Cryptocurrency world - Selling hashpower, mining, and making money

[zeddie]

here is mine that I've been running for the past few months with 1x 1080Ti.

I've been making only ~$1/day with my HD7970, then I bought my 1080Ti. Now it makes $4-5 CAD per day. I can make back my card purchase in about 5 more months at this rate. Also my first few months stashed in my wallet has accumulated more value because of rise of BitCoin.

It's great here, because electricity is relatively cheap compared to the rest of North America. It costs me ~5 cents/kWh. as opposed to 20+ cents in some places I've seen.

My portfolio as of this moment:

I bought a bit of Etherium (@~30$ at the time) and DashCoin (@~6$ at the time) in the beginning. Took out $25 like 2 months ago from my BTC and when deposited back then, I had barely $89. A few weeks ago, another deposit of $100. The rest is just increase in value.

Of course, I stop hashing when I play games and stuff, so if you look at my graph, you can tell when I game and when I don't lol:

Except that last bit last night... for some reason my PC restarted so couldn't mine for a big chunk there.

I see BTC has gone up by at least 10% today, so your $12 deposit today should go up to $13-14 as well!

 

[BUTUZ]

I'll try and pen some thoughts/advice later on the things I've learned since I started mining back in 2013.

My teacher said I was a bad learner, she was spot on right as I seem to learn most of my lessons the hard way :)

I'll never discourage anyone from starting mining - but you need to bear in mind that the big money has already been made - it's very very difficult with very high upfront costs to actually mine one bitcoin now, it used to be easy peasy. That being said, there is money still to be made, particularly if crypto keeps going up and up over the next 5 years. The only way you can take advantage of long term upwards trends is to NOT sell the crypto you earn.

So for my first lesson, never sell more than 50% of what you are making. In a hypothetical example, If your make 0.1 bitcoin a month, then send 0.05 of it to a safe wallet and if you must recoup costs then sell 0.05 on an exchange. This means that in 5 years time you'll still have 50% of all the bitcoin you ever mined, which hopefully will be a lot of moneys. This is the #1 mistake people make, selling all of it as they mine to get some cash back quick but then when the price doubles, and doubles again, you can't take advantage of those price rises as you got rid of it all. Think of it as a long term investment not a short term money making scheme.

Secondly, if you play things clever you can do things like, offset your heating costs in the winter by buying quiet miners and having one in every room of the house, that way your earning crypto, yes your spending electricity, but you can offset that against the gas or electricity you would have been spending. That's what I do in order to leverage 25-50% more profitability. My gas bill is $10 a month as my boiler never comes on.

Thirdly, never solo mine. You can only solo mine when the difficulty is low and there are not many people mining. There is no coin that is profitable that is worth solo mining. Always use a pool. That way you always get a share of something, rather than none of nothing which can happen if you solo mine. Mining pools are your friend.

Fourthly, never store your crypto online if you are keeping it long term. There is no website that is safe, exchanges can disappear, web sites can be hacked, or the owners can just plain disappear one day and take all your crypto. Always store your "keeper" crypto in a proper wallet, preferably the "core" wallet of your coin, or a physical hardware wallet. Keep it safe my precious!!!

Phew.

 

[DirectorGunner]

Thanks BUTUZ! great ideas and have been in line with what I've been reading.
I'm still a little confused on how wallets work but I completely get to never leave any coin in an exchange as examples in the recent past where they go down or get hacked. I want to use a double sig paper wallet for long term storage... I'm not sure if armor wallet will work for this?

It's important to also make sure to diversify one's portfolio because coin values can drastically drop. And bitcoin is not impervious to market changes.
So there's still a considerable amount of risk to consider. From what I've read so far.

Thank you so much Zeddie for sharing that!

The 2nd day I only ran my hybrid 980ti because it stays 50c, well.. last night I forgot I left one of my main 980ti (fan cooled) mining.. and it made a big difference. I went from $5 yesterday, to ~$7.50 this morning. This is incredibly fun... I mentioned this to my wife. She might let me invest 3K into an exclusive mining rig as it will pay itself off in less than 10 months.

 

[Stevetank]

I pay 8.40¢ a kwh. If I only make 10¢ an hour, I would make slightly more than breaking even, lol.

 

[Graptor]

I have a colleague at work who invested about $40,000, built 10 rigs, each with 6 GPU's. As noted, it heats his whole house. Lives in South Dakota and his heat hasn't turned on yet this year. And he's now saving electricity because he turned off all the air conditioners. :)

He is solo mining, ZCash if I remember correctly. Is making something like $9K/month, minus electricity bill of $2,500. My numbers may be off a bit, I don't know all his details. He's forecast that the rigs will be paid for in 9 months.

He also uses the strategy of taking 50% each month and moving it to Bitcoin. That's doing him quite well also. In general, if you have the money and the time to figure it out, there is a business model there. But like any business, it's not free money. He told me he spends a shitload of time on research, monitoring rigs, replacing parts, etc.

 

[Xist]

I bought cases from these guys almost 2 years ago:

https://www.miningrigs.net

Their cases are expensive but they are very high quality and they were quick to replace any bad parts. (I bought a lot).

In general I would recommend that you NOT buy dedicated GPU rigs for mining right now.

The landscape is changing. Ethereum is switching away from mining in the very near future. Millions, millions of mining rigs will be switching to other coins. It will not be possible to pay off your rig, let alone pay for the power usage.

The asterisk is: If you play video games, you can buy a nicer GPU than you otherwise would, and it will pay you back at least part of not all of the additional amount you paid for it.

That is about the only current scenario in which buying mining hardware makes any sense - using hardware you already have and maybe possibly buying 1 updated GPU to go with it.

I would also say this: mining is not an investment! It's a gamble.

That being said, only spend money you are willing to lose, and expect to lose it.

I'll go farther and say that the only way you will possibly make any money is if you HOLD ALL YOUR COINS until they are valuable to you and then SELL YOUR COINS before they tank in value.

It's a gamble after all, so don't try to be cash flow positive. Try to accumulate coins and hope their value increases, then sell while the selling is good.

My $0.02 given my past 2 years experience. I have been very lucky that the price of coins has gone way up, but there is no guarantee they will continue to do so.

 

[Sirus7264]

All this talk about minning has got me trying this out. I downloaded the programs to mine etherium last night and i have no clue what im doing. Currently i am using Ethminer, Etherium Wallet, and GetH. Do you guys have any suggestions? I wouldnt mind putting a system together to mine as bitcoin is getting very profitable as of late.

 

[ColdDog]

you may be mining and not even know it. careful folks.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-hijack-coinhive-dns-server-through-an-old-password/
https://community.rsa.com/community/products/netwitness/blog/2017/09/26/monero-mining-who-wants-ads

 

[Xist]

you may be mining and not even know it. careful folks.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-hijack-coinhive-dns-server-through-an-old-password/
https://community.rsa.com/community/products/netwitness/blog/2017/09/26/monero-mining-who-wants-ads

@Montoya your secret is out! No wonder TestSquadron.com keeps crashing on Android... :P

 

[Sintha]

Anyone wanna buy my magic beans?

 

[Sirus7264]

you may be mining and not even know it. careful folks.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-hijack-coinhive-dns-server-through-an-old-password/
https://community.rsa.com/community/products/netwitness/blog/2017/09/26/monero-mining-who-wants-ads

Yeah this is why i updated all my passwords and made them extremely confusing and difficult. Somtimes sites are like "You have to many characters for a password" I wish i could just use Common access cards for everything having a physical item will always be the most safe method to secure stuff. If they dont have it they cant hack it right?

 

[DirectorGunner]

In general I would recommend that you NOT buy dedicated GPU rigs for mining right now.

The landscape is changing. Ethereum is switching away from mining in the very near future. Millions, millions of mining rigs will be switching to other coins. It will not be possible to pay off your rig, let alone pay for the power usage.

The asterisk is: If you play video games, you can buy a nicer GPU than you otherwise would, and it will pay you back at least part of not all of the additional amount you paid for it.

That is about the only current scenario in which buying mining hardware makes any sense - using hardware you already have and maybe possibly buying 1 updated GPU to go with it.

I would also say this: mining is not an investment! It's a gamble.

That being said, only spend money you are willing to lose, and expect to lose it.

I'll go farther and say that the only way you will possibly make any money is if you HOLD ALL YOUR COINS until they are valuable to you and then SELL YOUR COINS before they tank in value.

It's a gamble after all, so don't try to be cash flow positive. Try to accumulate coins and hope their value increases, then sell while the selling is good.

My $0.02 given my past 2 years experience. I have been very lucky that the price of coins has gone way up, but there is no guarantee they will continue to do so.

I'm seeing very different ideas with some aspects of what you shared, on other forums and with aggressive research..
here's what I've gathered so far.

• ASIC solutions are more efficient but hard to come by, and support absolutely sucks / non existent.
• Majority of miners are using GPUs, according to massive amount of tutorials, forum posts, news articles, etc
• Many large multi-million invested companies are using modular GPU rigs. <- See the genesis mining video linked
• Just like with stocks and other investment strategies, there is ALWAYS risk
• Cryptocurrency in general designed mining as both an incentive and security for the health of a currency
• Some new currencies may happen which change the paradigm for their currency
• Bitcoin is the largest market right now
• EXCHANGES are high risk and can be hacked, while blockchains in an actual currency supposedly can't because being validated by a decentralized ledger
• Cryptocurrency is an asset, not a security
• Difficulty of hashing increases as more enter a market, eg when ETH's switching to proof of stake, other coins will be flooded with the hashing that used to take place in ETH... but that will take some time

I think this is a really great video on some of the risks in the current crypto market

About ETH's impending change
"With Casper, virtual miners, known as validators, commit money to the system with the understanding that they will lose their deposits if they don't follow the rules."
Currencies are only powerful with the amount of account holders and participants they have, ETH is not without a big risk for making a move like this soon. I for one, do not want to be a part of a system that has the "right" to take my money if I don't follow "procedure". That may even be illegal in some countries. If I go to a teller, instead of the ATM, a bank can't decide to just take all of my money because I didn't follow "procedure".. this is where things are going to start getting messy as public pressure for regulation as people start losing massive amounts of money... again.. just like when Exchanges gets hacked or go down or are doing shady things.

The actual bitcoin though, that's not an "exchange" and is decentralized, yes it's still vulnerable, and yes new GPU rigs maye see slower return rates due to hash difficulty increasing.. but in the next 2 or 5 years... the potential reward over risk with alt currencies.. if you play your cards right.. seems like it's fing worth it. More than doubling your investment in just over a year, is worth it to me.

IMO in investment, anything worth investing in is a gamble, unless you like getting a return less than inflation in money markets.
The thing is, we take calculated risks, and do what warren buffet does... take advantage of human nature concerning perceived value. Sell when overvalued.. buy when undervalued.

And finally

That being said, only spend money you are willing to lose, and expect to lose it.

No offense, but... who did you learn how to invest from? I would NEVER make an investment expecting to LOSE it. No fucking way... that's not smart. Would I take a risk if I were to lose all of it if the likelyhood was very low and the reward worth the risk? yea maybe. With making my own GPU rig to pay for itself, that is smart. Because when the hashing gets too difficult for the rig to be efficient, it can be used as a render farm or parts sold at ~50%, and by then... they've already paid for themselves.

#1 i will not keep currency held by exchanges.
#2 I will monitor as best I can what is going on and do my absolute best not to make emotional decisions or decisions based on fear or greed.
#3 I will adapt
#4 I will cash out, when it makes sense to, and the portion it makes sense to cash out for. Whether all or a percentage.

Sorry, but even though you have 2 or more years experience over me in mining... I'm not agreeing with some of what you wrote at all.

 

[Xist]

Yeah this is why i updated all my passwords and made them extremely confusing and difficult. Somtimes sites are like "You have to many characters for a password" I wish i could just use Common access cards for everything having a physical item will always be the most safe method to secure stuff. If they dont have it they cant hack it right?

1password.com

Use it, or something like it. It's the only way to fly.

 

[Xist]

I'm seeing very different ideas with some aspects of what you shared, on other forums and with aggressive research..
here's what I've gathered so far.

• ASIC solutions are more efficient but hard to come by, and support absolutely sucks / non existent.
• Majority of miners are using GPUs, according to massive amount of tutorials, forum posts, news articles, etc
• Many large multi-million invested companies are using modular GPU rigs. <- See the genesis mining video linked
• Just like with stocks and other investment strategies, there is ALWAYS risk
• Cryptocurrency in general designed mining as both an incentive and security for the health of a currency
• Some new currencies may happen which change the paradigm for their currency
• Bitcoin is the largest market right now
• EXCHANGES are high risk and can be hacked, while blockchains in an actual currency supposedly can't because being validated by a decentralized ledger
• Cryptocurrency is an asset, not a security
• Difficulty of hashing increases as more enter a market, eg when ETH's switching to proof of stake, other coins will be flooded with the hashing that used to take place in ETH... but that will take some time

I think this is a really great video on some of the risks in the current crypto market

About ETH's impending change
"With Casper, virtual miners, known as validators, commit money to the system with the understanding that they will lose their deposits if they don't follow the rules."
Currencies are only powerful with the amount of account holders and participants they have, ETH is not without a big risk for making a move like this soon. I for one, do not want to be a part of a system that has the "right" to take my money if I don't follow "procedure". That may even be illegal in some countries. If I go to a teller, instead of the ATM, a bank can't decide to just take all of my money because I didn't follow "procedure".. this is where things are going to start getting messy as public pressure for regulation as people start losing massive amounts of money... again.. just like when Exchanges gets hacked or go down or are doing shady things.

The actual bitcoin though, that's not an "exchange" and is decentralized, yes it's still vulnerable, and yes new GPU rigs maye see slower return rates due to hash difficulty increasing.. but in the next 2 or 5 years... the potential reward over risk with alt currencies.. if you play your cards right.. seems like it's fing worth it. More than doubling your investment in just over a year, is worth it to me.

IMO in investment, anything worth investing in is a gamble, unless you like getting a return less than inflation in money markets.
The thing is, we take calculated risks, and do what warren buffet does... take advantage of human nature concerning perceived value. Sell when overvalued.. buy when undervalued.

And finally

No offense, but... who did you learn how to invest from? I would NEVER make an investment expecting to LOSE it. No fucking way... that's not smart. Would I take a risk if I were to lose all of it if the likelyhood was very low and the reward worth the risk? yea maybe. With making my own GPU rig to pay for itself, that is smart. Because when the hashing gets too difficult for the rig to be efficient, it can be used as a render farm or parts sold at ~50%, and by then... they've already paid for themselves.

#1 i will not keep currency held by exchanges.
#2 I will monitor as best I can what is going on and do my absolute best not to make emotional decisions or decisions based on fear or greed.
#3 I will adapt
#4 I will cash out, when it makes sense to, and the portion it makes sense to cash out for. Whether all or a percentage.

Sorry, but even though you have 2 or more years experience over me in mining... I'm not agreeing with some of what you wrote at all.

ASICs suck, they are horrible for Bitcoin. It's one of the single largest problems with Bitcoin. Mainly because they cause mining power to consolidate into too few hands, and in Bitcoin the money have all the power. That's why Bitcoin is becoming more and more obsolete IMO.

That being said, it's the one everyone knows, so at least for now it is the primary place where people want to store their value. That will likely change over time.

Most of the new interesting stuff going on in crypto uses GPUs to mine so it can truly be more decentralized which was the whole point in Bitcoin to begin with.

ETH wants to be a real transaction engine, not just a value store, which is why they are moving away from POW mining which is the biggest waste of energy ever invented and will cause Bitcoin blocks to slow down to infinity.

 

[DirectorGunner]

1password.com

Use it, or something like it. It's the only way to fly.

This is better:
http://preshing.com/20110811/xkcd-password-generator/

• Make a derivative of the generated password using mixed capitals, numbers, and symbols that's memorable.
• Use a different password on each website/account
• NEVER answer security questions with a real answer
• NEVER use a cloud hosting service to remember your password
• USE local storage, and backups to save your passwords in an ENCRYPTED files. Some programs are made for this.
• Keep a copy of your account credentials on paper in a safe or safety deposit box, and for good measure you can use a book cipher to encrypt it all. This way if your safe or safety deposit box gets compromised, your accounts will likely still be secure since only you know your cipher.

Note: I've done human engineering before as an exercise at request, and got access to all of someone's accounts. I had permission, but it was to test if what I knew was correct about majority of people. Lots of people don't think of the probability of how they can be compromised in any given action, walking down an alleyway by themselves, using the same password for every single fing account, answering the security question of their parents name/street they grew up on/high school/dogs name in their account recovery questions.... etc... think outside the box and assume your information could be compromised so compartmentalize to reduce your total risk.

 

[Sirus7264]

1password.com

Use it, or something like it. It's the only way to fly.

I stick to the old pen and paper im just not so sure about password storage programs. I know alot of people use the one we provide here at work but i dunno if one day it got hacked thats all my passwords and accounts compromised. Ive been hacked when i was younger lucky for me there was nothing there to steal other than some old credit reports(very old). Not to mention all of the hacks on yahoo and the government(chinese already have everything so not much i can do haha).

ASICs suck, they are horrible for Bitcoin. It's one of the single largest problems with Bitcoin. Mainly because they cause mining power to consolidate into too few hands, and in Bitcoin the money have all the power. That's why Bitcoin is becoming more and more obsolete IMO.

That being said, it's the one everyone knows, so at least for now it is the primary place where people want to store their value. That will likely change over time.

Most of the new interesting stuff going on in crypto uses GPUs to mine so it can truly be more decentralized which was the whole point in Bitcoin to begin with.

ETH wants to be a real transaction engine, not just a value store, which is why they are moving away from POW mining which is the biggest waste of energy ever invented and will cause Bitcoin blocks to slow down to infinity.

I think i remember seeing an article about amazon buying some cyrpto websites one which was labled Etherium amazon or something i'll try to find the link. Weither this was just another fabrication to boost etherium profits i have no idea i didnt do to much research into it but i really think ETH will take off in the next few years.

 

[Maxgerber5250]

I have been looking at this for about 4 months now, mulling weather or not to try. I like this topic and would like to know more of the ins and outs.
info. I need info.

 

[DirectorGunner]

More info

It's important to understand hard forks and what it means for the market you're mining
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hard-fork.asp

I see that currencies like ETH use something called DAG and those will grow in size until consumer GPUs are not viable to mine with
https://investoon.com/tools/dag_size
until a hardfork to this proof of stake thing
an annoying video

Lots of info here in this Blockchain 101 section of this website
https://www.coindesk.com/information/

Monero might be a good alternative to Ethereum which doesn't have the same problems and limitations.

There's a lot to learn on all this.
But, any alt coin with a stable foundation... and wide desirability... and is miner friendly... I think is something worth looking into.

 

[ColdDog]

More info to help you succeed.
https://community.rsa.com/community/products/netwitness/blog/2017/07/20/an-introduction-to-cryptocurrency
https://community.rsa.com/community/products/netwitness/blog/2017/01/10/collection-of-2017-security-predictions

Cyber criminals will continue to show a great interest in earning opportunities offered by cryptocurrencies. Security firms will continue to detect malware specifically designed to steal crypto currencies or to abuse victim’s resources for mining activities. The Zcash currency will probably offer the greatest financial opportunity to criminal syndicates. Zcash mining will remain among the most profitable compared to other cryptocurrencies; this means more opportunity for cyber criminals that started creating botnets for mining.

https://community.rsa.com/community/products/netwitness/blog/2013/03/12/tales-from-the-darkside-malware-does-clickfraud-plus-bitcoin-mining

Kinda my job to be in the know when it comes to this stuff. I hope it helps.

 

[BUTUZ]

Guys - all you need to do is follow these two points.

1. DO NOT buy ASIC miners. As mining difficulty rises, they effectively become worthless lumps of scrap metal. GPUS always have a large amount of intrinsic value in that they can do cool stuff like let you play Star Citizen. SO when your finished mining, people will buy them off you. People will not buy 3 year old ASIC off you as a 3 year old ASIC is a paperweight.

2. If your gonna start off and your not sure, so much information around, so many opinions. Just buy one or more gpu's (or use existing ones) and mine Zcash. That's all you need to do to make consistent money. If anything changes I will let you know but I've been mining Zcash since April and its consistently been the most profitable coin for GPUs. Best cards for mining Zcash hare GTX 1060, 1070, 1080 1080 ti. Followed by AMD Fury based cards (Nano, Fury, Radeon pro duo). If you must mine something else Ethereum is good, its been consistently profitable for the last ~1.5 years and despite what people say, it aint going anywhere any time soon. Also be careful about spending money on hardware which does not improve hashrate, fancy cases, fancy motherboards, 32 gig of ram, etc, all useless for mining. My mining rigs are all open rigs running Celeron CPUs and 4GB RAM.