Deciding Between Mining and Direct Investment

[qwertyup23]

Do you have the necessary equipments and knowledge for mining? Also, is your environment relatively cool in order to compensate for the energy being released by the amounts of mining rigs required? If yes, then feel free to explore this zone as it may be profitable. If not, then consider direct investment for relatively easier profits.

The problem with mining comes with the equipment and geographical location on where you are staying. Most miners live in a cool environment to compensate the heat being released by their equipment. Of course, more heat means more energy being used, thus increasing your costs further.

Like what was suggested by others, try to make a rough estimation of the amount of electricity that you will be paying once you start your mining venture. Personally, I would definitely choose direct investment due to its simplicity and convenience in nature.

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[cryptoaddictchie]

If the electricity is cheap on your country and you got funds for nrw or second hand equipment then go for it. But if you think the money would cost would be so high to run it and not sure of the expenses then just invest directly and you dont need any things or you wont be hassle for. Its not easy to set up for mining as I have friends who started and eventually they close it too due to massive expenses and the earning is not worth it according to their observations.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

Although you might not be good at racking your brain with calculations, but this is a business you are going into, and you have to put in your best effort to map out your requirements for the mining and also the possible daily earnings you will be making, how long you will need to mine before you can accumulate one Bitcoin, even before you mine and archive one Bitcoin, how much it will cost you to maintain your mining rig and the electricity bills. I Think taxation might also apply since it's a business you are running. But if it's just to accumulate Bitcoin, you can easily set a target for how much you are going to be Investing regularly, depending on how you plan it and also how much your monthly or daily income is.

[ZAINmalik75]

If I buy 10 units of S19 XP, each with a daily production value of $9.8 and a daily electricity cost of $1.44, considering my electricity cost is $0.02 per kWh, my net income per unit would be $8.33 source: (https://www.f2pool.com/miner?id=155037).
Currently, its price is $3145 source: (https://www.asicfinder.com/frontend/hardwares/bitmain-antminer-s19-xp-141t).
Now, BTC is priced at $29,048, which is quite low, and we are all waiting for the bull market to come.
Honestly, I'm not a fan of numbers and calculations, but I'm determined to make the right choice. Should I pursue mining for a steady source of income, or would it be more beneficial to directly purchase coins with an eye on long-term potential?

Wait what! Let me tell you something dear, there is not a term of steady source in the field of Crypto. It's the business of volatility so you aren't going to get any exact and 100% correct answers here which you could blame after. But still, here is my suggestion. If you are 100% sure that you are going to generate $8.33 daily which means by next ATH which might be around 2025 you would have generated $4,233.
510 days (approximately) * 8.33 = 4,233$

But if you would invest that money in BTC and buy 1 BTC and will sell it at the ATH of around $100k which is also not sure but mostly predicted so, if BTC hit $100k then you are making $more than $60k while in mining you are only making $4,233.

I think answer is pretty much clear for you here.

[Cricktor]

If you're not a fan of numbers and calculation, then mining is gonna be a recipe for desaster to you. Are you trying to spam here for this ASICfinder site?

As a normal person or habitant in a town or similar, how do you have reliable access to more than say 40kW power capacity (use your powerlines no more than ~80% of nominal capacity) and you'll need extra power for airflow and cooling.

How do you plan to get rid of ~31kW of heat 24/7/365? It's not gonna be easy and cheap! And then there's the noise of ten of those beasts including airflow and cooling. You have an industrial location site?

How about constant surveillance, you don't want to run +35kW gear unattended?

Use a mining profit calculator that can take difficulty adjustments and halving into account. That's some very basic stuff if you plan such an investment and you'd be crazy if you don't care about difficulty changes.

Changes in Bitcoin price can't be predicted, but don't forget that you have to pay your power and running costs bills.

[darkangel11]

I'd never choose mining, even with cheap electricity. That's because by choosing bitcoin you're, so to say, putting boots on the ground and exposing yourself to your government.
I'm a bitcoin holder and I got my coins long ago on a now defunct exchange. There's no way to link these coins to my identity. Nobody knows what and where I hold and they can't take it from me.
If I were to start mining, I'd reveal that I'm into bitcoin to my power company and my government (taxes). I'd depend on their decisions. If they were to limit my power, no more mining and no more bitcoin.

I'd have a location that's "raidable" so that any government agency can use a warrant to come in and search my place if I'm not secretly growing weed or something, because there's a lot of energy consumption and heat generation. I know they're doing that. They're even flying helicopters with thermal cameras to spot hot houses. I just don't want to deal with them.

Mining is a long-term process, comparable to DCA. I'd rather buy my coins now instead of buying it over the next 12 months or  something like that.

[Yamifoud]

For me, I don't choose mining over Bitcoin. Why? Because if you consider the cost of maintenance, it is really expensive and could just beat you down. Unlike if you are just investing in Bitcoin, you did nothing aside from waiting for the price rises and then selling, then repeating the strategy. But if you are into mining, you need to compete with others which is why you need to upgrade as possible which is costly, and if not manage well, you can be like others that had already shut down the operation.

[BitcoinPanther]

If I buy 10 units of S19 XP, each with a daily production value of $9.8 and a daily electricity cost of $1.44, considering my electricity cost is $0.02 per kWh, my net income per unit would be $8.33 source: (https://www.f2pool.com/miner?id=155037).
Currently, its price is $3145 source: (https://www.asicfinder.com/frontend/hardwares/bitmain-antminer-s19-xp-141t).
Now, BTC is priced at $29,048, which is quite low, and we are all waiting for the bull market to come.
Honestly, I'm not a fan of numbers and calculations, but I'm determined to make the right choice. Should I pursue mining for a steady source of income, or would it be more beneficial to directly purchase coins with an eye on long-term potential?

Have you deducted the personal labor on the maintenance of your farm?  Also the possibility of a unit malfunctioning along the course of taking ROI?  The possible noise pollution and the discomfort of running multiple mining rig at the same time?  If you are ok with those troubles then I think it is ok to setup a mining farm of 10 units of S19XP.

If I am in our shoes, I would rather buy BTC directly with that amount.  You are spare of the burden of setting up a mining rig, the maintenance and the negative possibilities that may happen along the way.  Having the investment fund converted directly to Bitcoin, it gives you a direct ROI and profit if in a month or two the price of BTC goes up which setting up a mining farm won't give you asap.

[Jon_Hodl]

I would simply buy the bitcoin instead of mining. While there are certainly some advantages to mining, it requires a relatively high technical knowhow as well as an understanding of the basic economics or hardware costs, electricity costs, difficulty adjustment, the halving, and how bitcoin price discovery works. I can see that you have done some basic calculations but the halving is less than a year away and historically the price doesn't pump for at least 6 months following the halving. No way to know if this time it will be different or not but it seems like a heavy capital investment with a lot of work between now and your potential break-even point.

If you have access to cheap mining hardware and free electricity such as curtailed energy, an oil well gas flare, or maybe even a farm that produces bio waste gas, then it absolutely makes sense to do anything to convert that surplus electricity into bitcoin via mining. Unfortunately, most people don't have access to surplus or wasted energy so it makes a lot more sense to just purchase some bitcoin which does a couple of things for the bitcoin ecosystem.

1. It puts upward pressure on the price of bitcoin because you will need to take bitcoin off of the market in one way or another and that not only supports other bitcoiners but it also supports miners who may be mining at a loss already. If you want to help bring the bull market back, then you can help simply by purchasing bitcoin.

2. You don't put any upward pressure on the hashrate (if you turn off miners cause they are mining at a loss, you actually put downward pressure on the hashrate) and that also helps the existing miners who may be mining at a loss. The difficulty keeps hitting new all time highs but the price has not been hitting all time highs along with it which, to me, is an indicator of some sort of state sponsored involvement or a lot of people mining with surplus energy that cannot be monetized otherwise. I tend to think it is the former and not the latter but I can't prove it one way or another.

I have been meaning to write an article on this exact topic for a while now so perhaps this thread will provide the motivation to consolidate my thoughts and publish it.