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Bitcoin's Price Surge Is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again

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Re: Bitcoin's Price Surge Is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again

#41

Post by flashdance »

Analemma_ wrote: post #23
bigtunacan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone tracking the electric costs for mining? I would love to see the stats on that. What about using something like solar to power this? Then you would have your upfront costs for the solar panels, but not have recurring electric costs?

The biggest mining operations are Chinese and Russian farms getting their power through questionably legal arrangements, so those statistics probably don't exist and wouldn't have much relevance if they did.

You can't bribe your way into 30 megawatts of power.

The biggest mining operations have legal partnerships with local and national governments.[1] As well, Russia isn't a major place for bitcoin mining: instead, mining is mostly concentrated in Georgia (the country, not the state) and China.

[1] http://ifact.ge/en/bitfury/

Re: Bitcoin's Price Surge Is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again

#42

Post by mabbo »

bigtunacan wrote: post #18
danmaz74 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more importantly, electricity costs weren't accounted for, while they should be pretty relevant.

Is anyone tracking the electric costs for mining? I would love to see the stats on that. What about using something like solar to power this? Then you would have your upfront costs for the solar panels, but not have recurring electric costs?

The source of the power is irrelevant: you could be selling that electricity to the grid, or offsetting the cost of your home's usage. Buying a solar panel may eliminate the middle man, but there's still lost opportunity cost.

Re: Bitcoin's Price Surge Is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again

#43

Post by stale2002 »

chx wrote: post #19
aqme28 wrote: post #8

>Solis bought a Bitmain Antminer S9 on eBay for $2,400. >As of this weekend, Solis has mined 1.01 BTC, worth a little more than $2,584 in his bitcoin wallet. >Solis said: >"When I bought the miner, the price per bitcoin was around $1,200. I thought I’d break even in one year, but actually it’s been about five months." So he would have been much better off just spending that 1,200 on Bitcoin rather than on a mining ri…

This is hindsight. He would have been best off staying the fuck away . As I mentioned a billion times cryptocurrencies (which are not currencies either) have zero legal real world use cases, currently the two uses are illegal money transfers out of China and hype. It's the worst sort of gambling: you do not even know the odds.

Crytocurrencies transactions are significantly cheaper than wire transfers.

That's a real world use case.

Re: Bitcoin's Price Surge Is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again

#44

Post by arcticfox »

paulpauper wrote: post #29
aqme28 wrote: post #8

>Solis bought a Bitmain Antminer S9 on eBay for $2,400. >As of this weekend, Solis has mined 1.01 BTC, worth a little more than $2,584 in his bitcoin wallet. >Solis said: >"When I bought the miner, the price per bitcoin was around $1,200. I thought I’d break even in one year, but actually it’s been about five months." So he would have been much better off just spending that 1,200 on Bitcoin rather than on a mining ri…

The major problem with buying mining rigs is that they may be pre-mined. Often the developers will use the rigs for mining and then when the rigs stop becoming profitable (assuming the bitcoin price is stable), sell them as 'new'.

This doesn't make any sense at all as a major problem. Used vs. new is basically irrelevant as long as no one is lying about the hashrate. As long as the sale is immediate there's basically no problem at all there.

The actual problem, especially in the past, was that you could pay for the hardware but not actually obtain it for months, by which point it was no longer profitable. Presumably, the manufacturers were using the hardware themselves during that period.

Re: Bitcoin's Price Surge Is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again

#45

Post by delegate »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #34

For those thinking, "now's a great time to join the party!", the price surge happened from about March to about May of this year, with BTC more than doubling in USD price. However, it's been completely flat for over a month now -- longer than any other point in recent history -- and there are currently some big questions about the future of BTC that are being addressed next month and may result in a loss of value for…

> Smart money right now isn't in BTC,

Where is it then ? I too would like to join the 'rich fast' bandwagon !

Re: Bitcoin's Price Surge Is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again

#46

Post by saurik »

ajc-sorin wrote: post #28
solotronics wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would it be better to just buy hold and use Bitcoin? mining adds slightly to the decentralized nature but I am curious about comparing buy and hold vs mine.

Because it's super easy to buy and hold Bitcoin, if it becomes more popular the value of mining rigs will increase. Right now, there's probably no material difference between buying the coin itself or buying the rig and mining, but eventually, it may become more pronounced. There are other benefits as well. Buying the mining rig is a sort of hedge in that if bitcoin drops to $0, you at least have some hardware that c…

The more people who mine the less valuable your mining hardware becomes, as the hash rate increase will lead to a difficulty update: it is a lottery that is designed to give payouts at evenly spaced time intervals.

You also now have a slightly old, very special purpose computer... it is like owning a three year old graphics card in a world where you decided graphics cards are not that interesting to own... what exactly are you "repurposing" it for? If it is some really awesome ASIC-based mining rig it might only be useful to mine Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin's Price Surge Is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again

#47

Post by ruste »

chx wrote: post #19
aqme28 wrote: post #8

>Solis bought a Bitmain Antminer S9 on eBay for $2,400. >As of this weekend, Solis has mined 1.01 BTC, worth a little more than $2,584 in his bitcoin wallet. >Solis said: >"When I bought the miner, the price per bitcoin was around $1,200. I thought I’d break even in one year, but actually it’s been about five months." So he would have been much better off just spending that 1,200 on Bitcoin rather than on a mining ri…

This is hindsight. He would have been best off staying the fuck away . As I mentioned a billion times cryptocurrencies (which are not currencies either) have zero legal real world use cases, currently the two uses are illegal money transfers out of China and hype. It's the worst sort of gambling: you do not even know the odds.

Neither does a beautiful hand-crafted glass bong, but there are many people willing to spend thousands of dollars on them and those dollars a perfectly legally useful.

Re: Bitcoin's Price Surge Is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again

#49

Post by tertius »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #34

For those thinking, "now's a great time to join the party!", the price surge happened from about March to about May of this year, with BTC more than doubling in USD price. However, it's been completely flat for over a month now -- longer than any other point in recent history -- and there are currently some big questions about the future of BTC that are being addressed next month and may result in a loss of value for…

> Smart money right now isn't in BTC

Ah, so smart money is predicting what will happen with BTC in the next six months and acting accordingly.

> unless you think you can predict what's going to happen in the next six months

Ah, you can't predict what will happen in the next six months.

Re: Bitcoin's Price Surge Is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again

#50

Post by bigtunacan »

mabbo wrote: post #42
bigtunacan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone tracking the electric costs for mining? I would love to see the stats on that. What about using something like solar to power this? Then you would have your upfront costs for the solar panels, but not have recurring electric costs?

The source of the power is irrelevant: you could be selling that electricity to the grid, or offsetting the cost of your home's usage. Buying a solar panel may eliminate the middle man, but there's still lost opportunity cost.

The source of power may be irrelevant to you, but not to me. Where I live net metering is capped at 30% of my utility costs. So if I produce more than 30% of what I use the utility company sucks up the excess that I produce and keeps it for free.
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