<div dir="auto">More people mining does not push price down as the difficulty adjusts (about every 2 weeks) automatically to keep the average rate of discovery of a block at 10 minutes. <div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Also, GPU mining of bitcoin has not really been possible for a couple of years. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">You need custom ASICS. Cloud mining can be done the cloud provider needs hardware designed to mine bitcoin...</div><div dir="auto">Not just a really fast computer.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Jun 18, 2017 5:38 PM, "David Johnson" <<a href="mailto:dave-gnhlug-list@davej.org">dave-gnhlug-list@davej.org</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
Recent article, however it doesn't get into the risks. There is<br>
clearly capital investment needed if you're going to be somewhat<br>
serious about it.<br>
<br>
<a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/an-idiots-guide-to-building-an-ethereum-mining-rig" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://motherboard.vice.com/<wbr>en_us/article/an-idiots-guide-<wbr>to-building-an-ethereum-<wbr>mining-rig</a><br>
<br>
If it's worth it depends on both electricity cost (which is highly<br>
variable by geo location worldwide), but also the payback of any<br>
hardware purchased. If the currency falls in value before you've paid<br>
back your hardware investment after electricity cost you've lost money<br>
and potentially lots of it.<br>
<br>
My impression is the more people mine, the currency price will be<br>
pushed back down to find an equilibrium so there's lots of risk if<br>
you're making an investment.<br>
<br>
The alternative strategy would be to use cloud based GPU instances on<br>
demand when prices spike but not otherwise. That way there is no<br>
capital investment. Now if cloud based GPU instances ever would be<br>
cheap enough is a different question.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Neil Schelly writes:<br>
> I have a coworker who makes money mining. His strategy is to mine for<br>
> the alternative currencies that are still comparatively easy to mine<br>
> than BitCoin. Whatever value he earns there gets exchanged for value<br>
> in BitCoin. From what I gather, he makes a decently steady side income<br>
> from it, though I haven't really probed for details. I suspect it's in<br>
> the range of a few thousand dollars a month profit.<br>
> -Neil<br>
><br>
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 8:46 PM, Lloyd Kvam <<a href="mailto:lkvam@venix.com">lkvam@venix.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> > Bitcoin did hit a peak value of $3,000 last week, so that would help the economics.<br>
> ><br>
> > My impression is that you need some edge in cost of bandwidth, electric power, or<br>
> > computer hardware for this to be an attractive business. Just tracking the blockchain<br>
> > can use enough resources to be annoying.<br>
> ><br>
> > An alternative approach would be to bet on bitcoins displacing gold: short gold and<br>
> > buy bitcoins. Of course that does not let you play with hardware.<br>
> ><br>
> > On Fri, 2017-06-16 at 18:12 -0400, Bill Ricker wrote:<br>
> >> Bitcoin initially did not require specialized hardware, but as new golden<br>
> >> hashes get harder to find, mining costs more in electricity and<br>
> >> depreciation without speciality gear (or a huge BITNET running for free).<br>
> >> If scarcity drives up BTC value, maybe, but odds of finding one still<br>
> >> declining as payoff increases. I haven't checked the calculation lately, it<br>
> >> would be a good exercise: what would an AWS VPS mining cluster big enough<br>
> >> to average 1 BTC mined per week cost to operate?<br>
> >><br>
> >> Which if any of the alt-coins have legit upside is not yet clear, and the<br>
> >> most likely of them already requires a cluster and has had its first major<br>
> >> scam.<br>
> >><br>
> >> / bill<br>
> >><br>
> >> On Jun 16, 2017 5:58 PM, "Greg Rundlett (freephile)" <<a href="mailto:greg@freephile.com">greg@freephile.com</a>><br>
> >> wrote:<br>
> >><br>
> >> ><br>
> >> > My son is investigating crypto-currency mining and seems to think it's<br>
> >> > incredibly lucrative.<br>
> >> ><br>
> >> > I've not delved into it at all.<br>
> >> ><br>
> >> > Comments? Anyone actually making money mining?<br>
> >> ><br>
> >> > From what I've previously gathered, I thought the amount of computational<br>
> >> > power, expense and electricity just about squeezed out anybody but those<br>
> >> > with super-specialized hardware.<br>
> >> ><br>
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</blockquote></div></div>