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Can I Make a Living Off Bitcoin Mining? Probably Not
41–47 of 47 posts
Re: Can I Make a Living Off Bitcoin Mining? Probably Not
#42GPUs? It's ASICs or not at all these days. Start with an FPGA prototype that can be used to create an ASIC, like an Altera. If you want to muck around with this stuff for fun you can buy a Cyclone or Stratix for relatively low cost.
It's an older article, but it serves to show just how fast these things swing. Just as CPU mining became worthless when GPU mining took off, GPU mining is totally useless now. Even with free power it's barely worth the trouble. FPGA is still viable, the chips are fairly cheap and performance can be improved with better designs, but ASIC will absolutely crush it. The good news is that getting your FPGA design taped ou…
Yeah the main hurdle to getting an ASIC taped out these days is actually that most production lines are backed up. I think the sample route might be a good idea for what will hopefully be a small run.
Re: Can I Make a Living Off Bitcoin Mining? Probably Not
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it deflationary because of the 21 million limit? That limit won't hit until 2140. Or is it deflationary because the projected velocity will go up faster than the mining output?
Please don't mix supply with perceived value. It's deflationary in the sense that with passing time each coin is worth more than before. There is some correlation with money supply, but deflation ultimately means: how much can you buy for a set amount of currency. The inflation/deflation of the US dollar for instance is measured by statistics like the CPI, which boils down to how much consumer goods you can buy. If y…
When astronomical quantities of USD are being printed into existence (today's QE is like 80 bln dollars per month), CPI is not a good indicator. Rich guys who get all this new money cannot buy 100x more food and toilet paper. What they can do is to buy expensive property all over the world (not very liquid, thus not affecting everyday prices much) and stocks.
Right now CPI does not change as much as USD supply changes, so people don't worry. However, it does not mean this is not delayed and will hit down the road even if they suddenly stop printing new dollars.
Re: Can I Make a Living Off Bitcoin Mining? Probably Not
#44Obviously the amount a bitcoin is worth is exactly the amount of money the average person spent to generate it, so you can't profit from it.
... if you're the average person. Usually, in a situation like this, it isn't too hard to out-execute the average person at some point.
The average bitminer, weighted by the people who invest more, who'll be more likely to be better at cutting costs. The interesting part is due to both the increase in miners, and the reduction of bitcoin creation rate over time, existing bitcoins will always rise in price. Always be deflating.
Re: Can I Make a Living Off Bitcoin Mining? Probably Not
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's certainly people who have lucked out and made a considerable amount of money that would, for all intents, be a replacement job for them. Some of the early Avalon machines would have been making hundreds of dollars a day when they were received. Even earlier miners on CPUs would be rolling in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
They may have made a great investment with a large, quick return - but it's not a job because: (a) the income from the Avalon machine likely is much less now than initially, and is likely to shrink rapidly - so it's not a sustainable future income; (b) keeping the income at the same level can't be done by spending your time, but by investing lots more money again and again; (c) you (and anybody else) can increase tha…
That's in a literal sense. I meant mining as a replacement for having a job, not so much that the mining itself was a job. You're right in every way though.
Re: Can I Make a Living Off Bitcoin Mining? Probably Not
#46Important note: this is not current information. Bitcoin and Litecoin mining have both changed a lot in the last few months, and this post is from April. I spent some time looking into mining about three weeks ago - with the proviso that my hardware would be free, since I run a 3D animation company that's in the process of transitioning to GPU-based rendering - and came to the conclusion that right now, it still ain'…
Curiously, CERN made the same decision and came out the other way. For quite a time they mined Bitcoin using the spare CPU cycles of their data processing farms.
Re: Can I Make a Living Off Bitcoin Mining? Probably Not
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an older article, but it serves to show just how fast these things swing. Just as CPU mining became worthless when GPU mining took off, GPU mining is totally useless now. Even with free power it's barely worth the trouble. FPGA is still viable, the chips are fairly cheap and performance can be improved with better designs, but ASIC will absolutely crush it. The good news is that getting your FPGA design taped ou…
Yeah the main hurdle to getting an ASIC taped out these days is actually that most production lines are backed up. I think the sample route might be a good idea for what will hopefully be a small run.
They sell surplus area on their wafers to those making small runs, and the yields are not that great as these are the less desirable parts of the wafer. Still, it's actually quite cheap all things considered, especially if you only want a few hundred units.