I just started this. My friends and I are going to start up a mining farm this summer. Our plan is basically to pay for the cards, get bitcoins, buy better/more cards with the bitcoins we get, repeat. We plan on cashing in our bitcoins fairly often, can easily see this thing unraveling quickly. Plan to just sell off some of our equipment once it does.
brownstone
Golden Member
- Oct 18, 2008
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Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm guessing that it will be far too late come this summer to be getting started, even now the difficulty is increasing at a rapid rate.
We are going at it anyway. It is wildly profitable right now, with the current exchange rate for USD, which we hope will continue to rise! I think we will do just fine with any bump in difficulty, we joined Slush's pool. We should be over 1GHash/s by the middle of June and hopefully over 2 by end of July. Depending on the exchange rates then, we may just stop building up our farm at that point. As long as we make a couple hundred dollars before this thing folds, we believe we can at least come out even after we sell our parts off.
brownstone
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petrusbroder
Elite Member
- Nov 28, 2004
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I may be too old for this.
Why put in all that effort for "at least come out even after we sell our parts off."? I understand that you hope for a profit and may your hope come true!
If you make a profit of 200USD and you have 3 - 4 friends, than your share would be 70 - 50 USD.
Is that worth all the effort?
Considering that time is one of the most valuable resources: All the hours of finding and buying the parts for the right price, building/upgrading the computers, installing software; running the computers, paying for the power, the internet connection; disassembling the computers and selling them?
That is quite a few hours of work - and even when including the fun- and WOW-factor ... the earnings will probably not be so big. Then add the risk of the project folding (this risk I can not estimate, maybe you can). Also the timing .... you have to sell the bitcoins before the currency looses too much value and time it just right or cash in almost every day - and that effort takes time too and may decrease the value (if there is a lot of bitcoins on the market the exchange rate will go down)
As I said: I may be too old for this. I wish you luck in your endeavor!
Why put in all that effort for "at least come out even after we sell our parts off."? I understand that you hope for a profit and may your hope come true!
If you make a profit of 200USD and you have 3 - 4 friends, than your share would be 70 - 50 USD.
Is that worth all the effort?
Considering that time is one of the most valuable resources: All the hours of finding and buying the parts for the right price, building/upgrading the computers, installing software; running the computers, paying for the power, the internet connection; disassembling the computers and selling them?
That is quite a few hours of work - and even when including the fun- and WOW-factor ... the earnings will probably not be so big. Then add the risk of the project folding (this risk I can not estimate, maybe you can). Also the timing .... you have to sell the bitcoins before the currency looses too much value and time it just right or cash in almost every day - and that effort takes time too and may decrease the value (if there is a lot of bitcoins on the market the exchange rate will go down)
As I said: I may be too old for this. I wish you luck in your endeavor!
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Assuming this thing doesn't implode/explode/shut down in the next few months, our profits stand to be well over $200 USD. I'm sure brownstone can back me up on this, but with our planned output: $1200+ per month should be reasonable after taking out cost of electricity. Assuming about 7USD:1BTC holds. Right now it is over 8.5:1.
Edit: Also, it is summer, we are college students back at home with nothing to do. Anything to pass the time!
petrusbroder
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brownstone
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Provide exchange rates stay high, then it's worth it for now. However, with another 80% increase in difficulty, I'll be considering closing up shop. There will still be $$ to be made, but whereas I used to be able to pull in 7-8btc/day less than a month ago, I'm now getting around 2.5/day...by this time next week I'm predicting about 1.6btc/day followed by the week after around 1. Kind of a gloomy picture, but that just "assumes" that current rates of difficulty continue to increase at a steady rate and that exchange rates don't go down....what can I say, I'm an optimist. 
Wish I had stumbled upon bitcoins last summer. I folded for a good 8 months on two i7 machines. I got a little bit of a warm feeling doing it but hard cash would have been better...
Anyways, if I spent ~$300 on three 5830 cards to throw in my current i7 rig roughly what type of profit could I expect within the next month, two months, etc? Note that it would probably be a week from now before I can start mining (shipping time to get the cards, etc).
After plugging in some numbers into the following site it seems to show around $800 in profit after 3 months. Realistic? I am not sure if I plugged all the numbers in correctly or not though.
http://bitcoinx.com/profit/index.php
BTW, I don't have my kw/h electricity costs but I think it is pretty cheap as I am in Missouri.
Anyways, if I spent ~$300 on three 5830 cards to throw in my current i7 rig roughly what type of profit could I expect within the next month, two months, etc? Note that it would probably be a week from now before I can start mining (shipping time to get the cards, etc).
After plugging in some numbers into the following site it seems to show around $800 in profit after 3 months. Realistic? I am not sure if I plugged all the numbers in correctly or not though.
http://bitcoinx.com/profit/index.php
BTW, I don't have my kw/h electricity costs but I think it is pretty cheap as I am in Missouri.
Difficulty goes up every two weeks. The next projected increase is just under 20% so far. You can see the number by going to http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ and looking at the numbers along the top. I would plug in some higher difficulty numbers in the calculator to get a better idea.
airdata
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- Jul 11, 2010
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wbynum : like younggun said, the difficulty is constantly going up. I just started mining a week ago and the difficulty jumped 78% a couple days after i started before I'd gotten any of my new video cards in...
2 weeks is generous. At the current rates of calculation, the increases are coming sooner and sooner. I've read that it increases every 2016 blocks. As more people jump into the mining, the faster the blocks are found.
I'm a noob too.. still waiting for a month to elapse so I can see actual gains and my electricity bill.
2 weeks is generous. At the current rates of calculation, the increases are coming sooner and sooner. I've read that it increases every 2016 blocks. As more people jump into the mining, the faster the blocks are found.
I'm a noob too.. still waiting for a month to elapse so I can see actual gains and my electricity bill.
Guess I am going to become a bitcoin miner. I ordered three 5830's from Newegg today. Should work in my i7 rig that has three PCI-E slots.
Those $110 5830s are excellent
I've already picked up 6 of them. I'm thinking I might build another 3x 5830 machine. 10 Ghash/s is so close Thankfully no. I only need it for very warm days, but generally I get by without it. If I need AC, I'll only need i for maybe 2-3 hours during the really warm part of the day. So far my cooling costs as a result of AC are negligible compared to the rest of my operation.
All that hardware is not in the same room either. The house I live in is incredibly weird, and I have set up most of my mining operation based on the principle that heat rises. It has worked out shockingly well.
Edit: Picked up another 3x 5830 machine. I'm running out of circuits in my house to load up
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Just ordered 3 more motherboards, 1 psu and six 5830 cards to bring my stable up to eleven 5830's. Only two regrets that I have:
1. I didn't order all 11 cards last week when I first found out about BTC mining. If I had they would all have been mining this weekend.
2. I didn't find out about Bitcoins one year ago when I put together two i7 systems for folding. I don't even want to think about how many bitcoins I would have earned during the 8 months or so that I folded...
1. I didn't order all 11 cards last week when I first found out about BTC mining. If I had they would all have been mining this weekend.
2. I didn't find out about Bitcoins one year ago when I put together two i7 systems for folding. I don't even want to think about how many bitcoins I would have earned during the 8 months or so that I folded...
petrusbroder
Elite Member
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And if you are building mining rigs based on this, you are better off just buying Bitcoins. The reward is much greater, and you only lose the hardware hedge.
(I'm not suggesting you buy Bitcoins, just offering some information on the profitability of mining vs. buying)
To add some real life info, I bought a bunch of mining gear when Bitcoin was worth less than a dollar a piece. I still haven't mined enough Bitcoins to equal the amount I would have had if I simply bought Bitcoins initially. Difficulty is a harsh mistress.
That said, mining does have some advantages over buying. And if you are a geek, it's fun!
Don't worry, it won't
Informative.
When I first posted in this thread, BTC were trading for less than a dollar. When you first posted, they were trading for about $3.50 each. Today they are trading for $18-$19 each.
I have to assume since you knew about Bitcoin then (and have a crystal ball), that you've profited wildly off of it. And because of your last post I have to assume you've exited the market, expecting a sell-off.
Perhaps you could look into your crystal ball for me and give me some more specific advice, such as how low it will go (so I can buy) and when (so I can have the funds ready).
No one knows, no one can know. But to really think it's going to keep up this pace is just unrealistic. That's ~400 - 500% growth in under a month, it's unsustainable. I think the explosion is because the adoption rate was more rapid than expected thanks to a relatively successful "viral" campaign and a fair bit of press in the right circles. Bitcoin was fairly quiet for a long time, slowly spreading by word of mouth and then in the last few weeks this thread was bumped and grew, the same happened on Overclock.net, and some news sites began covering it. Whether by intent, design, or pure luck the timing was good and the buzz began.
I'm not surprised it grew, I'm surprised it did grow so fast but I did miss the angle. It was marketed as a 'free currency' but you can't sell that because nobody gives a crap. Once it started getting press from people making money off of it, then people started to listen. And with something like this, more adopters leads to more adopters because the only reason anyone does it is because someone else is doing it. The problem here is going to be getting non-miners to adopt, it's common knowledge the % of computer users even with hardware to mine (discrete, modern GPUs) is quite small and qualifying that group further (inclination, knowledge, interest in mining) is even smaller. So the key here will be whether or not non-miners care about bitcoins enough to jump in, which would keep the ball rolling. I don't think they will, at least not many of them because they don't have the vested interest.
For the time being that's not a problem because the buzz is still hot and bitcoin's difficulty factor/halving intervals (and eventually static coin amount), intentionally or not, I think do an interesting job of artificially increasing demand, or maybe just amplifying increased demand. It's hard to say.
Regardless, the point is that it is a bubble. However asking someone to predict the breaking point is nigh impossible if for no reason other than because it's a bubble. There are no numbers to back this up, but I think the tone from the threads and the very limited places to use bitcoins anecdotally support the opinion that most people using bitcoins are buyers and sellers. Not consumers. Because there are so few consumers, the value of a bitcoin is not grounded by any significant tangible prices or applications. Because the bitcoin market is dominated by traders and it is so liquid, swings up will last longer and be amplified higher (which then re-create buzz, push it higher again, etc). It'll ride itself higher until it peters out and crashes, just like every other bubble. I'd say sooner rather than later given the current rate of growth. However the breaking is more a matter of what than when, as I think it's going to be a price point rather than a point in time.
petrusbroder
Elite Member
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I have the same thoughts as you do, darkwaffle.
Profiting from a bubble is difficult and few really do. I'll not take the risk.
If something sounds to good to be true, then it often is. BitCoin does sound very good, too good.
Anyhow, now it is not a good time to buy BitCoin because the price is so high. Now is the time to sell and to realize the profit made.
It may rise more - and it probably will, but those who buy now make much less of a profit (even if the exchange rate doubles) than those who mined the BitCoin some months or even a year ago.
What is the old and economic saying? Buy cheap, sell expensive.
Profiting from a bubble is difficult and few really do. I'll not take the risk.
If something sounds to good to be true, then it often is. BitCoin does sound very good, too good.
Anyhow, now it is not a good time to buy BitCoin because the price is so high. Now is the time to sell and to realize the profit made.
It may rise more - and it probably will, but those who buy now make much less of a profit (even if the exchange rate doubles) than those who mined the BitCoin some months or even a year ago.
What is the old and economic saying? Buy cheap, sell expensive.
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Nice post. I agree with much of what you've said.
I wonder how many people in the world value (or will value) Bitcoin for it's properties. There are several that are quite useful, in my opinion. Ultimately, this will determine it's relatively stable future exchange rate (barring any technological failures or better alternatives).
Even with it's recent popularity, it's relatively obscure. How many people on the street would be able to tell you what Bitcoin is? How many of your family members know about Bitcoin? When it has become popular enough to reach the people that will use Bitcoin, then we will begin to see what it's actual worth will be.
I think this is what the speculators are banking on (relative obscurity). Speculation may or may not have created a bubble, but I have serious doubts that Bitcoin will be worthless any time soon. Too many people like me value it too much. If someone wants to dump a ton of Bitcoins on the market, and a panicked sell off ensues, we will be waiting to snatch up the cheap coins.
I'm certain the market is in for some wild swings. It will be a fun ride. Bitcoin may fail or it may succeed, but I have a feeling crypto-currencies are here to stay.
I am expecting it to hit close to $40 in the next few months, as long as no government tries to take action against it. A few Senators have already spoken out against it - like they are even smart enough to understand it? lol
Difficulty is a bummer. Our cards being sold out on NewEgg is a bummer. We will keep mining and building more rigs nonetheless. The profits are still here, they just aren't as crazy as they used to be.
Difficulty is a bummer. Our cards being sold out on NewEgg is a bummer. We will keep mining and building more rigs nonetheless. The profits are still here, they just aren't as crazy as they used to be.
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