Why mining is still profitable on Radeons

[kallisti5]

UPDATE 5/23/2011:   Whoo!! Mining is profitable again!  Note to self... no math early in the morning before coffee



EDIT:   Doh! I mis-calculated power usage!

I have a beefy rig I leave running 24/7 anyway.
I recently purchased a Radeon 5830 for $129.99

Proportional mining on DeepBit earns me $5.45 USD a day (~0.93 BTC / Day max at 228MH/h)
$5.45 / day - $0.38 electricity (0.9/watt * 175 W peak)/ day means my Radeon 5830 @$129.99 will pay for itself in 25 days! (At current MtGox prices of $7 = 1 BTC)
As long as building a mining rig means buying a "low-end" performance Radeon on the cheap... and MtGox stays in the $6-7 sweet spot.... it is very profitable.


5.45 / day - $3.78 electricity (0.9/watt * 175 W peak)/ day means my Radeon 5830 @$129.99 will pay for itself in 77 days! (At current MtGox prices of $7 = 1 BTC)


Radeon 5830  228MH/h

on DeepBit Proportional mining:
  $5.45 / day (~0.95BTC / day) - 0.378  (175 W peek * 24 hours / 1000 * 0.09)  (income - power cost)
  $5.45 - 0.378 = $5.07 daily profit.


So the Radeon 5830 @ $129.99  would take about 23 days to pay off.

So yes... as long as your initial investment isn't very large you can easily profit off of mining for the moment given MtGox prices and the difficulty doesn't jump up again.

[goatpig]

You forget the increasing difficulty. There's no guaranty that the actual price to difficulty ratio will be maintained. If anything logic dictates that this ratio tends toward smaller and smaller profit margins, as people compete over the network.

[kallisti5]

thats true as well.

Sigh.. why is there no easy money?

[Dude65535]

Is your electricity really 90 cents per kilowatt hour? Mine is only 10 cents per kilowatt hour.

[goatpig]

That's some insane electricity price you got there, are you sure it's not 0.09 USD/kWh?

[dayfall]

I bought just under $1000 of cards and cases and I get 1100Mh/s.  I get about 5BTC/day at BTCMine.  From what I figure, difficulty should double every 23 days.  Every difficulty increase is at about 140% and happens every 10 days.  If the next difficulty increase is in 5 days from now,... I'll have :

50 for the next 5 days (and previous 5) ($350)
35 for the next 10,  ($245)
25 for the next 10,  ($175)
17 for the next 10,  ($119)
12 for the next 10,  ($84)
_8 for the next 10,  ($56)

$1029 will take 60 days.  I estimate power cost to be $2.00 per day including A/C.  So, if I were starting right now and prices would remain at 7 USD/BTC, then it would take me about 2 months to break even.

Does this all look right?

[goatpig]

I bought just under $1000 of cards and cases and I get 1100Mh/s.  I get about 5BTC/day at BTCMine.  From what I figure, difficulty should double every 23 days.  Every difficulty increase is at about 140% and happens every 10 days.  If the next difficulty increase is in 5 days from now,... I'll have :

50 for the next 5 days (and previous 5) ($350)
35 for the next 10,  ($245)
25 for the next 10,  ($175)
17 for the next 10,  ($119)
12 for the next 10,  ($84)
_8 for the next 10,  ($56)

$1029 will take 60 days.  I estimate power cost to be $2.00 per day including A/C.  So, if I were starting right now and prices would remain at 7 USD/BTC, then it would take me about 2 months to break even.

Does this all look right?

$2 for power a day seems little low, the rest is sound. You can expect the difficulty rises to calm down if the price doesn't go up 2 weeks from now.

[dayfall]

Ah, yes it should be $3.5 for 1500 watts (that is probably a high estimate for my machines) with an additional $2.5 for A/C.  Yeah, so it is not profitable unless difficulty percent increases slow down or prices rise.  Both of those will likely happen.  But that is a matter of faith.

No easy money, is right.  As it should be.

[goatpig]

You should also factor in how long you intent to hold on your coins. The figures you provided imply you sell your production on the spot. These parameters change if you hold on your BTC, although it naturally carries more risks.

[Tukotih]

thats true as well.

Sigh.. why is there no easy money?

There has always been easy money. But the ways to get them are only available for short periods of time.
The ways of earning these easy money are always criticized or doubted since there is a common belief that there actually is no easy money just as you said.
Examples: Stock market crash a few years back, Bitcoin mining 3 months back

[kallisti5]

fixed OP.   sorry for the initial bad math this morning

[minerX]

Difficulty will be increasing again in 880 blocks.

We are currently at 11.15 blocks per hour when we should be at 6.   Current estimated at Bitcoin charts is projected: 387,289 difficulty rating from 244130.

244130 / 387,289 = 63% increase. 

However I still believe people are buying gear and after the weekend newegg sale with 5830s @ 99$.  I'm expecting a 65%-75% difficulty increase.