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Originally Posted by Play  Why do people mine them then? (P.S. Serious question, not sure why they'd go above and beyond if there was no incentive). |
Mining Bitcoin is over for people like you and me. You would have to buy ASIC miners that are designed only for mining. They cost somewhere around $3,000+ a piece, are sometimes hard to get, and are only relevant for a short period of time. After that you might as well use it as a boat anchor.
The reason is the difficulty level rises exponentially as more miners join the network and the block-chain gets longer and your competing against people with endless money, possibly even government sponsored.
Right now, if you're going to mine, GPU mining is the best bet. Almost all the hardware to build the miner can be re-sold or re-purposed, as long as you don't buy mining specific hardware, you could use the hardware to build a badass PC for yourself. The only thing that's junk is the $50 CPU and case. (Mining doesn't require much CPU power, I use a Intel Pentium G-4400).
How much does a Alienware PC cost? About as much as mining rig, plus you would still have 4-6 top of the line GPU's to resell. As long as you keep your GPU's under 80C they should last a long time and most come with a 5 year warranty.
AMD Cards are harder to Over Clock, use more electricity and get less Mh/s. Nvidia cards have less options of coins to mine.
I went with Nvidia. They use a lot less electricity and get more Mh/s than AMD. Nvidia price is higher but the electric will even things out. Nvidia cards produce less heat and are quieter.
GPU mining is far from over. For instance if a company made a application where movie companies could rent out the network to do their video rendering in exchange for tokens... There are all kinds of possibilities... It's a good possibility Gift Cards could be tokenized and used on a app on your phone... all those transactions are processed by someone... It all comes down to who can provide a secure convenient service for the least amount of money.
Most of mining is speculation, or gambling as someone mentioned. But hindsight is 20/20. Its easy to say your better off to investing than mine after you see where the coin was at and where it is now.
[10.18.17] I would suggest if Bitcoin hits down around $3,500USD in the next few months to buy at least one coin. When it hits $6,000USD sell and buy mining eqt. Then you cant lose.
If you mine 2000 tokens this month while the token is @ a fraction of a cent and they come out with some kind of application like the video rendering concept or smart contracts that will be used by fortune 500 companies. Those 2000 tokens could be worth millions.
Tokens are only the gas that powers the network. In software development there is a testing faze. If bitcoin is that test... the proof of concept is already complete. Now its just implementing a technology to be used on the network.
This is like investing in the internet in 1993 because it sounds cool, even though you cant wrap your mind around it or imagine what the end results will be like. Look at all the applications they have come out with since then. Its the equivalent of buying stock in these companies at a discounted rate. (the cost of electricity).
Which for me is about $1.62 a day. Plus if your really cheap you can counter that by shutting off all the lights and unplugging things you normally wouldn't when not in use.
Re: Anyone into Mining? 
Re: Anyone into Mining? 
