Never make a ROI

[XScrypt]

For example I purchased my first Antminer S1 through Sushi's group buy in early February for 1.45BTC

I set it up and overclocked it to 200 GH/s and started mining on February 12th.

Using http://retrocalc.net/ I see I've roughly made 0.8 off that 1 Antminer S1(2.24 Total BTC mined).

I don't think making nearly $500 off of one miner(out of several I bought) is just barely making ROI, do you?  Another factor is I luckily have free electricity, so helps a great deal.

Now I've sold most of my Ants, but I've held onto Antminer #1, as that little guy is proof that you can ROI in this difficult environment.  He'll always have a place in my BTC heart....

You didn't make $500. If you sold right now you'd make about half that due to the drop in price since February. You don't make a profit or a loss until you sell. Until then, it's imaginary.
 

[ChuckBuck]

For example I purchased my first Antminer S1 through Sushi's group buy in early February for 1.45BTC

I set it up and overclocked it to 200 GH/s and started mining on February 12th.

Using http://retrocalc.net/ I see I've roughly made 0.8 off that 1 Antminer S1(2.24 Total BTC mined).

I don't think making nearly $500 off of one miner(out of several I bought) is just barely making ROI, do you?  Another factor is I luckily have free electricity, so helps a great deal.

Now I've sold most of my Ants, but I've held onto Antminer #1, as that little guy is proof that you can ROI in this difficult environment.  He'll always have a place in my BTC heart....

You didn't make $500. If you sold right now you'd make about half that due to the drop in price since February. You don't make a profit or a loss until you sell. Until then, it's imaginary.
 

It's not imaginary.  I've made over 0.81 BTC with the single Antminer S1 I'm still running.  Put in February 12 to June 14 and 200 GH/s:

http://retrocalc.net/

Forget the fiat for a second, I've made 0.81 profit from my 1.45BTC invest.  So 0.81 is pure up coins.  So 0.81 x current exchange rate = $456 or so since BTC price dipped a little.

I always use coins to buy miners, so don't factor the exchange price then and now.  Coins in, coins out.

Hope that makes sense to you now.

Chuck

[ajareselde]

mining has become over-staturated, thats why the profits are marginal/none.
Try to make a profit trading, instead of mining, if u have a steady hand and nerves

Most of miners usualy start selling equipement as soon as they recieve it, and that way they make better profit, so consider that also.

[nwfella]

ROI depends on how big you see your system. If it is limited to a crypto hardware and supporting CPU then your system input constraints (such as elec prices) will smash your ROI into the floor. On the other hand, expand your vision to include the energy source and derive a method to control it, such as adding a solar panel / wind turbine to power your hardware, then your system might take longer to break even but the ROI is ongoing.

Yes the ROI is diminishing however it does allow you to continue using older generation miners and updating them through profits.

This is the approach I have used and although I am not packing a 10THs facility, I do own my 1.5kW solar array plus the Jally plus the R-box plus the 3 * 6770s plus the 2 * AMD 6 cores that were ALL paid for out of an initail $500 investment.

Yes, this is less profit than having bought just BTC however I am more comfortable working with and understanding hardware/ software than I am with world economics...

P.S the 1.5kW array is more than enough to power sufficient ASICs to make it worth my while as each gen improves more hash for less watts. As the current 3rd gen stabilises, I will grab a few more to my collection. 

Overall, work out a business plan that works for you and stick to it!

This fella makes alotta sense.  I've been wanting to find somebody with a huge solar farm for sometime now.  Kudos to you sir (even though I hate you kind of...not really;)

[Nitroyoda]

 So Lets say I had enough capital to buy 20 TH/s worth of machinery and could run it at $ 0.03 kw/h............could this not make money ?

[brian_23452]

So Lets say I had enough capital to buy 20 TH/s worth of machinery and could run it at $ 0.03 kw/h............could this not make money ?

Possibly, obviously how much they cost and how much electricity they consume would be the main factors.  The thing is though, it's easy to make money on paper using cheap accounting tricks, without actually making any money.  Large part of the reason why costs are so high.  For instance someone mentions solar panels to cut down on the costs of electricity.  Okay, but solar panels don't come free, if you spend 20k USD on solar panels, are you including that cost in your operational costs or just ignoring it?  Even with solar panels, electricity that you are consuming is still worth money.  If you consume 1000 USD a month in electricity that you could have otherwise sold to the power company, is that missed revenue being accounted for as a cost as it should be, or just ignored?  And of course there are the people with "free" electricity.  Unless you are stealing it though, you are paying for it.  It may be included in the rent so you don't know how much your paying for it, but it's still there.  These are just a few examples of costs that are sometimes ignored but are nevertheless still there.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

So Lets say I had enough capital to buy 20 TH/s worth of machinery and could run it at $ 0.03 kw/h............could this not make money ?

The answer to your question ultimately depends on two things:

One - how fast the difficulty increases. This will determine how much your machines will mine in the future as well as the future value of your miners.

Two - the price that you pay for the machines. This will help determine when/if you will ever reach ROI.

I assume that you would purchase 28nm machines. You generally "have" to assume that the price of bitcoin will remain flat when calculating ROI as if you think it will increase then you would be better off simply buying bitcoin.

IMO the best way to profit off of miners is to buy miners at the market price (or slightly below if possible) then resell it right away to someone else quickly, before the miner looses any value. You could then keep what it mines as profit.

Miners will lose value as the difficulty increases as they will produce less bitcoin

[Harley997]

ROI depends on how big you see your system. If it is limited to a crypto hardware and supporting CPU then your system input constraints (such as elec prices) will smash your ROI into the floor. On the other hand, expand your vision to include the energy source and derive a method to control it, such as adding a solar panel / wind turbine to power your hardware, then your system might take longer to break even but the ROI is ongoing.

Yes the ROI is diminishing however it does allow you to continue using older generation miners and updating them through profits.

This is the approach I have used and although I am not packing a 10THs facility, I do own my 1.5kW solar array plus the Jally plus the R-box plus the 3 * 6770s plus the 2 * AMD 6 cores that were ALL paid for out of an initail $500 investment.

Yes, this is less profit than having bought just BTC however I am more comfortable working with and understanding hardware/ software than I am with world economics...

P.S the 1.5kW array is more than enough to power sufficient ASICs to make it worth my while as each gen improves more hash for less watts. As the current 3rd gen stabilises, I will grab a few more to my collection. 

Overall, work out a business plan that works for you and stick to it!

This fella makes alotta sense.  I've been wanting to find somebody with a huge solar farm for sometime now.  Kudos to you sir (even though I hate you kind of...not really;)

Many states force utilities to purchase excess solar power from consumers at retail prices.

Even if the electric did not "cost" anything they would still miss out on selling that electricity to the utility company