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Ask HN: What equipment's/setup do I need to mine Bitcoin at home?

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Re: Ask HN: What equipment's/setup do I need to mine Bitcoin at home?

#31

Post by smt88 »

chucksta wrote: post #30
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #8

I did this in 2018. I bought an Antminer S9 and power supply. It's not worth it as an individual. In order to earn anything at all, your cost of power needs to be ludicrously low and you still need to join a mining pool. And these things are LOUD. After a year of mining I broke even.

1 year ROI isn't too shabby

"broke even" = 0% ROI (meaning there was no return on the investment)

In fact, breaking even after a year is losing money because of inflation.

If they had put the same money in an index fund, they'd have made 10% at least.

Re: Ask HN: What equipment's/setup do I need to mine Bitcoin at home?

#33

Post by ksaj »

alfl wrote: post #16

> 3) Is it possible to create "smart" algorithm to reduce computing cost per bitcoin? I think this is equivalent to the problem: "how can I calculate SHA-256 hashes more efficiently?" This is an open problem in cryptanalysis. Is it "possible"? I think so, but it's a very complex computer science question. I would say: "it is probably possible, but extremely difficult to the point that it might be impossible."

Occasionally I see people talking about how eventually quantum computers will be able to mine coins much faster than anyone can with the current technologies in use.

Maybe. But how much does a Quantum computer costs to a) buy and b) run?

Re: Ask HN: What equipment's/setup do I need to mine Bitcoin at home?

#34

Post by tromp »

mam3 wrote: post #27
BitwiseFool wrote: post #10

Bitcoin miners use specialized hardware designed for mining. There is no special algorithm to make mining faster or more efficient and that is by design. Bitcoin is meant to take a lot of work to mine. Bitcoin also adjusts itself automatically so that each mined block takes roughly 10 minutes to find. There is no avoiding this. The specialized mining rigs are very expensive and they have facilities with thousands of…

What about mining other coins .. ? Doge ?

Doge uses hashcash with scrypt instead of double SHA256 as PoW. So you need scrypt ASICs to mine Doge (and Litecoin at the same time, as they can be merge mined).

Re: Ask HN: What equipment's/setup do I need to mine Bitcoin at home?

#35

Post by chucksta »

smt88 wrote: post #31
chucksta wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 year ROI isn't too shabby

"broke even" = 0% ROI (meaning there was no return on the investment) In fact, breaking even after a year is losing money because of inflation. If they had put the same money in an index fund, they'd have made 10% at least.

Fair point. I should have said pay back period, I had the term confused
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