Want to start mining

[Kieran Bass]

I want to start mining and have enough money to invest in the new technology what do you guys suggest before going ahead with it?

[Acidyo]

I would much rather buy miners from reputable companies. Don't buy from cloudmining services since most people lose on those.

[odolvlobo]

Do lots of research before spending any money. Most newbie miners lose money because they don't have a complete understanding of the mining industry and the economics of mining. If you are new to Bitcoin, I recommend you buy the bitcoins rather than mine them.

[Meuh6879]

1) understand this : https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty
2) buy on this : https://www.bitmaintech.com/product.htm
3) do maths ...
4) buy bitcoin on exchange ... and trade.

[Lieji]

Unless you have very cheap electricity, I would suggest you to buy bitcoin directly.
It is not easy to get profit in mining and buying miners is a very risky investment as the difficulty could go up very rapidly when newer generation of ASICs are shipped.

[ajareselde]

I want to start mining and have enough money to invest in the new technology what do you guys suggest before going ahead with it?

Just dont. Like it was said before, mining has become oversaturated, and profits are marginal at best.
You have much more chance of increasing your capital by buying coins you would normaly mine, than you have when you buy mining gear.
Most of us old miners are selling our gear, and its not because we dont like making profit, its because its not worth it anymore.
Good luck whatever u decide to do.

cheers

[micky123]

I want to start mining and have enough money to invest in the new technology what do you guys suggest before going ahead with it?

Hi Kieran,

I was exactly like you a couple months back. Try what i did in order and see what works for you. I don't think mining is for everyone.

1) Buy BTC from an exchange, the prices are very tempting right now, you can get a good deal.
2) Stay away from cloud mining sites, their maintenance costs are very high and will burn a hole in your pocket, especially with difficulty rising.
3) If you really want to mine, get yourself some BTC from an exchange and rent a rig for a day or so and see how that works out for you - Try Betarigs / leaserigs for more information.

Do not waste your money on buying a miner and setting it up, this is my humble opinion. Sooner or later, with difficulty rising, your returns will keep coming down and operating costs will feel like they are rising. If you are still hell bent on buying a miner, buy one from Bitmain... i recommend the S3 antminer to start off with.

[byt411]

As others have said, the best option for you is to buy some bitcoin and sit with it. Right now it's an amazing opportunity to do so. You should read more about mining in general, and then buy some mining hardware if your electricity price is really low. (Less than $0.07/kWh) But you still need to do your own calculations properly.

[galbros]

The key thing to keep in mind is that mining is just buying bitcoin in a different way.  Especially now that you can't just set up a few old PCs and expect to earn coins using their GPUs.  So research a lot.

If you just want to see what you can get in a real environment, I found bitminter to be great for just getting started with mining.

Good Luck!

[JamesGuitar]

Mining is only for the wealthy and people who have enough cash to keep Bitcoin generating more.

[byt411]

Mining is only for the wealthy and people who have enough cash to keep Bitcoin generating more.

Not true at all. Anyone can buy an ASIC and mine in their garage, if they have cheap/free electricity. Right now, you can get Block Erupter USBs for like $5 or something, and if you consider someone that has a spare $5 "rich", then I really wonder how you get access to the internet.

[SelbyTsang]

Basically, I agree with the others that you should buy bitcoin rather than bitcoin miner.
You don't need to trust us blindly and you can check some profit calculators yourself.

[nottm28]

...
i recommend the S3 antminer to start off with.
...

meh - S3 is not a good deal even if it was shipping today - but it won't even ship for 30 odd days from now...

My advice is to hold back and watch for now - if you must jump in then asicminer has the best deal at the moment with 8TH for approx $5000.

But even that will just about (maybe/might/unlikely) ROI (make your money back in BTC).

Buying BTC (as advised by others) is probably not a bad idea - but it's boring as hell and you might as well put your money in stocks and shares.

[Kieran Bass]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

[MajidBC]

First of all, don't hurry to join the mining community. You may lose money here. If you decided to invest, Take a look at here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=741838.msg8402204#msg8402204
I read about it a few minutes ago. Hashlet. Read the comments there. I'm not recommending it, I don't know anything about it. Just giving a suggestion to research.

[Kieran Bass]

so everyones against the idea of mining? but I was under the impression we require miners otherwise Bitcoin will fail?

[byt411]

so everyones against the idea of mining? but I was under the impression we require miners otherwise Bitcoin will fail?

No one is against mining. We'd all love to mine and earn money by doing nothing, but unless you have cheap/free electricity, you won't ever profit from mining.

[odolvlobo]

so everyones against the idea of mining? but I was under the impression we require miners otherwise Bitcoin will fail?

Mining can be profitable if you know what you are doing. Many people got burned because they jumped into mining without doing the necessary research. They were hoping to make money and instead they ended up losing money.  If you don't care about profitability, then go for it. Mining can be a fun and interesting hobby. It can be very educational.

If you want to make a profit, then there are two important aspects to mining that you must understand.  The first is the investment in bitcoins. If you invested in bitcoins or mining equipment during the last 9 months, your investment is worth less now than it was when you made the investment because the value of a bitcoin has dropped. This loss of value is not specific to miners. It applies to anyone holding bitcoins over the last 9 months, and it is a big reason for the negative opinion of mining you see here.

Despite that, if you believe that the future of bitcoin is good, then you still might want to obtain some bitcoins, whether through buying them or mining them. This is where the second aspect comes in.

The second aspect (and the most important one to miners) is making a profit from mining in terms of BTC. If you want to obtain bitcoins, you have a choice of buying them or mining them. If you can obtain bitcoins more cheaply by mining, then you should mine. Otherwise, you should just buy them and avoid wasting time and money on mining equipment. Many miners (especially over the last two years) paid more for mining equipment than the equipment would mine. They should have just bought the bitcoins instead. Predicting the profitability of mining is difficult and complicated. Before investing in mining equipment a miner should first come up with a reasonable estimate for the amount of BTC the equipment will mine and compare that to the total cost of mining (in BTC). Many miners never did that, and now the realize that they made a bad investment. That is another reason for the negative opinion of mining that you see here.

No one is against mining. We'd all love to mine and earn money by doing nothing, but unless you have cheap/free electricity, you won't ever profit from mining.

That is not accurate. Compared to the cost of the equipment, the energy cost is small, though it is growing.

[Kieran Bass]

so everyones against the idea of mining? but I was under the impression we require miners otherwise Bitcoin will fail?

Mining can be profitable if you know what you are doing. Many people got burned because they jumped into mining without doing the necessary research. They were hoping to make money and instead they ended up losing money.  If you don't care about profitability, the go right ahead. Mining can be a fun and interesting hobby. It can be very educational.

If you want to make a profit, then there are two important aspects to mining that you must understand.  The first is the investment in bitcoins. If you invested in bitcoins or mining equipment during the last 9 months, your investment is worth less now than it was when you made the investment because the value of a bitcoin has dropped. This loss of value is not specific to miners. It applies to anyone holding bitcoins over the last 9 months, and it is a big reason for the negative opinion of mining you see here.

Despite that, if you believe that the future of bitcoin is good, then you still might want to obtain some bitcoins, whether through buying them or mining them. This is where the second aspect comes in.

The second aspect (and the most important one to miners) is making a profit from mining in terms of BTC. If you want to obtain bitcoins, you have a choice of buying them or mining them. If you can obtain bitcoins more cheaply by mining, then you should mine. Otherwise, you should just buy them and avoid wasting time and money on mining equipment. Many miners (especially over the last two years) paid more for mining equipment than the equipment would mine. They should have just bought the bitcoins instead. Predicting the profitability of mining is difficult and complicated. Before investing in mining equipment a miner should first come up with a reasonable estimate for the amount of BTC the equipment will mine and compare that to the total cost of mining (in BTC). Many miners never did that, and now the realize that they made a bad investment. That is another reason for the negative opinion of mining that you see here.

No one is against mining. We'd all love to mine and earn money by doing nothing, but unless you have cheap/free electricity, you won't ever profit from mining.

That is not accurate. Compared to the cost of the equipment, the energy cost is small, though it is growing.

thanks for the information I would like to earn to profit but also to help the network as it continues to grow we need more miners for Bitcoin to be successful.

[Bitsaurus]

DO NOT CLOUD MINE! - it centralizes the network which is bad for crypto.  Not to mention the potential for every cloud mining pool to be a scam/ponzi : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=739510.0

You can mine with new or 2nd hard hardware but you will most likely do so at a loss.