Cryptocoin Mining?

[Zargon]

*Makes a note not to buy any used 5830s that show up on FS/T*

Hmm, I wonder if my 5870 is worth something to a miner. Maybe I should sell it...

I'll give you a hundred for it

 

[YoungGun21]

I guess my math was way off. But the question stands, is electricity really 3X as expensive in Hawaii?

http://www.bls.gov/ro3/apwb.htm

Interesting note, the national average cost of electricity is 0.126 per kWh, a bit less than the 0.15 figure.

Also, make sure you are doing a valid comparison. If you regularly leave your computer on for other reasons, you should only count the increase in power usage that BTC mining causes, not the total usage.

I agree that .15 is high, but I'd say it is always better to over estimate.

I have two computers simply for mining, one of them having 1 5830 and the other having 2 5830s. Between them, they draw close to 700W. My main desktop mines, drawing 240W while mining, 115W while idle, an increase of 125W. Adding that gives me about 825+ Watts pulled from the wall, netting (right now) .65 BTC/day.

 

[Dr.Haribo]

And sure, the heat adds a little more to the power cost by making your AC work harder, but even at $14 per BTC it would have to make your AC work a LOT harder to cancel out your potential profit.

What's this AC you are talking about?

It's so hot in here, I can't think. :biggrin:

 

[blastingcap]

Is it really that bad though? I think someone calculated that it cost about $2.50 in electricity to produce 1 bitcoin at $0.15/watt/hr, even if Hawaii electricity costs 5 times that it would still be a net profit. Do you have an exact figure, is it really more than $.75/Watt/hr? And sure, the heat adds a little more to the power cost by making your AC work harder, but even at $14 per BTC it would have to make your AC work a LOT harder to cancel out your potential profit. Don't count it twice though, that is cheating.

The other guy said there is NO reason PERIOD and all I had to do was find one guy who thinks it's not worth the hassle. Go to the forums around the web (here, HardOCP, etc.) and you will find that there are people who feel that it's not worth it to them for heat/noise reasons, or because they do not want to prematurely wear out their gear, for instance. I never said that mining is unprofitable for everyone, just that there may be valid reasons why people don't bother with it, especially as difficulty increases = you get less BTC per hour of mining.

As for electric costs, many utilities have tiers, where your first chunk of power is cheap, then each chunk (tier) after that gets pricier. For instance, at the highest tier in northern California, you end up paying FIFTY cents per kwh (roughly). So the national average thing can be misleading depending on whether you are a heavy user or not, and whether your utility punishes you for it, in order to encourage energy conservation. Hawaii has tiered rates btw: http://www.heco.com/portal/site/hec...bacRCRD&vgnextfmt=default&cpsextcurrchannel=1 You lose a lot of information when you look only at averages.

 

[lau808]

blastingcap - u from hawaii? i am, idk how much my elec is $/kw tho lol i can check my bill if i remember later.

 

[alkemyst]

I am not so interested in bitcoins as so much the trend. It appears a lot of the mining goes into upgrading the video card and then rinse/repeat.

I know many are using that money outside it, but a lot seem to be just reinvesting it.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

im thinking of buying another 5830.

i have dual 5830s mining in my first rig and I just built my 2nd rig using some spare parts. I was hesitant about building this rig because it lacks a chassis, but I suppose I can still use it. A 6850 is in it right now, but I'm thinking of throwing a 5830 beside it.... hmmm

in other news I mined my first bitcoin 2 days ago

BTW, any speculation/comments about bitcoin prices? Do you think they'll stabilize around 14-15$/btc?

 

[dalamchops]

im done adding hardware unless price jumps above $20. Probably gonna mine with 3 ghash at least through the winter.

 

[YoungGun21]

They already have stabilized at this price range, it has been here for weeks basically.

 

[Imouto]

Just started mining few days ago with a steady 0.22 BTC income daily at around 350/360 MH/s.

My mining hardware is an already year old 5850 @ 900/300 70º stock voltage (damn non ref pbcs) and fan at 50%

I have a monthly 94$ raw revenue with 60$ electricity cost and 34$ neat profit according to this calculator.So it should be returning 1/3 wich I think is pretty cool.

I'll be testing this for 2 weeks until I find if I can spend my BTC in some worthy services in Europe and ofc if it worths the effort.

 

[ItsAlive]

I'm having problems with bitcon.exe, it seems like I have to uninstall/reinstall and redownload the entire block chain everytime I want to receive a payout. I have port forward on port 8333 and set it in bitcoin. I get 2 connections, but the block chain doesnt update. I have left it overnight and still dont have the entire chain. I have comcast ISP and a decent connection so I dont think thats the problem.

Any thoughts on how to fix this?

 

[gorobei]

difficulty bump coming up. probably tomorrow at the latest. be sure to recalculate your hash earnings to make sure you are still profitable.

 

[Chiropteran]

difficulty bump coming up. probably tomorrow at the latest. be sure to recalculate your hash earnings to make sure you are still profitable.

I'd like to see a big difficulty increase, as I feel the value of 1 BTC is being held back by lack of difficulty. We'll see.

 

[gorobei]

I'd like to see a big difficulty increase, as I feel the value of 1 BTC is being held back by lack of difficulty. We'll see.

as others have stated, there is no reason for btc value to rise based on difficulty. there is a massive float at mtgox, and no scarcity. the long term guys with massive positions of btc/cash are using it to stabilize the value at 14. anyone who wants some coins for a online transaction can get them easily enough such that it doesnt matter how hard it is to mine new coins.

 

[Acanthus]

I have my 6 up on MtGox now @ 14

 

[YoungGun21]

Difficulty has pretty much stabilized as well until another piece of hardware comes out. There aren't as many people jumping in, and there are only a few great mining cards left. This jump is again very small, which I am glad to see. Keeps our production high for the time we have left.

 

[gorobei]

The way i figure it, we have about 2 months left of stable mining. By mid sept someone will likely have leaked a southern islands engineering sample hash bench. Everyone will have to evaluate if it is worth it to upgrade for better hash/lower energy/cooler temps.

The jump in compute power will almost certainly spike difficulty and reduce return rates.

The real question is will there still be a market for used 5830 cards. A lot of the triple rig miners need resale prices to be high in order for profit margins to rise out of single digits given how flat the btc exchange rate has been. The difficulty jump could easily make the 5830 unprofitable hash wise and less attractive game-wise(i.e. 2 gen old) which would make them harder to sell later. It will be a real dice roll figuring out if and when to dump your less useful cards as the southern islands release date approaches.

 

[YoungGun21]

The way i figure it, we have about 2 months left of stable mining. By mid sept someone will likely have leaked a southern islands engineering sample hash bench. Everyone will have to evaluate if it is worth it to upgrade for better hash/lower energy/cooler temps.

The jump in compute power will almost certainly spike difficulty and reduce return rates.

The real question is will there still be a market for used 5830 cards. A lot of the triple rig miners need resale prices to be high in order for profit margins to rise out of single digits given how flat the btc exchange rate has been. The difficulty jump could easily make the 5830 unprofitable hash wise and less attractive game-wise(i.e. 2 gen old) which would make them harder to sell later. It will be a real dice roll figuring out if and when to dump your less useful cards as the southern islands release date approaches.

I agreed with you until the bolded part. My crew and I broke even last week, so any BTC we sell from now on are essentially pure profit. The resale value of the cards are profit as well. So we stand to still make maybe $150+ each (3 of us) over the next month as we sell BTC and eventually our cards (3 cards). I don't really understand your comment about profit margins being in single digits.

It certainly is questionable though what we will be able to sell the cards for. I'm keeping one for my computer because it is still an upgrade over the 5750 that I had.

 

[gorobei]

i've run the numbers on a triple rig (need at least 900mhash bare minimum nowadays for it to be worthwhile) on spreadsheet. Assuming 1btc stays at ~14, the only variable is difficulty.

At difficulty increase rates of 1.3+ (the average rate from late may to late june) you earn .75 of what you got the prior week. The break even point on a triple rig is around 5 months. That puts you at SI release time and kills your resale margins. [i.e. you bought 1000$ worth of equipment, recovered your expenses by selling coins and net gain = 0. But the new difficulty makes the old rig unprofitable to operate, so the only profit will come from selling the rig parts. If SI is out by then, you will be lucky to get 40-50&#37; of the video card's price. So for $1000 spent you may earn less than $150. <15%. electricity costs can take this down to single digits.]

At 1.05 - 1.1 difficulty increase rates (latest 2 rounds), you earn .9 of what you got last week. The break even is 3 months and you still have time to mine extra coins and sell your cards. Profit margins will be in the 30-40% range.

Anything between 1.1 and 1.3 and you need to be constantly evaluating your electricity costs to make sure you will cross the break even line in time to sell. At its peak, the difficulty jump hit 1.7 twice. Each spike pushes your break even date further back.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Yeah I've broken even as well. I have one HD 6970 & two HD 5830s Exs. I'm just waiting on a new power supply to power everything.

I'm probably going to buy a 7000 series card.

 

[Zargon]

man my power rates just jumped to summer prices on the last bill. a whole exta one and half cent per kwh.

of course, with the mining, my usage went up ~75-100kwh. hard to tell how much since we had house guests, and its been HOT!

 

[Muyoso]

I just started mining with a pool hopper program the past couple days and holy crap it has drastically increased my per day payouts. It is a pool hopping program that hops to a pool as soon as they solve a block and stays with them until they reach 43.5&#37; of the current difficulty's shares or until a different pool discovers a block. The math works out to this setup being the most efficient. First day, which was yesterday, I made 192% of what I should be making with my hashrate. Today with an hour left to go I am at 144% of what I should be making with my hashrate. With this setup I will be mining for a much longer time than I thought I would be. It basically just rolled back a couple difficulty increases for me.

 

[ghost recon88]

I just started mining with a pool hopper program the past couple days and holy crap it has drastically increased my per day payouts. It is a pool hopping program that hops to a pool as soon as they solve a block and stays with them until they reach 43.5% of the current difficulty's shares or until a different pool discovers a block. The math works out to this setup being the most efficient. First day, which was yesterday, I made 192% of what I should be making with my hashrate. Today with an hour left to go I am at 144% of what I should be making with my hashrate. With this setup I will be mining for a much longer time than I thought I would be. It basically just rolled back a couple difficulty increases for me.

I'll bite. Program name?

 

[dalamchops]

that pretty much screws over anyone else not hopping around.

 

[Muyoso]

that pretty much screws over anyone else not hopping around.

Not necessarily. They may make slightly less per round but the flood of new workers into a pool probably also means more blocks found for them. Either way, I spent the first month mining bitcoins being "screwed over" not hopping and its frankly inefficient.

Name of the program is bithopper btw. Not the easiest to setup. Was a bit of a pita frankly.

Edit: The second full day of mining on this program came to a close a few minutes ago, and at the last second another block was found on a pool I stopped mining at nearly 20 hours ago.

So this:

Today with an hour left to go I am at 144&#37; of what I should be making with my hashrate.

gets revised to this:

Today I mined 181% of what I should be making with my hashrate. I love this program.