, you will get less mining rewards. Mining rewards will plummet if bot block rewards decreases (halving, ie.) and difficutly increases

Price of coins on market: If you can not sell your coin on market at 1 satoshi, you will never get profits if you mine millions of coins.
Miners should look at bitcoin price, price of coins they're mining, and other factors above to have overview on mining profits in both short term and medium term.

[timerland]

if its free electricity mine all you can get

Not really, it depends on the mining gear that you purchase. For example, if you had a PC you are currently using, and then moved that to a 24/7 mining setup, it'll be much more profitable then buying new antiminer gear, etc.

If you have free electricity or free power source mining for you is profitable and it depends on what mining machine you have because if you mine coins with GPU the ROI will take years before you reach the ROI. But if you are mining with ASIC miner I think you can reach the ROI fast.

You don't need a deep knowledge of Hardware/software. It is enough if you know how to maintain your miners or how to clean them and knowledge to set up the pool is enough.

ASIC miners do cost thousands of dollars, but GPU's will eventually wear down from your constant mining. I'd personally look to repurposing your old PC equipment, or doing the calculations and buying a new antiminer or 2.

If you have free electricity or free power source mining for you is profitable and it depends on what mining machine you have because if you mine coins with GPU the ROI will take years before you reach the ROI. But if you are mining with ASIC miner I think you can reach the ROI fast.

if we exclude bitcoin from the list then it depends on timing. there are years (like this year) that altcoins are dumping hard and everyone loses money even miners so they will have a much harder time reaching profit let alone ROI. of course with no electricity cost it will be better but not by a lot.
then there are years when we have lots of altcoin pumps like 2017 or 2013,... and mining coins, specially the GPU coins (since they are pumped a lot more) is more profitable than coins that are big enough to have an ASIC.

Ah, this is well-said mate! I'd personally recommend picking an altcoin you are personally interested in, and then with a bit of luck, and some price rising, it'll be much more worthwhile to mine it, then BTC.

[Febo]

Mining is not all about power cost, there are many other factors that would determine a successful mining business from a complete losing investment, some of those factors are:

1-Gear price
2-Timing
3-Luck

If you have free electricity, that will overrun all other factors. Problem is that people usually underestimate how much electricity will get used.

[Velkro]

Can it be profitable to mine if you have a "free" power source and some programming/hardware knowledge skills (not sure this even matter) ?

Its pretty easy to mine with free electricity but its not always a good way to earn. You must calculate if you will earn keeping in mind difficulty rise all the time lowering your income.
Keep in mind that "free" electricity made people go to jail many many many times. Be careful with that, im not saying you doing something wrong, just know what you do for sure first.

[BitMaxz]

if we exclude bitcoin from the list then it depends on timing. there are years (like this year) that altcoins are dumping hard and everyone loses money even miners so they will have a much harder time reaching profit let alone ROI. of course with no electricity cost it will be better but not by a lot.
then there are years when we have lots of altcoin pumps like 2017 or 2013,... and mining coins, specially the GPU coins (since they are pumped a lot more) is more profitable than coins that are big enough to have an ASIC.

I don't believe on altcoins honestly. We see altcoins on the past massively increases but I don't know if it can happen again after the block halving if miners can hold their precious altcoin why not. Since he has a free power source they can mine 24/7 without thinking about electricity cost but we don't know if that coin will massively increase just like what happened in the past there are some coins die before it happens. So instead of holding them, they sell their coins before it dies.

Mining altcoins is just gambling if you invest right now with free electricity you can gain profit but it takes years before you reach your ROI like what happened to me I invested my money to buy a small rig with the small solar system year 2018 until now I can't reach the ROI. I'm just holding and sell if the price increase 100% or more but still I'm far to reach the ROI because I only have a small solar system with two 9kw/h battery bank my miner runs around 12hrs to 19hrs. Even I have a free source I'm too far to get my ROI. I'm waiting for block halving and holding but instead of waiting for too long I trade some of my coins to major altcoins so that I can make a little profit while waiting but not focusing only on one altcoin.

That is why I suggested him to buy ASIC because you can get your ROI fast compared on mining altcoin. Why not he buy ASIC first then after block halving start mining altcoin then hold so that he doesn't waste the opportunity to make a profit these months. Block halving still too far so this is the best choice that I know if he is looking for a profit and become rich after block-halving.

[jossiel]

I have read this from someone in the forum that "if your electricity is free then there will be someone that will pay for it" unless it came from renewable source or solar energy.

In line with your skills of programming, it's not only mining that you can profit with but you can also work as a programmer. As long as your programming language suits a company, you just have to scout for those openings.

[mikeywith]

If you have free electricity, that will overrun all other factors. Problem is that people usually underestimate how much electricity will get used.

WRONG!!!!!

I don't usually color my text , but this time I had to because your statement is so wrong, let me give you a real life example of a recent mining gear , and that is the antminer D3, if you bought a D3 ( 1200w / 17gh) a couple months ago for 300$ like some people did right before the release of SPx36 (4400w/540gh) where difficulty went from about 60-70 to  over 160 and price kept only decreasing , the average daily income you would have made would be about 50 cent day.

that's 13$ a month ! say 15$ a month at best case scenario , that is 20 moths to roi , you are not even half way there despite the free power, let alone the fact that you paid 300$ when btc was under 5-6k which means if you simply held BTC ,your hodlings would now be worth double without having to worry about running a mining gear.

Same thing goes for a lot of other gears, whereby price keeps going down while hashrate (difficulty) keeps going up due to way more efficient gears being introduced, so it's not all sun shine and rainbows for those who have free power.

and hey ! i am talking from personal experience since I do have free power, and I am sure that anyone who has been in the mining business long enough would agree to the fact the free power is not the only factor that determines a good business.

If you have the time, you can check websites like bitinfocharts.com where you can see both price and hashrate on the same chart, do the math and you will see a lot of gears that never ever going to ROI.

Before I end this, i would put two more examples, which are Innosilicon S11 and Antminer A3 , I still remember how on one day the A3 made 9$ and the next morning it became a door stopper that nets 0 profit, not sure how free power would have saved you from a hardfork against your gear.
edit:

I am willing to bet that the fine gentlemen who think mining alts with (GPUs) has faster ROI or less risk than mining btc with mining gears - probably never tried both, there are many facts to point out to how wrong their assumption is, probably too long to fit into a single comment, but if anyone wants to debate based on statistics and numbers , kindly let me know  

[pooya87]

That is why I suggested him to buy ASIC because you can get your ROI fast compared on mining altcoin. Why not he buy ASIC first then after block halving start mining altcoin then hold so that he doesn't waste the opportunity to make a profit these months. Block halving still too far so this is the best choice that I know if he is looking for a profit and become rich after block-halving.

i agree with the altcoin mining risks, i sometimes forget to mention them since they are too obvious to me.
but regarding ASICs i have to say in my opinion it depends on what ASIC you are buying. if it is bitcoin (SHA256) ASIC then i don't think it is a good idea to mine an altcoin with it. sticking to bitcoin has lower risks too. in order to choose an altcoin to mine that has to be a lot more profitable than bitcoin and according to https://www.coinwarz.com/miningprofitability/sha-256 nothing satisfies that condition.

but if it is an altcoin ASIC (like scrypt, or keccak,... ASICs) then again you would be subjecting yourself to the high altcoin risks and you would have an ASIC that could only be used for that altcoin and not much else specially not for bitcoin.

[mikeywith]

but if it is an altcoin ASIC (like scrypt, or keccak,... ASICs) then again you would be subjecting yourself to the high altcoin risks and you would have an ASIC that could only be used for that altcoin and not much else specially not for bitcoin.

No only this, the main problem with mining altcoins is the small hashrate of the network, while that may give the impression of being able to mine more coins, the difficulty is subject to double at any given time, but that certainly is not the case for BTC since it takes a ton of gears to increase the hashrate by 5-10%.

another reason is the technology limits, altcoin gears still have a lot of room for improvement because they are fairly new, in my previous comment I talked about mining dash (x11) , and you can see that we went from about 1200w and 17gh on the D3 to 4400w and 540gh on the Spx36 , or in other words from 70w per gh to 8w per gh , that is about 9 times more efficient, which was good enough to send D3 to the garbage.

But if we do the same thing on BTC ASIC, old school S9 does about  80-90w per th , while the latest and most efficient gear S17pro does about 39w per th, that is only about twice as better, and we are talking about 2 years of on-going improvement to get this point.

Let alone mining your favorite altcoin with GPU and then a x100 times better ASIC is introduced and the dev team of your coin do nothing about it.