How much did you profit during the mining craze?

[96Firebird]

In light of some recent posts, and out of shear curiosity, I'm wondering where everyone stands since the mining bubble burst? Did you time things just right, sell short, or are you still holding on to coins hoping they make a return?

For profits, I wasn't really sure how to handle cost of hardware and all that. I guess, for the time being, profits = any money you made after costs (est. electricity costs, hardware costs, etc...). If you sold your mining cards, include that in profits. If you still have your cards, or re-purposed them for gaming/other uses, I'm not sure what to do with that cost... Do whatever you feel is right.

For those who still have coins, use the most current value of the coins and assume you were to sell them today.

Also, feel free to share how many cards you used to mine with, things you wished you would have done differently, and anything else you feel pertinent.

Edit - I hope the poll goes high enough...

 

[RussianSensation]

I started mining during HD4800 series days where on a single day a 4870/4890 card mined a single coin. I then upgraded to later generation of cards such as the HD6950, and then 7970s. I waited and waited until prices would increase and then I started unloading my coins. I listened to the advice various members of the bitcoin community shared to leave some coins for a later point in time. I don't know the exact total amount of money I made at the top of my head right now as it was spread across various accounts, but I sold my last batch of 35 coins from Mt.Gox with each coin valued between $500-600 USD, which netted me around $20,000 USD. Before that I unloaded 60 coins at various price points. At first I thought I would use all these profits to have a lifetime of GPU upgrades but then decided gaming at the highest settings at a lower resolution of 1080P isn't important enough in my life over other hobbies/interests for the sake of spending $1000 on GPUs every generation.

Since mining ended, I've just kept a pair of 7970s for occasional gaming and used the bitcoin funds for other things in life. I think one of the major reasons why I made a good amount on bitcoins with less than 3 GPUs at any one time is because I wouldn't cash out most of my coins until prices increased to $300+ levels. I remember when in 7 days my 4800 cards made me 9 coins alone. Since I kept these coins, that small stretch of time already made $2,700.

 

[gdansk]

I was in a early pool and cashed out when Bitcoin was just over $1000. Subtracting for electricity costs, it was about $550.

 

[Subyman]

I mined litecoin on a 6850 when they first started. I got ~110 coins and cashed out when they were $38 per coin.

 

[JimKiler]

I tried mining last year, well after it would have been profitable but never got the software to work. I just wanted to try it out. I wonder how all those other digital currencies are doing.

 

[chimaxi83]

I started with 6950s, continued with 7950/70, and ended with 290s. I never had more than 4 cards going simultaneously. I played with a lot of crappy alt coins, buy low sell high, lost a bunch, but made more profit. Subtracting hardware and electricity, I was at roughly $11,000 overall, and that was with some terrible alt coin decisions and a couple BTC panic sells. Coinye and Asiacoin (after some scam came to light) come to mind as far as terrible choices lol. Blackcoin was my best performer overall.

Paying attention to all the different coins and price fluctuation, coupled with the scamming, made it just not worth it to continue.

 

[RussianSensation]

I started with 6950s, continued with 7950/70, and ended with 290s. I never had more than 4 cards going simultaneously. I played with a lot of crappy alt coins, buy low sell high, lost a bunch, but made more profit. Subtracting hardware and electricity, I was at roughly $11,000 overall, and that was with some terrible alt coin decisions and a couple BTC panic sells. Coinye and Asiacoin (after some scam came to light) come to mind as far as terrible choices lol. Blackcoin was my best performer overall.

I am glad you pointed this out. One of the biggest misconceptions about mining was that you needed tens or hundreds of cards to make money. Timing of the coin sale was nearly as important, if no more, than the number of cards you had. Overall, this is probably the easiest $11K you made. :thumbsup:

 

[chimaxi83]

I am glad you pointed this out. One of the biggest misconceptions about mining was that you needed tens or hundreds of cards to make money. Timing of the coin sale was nearly as important, if no more, than the number of cards you had. Overall, this is probably the easiest $11K you made. :thumbsup:

Absolutely was the easiest, I just wish I'd gotten in sooner. Like most though, I thought it was stupid, so why bother?

I had four 7970 Lightnings at one point, and that was the most I ever put into mining. I considered doubling what I had, and I really should have, but even then I didn't think I would make anything substantial. Oh well.

 

[smackababy]

I made some profit indirectly from bitcoin. I was able to unload a couple 5850s for what I paid for them, so that is profit.

 

[DeathReborn]

Started with a single 4870 and added a 2nd card before going to 4x 5850 to 8x 7990 (3 PC's + 1 server) then stopped. Never bothered with Litecoin or anything else.

Sold 30 BC for ~$9,000 & still have 137 left (~$31,000 current value). The $9,000 paid for a couple of holidays to Australia & Singapore the rest are for a rainy day, or when I can find a car I really, REALLY want. All the hardware except 2x 7990's & 1x 5850 was sold for not far off it's retail cost except one 4870 that died.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I feel like I waited for the right time to buy GPUs lol. I sat on that GTX 460 for forever, and then this year I grabbed used AMD cards for two of my rigs which were substantial upgrades. It is amazing that you can get used AMD tech for half of what new Nvidia tech of the same power level costs, and that is including replacing the worn out fan/HSF. There isn't any risk thanks to Ebay's crazy pro-buyer policies.

Thank you mining bubble pop.

 

[Grooveriding]

I got on Bitcoin very late and only made about $1500 directly mining BTC. Did better jumping on some of the new altcoin pump/dump rides selling them for BTC. Made about $8000 on Maxcoin and a couple thousand more playing with some of the other altcoins.

So all told about $10K. I don't think there is any money left to be made in GPU mining these days, also the price of BTC has tanked from where it was. Most of the money I made off mining was during the $1000 per BTC days.

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

I never got into it though i had the GPU'S I went so far as to make a wallet. But no one would help me every time I asked for it, now its all done i guess? Didn't they catch some queen who owned a mining farm cheating or something?
To bad it got borked, I'd still like to try my hand at it. I got 5 5770, 2 2x3870, 1 2X4870

 

[thilanliyan]

nm

 

[hoorah]

When I got into it, it was really just because I wanted a new GPU for gaming but thought "well I'll set the thing to mine while I am at work". Mined around 0.8 BTC over a month, which was at the time worth around $40, and cost me around $30 in electricity. Never bothered even cashing it in, decided the whole thing was dumb.

Changed my mind when BTC was worked $1000, and sold 0.5 for around $500. Held onto the last 0.3, which has just been sitting until I recently bought a $40 VPN subscription with part of what was left.

All in all, not bad.

 

[hoorah]

which netted me around $20,000 USD.

So, I don't know where you are from and I understand if you don't want to answer, but are you concerned about any kind of IRS liability with that kind of income?

 

[3DVagabond]

So, I don't know where you are from and I understand if you don't want to answer, but are you concerned about any kind of IRS liability with that kind of income?

If anyone was concerned all they had to do was give to Caesar what is Caesar's. In other words, just pay your taxes. Of course, I'm sure that everyone is concerned when they order something online from an out of state vendor as well.

 

[RussianSensation]

So, I don't know where you are from and I understand if you don't want to answer, but are you concerned about any kind of IRS liability with that kind of income?

I am not a U.S. citizen/Green Card holder, which means I do not need to report bitcoin income to IRS. In Canada, the rule is if you earned your worldwide income working abroad as a non-resident for a non-Canadian firm, you do not owe Canada any taxes. If you are away for more than 183 days in a year, you can claim non-resident status in Canada. I spent the last 2.5 years working abroad in foreign countries. That's one of the main advantages of Canadian vs. the U.S citizenship is that even if you make millions of dollars working outside of Canada for a non-Canadian firm, you owe Canada $0 in taxes. This should make sense since you aren't using the country's infrastructure, health care, educational system, or any other benefits during this period of time. U.S. disagrees with this notion. What this means in practice is every $1 you earn in U.A.E. is $1 you keep - Canadian government gets $0, which effectively means if your income is say $150,000, you save $50,000 in Canadian taxes.

Canada does not abide by any of these 3 U.S. tax rules:

1. Increased awareness of new tax filing laws. Many people with U.S. passports who live permanently overseas have been unaware of the rules requiring all citizens to file tax returns. The UBS tax scandal and crackdown on Americans with overseas assets has made more people aware of the requirement. And they have simply given up their citizenship rather than comply.
2. Growing compliance burden. A new law, known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, was enacted in 2010 and may soon require foreign financial institutions to report to the Internal Revenue Service accounts held by U.S. taxpayers. Mitchel said some banks are simply closing the accounts of U.S. clients as a result.
3. Big penalties. The standard penalty for unintentionally failing to file a tax return is $10,000. But the penalty for intentionally failing to file is far more. Mitchel gives the example of an individual who has retired overseas with savings of $1 million in a foreign bank account. If they've intentionally failed to file for four years, the penalty could be $2 million.

In Canada, you can file taxes 12 months, or even 20 months from the filing date for that year, as long as you do not owe any taxes to the Canadian government, you will incur 0 penalties. If you become non-resident, you can live in any country in the world with a Canadian citizenship and never file taxes. The only thing Canadian CRA (IRS equivalent) requires from you is a phone call to tell them you've permanently moved and for you to change your address online.

It's no wonder this is happening -- Record number of Americans give up citizenship.

My off-topic response.
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[therealnickdanger]

Mine low, sell high.

 

[therealnickdanger]

My off-topic response.
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Not really off-topic though since the thread is about profit and taxes take a huge bite out of profit. The citizenship information is fascinating. It's historically been true that whenever the U.S. government tries to tax income over a certain percentage (usually 20%), said people find ways to avoid paying. This is one reason I would love to see a flat rate tax or fixed national sales tax. No loopholes, no breaks, no special treatment.

 

[sm625]

I mined one coin on a 5750 running for like a week back when a coin was only worth a couple dollars. I think it was late 2010 maybe early 2011. All I remember is that it was cold outside. That coin is still out there because I never kept any of the info. I might still have it because I never deleted the folder that contained my mining software and stuff. I just never got around to trying to dig it out, mainly because I dont even remember what to look for.

 

[xthetenth]

Not really off-topic though since the thread is about profit and taxes take a huge bite out of profit. The citizenship information is fascinating. It's historically been true that whenever the U.S. government tries to tax income over a certain percentage (usually 20%), said people find ways to avoid paying. This is one reason I would love to see a flat rate tax or fixed national sales tax. No loopholes, no breaks, no special treatment.

This is one of those nice sounding ideas that don't work at all in practice or would have utterly horrifying ramifications, and defeating the "problem" of a small set of people avoiding taxes isn't at all in proportion to the cost.

 

[ultimatebob]

I did most of my mining in Litecoin while it was cheap. I converted it to Bitcoin and sold about $150 of it. I got a really cool flashlight, a silver coin, and some amazon.com gift cards.

If you subtract the cost of the Radeon 6870 I used for mining, I ended up about $70 in the hole. I used that card for other things besides mining, though.

 

[ultimatebob]

So, I don't know where you are from and I understand if you don't want to answer, but are you concerned about any kind of IRS liability with that kind of income?

I got out of cryptocoin mining long before the IRS had regulations for it, thankfully.

 

[bigboxes]

I couldn't have cared less. I'm happy for those that were able to make money off of the cards, but I resented how they drove up the price and availability for those that just wanted to game on them. I still think it's a pyramid scheme in some sense.