Cryptocoin Mining?

[railven]

A GTX 460 is worthless as a miner. I sold mine for about $80 quite some time ago now. They're probably still worth $50-60.

I'm well aware of that, I said I wonder what I can trade it for, not that I would use it for mining.

Don't listen to the doomsday prophecies. Mining will still be profitable into the new year IMO.

Who knows. If I were to use my current hardware, I'd have to change my case since noise would be an issue. In the past I had a dedicated miner, having my gaming PC be my miner doesn't seem like something I'd enjoy. And yes, I know I wouldn't be mining and gaming at the same time.

I'll sleep on it. Perhaps I can get an HD 7850 since the GF just approved setting up an HTPC in the living room

 

[SickBeast]

So you have a 7970 and you're not mining? That's a lot of cash you're giving up. Just use bitminter it's simple. Plus you can undervolt/underclock your card if you're worried about noise.

 

[railven]

So you have a 7970 and you're not mining? That's a lot of cash you're giving up. Just use bitminter it's simple. Plus you can undervolt/underclock your card if you're worried about noise.

It's like you aren't even reading what I'm posting. Haha.

Noise would be an issue because it is my gaming case, thus system fans, which are louder than my actual card.

I know how to mine, and I haven't had a reason to return to mining. My card was paid for by mining last summer.

I'm debating mining again, but frankly put I'm not really interested in $65 a month. When it was about $150 a month, yeah that was a lot easier to say yes too. Also, I wouldn't be running the thing 24/7 since it is my only rig right now for gaming. Maybe when I build the HTPC for the living room, I'll look into it again.

 

[blastingcap]

A GTX 460 is worthless as a miner. I sold mine for about $80 quite some time ago now. They're probably still worth $50-60.

Don't listen to the doomsday prophecies. Mining will still be profitable into the new year IMO.

You don't know much about mining if you think rewards won't halve in December, and you may want to open a math textbook to see what compound interest does after a while. Difficulty has increased by ~8-11% for several cycles now, and at that rate difficulty doubles after ~2.5 months. It already has doubled in about ~2.5 months if you look at where difficulty was over the summertime. The difficulty growth rate will increase at a much faster rate once ASICs ship, which could happen as early October according to BFL's claims.

Even if ASICs are delayed for some reason, you can expect difficulty to basically quadruple compared to today, once the block rewards halve in December 2012. The effect on profit will be much more than a 75% hit because profit is not the same as revenue; you must factor in electricity and depreciation costs (video cards become less valuable every day they live... as any hardware enthusiast knows!). For instance if you made $100 revenue/month but paid $40/month in power, and rewards drop you down to $25/month due to difficulty quadrupling, you are actually mining at a loss of $15/month. (These numbers are just for explanatory purposes and your ratio may vary.)

The above example doesn't even take into account ASICs and depreciation! What if ASICs do show up in October? What if you do factor in depreciation? It gets much, much worse than even the example above. You might still make, say, $0.10 of profit (NOT revenue) per day to offset the cost of a card you were going to buy anyway for gaming, but when profit gets to be measured in pennies per day you should ask yourself if it's worth the premature wear and tear on your card, noise, heat, etc. on the rest of your components, and the hassle of it all.

Further, you also assume prices will stay at present rates, but nobody knows what will happen. >10 million coins have already been mined compared to a paltry 7200/day mining (soon to be 3600/day) so a halving of the daily mining rate is unlikely to materially impact prices. Besides, if you are so sure prices will rise then you are better off buying BTC than mining equipment.

 

[SickBeast]

We'll see. I'm hoping to earn $300 by the end of the year.

 

[blastingcap]

Earning $300 after transaction feeds, electricity costs, and depreciation in the next 90 days would be quite difficult on GPUs unless you have a LOT of GPUs or free or very cheap electricity. That is assuming constant price. Difficulty is not constant though.

If you mean $300 total from early in the year, that is an entirely different point. Example: Early miners who have been mining for a year have long since paid off their gear. But new miners should be getting ASICs instead of GPUs at this point.

 

[railven]

Earning $300 after transaction feeds, electricity costs, and depreciation in the next 90 days would be quite difficulty on GPUs unless you have a LOT of GPUs or free electricity. That is assuming constant price. Difficulty is not constant though.

If you mean $300 total from early in the year, that is an entirely different point. Example: Early miners who have been mining for a year have long since paid off their gear. But new miners should be getting ASICs instead of GPUs at this point.

Doing the math, if I start now and let's assume until December I can pocket coins, and the value stays high. Hardware is already paid for (thanks to my bitmining stint in 2011), but it seems all things assuming best case scenario, I'm looking at about $200-220 after electricity. Which is nice, and all, but then I have gut my system a little and to get the best results downclock everything, and maybe install Linux (are the Windows miners finally as good?)

I'm just being lazy haha. Oh well, no free HD 9970 for me it seems.

 

[blastingcap]

Doing the math, if I start now and let's assume until December I can pocket coins, and the value stays high. Hardware is already paid for (thanks to my bitmining stint in 2011), but it seems all things assuming best case scenario, I'm looking at about $200-220 after electricity. Which is nice, and all, but then I have gut my system a little and to get the best results downclock everything, and maybe install Linux (are the Windows miners finally as good?)

I'm just being lazy haha. Oh well, no free HD 9970 for me it seems.

Heh, yeah. I am starting to list my cards for sale in order to beat the rush to the exits and cratering of used Radeon prices.

Make sure your math takes into account steadily climbing difficulty rates pre-ASIC, ASICs, your true cost of electricity, and depreciation (it still eats your profit even if your cards are already paid off and is something I'm worried about with the flood of used cards about to hit the market as miners stop mining.. not to mention AMD lowering prices for new 7xxx cards seemingly every week). Good luck to those of you trying to hang on, it was a fun ride while it lasted. Cheers to the end of an era.

 

[wbynum]

One thing to consider is winter coming up for a lot of us. Even at break even mining will be useful as heat. The fan noise is annoying though. I'm thinking I will mine through this winter until I am no longer breaking even after electricity.

 

[fread2281]

Cheers to the end of an era.

This made me cry a little

 

[RussianSensation]

ButterFly laps ups the performance estimates for their ASICs by 50%.

http://codinginmysleep.com/butterfly-labs-releases-more-data/
BitForce Jalapeno
4.5 GH/s @ 4.5W

BitForce Single SC
60GH/s @ 60W Wow!

BitForce MiniRig SC
1,500GH/s @ 1,500W

They also announced the release of another product tier that hasn't yet got a proper name, but they're calling it the "Little Single" which clocks in at 30GH/s and carries a $649.00 price tag similar to their current line of FPGA singles.

The $150 Jalapeno is more than 6 times faster than an overclocked 7970 and you can pre-order 3 of those for the price of a 7970.

 

[Zargon]

Heh, yeah. I am starting to list my cards for sale in order to beat the rush to the exits and cratering of used Radeon prices.

Make sure your math takes into account steadily climbing difficulty rates pre-ASIC, ASICs, your true cost of electricity, and depreciation (it still eats your profit even if your cards are already paid off and is something I'm worried about with the flood of used cards about to hit the market as miners stop mining.. not to mention AMD lowering prices for new 7xxx cards seemingly every week). Good luck to those of you trying to hang on, it was a fun ride while it lasted. Cheers to the end of an era.

hopefully I can snag a cheap 7970 or 7950 on a 7970 board then.......

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

hopefully I can snag a cheap 7970 or 7950 on a 7970 board then.......

Did you miss out on the $311 Diamond refernce 7970?

 

[Zargon]

yeah, and I could get another 7950 TF for about 300 bucks most days of the week

I meant more like 200

 

[Chiropteran]

ButterFly laps ups the performance estimates for their ASICs by 50%.

http://codinginmysleep.com/butterfly-labs-releases-more-data/
BitForce Jalapeno
4.5 GH/s @ 4.5W

BitForce Single SC
60GH/s @ 60W Wow!

BitForce MiniRig SC
1,500GH/s @ 1,500W

I saw that too.

Please be real. Please don't be a scam. Please let me win the early shipment lotto.

 

[railven]

I saw that too.

Please be real. Please don't be a scam. Please let me win the early shipment lotto.

Yeah, 60GH...how much does a 7970 get at peak with cherry picking settings, like 700MH.

I decided to think about getting back into the game waaaaaay to late. Oh well, no money lost (as I bought nothing) and my first adventure was very profitable.

To you guys that kept going when the market collapsed, kudos. TO those that cashed out when coins where $20+, them were some good times

 

[thilanliyan]

ButterFly laps ups the performance estimates for their ASICs by 50%.

http://codinginmysleep.com/butterfly-labs-releases-more-data/
BitForce Jalapeno
4.5 GH/s @ 4.5W

BitForce Single SC
60GH/s @ 60W Wow!

BitForce MiniRig SC
1,500GH/s @ 1,500W

They also announced the release of another product tier that hasn't yet got a proper name, but they're calling it the "Little Single" which clocks in at 30GH/s and carries a $649.00 price tag similar to their current line of FPGA singles.

The $150 Jalapeno is more than 6 times faster than an overclocked 7970 and you can pre-order 3 of those for the price of a 7970.

So remind me again why BFL doesn't just use these things themselves and make some money?

I think we discussed this but don't remember the reasoning...?

I am seriously considering one of the new singles...but BFL has not inspired confidence in many people over at the BTC forums, which makes me hesitant.

Are there any projections as to what kind of generation it will be once all these ASICs hit? I mean, will it get to the point where it will take 60GH/s to make 1 coin a week or something? Or will the price offset the difficulty increases and halving of reward?

 

[blastingcap]

So remind me again why BFL doesn't just use these things themselves and make some money?

I think we discussed this but don't remember the reasoning...?

I am seriously considering one of the new singles...but BFL has not inspired confidence in many people over at the BTC forums, which makes me hesitant.

Are there any projections as to what kind of generation it will be once all these ASICs hit? I mean, will it get to the point where it will take 60GH/s to make 1 coin a week or something? Or will the price offset the difficulty increases and halving of reward?

Short answer: More than 20 times what today's difficulty is.

Long answer: I can't find the post right now, but one BTC forum user did a reasonable estimate based on publicly available information about BFL pre-orders and such, and the result was something like a 20 times increase in difficulty if some fraction of BFL pre-orders were fulfilled... and that was a calculation done over a month ago, when there weren't as many pre-orders. The calculation also did not factor in non-BFL FPGA and ASIC (BFL is not the only company that makes mining ASIC and FPGA systems!). The calculation already assumed a large percentage (20+%) of BFL pre-orders were not serious.

So in reality difficulty would probably rise by MORE than 20 times what it is today just with a portion of the pre-orders from 2 months ago, let alone any other backlog they got in the last 2 months.

Edit to add: However that doesn't take into account all the GPU miners leaving once ASIC hits so it is possible that difficulty might not rise quite as quickly due to that effect.

And yes I'm sure we'll see BFL spike difficulty with their own testing right before they ship it out, but not for TOO long or everyone will get pissed at them.

 

[thilanliyan]

So in reality difficulty would probably rise by MORE than 20 times what it is today just with a portion of the pre-orders from 2 months ago, let alone any other backlog they got in the last 2 months.

So do you think a Single would be worth the investment? Or just 2 or 3 Jalapenos?

This thread is speculating that more and more people would move to Litecoins!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=105703.0

I'm so confused lol

 

[RussianSensation]

Here is a thread with some recent estimates. They are ball-parking a 10-20x increase in network hash rate and a halving of the block reward by Dec 2012:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=114323.0

I added the very rough rounded break-even points (but didn't account for a rise in difficulty rate after the network reaches 10-20x throughput rate).

Case 1:

Total network hashrate (10x): 220 Thash/s, 3600BTC daily reward rate

Daily payout per
Thash/s: ~16.4BTC
Ghash/s: ~0.017BTC
Jalapeno: ~0.068BTC
Single : 0.85BTC

Single costs $1,300.

If BTC halves to $6 = $5.1 / day (break-even = 255 days)
If BTC stays at $12 = $10 / day (break-even = 130 days)
If BTC goes to $15 = $12.75 / day (102 days)
If BTC doubles to $24 = $20 / day (65 days)

Case 2:

Total network hashrate (20x current): 4400 Thash/s, 3600BTC daily reward rate

Daily payout per
Thash/s: ~8BTC
Ghash/s: ~0.009BTC
Jalapeno: ~0.034BTC
Single: 0.42BTC

If BTC halves to $6 = $2.52 / day (break-even = 516 days)
If BTC stays at $12 = $5 / day (break-even = 260 days)
If BTC goes to $15 = $6.3 / day (~204-206 days)
If BTC doubles to $24 = $10 / day (130 days)

Of course if someone gets the Single a lot earlier, the network rate won't be 10-20x yet. Those with the earliest pre-orders will make exponentially larger amounts.

 

[MrTeal]

Short answer: More than 20 times what today's difficulty is.

Long answer: I can't find the post right now, but one BTC forum user did a reasonable estimate based on publicly available information about BFL pre-orders and such, and the result was something like a 20 times increase in difficulty if some fraction of BFL pre-orders were fulfilled... and that was a calculation done over a month ago, when there weren't as many pre-orders. The calculation also did not factor in non-BFL FPGA and ASIC. The calculation already assumed a large percentage (20+%) of pre-orders were not serious.

So in reality difficulty would probably rise by MORE than 20 times what it is today just with a portion of the pre-orders from 2 months ago, let alone any other backlog they got in the last 2 months.

Edit to add: However that doesn't take into account all the GPU miners leaving once ASIC hits so it is possible that difficulty might not rise quite as quickly due to that effect.

And yes I'm sure we'll see BFL spike difficulty with their own testing right before they ship it out, but not for TOO long or everyone will get pissed at them.

We'll have to see, I think it's going to be awhile before we hit 20x.

I did some rough calculations based on our sales figures and at least for the case of BFL, we will not cause a 10x increase. I can't speak for the other manufacturers numbers, of course.

The Avalon boards coming out in the new year have sold out their first preorder run of 300 60GH/s systems so that's 18TH/s or about a 1x increase, then there's the bASIC boards in November/December and the Deepbit Reclaimer project in the first few months of 2013.

BFL could be lying to convince people mining will be more profitable than it really will be, but a 20x increase might not happen until late in 2013 unless the ASIC manufacturers slash prices in the spring.

 

[UNhooked]

Just newly got into the Bitcoin mining and it seems I may have missed the boat this time. What would you folks reccommend?

Invest in BFL Jalapenos?

What's the difference between Litcoin, Namecoin in regards to bitcoin?

 

[philipma1957]

bitcoins are by far the most valuable of the coins,


Note below is from BFL website. It used to say delivery was OCT. it now says Nov. !!!

"Some jobs have exceptional needs. The BitForce SuperComputer family can deliver.
Pre Order List
Performance: 4.5, 60 & 1,500 GH/s The BitForce SC chip is now in final stage development. Initial product delivery is scheduled for November.
See the SC FAQ and release Notes for policy information. Read the Press Release."

http://www.butterflylabs.com/products/

this is the page link look on the right



Not good if you purchased in July and thought Oct 1.

Nov. 1 is one more month that they hold your money. I also like how they make a big deal that it is faster then they had hoped for but they do not make a big deal out of the 1 month delay.

 

[MrTeal]

We'll see. I'm hoping to earn $300 by the end of the year.

Unless you hold the coins and there's a big spike in the price, along with not paying for power, that will be pretty much impossible with a 7870 and 7850. Even if you were getting 800MH/s at 100% pay per share, you would only be making 0.281BTC/day at current difficulty in October and November, and 0.1405 BTC/day in December. That's a current (2.86M) difficulty, it's going to jump to over 3M late tomorrow and even without ASIC will probably keep going up. Realistically even if no ASICs hit the network this year you probably won't mine any more than 20BTC.

If the ASICs do start shipping in early November, the network hashrate will jump past 100TH/s pretty quickly and the block reward halving will get pulled forward to the middle of November instead of the 30th of November like it is now, so you wouldn't even cover the cost of power without a big spike in prices.

 

[thilanliyan]

Any thoughts on litecoins? Would that be a good early investment to get into?