Ethereum GPU mining?

[Red Squirrel]

I'm sitting at a projected 0.07237/mo with my 1070TI on ethermine.org, which comes up to around $112. Not bad considering it's just one card, and the rig it's in would normally be turned on half the time anyway, so really I only need to account for an extra 200w or so of power usage which is kind of negligent.

Just wish I could have gotten my hands on two cards though but there was a limit of 1 per customer and everywhere else was sold out. This particular machine can handle 2 without risers or a PSU upgrade so I could double my output with basically the same ROI.

I still want to build a dedicated rig though, where I can fit 6 GPUs. I will build a custom rackmount case, and I won't be able to do that till spring anyway since my garage is not insulated so hopefully by then the next model of GPUs come out and that I can get my hands on a few. Though I have a feeling they will greatly limit per customer, perhaps to just one. I guess I can buy one from different sources, but that sucks to do as you are paying shipping for each one.

 

[IntelUser2000]

. . . and that's why we pool mine.

If you solo mine, it will take 886 days to mine a block in average. Now, it may take longer, it may take shorter. So you can mine $4000 worth of ethereum, but only once every 2.5 years or so.

By the way, France is also clamping down on Cryptocurrency laws. Reports of ban on South Korea may have been hyped, but may not have been far from the truth.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Sucks that some governments are trying to stop this, but not surprising. It's a matter of time till they clamp down on it here too. Well it sounds like they already are, via taxes. Basically they will just tax it to the point where it's just not worth it. Either for mining, or simply using as currency.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Some countries in Eastern Europe are going crypto-friendly, while others are going crypto-hostile. Such developments are curious to watch.

 

[harobikes333]

Your NiceHash link is using $.90/KWh but the other calculator is using $.10/KWh. I pay about $.20/KWh and both calculator says I'd make about $90 per month.

Thank you for that catch! >_< & I plan on pool mining.
Last two questions....? I hope ^^
Best wallet for Ethereum & Bitcoin..? * I have an ancient Ethereum wallet that I made using Electrum but didn't ever get around to mine anything * hindsight *
Best pool miner for my tiny setup...? NiceHash? MinerGate? Just want some experience people's input. Thanks!

 

[DrMrLordX]

If you are pool mining Ethereum, um, use Claymore' s miner.

All of the Ethereum Wallets are problematic in one way or another. Probably best to just use MEW.

 

[Suijin]

Tax law seems really weird wrt mining.

Seems like you could get around it pretty easy by making a new currency that is easy to mine but you value it high, then after a few months the value dumps and you sell all of it for a "loss". Report this on your taxes to offset your gains = no taxes paid out of your pocket.

The weird part of mining is that there is a value to the currency when you mine it. It should only have value when you buy or sell it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah it's BS, you end up paying tax twice on it. When I get my taxes done I'll ask about all this to my tax person, she'll now of any tricks or things I can do. I'm thinking doing it as a business might be better, since you'll be able to write off your costs, so at least it will somewhat even out. I wonder if there is a way to write off the taxes themselves as a loss.

 

[bbhaag]

Good news guys. I got my first payout from mining! It was pretty small at only .01483 ETH but hey we all start somewhere right. Anyway, just thought I would share the good news.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Cool stuff. I'm at 0.00997 mined so far, payout will be at 0.05. Looking forward, especially since I'm still not 100% sure how to even do a transfer, the commands look quite involved, I'll have to make a cheat sheet.

I also just realized I probably should have created my wallet AFTER downloading the blockchain, does that make a difference? I wonder if the wallet I'm mining to may not even be valid lol. When I realized the blockchain is 100's of GB I realized I should create a separate VM for it as my miner is just on a small SSD.

At this point I'm more bummed out about the GPU shortage, I really want to do 1 or 2 rigs with 6 cards. I have a rough rackmount case design in mind and it will make a fun project to build. My goal is to just keep expanding. It's basically going to have the bonus side effect of generating what is basically free heat.

 

[bbhaag]

Cool man good to hear you're up and mining. Looks like that new card was just the ticket to get you on your way.

Transferring was fairly straight forward for me but I didn't dl the whole blockchain like you. I basically took my payout from ethermine.org then went to myetherwallet.com entered my info then got the addresses and then transferred it over to my Coinbase account. My Coinbase account is tied to a savings account that I opened at a local bank. I can then transfer from Coinbase to my local bank if I desire. I held off though because I think Eth is going to go up in value over the next few months.

Yeah the gpu shortage is a bummer but not much we can do about it right now except wait.

 

[fleshconsumed]

I also just realized I probably should have created my wallet AFTER downloading the blockchain, does that make a difference? I wonder if the wallet I'm mining to may not even be valid lol.

No, it does not matter when you create a wallet/account. You should be fine. Just be sure to backup your keystore folder, that's your private key, without it you can't get to your ether. Also write down your password that you used when creating account, also important.

 

[Red Squirrel]

No, it does not matter when you create a wallet/account. You should be fine. Just be sure to backup your keystore folder, that's your private key, without it you can't get to your ether. Also write down your password that you used when creating account, also important.

Good to know, and yeah I'll be sure to backup that stuff.

And yeah I'm glad I got the card when I did because there's pretty much no others available. Going to keep checking retail sites every day in hopes that some new stock pops up. In the meantime I can start thinking about building a dedicated rig as right now I'm tying up my gaming machine.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If you are ever worried about your wallet status, just look it up on etherscan and see what's in there (if anything).

Anyone seriously looking to mine now might be able to score some 290s cheap on eBay, just follow the auctions. DAG size is around 2.28 GB so 4GB cards should be safe up until full PoS. Hawaii isn't a great option, but it's viable if you're willing to do some BIOS tuning/flashing, which is actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it. 480s. 580s, and 390s are better miner cards though.

edit: just wanted to add, if you do score some "irregular" 290s off eBay (which is what I did over a year ago), you should expect them to have quality all over the map. One surefire way to get nearly any functioning 290 to run is to just run it at 800 MHz GPU and downclock the memory some too. You can easily get 23 MH/s with power draw somewhere in the 150W range without any BIOS hacking. Not great, but you will make a profit of about $70/month assuming $.1 kW/h according to my pool (this is after 1% pool fee and after Claymore fee). You could run 6 of them with a 1200W PSU, no problem. Not sure what board you would use, though; I used crappy old AM2+ boards and other dross for my ghetto miner rigs. No more than 4 cards per rig on those.

Getting 12 of them might be a trick too. The more you buy, the harder it will be for you to get them.

 

[thilanliyan]

Damn, it all crashed pretty hard lol.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yup, ETH tried to rally back over $1k but it double-dipped. Oh well, the mining profits were nice while they lasted.

Pity so many Koreans are fear-selling. Some are saying there's a selloff thanks to the Chinese New Year, but I'm not convinced.

 

[Yakk]

Let's see if ETH can stay above $850.

 

[DrMrLordX]

It's gonna be volatile, that's for sure. I can't tell if the "bargain hunters" and whales will hit hard enough to drive the price back up. The fear and outrage over punitive action against crypto exchanges in S. Korea is driving a lot of this. Weak hands are folding.

Kinda reminds me of what happened last summer, when ETH dipped from $300 to $145 in the span of a day, and then went back to $300 and oscillated there for months. Not sure where it'll level off though, or how far it can go before the buy pressure builds up enough to finally push it into a stable zone.

The real question is whether ETH will ever be valuable enough in terms of utility to justify prices of $1300, much less $800.

Yes, it's going to go to near-zero currency issuance fairly soon (full PoS) so there is that. If you stake, you can get returns of maybe 7%. Okay, that's cool. Not many investments give you such returns.

But once sharding and plasma/Raiden go into full implementation, we could see transaction fees that are very, very low. The total amount of ETH that would be consumed by the network per day might not be that large. It's exceedingly difficult at this stage to fully estimate the actual value of ETH once we are out of the development stage and a large number of dApps are running full-bore on the public blockchain (plus transfers between private blockchains going out over the public chain).

 

[Pneumothorax]

Well hopefully I can sell my 4+ eth when it has a dead cat bounce...

 

[Yakk]

Well, so much for ETH $850 support...

.
.
.

 

[Krteq]

Well, so much for ETH $850 support...

It's below 800 bucks now... RX Vega, come to me

 

[Yakk]

It's below 800 bucks now... RX Vega, come to me

Should probably look more towards Monero for Vega for profit.

 

[Charlie22911]

Wow, glad I moved all my ETH into BTC at 1800ish. Also moved all my XRP into BTC at 3ish dollars, my timing has been very fortunate.

EDIT: I’m a dummy, I wish ETH hit 1800. That’s supposed to be 1300ish.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Wow, glad I moved all my ETH into BTC at 1800ish. Also moved all my XRP into BTC at 3ish dollars, my timing has been very fortunate.

You'd have still lost gains unless you converted to fiat before the drop.

 

[Charlie22911]

You'd have still lost gains unless you converted to fiat before the drop.

I've been HODL'n for the most part since 2011, not really worried about lost gains. BTC seems to be holding up a bit better relative to the others though, which is why I feel fortunate.