Why Mine ?

[eoakland]

Mining is fun and a neat hobby, however for us little guys mining just isn't really making too much cents/sense.  Difficulty is rising too rapidly, that along with the insane price for power to mine (at least in California) is making it harder and harder to continue mining.  The s3 which is pretty new is almost outdated in terms of profitability.  Nowadays 450 gh/s is the new BFL jalapeno.

Cloud hashing services/Ponzi schemers are anxiously waiting for all us little guys to crossover, and are licking their chops. 

[dropt]

Mining is fun and a neat hobby, however for us little guys mining just isn't really making too much cents/sense.  Difficulty is rising too rapidly, that along with the insane price for power to mine (at least in California) is making it harder and harder to continue mining.  The s3 which is pretty new is almost outdated in terms of profitability.  Nowadays 450 gh/s is the new BFL jalapeno.

Cloud hashing services/Ponzi schemers are anxiously waiting for all us little guys to crossover, and are licking their chops. 

Mining always has been, and always will be a race to the bottom.  Alas you're right, you cannot compete with the large farms that have their own IP and a direct line to the fab house.   All you can hope for, if you really want to call it that, is for a sky-high difficulty and a massive sustained drop in price to the point where all of those large farms go bankrupt without recouping their initial investment.

[chanz]

Well, most of them are taking it as an hobby but unless you have terahashes of power it's useless to even begin with.

[notlist3d]

I do it because I enjoy it.

If your have space and decent electricity you can still ROI.  But it is harder then the day's you could just buy GPU's and almost guaranteed ROI it seemed for a long time.

[Barnabe]

I do it because I enjoy it.

If your have space and decent electricity you can still ROI.  But it is harder then the day's you could just buy GPU's and almost guaranteed ROI it seemed for a long time.

Even when there are some farm with ridiculous electricity costs and several TH/s miners ?

[notlist3d]

I do it because I enjoy it.

If your have space and decent electricity you can still ROI.  But it is harder then the day's you could just buy GPU's and almost guaranteed ROI it seemed for a long time.

Even when there are some farm with ridiculous electricity costs and several TH/s miners ?

I still have decent electricity and good amount of space, and mining ROI ...... so yes even if big farms.

[bozo333]

Many miners like to fool themselves with faulty ROI calculations because the belief system must be upheld at all costs.

Even with a 7c/kwh rate I can say with 98% certainty you will not make a profit in fiat (which you pay your bills with) if the exchange rate stays under $550 and the diff. keeps increasing at recent rate.

The only ones making the money are the mining equipment manufacturers which run their new ASICS for 1-2 months before releasing them to the consumer or wholesaler (who may or may not also run them for a couple weeks first).

In general after mining for 2-3 months you have to sell your equipment because you usually will get more on Ebay (even after fees) than the miner can produce if kept running.

[waltermot321]

There is a good chances that the difficulty would stop/slow down at one point. Its just too hard to keep increasing 20% forever..

[Barnabe]

There is a good chances that the difficulty would stop/slow down at one point. Its just too hard to keep increasing 20% forever..

The difficulty will only increase if the technology or the means (investments) don't change. Sometimes difficulty lowers, but many people think it's only market readapting (miners selling their old hardware to buy new ones).

[DrG]

I do it because I enjoy it.

If your have space and decent electricity you can still ROI.  But it is harder then the day's you could just buy GPU's and almost guaranteed ROI it seemed for a long time.

Technically there were only a few periods of time where even GPUs made ROI (we're going to consider BTC ROI since fiat ROI was all based on luck of BTC shooting up in price).  Back when BTC was $2 you would have to mine 75BTC to pay off a 6870.  While a 6870 was able to make almost 0.5BTC in a day at the lowest difficulty of 1 million the difficulty didn't stay there for long.

So almost the entire history it has been financially better to buy.  Had any of us GPU miners know that BTC would be $500(or $1200) we would have probably bought thousands of BTC and just kept much smaller farms rather tha have our wife ask why the electric bill is in the thousands 

[Diver6691]

Mining is fun and a neat hobby, however ...........................................................

The only way to see it as "fan" or "hobby" is to solo mine (no pool).
That way it's like lottery  .    25 BTC is a good prize
Oh.....I forget , you can also use it as a heating element in winter   

Generally at this time........mining is not such a good idea .

[vortexz]

mining for small miners is bad !
only big miners are getting profits, like manufatureres and stuff.

[Barnabe]

mining for small miners is bad !
only big miners are getting profits, like manufatureres and stuff.

During the Gold rush it was the same thing. Most prospectors win very little and had to buy very expensive fournitures and equipment, while shop owners and equipment sellers could make amazing margins because of the increase of demand.

[Radelderth]

I do it because I enjoy it.

If your have space and decent electricity you can still ROI.  But it is harder then the day's you could just buy GPU's and almost guaranteed ROI it seemed for a long time.

Technically there were only a few periods of time where even GPUs made ROI (we're going to consider BTC ROI since fiat ROI was all based on luck of BTC shooting up in price).  Back when BTC was $2 you would have to mine 75BTC to pay off a 6870.  While a 6870 was able to make almost 0.5BTC in a day at the lowest difficulty of 1 million the difficulty didn't stay there for long.

So almost the entire history it has been financially better to buy.  Had any of us GPU miners know that BTC would be $500(or $1200) we would have probably bought thousands of BTC and just kept much smaller farms rather tha have our wife ask why the electric bill is in the thousands 

This is the reason why everyone should buy BTC and not mining gear. Its killing the market...

[Barnabe]

I do it because I enjoy it.

If your have space and decent electricity you can still ROI.  But it is harder then the day's you could just buy GPU's and almost guaranteed ROI it seemed for a long time.

Technically there were only a few periods of time where even GPUs made ROI (we're going to consider BTC ROI since fiat ROI was all based on luck of BTC shooting up in price).  Back when BTC was $2 you would have to mine 75BTC to pay off a 6870.  While a 6870 was able to make almost 0.5BTC in a day at the lowest difficulty of 1 million the difficulty didn't stay there for long.

So almost the entire history it has been financially better to buy.  Had any of us GPU miners know that BTC would be $500(or $1200) we would have probably bought thousands of BTC and just kept much smaller farms rather tha have our wife ask why the electric bill is in the thousands 

This is the reason why everyone should buy BTC and not mining gear. Its killing the market...

At least the hash power is getting the bitcoin ecosystem more secure.

[Morguk]

I think it is for the fun now. Even online, it's something I can keep an eye on, a little hobby I can check every now and again.

[RoadStress]

I like the hardware and I like to have a small army working for me 

[rammy2k2]

it's a hobby , addiction ... its a race u might win or not ... its like a RTS

[bitgeek]

mining for small miners is bad !
only big miners are getting profits, like manufatureres and stuff.

Not true. I've seen a lot of people who profited from "small" mining, even recently.

[generalt]

Commercialization has pretty much killed mining.  Manufacturers mine with their equipment for 1 - 2 months before selling it to the public.  The public buys the hardware with the illusion of ROI, but I believe that the majority of people that have been burned realize this and they will stop buying new miners.  Even with free electricity some of these "new" miners for sale will take years to ROI with the difficulty change.  Unless the price of bitcoins skyrockets things look grim.  Plus I doubt that the price of BTC will skyrocket considering these huge monster mining farms are mining and dumping their BTC daily.