The following is just my opinions and I may be incorrect at any point and probably am on many points.
For me, a kinda depressing update
The market is confusing me, when developing my white paper I became less confident in HONEST profitability of starting a mining facility "data center" style node with a complimentary new cryptocurrency venture. Without paid for solar power** and nearly free GPUs or cutting edge ASIC machines, the competition for easily liquidable coins/algorithms is too great. It was fantastic when nicehash went down. But when nicehash went back online... every tom, dick, and harry with 1 or more GPUs started up again and difficulty went back up.... it's not just because of nicehash but nicehash had an observable effect. While profitability is driven down by the nicehash effect, around 2 dollars a day or under per NEW GPU...
power costs will be increasing nationwide soon, Nevada for example is seeking a power increase. And we're in a pain in the ass spot for people like me because I don't want to buy a shit ton of old GPUs... let me explain.
Miners who are leaving the market, are (at least from what I see in Las Vegas) are selling their used GPUs to other miners at half retail costs or less. All the people who emailed or texted me about my 980ti's, when I asked, said they were also miners.
There's still miners wanting to get serious, convinced that the older gen GPUs will pay for themselves in a few months.
So they're buying them as cheap as they can buy them, and mining with them. It's a smart short term game plan.. but by the time 2 to 3 quarters go by, the market has changed to the point that you have all these new shitty GPUs bought dirt cheap mining away for bottom feeders. But it seems to me they'll barely have enough profit after breaking even to do anything but buying some more (but not enough) old GPUs in a never ending dog after it's tale cycle.. As a means of earning a regular income, cashing out most of earnings every month... there's much better ways to earn more reliable income than this with the way things currently are.
When profits were $6 to $12 a day per GPU... it was worth it.
About the new emerging ASIC machines...
I believe more coins will soft branch into a more asic resistant solution as companies build new asic machines for coins which had no previous asic solution. The problem is, because of the way the industry is, the barrier to entry as a professional business (not hobby level) is absolutely massive and the risk of developing and failing at a new cryptocurrency is substantial.
I'm sad to report, after spending time to developing a business model I was trying to get funded... I'm less confident now. It's not impossible, something might happen tomorrow which may make me ecstatic... but as of this moment in time.. I can't in good conscience try to convince an investor that a mining facility node at this very point in time.. is a good investment idea... now is the worst time of the cycle I think to do it if the building was already available.
And so... I still mine, but...I am not happy where things are right now.
**getting enough power offset is a considerable challenge. 330 watt panels systems are on average $3 a watt. and the space required to power enough ASICs and GPUs to make a node worth wild for 1 person to manage with enough to pay their salary and the business and property costs.. it's massive a amount of roof space. For a 1 million kw of power a year via solar panels... through all south facing panels on a 22.6 degree tilt.. in Nevada... at 600 Kw a year per panel (330 watt panasonic HIT).. that's 1667 panels... which needs an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM of
30,034 square feet. That's at least a
$1,650,330 solar system. At a very aggressive target revenue of $15K to $24K a month for that available solar production (would still have to use local power grid for the night).... the solar panels alone would take over 9 years to pay off. Which wouldn't be too bad if the market and tech market was more predictable. But add in all the other costs.... including diminishing returns per cycle... it balloons that break even point way out there... it's still a business... but not the most lucrative business in the world.
And if downscaling that model, it's not lucrative enough for my desire. Even though $15K to $28K a month sounds like a lot... it's not after all the payments, costs, etc are deducted. Not to mention Unlce Sam having his dues from that.. which is quite a lot.
So.. I'm working on getting a real estate license and later a broker license after 2 years, while I'm in grad school.
My cryptocurrency idea I'll still work on the white paper for.. but... mining facility nodes popping up like Starbucks all over the nation...... my views on that I idea I had... has been severely tempered and dialed back.
