Cryptocoin Mining?

[Axon]

Down to $5 a coin? Ouch.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Down to $5 a coin? Ouch.

Was down to 2 a coin a few months ago.

 

[blastingcap]

With ASIC and FPGA boards already being built and sold, I foresee a monumental jump in difficulty that won't easily go back down since those specialized chips are built specifically for mining using very little power, so they will keep mining even if bitcoins drop to near-zero. If difficulty rises by a factor of 10, that effectively makes bitcoins worth $0.50 to miners.

 

[Despoiler]

With ASIC and FPGA boards already being built and sold, I foresee a monumental jump in difficulty that won't easily go back down since those specialized chips are built specifically for mining using very little power, so they will keep mining even if bitcoins drop to near-zero. If difficulty rises by a factor of 10, that effectively makes bitcoins worth $0.50 to miners.

AFAIK there are no mining ASICs. People are talking about them only.

 

[blastingcap]

AFAIK there are no mining ASICs. People are talking about them only.

FPGAs like the Butterflies are already being sold. ASICs are being discussed under the table so it's hard to know exact timing unless you are in the know. But I think you are missing the point, which is that difficulty will effectively increase by a LOT as FPGAs and ASICs become increasingly prevalent; and since they are single-purpose devices, don't expect people to turn them off even if BTC value drops like a rock. Also, difficulty effectively doubles at the end of this year. (25 instead of 50BTC payout per block.)

 

[hawtdawg]

FPGAs like the Butterflies are already being sold. ASICs are being discussed under the table so it's hard to know exact timing unless you are in the know. But I think you are missing the point, which is that difficulty will effectively increase by a LOT as FPGAs and ASICs become increasingly prevalent; and since they are single-purpose devices, don't expect people to turn them off even if BTC value drops like a rock. Also, difficulty effectively doubles at the end of this year. (25 instead of 50BTC payout per block.)

Isn't it really past the point of mining becoming profitable for people trying to get in, even for FPGA's?

I jumped in about a year ago, when the prices were still climbing, and i've only been turning a profit for a couple of months. You basically have to be in a situation where electricity is free for mining to even be worth considering getting into at this point imo.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Isn't it really past the point of mining becoming profitable for people trying to get in, even for FPGA's?

I jumped in about a year ago, when the prices were still climbing, and i've only been turning a profit for a couple of months.

shouldn't you have made a profit for a while now if you jumped in while prices were climbing? unless of course you held onto the BTCs too long.

I thought I held on too long and sold MANY around $3/BTC, but even then it's been 6 months since breaking even... and this is considering I joined well after the $32/btc peak.

 

[blastingcap]

Different people have different mining costs. Electricity costs vary, and also some people only count the variable cost of mining without accounting for how much the rest of the rig cost you, and how quickly it depreciates. Someone who was going to buy a nice computer and stick a mining card in it anyway (e.g., for gaming) and who gets subsidized power, is in a different situation than someone who buys a second computer expressly for mining, stuffing it full of four 5970s but an otherwise bare-bones system (crappy CPU/RAM/mobo/etc.), all while paying superhigh electric rates due to living in Hawaii or something. Most people are somewhere in-between those two extremes.

Also consider opportunity costs and risks. Opportunity cost means what else you could have done with that money had you not bought mining equipment and spent extra on power bills. You could have put it into other, less risky investments. As for risk, people seem oblivious to mining risks, especially regulatory risk of the government cracking down (all it would need to do would be to kill the big exchanges and/or Dwolla). They do seem more aware of the risk of FPGA and ASIC mining making mining unprofitable for almost everyone, though, by jacking up difficulty.

 

[hawtdawg]

shouldn't you have made a profit for a while now if you jumped in while prices were climbing? unless of course you held onto the BTCs too long.

I thought I held on too long and sold MANY around $3/BTC, but even then it's been 6 months since breaking even... and this is considering I joined well after the $32/btc peak.

are you talking about just the price of the card/cards you got? i built several rigs just for mining. Though for several months there, when prices were at 3ish, I was barely breaking even on power, and just held onto the coins. Sold a bunch at 6 a month or 2 ago. Now im in a free electricity situation though. I've been holding on to 10% of the coins anyway, just to have them.

 

[Vesku]

I don't think FPGAs will be increasing difficulty by too much atm, their cost per MH is quite high and their individual MH rate is comparable to AMD cards. Each bitcoin generated costs less in terms of KWh but similar amount of MH/s mining per $ invested, as of now. If ASICs show up I would expect there would be quite a jump in difficulty based on predicted $ to MH/s or if FPGA costs drop significantly.

 

[Despoiler]

FPGAs like the Butterflies are already being sold. ASICs are being discussed under the table so it's hard to know exact timing unless you are in the know. But I think you are missing the point, which is that difficulty will effectively increase by a LOT as FPGAs and ASICs become increasingly prevalent; and since they are single-purpose devices, don't expect people to turn them off even if BTC value drops like a rock. Also, difficulty effectively doubles at the end of this year. (25 instead of 50BTC payout per block.)

No you are missing the point. There are no ASIC miners. Discussion to actual product is 2-3 years out if someone had the considerable funding right now. No one does. Mentioning it is like saying your fantasy football team is gonna own in the NFL soon.

 

[blastingcap]

No you are missing the point. There are no ASIC miners. Discussion to actual product is 2-3 years out if someone had the considerable funding right now. No one does. Mentioning it is like saying your fantasy football team is gonna own in the NFL soon.

First, I said FPGA and ASICs. FPGAs already here and far more efficient than GPUs. Second, I don't think you know enough of the players in the mining scene to make that kind of statement about ASICs. I will just leave it at that since you obviously know everything about it already. /sarc

P.S. The other guy arguing that investing in FPGA/ASIC is irrational: yes it is irrational due to the risk, but there are lots of crazy people out there. Just because you wouldn't invest in FPGAs doesn't mean some nutters out there wouldn't. Some people will ruin it for everybody. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons And the other dude always bragging bout how many coins he's mining never says how much money he spent on the equipment and power. It's like a company bragging about revenue but saying nothing about costs, even while profit margin is shrinking to zero and soon to be negative.

 

[Smartazz]

I still don't see FPGAs increasing difficulty anytime soon. Their $/mhash is simply too high and if the Bitcoin market collapses, you're stuck with pretty useless hardware. At least those mining with GPUs can sell the GPUs if mining becomes unprofitable for them. Maybe if Bitcoin remains stable for quite some time, we'll see more people risk money buying FPGAs.

 

[Chiropteran]

Their $/mhash is simply too high and if the Bitcoin market collapses, you're stuck with pretty useless hardware.

This.

Also, FPGA/ASIC technology may eventually result in massive difficulty increases, but this is acceptable to me for a couple reasons. The main one is that the HUGE investment required to develop custom ASIC for bitcoin mining is really an investment into the currency. The corporation or wealthy individuals behind those technologies are, in a sort of way, backing the value of BTC. If BTC drops to nothing their million dollar investment is nearly useless.

In the long run, the success of BTC as a currency is more important to me than just making a few hundred dollars a month mining on my video cards.

 

[Despoiler]

First, I said FPGA and ASICs. FPGAs already here and far more efficient than GPUs. Second, I don't think you know enough of the players in the mining scene to make that kind of statement about ASICs. I will just leave it at that since you obviously know everything about it already. /sarc

Yes, I was specifically talking about ASICs, which is why FPGA appeared nowhere in my statements. I was correcting your bad information about them. For the second time FPGAs exist and ASICs are nowhere near existing.

I still don't see FPGAs increasing difficulty anytime soon. Their $/mhash is simply too high and if the Bitcoin market collapses, you're stuck with pretty useless hardware. At least those mining with GPUs can sell the GPUs if mining becomes unprofitable for them. Maybe if Bitcoin remains stable for quite some time, we'll see more people risk money buying FPGAs.

I believe you are correct. FPGAs are not going to be entirely additive to the total. FPGAs will be replacing GPU rigs in places where electricity is not cheap/free, where mining operations are large enough to require dedicated AC, or where space is a limitation.

 

[Smartazz]

I'm surprised difficulty has been increasing a lot lately given that the weather is warming up. I guess there's a bunch of 28nm AMD cards mining now. Any other hypotheses?

 

[Chiropteran]

I'm surprised difficulty has been increasing a lot lately given that the weather is warming up. I guess there's a bunch of 28nm AMD cards mining now. Any other hypotheses?

BTC value has gone up a bit on mtgox also, not a huge jump though. How much as difficulty increased?

fake edit: it's been going down.

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png

Difficulty peaked during the first half of April and has been decreasing since then.

 

[blastingcap]

Short term fluctuations happen, but if you look at things month by month, difficulty has been going up, not down, and it is scheduled to go up again after the next reset. With more and more people moving to faster GPUs and FPGAs and eventually ASICs, difficulty is more likely to go up rather than down. If BTC values drop enough, we might see another downturn in difficulty like last winter, but that would also mean a large loss in coin value so that would not be a good thing.

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin.png

 

[moediff]

Hello Everyone - I have an issue and I'm asking for help. I have been bitcoin mining using GUI Miner for windows on a single Radeon HD 7970. No issues at all. After mining for a while I decided to build a dedicated mining rig. It has two exact Radeon HD 7970. The problem I have is I am getting 650 Mhash/sec from one card and 291 Mhash/sec from the second card. I don't know why. Here are some details.

#1: I am not running the cards in crossfire.
#2: I am using the Sapphire Tweak Utility to slightly overclock the cards. (GPU clock is 1125 - Memory is underclocked to 600.
#3: I am using one monitor. The second card is not plugged into a monitor.
#4: The cards are not running hot - 70C average.

Questions Please:

#1: Do I need to use two monitors in order to get equilivent mining speeds?
#2: If I can use a dummy plug on the second monitor - can someone recommend one?
#3: I am using GUIMiner - should I be using a different miner? I use a pool to mine so I would want one that supports Deepbit. Can someone recommend one?

Thanks...

 

[Vesku]

Try cgminer, should give you some more detailed info about what's going on with your mining.

 

[LightRider]

Has anyone tried using the cgminer on an nvidia 9600 with any recent drivers? For the last few months, all recent nvidia driver releases tend to crash the gpu when I try to mine. Cgminer dev says he hasn't changed anything significant on his end, so it must be something driver related. Any clues?

 

[wbynum]

I was heavily into mining during the peak last summer (14 or so cards running). Did it for a couple months and made a decent profit. Thinking about getting into it again on a smaller scale. Maybe bigger during the winter when I could use the extra heat.

Just picked up a 7950 card to replace my Nvidia setup. I'm guessing at ~$6 per btc it would not be profitable to mine with this card? I pay ~10 cents per KWH. Thoughts?

 

[Dark Shroud]

Has anyone tried using the cgminer on an nvidia 9600 with any recent drivers? For the last few months, all recent nvidia driver releases tend to crash the gpu when I try to mine. Cgminer dev says he hasn't changed anything significant on his end, so it must be something driver related. Any clues?

I'm sorry I can't help with that, but why are you mining on an Nvidia card? If you have to pay for the power you're just wasting your time & money.

I was heavily into mining during the peak last summer (14 or so cards running). Did it for a couple months and made a decent profit. Thinking about getting into it again on a smaller scale. Maybe bigger during the winter when I could use the extra heat.

Just picked up a 7950 card to replace my Nvidia setup. I'm guessing at ~$6 per btc it would not be profitable to mine with this card? I pay ~10 cents per KWH. Thoughts?

A 7950 OC'd to around 1100mhz should actually be pretty decent for mining. I think it was diablo miner that was the first to support GCN every well. I would suggest the official Bitcoin forums to see which miner to run.

 

[IGemini]

Has anyone tried using the cgminer on an nvidia 9600 <snip>

I'll stop you right there. Even the fastest top-shelf nVidia card won't mine faster than an old 48xx Radeon, a 9600 isn't worth your time & energy.

Just picked up a 7950 card to replace my Nvidia setup. I'm guessing at ~$6 per btc it would not be profitable to mine with this card? I pay ~10 cents per KWH. Thoughts?

I wouldn't plan on paying for the card anytime soon I've been mining whenever I can with my 6870, and while I didn't have to pay for it, it took a while to get enough turnover for ~$50 (before the exchange increase :/). I'm ball-parking, but even for the cheapest 7950 @ current exchange rates, you'll need to mine non-stop for a year to break even (not factoring electricity).

 

[LightRider]

Some of us can't buy new videocards like candy bars, so I'm using what I have. I'm not interested in "making money", I'm interested in making bitcoins. I believe it is a more honest money that the fraud perpetrated on us by fiat currencies. Even slowly accumulating them now is better than not accumulating them at all, because any fraction of a fixed amount is better than a dwindling fraction of a hyperinflated amount of dollars.