Cryptocoin Mining?

[nwo]

Any chance I could build a cheap i3 system with a video card and have the video card pay off in a month? Lets say I built one right now, whats the cheapest build I can make that will pay off my upgrades with in a few months time?

It is impossible for any GPU to pay itself off in a month at current price/difficulty of LTC and prices of Radeon GPUs.

 

[JumBie]

It is impossible for any GPU to pay itself off in a month at current price/difficulty of LTC and prices of Radeon GPUs.

Any idea how long it would possibly take a r9 280x to pay off its self?

 

[blastingcap]

He just told you it's impossible and you ask the same question again? Even if the rest of your system were free, it'll not pay for itself if difficulty rises by a paltry 1.7% per adjustment from here on out assuming average USA electric prices. Since you would need to pay for a CPU, mobo, RAM, PSU, and possibly case, fans, drive, and OS, the only way your proposed i3 rig is going to pay for itself is if prices absolutely EXPLODE up. Especially in your crazy one month period where you seem to think a video card can pay for itself in just a month. Not going to happen unless we see an absolutely epic price rise in coins. And in that case you are way better off buying coins directly and holding onto them.

 

[geokilla]

Why would you mine catcoin when even litecoin is more profitable to mine?

Its still more profitable to mine doge than litecoin. Supply and "demand" will eventually pull all highly valued coins down, even if the demand is only from speculators and "highly valued" is only in relation to the cost to mine them.

The alternate currency forums over at bitcointalk are scary. Too many stupid coins to keep up with.

Doge is still a bit more profitable than LTC if you pump and dump continuously but it won't be for much longer (maybe not even tomorrow) if it keeps falling while LTC goes up in value even with the crazy difficulty increases.

http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

I kept all the coins I mined... I guess it's time to dump my CATs and DOGEs for LTC? Trade em on Coinedup? I haven't had a successful trade though. I've been mining only CAT for the past 24h.

 

[nwo]

Any idea how long it would possibly take a r9 280x to pay off its self?

Depends on the purchase price. But roughly 3-4 months when I did the calculations a few days ago. Things have changed a lot since then, and if the difficulty keeps going up at this pace, it could easily take a lot longer than that. Especially since we do not know the ETA or effect ASIC scrypt miners will have.


I would not invest into mining cards at this time. But, if you want to spend extra $$$ on a more powerful GPU for your gaming rig, then it might still be a good move and sooner or later you can expect to profit from it. If not, then you still have a badass gaming card and at least the LTC generated will help you recover some of the cost.

I wouldn't recommend a 280x at $400, and I certainly would not recommend the extremely overpriced 290s unless you are an LTC optimist like myself and think the price of LTC will reach $1000 by the end of the year.

 

[JumBie]

He just told you it's impossible and you ask the same question again? Even if the rest of your system were free, it'll not pay for itself if difficulty rises by a paltry 1.7% per adjustment from here on out assuming average USA electric prices. Since you would need to pay for a CPU, mobo, RAM, PSU, and possibly case, fans, drive, and OS, the only way your proposed i3 rig is going to pay for itself is if prices absolutely EXPLODE up. Especially in your crazy one month period where you seem to think a video card can pay for itself in just a month. Not going to happen unless we see an absolutely epic price rise in coins. And in that case you are way better off buying coins directly and holding onto them.

Well i forgot to mention power is free...but w.e.

 

[JumBie]

Depends on the purchase price. But roughly 3-4 months when I did the calculations a few days ago. Things have changed a lot since then, and if the difficulty keeps going up at this pace, it could easily take a lot longer than that. Especially since we do not know the ETA or effect ASIC scrypt miners will have.


I would not invest into mining cards at this time. But, if you want to spend extra $$$ on a more powerful GPU for your gaming rig, then it might still be a good move and sooner or later you can expect to profit from it. If not, then you still have a badass gaming card and at least the LTC generated will help you recover some of the cost.

I wouldn't recommend a 280x at $400, and I certainly would not recommend the extremely overpriced 290s unless you are an LTC optimist like myself and think the price of LTC will reach $1000 by the end of the year.

Thanks, appreciate the answer.

 

[nwo]

Well i forgot to mention power is free...but w.e.

Why not just add a second card to your 7970? Are you mining on it already?

 

[geokilla]

How are they developing these ASIC cards anyways? I thought the whole point of Scrypt mining was so it's ASIC resistant.

Also anyone know where I can get rid of CAT for LTC? Cryptsy and Coinedup only trades for BTC it seems. I have "tons" of DOGE too..

 

[nwo]

How are they developing these ASIC cards anyways? I thought the whole point of Scrypt mining was so it's ASIC resistant.

I have no clue how they are developing them, I just know there are several of them in the works. Scrypt mining was ASIC resistant since current ASICs are not compatible with them, but that will most likely change pretty soon. The common misconception is that it will stay that way. As we all know, people/companies will find a way to do something as long as it is profitable.

 

[xodusgenesis]

Cheapest would be 4x7850 (if you can find them) or 4xR9 280x. Assuming you can get $30-40 a day, you can pay off in <2 months. HDD, ram, mb, cpu don't matter so pick the cheapest that will let you get you 4 cards and start windows. Also need about 1500 W psu (I think)?

 

[Torn Mind]

I have no clue how they are developing them, I just know there are several of them in the works. Scrypt mining was ASIC resistant since current ASICs are not compatible with them, but that will most likely change pretty soon. The common misconception is that it will stay that way. As we all know, people/companies will find a way to do something as long as it is profitable.

Well, I wouldn't believe that there would be no way to make an integrated circuit solely for scrypt; it is just that design has to be different to accommodate scrypt's hardware requirements.

I have heard that scrypt requires more vram. So, they are probably trying to find a way to stuff a ton of ram into a small space.

 

[Silverforce11]

How are they developing these ASIC cards anyways? I thought the whole point of Scrypt mining was so it's ASIC resistant.

Also anyone know where I can get rid of CAT for LTC? Cryptsy and Coinedup only trades for BTC it seems. I have "tons" of DOGE too..

It will not matter, what the BTC asics taught us is that new crypto coins will rise using new algorithms that ASICs cannot touch, and it will catch on fast due to all the GPUs out there.

Likewise, early adopters of ASICs will be filthy rich, but late comers will have a tough time.

@Torn Mind, it is not hard, just take most GPU design and remove all the rendering and output functions.

 

[nwo]

Cheapest would be 4x7850 (if you can find them) or 4xR9 280x. Assuming you can get $30-40 a day, you can pay off in <2 months. HDD, ram, mb, cpu don't matter so pick the cheapest that will let you get you 4 cards and start windows. Also need about 1500 W psu (I think)?

I agree with the 7850s, since they are capable of 350+ and should cost less than $100 (if you can find them) which gives you the most kH/s/$. However, I disagree with the 280x. They can get 700-750 but at $400 per card, it will take a while to pay them off.

I'd even recommend 270s over 280X, because 270s can get 450-480 each and cost less than half of a single 280x which makes them pretty attractive mining cards.

 

[Silverforce11]

I agree with the 7850s, since they are capable of 350+ and should cost less than $100 (if you can find them). However, I disagree with the 280x. They can get 700-750 but at $400 per card, it will take a while to pay them off.

I'd even recommend 270s over 280X, because 270s can get 450-480 each and cost less than half of a single 280x which makes them pretty attractive mining cards.

There's 2 train of thought.

1. Get hardware and pay it off ASAP to start earning some profit. Here, kH/s per $ matters.
2. Get as much hash as possible to hoard as many coins as possible, because they have a good chance of doubling, trippling, etc several months down the road. Here, the highest kH/s matters more.

#1 is less risky with lower expectations of profit.
#2 is similar to investing to buy coins outright, but not as risky because even if coin prices stagnate and don't rise, they will eventually recover the investment and start to make a profit.

I am #2, I am hoarding BTC and not selling.

Edit: Have to clarify, I am #2 but I sell partial coins to pay the bills as I go and hoard the rest. This is the least risky option with the moderate potential reward. It is in between buying coins with $ to hold and mining to hold.

 

[geokilla]

Lol well I just checked the value of all my CATs, DOGEs, and LTC. While LTC has gone up, DOGE/LTC has dropped from 0.00003 to 0.000008. That's such a significant drop, I think it's time for me to get out of the game... My electricity probably costs more than the amount of money that was made.

 

[Mark R]

I have no clue how they are developing them, I just know there are several of them in the works. Scrypt mining was ASIC resistant since current ASICs are not compatible with them, but that will most likely change pretty soon. The common misconception is that it will stay that way. As we all know, people/companies will find a way to do something as long as it is profitable.

It comes down to the design of the hash.
SHA256 (and it's parent SHA-1) is a general purpose cryptographic hash (used for identifying a message). It was specifically designed for the best balance between simplicity, speed, ease of ASIC design, and security. (Remember that as a general purpose hash, it was going to be used in stuff like transponder keys, bank cards, etc. so ASIC efficiency got big weighting in the selection criteria).

Later, people started using SHA for things that it really wasn't meant for, like storing passwords in a database. If you store the hash of the password, then leaking the database isn't catastrophic. Well, it is if you can simply brute force a dictionary of common passwords and see if the hashes match.

Password derivation hashes were specifically designed to combat brute force. They were deliberately made complex and time consuming. The typical way was to repeat a hash many times. Typical examples are things such as PBKDF2 and bcrypt.

The problem is that this doesn't necessarily increase the difficulty as much as you think. If you're running the same algorithm over and over, you can find lots of ways to optimize this. Making a bigger ASIC is one.

Where scrypt is different is that it is specifically designed to be logic gate intensive AND RAM intensive. Now there are 2 different things that are potential limiting factors. You can't just spam 50,000 SHA256 engines onto a single ASIC and have it work. You still need lots of SHA256 engines (as scrypt is based on SHA256), but much more importantly, you need tons of RAM, and massive memory bandwidth. Scrypt was designed so that at minimum you need 128 kB per thread (so it can fit into a CPU's L2 cache), but start parellelizing this and you soon need GBs of RAM and TB/s of RAM bandwidth.

The early scrypt ASIC prototypes look like GPUs - massively complex PCBs packed with GDDR RAMs. Even the prototype 1 MH/s miner ASIC with details available needs a 1024 bit RAM bus, in order to be able to use readily available and not excessively hot RAMs.

I'm toying with the idea of pre-ordering a 25 MH/s ASIC miner. The cost would be about the same as buying 40 280x cards - but the ASIC unit has the advantage of not needing the purchase of any ancillary equipment (mobos, RAM, PSUs, riser cards, etc.), and it has an expected power consumption of 1 kW and would fit in 6U of space, whereas the radeons would need 10 kW and about 60 U.

 

[nwo]

I'm toying with the idea of pre-ordering a 25 MH/s ASIC miner. The cost would be about the same as buying 40 280x cards - but the ASIC unit has the advantage of not needing the purchase of any ancillary equipment (mobos, RAM, PSUs, riser cards, etc.), and it has an expected power consumption of 1 kW and would fit in 6U of space, whereas the radeons would need 10 kW and about 60 U.

That's a lot of $$$ to be toying around with considering that scrypt market is relatively new and extremely volatile. But, if you believe LTC will follow BTC, then I'd go for it if you have the funds and sources readily available. As already said, early adopters profit while late comers get screwed, especially with ASICs.

 

[blastingcap]

There's 2 train of thought.

1. Get hardware and pay it off ASAP to start earning some profit. Here, kH/s per $ matters.
2. Get as much hash as possible to hoard as many coins as possible, because they have a good chance of doubling, trippling, etc several months down the road. Here, the highest kH/s matters more.

#1 is less risky with lower expectations of profit.
#2 is similar to investing to buy coins outright, but not as risky because even if coin prices stagnate and don't rise, they will eventually recover the investment and start to make a profit.

I am #2, I am hoarding BTC and not selling.

It is far more profitable to buy and hold coins if you think they will double or more in value. If you pay anything for electricity and mine-and-hold, then you are basically converting your power bill into monthly installments of buying bitcoin anyway, so it's risky and possibly even riskier than buying-and-holding coins directly, contrary to what you said.

The only way mining is LESS risky than buy-and-holding coins directly is if you use some or all of the mining proceeds to pay for power or cash out immediately, or if you have free power (which is very rare). For anyone who pays for power, if you mine-and-sell-immediately that takes away most of the risk, but also means you have a lot fewer coins that benefit from price rises, too, so you lose a lot of potential upside. If prices go to zero, a mine-and-holder may lose MORE than a buy-and-hold-coins-directly person because of all those power bills. In general, if you think prices for cryptocurrency will increase more than ~40%, and you pay average USA electricity rates, it's better to buy-and-hold coins directly. A little bit goes a long way, since this strategy has been 10 to 20 times more profitable than "mine and hold" and way, way, way more than 20 times as profitable as "mine and sell just enough immediately to cover power bills," and even more profitable than that vs. "mine and sell everything immediately."

If prices go to zero, miners have to deal with depreciated hardware (used 7950s would be worth less than half their going rate now, for instance) and all those power bills. Buy and holders can't lose more than they put in, and get all of their investment immediately rather than having to deal with decreasing trickle of coins over time as mining difficulty goes up.

It will not matter, what the BTC asics taught us is that new crypto coins will rise using new algorithms that ASICs cannot touch, and it will catch on fast due to all the GPUs out there.

Likewise, early adopters of ASICs will be filthy rich, but late comers will have a tough time.

@Torn Mind, it is not hard, just take most GPU design and remove all the rendering and output functions.

There is only room for about 2 major cryptocoins which derive their value solely from network effects (the more people who use them, the more valuable they get), just like Facebook and Google+ dominate social networks. Similarly, if you invest in precious metals, you know that gold and silver dominate.

Since there is only room for 2 cryptocurrencies and we already have them (Bitcoin BTC and Litecoin LTC), the only way a third currency becomes viable is if it kills bitcoin and/or litecoin to make room for itself. Whatever kills BTC/LTC, it has to be a lot better than BTC/LTC. Merely copycatting BTC will not work. Thus whatever kills BTC/LTC will likely NOT be yet another Proof of Work coin like BTC/LTC. It will likely be radically different such as a Proof of Stake coin which does not require "mining" for "block rewards" at all.

Even if somehow a third PoW "mineable" coin emerges to kill BTC/LTC, there is no guarantee that it will work as well on current cards. As someone said recently in this thread, scrypt-jane apparently works better on NV GPUs. So if a scrypt-jane PoW coin kills BTC and/or LTC, you will see a massive fall in AMD GPU prices and a massive rise in NV GPU prices.

Like I said though, it's way more likely that a Proof of Stake (PoS) coin emerges instead of another "mineable" coin. This is because the world does not need yet another bitcoin clone. It needs something that gives bitcoin-like advantages (or more) and yet fixes bitcoin's drawbacks like blockchain bloat and "mining" which wastes a lot of energy. Something radically different. And that something is unlikely to be mineable by CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, or anything else, because the entire concept of mining for block rewards will be done away with as it is not necessary to ensure security.

 

[Torn Mind]

So, I've been mining lottocoin these past couple days...should I go back to litecoin?

 

[TripleThreatTLT]

So is it worth it to mine on a gaming machine? I have a gaming machine I built recently with a R9 280x got it for $300 when it first released. The machine sits idle 21 hours a day usually. I also live in Idaho so my electricity cost is pretty cheap.

So is it worth it to turn this machine loose 21 hours a day? Or is casual mining not really viable? I don't expect much out of it, but am thinking it could be something fun to check out.

 

[Silverforce11]

So is it worth it to mine on a gaming machine? I have a gaming machine I built recently with a R9 280x got it for $300 when it first released. The machine sits idle 21 hours a day usually. I also live in Idaho so my electricity cost is pretty cheap.

So is it worth it to turn this machine loose 21 hours a day? Or is casual mining not really viable? I don't expect much out of it, but am thinking it could be something fun to check out.

Turn it on and mine on Middlecoin.com

You will get a low but steady stream of BTC into your wallet and who knows, maybe next Xmas they may really be worth $10,000 a coin.. and in the meantime, your casual mining over time will earn you a fair bit!

When electricity is cheap, its a no brainer to mine on hardware you already own.

 

[f1sherman]

These are sad days for GPU mining.

But moar time for trading and gaming

 

[Silverforce11]

These are sad days for GPU mining.

But moar time for trading and gaming

So sad..

http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

Only 2,100 kH/s and thats some pretty decent income. Easy to obtain BTC through multipools.

 

[blastingcap]

Coinwarz revenue projections are unreliable because it uses instantaneous price/difficulty ratios that change so much that no. 1 right now may be no. 20 hours later. This is especially true if market cap and difficulty numbers are low or if difficulty readjustment is high. A naive miner may think omg, let's mine an altcoin only to have difficulty shift way up or the blockchain fork or the price per altcoin fall by 90% by the time they stop mining it and want to cash out. The reverse is true too, you could get lucky. It's basically gambling.