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As far as I understand it, the only way to profitably mine bitcoin is to have super cheap power and ASICs specific to bitcoin mining. Essentially, GPUs won't cu
by hueving 10y ago
As far as I understand it, the only way to profitably mine bitcoin is to have super cheap power and ASICs specific to bitcoin mining. Essentially, GPUs won't cut it because you're competing with Chinese miners using ASICs attached almost directly to dirty, cheap electricity generation.
- askmike 10y agoYou are right about Bitcoin specifically, but there is a second market for altcoins which use different PoW algorithms [0]. For a lot of these ASICs are either not on the market, or not economically feasible, in which cases GPUs still dominate. But most of these markets are very small compared to Bitcoin. [0] https://whattomine.com/ https://whattomine.com/
- kobeya 10y agoHe didn't say bitcoin.
- cloudjacker 10y agoYou don't understand it. Mine other cryptocurrencies that are profitable, or may become profitable. It is VERY, as in EXTREMELY, profitable to mine large stakes in cryptocurrencies that the market hasn't discovered yet. Especially ones that aren't even listed on an exchange yet and mining is the only way to earn it. The Darkcoin (now renamed to the politically non-threatening name DASH) instamine was a notoriously profitable use of GPU clusters on AWS.
- hueving 10y agoDon't claim I don't understand it when I was clearly talking about the economics of bitcoin. Also, if you are paying to mine currencies that don't have an exchange value yet, you are just speculating. The mining isn't profitable at that point because the currency has no value. It's just as likely that you chose to mine a dud. It's exactly the same thing as opening a copper mine at a loss and hoarding the concentrate hoping that it will gain value.
- cloudjacker 10y ago> you are just speculating you say that like its a bad thing it is a very profitable endeavor
- petertodd 10y agoFWIW it appears that essentially all the Chinese mining is now done with "standed" hydroelectricity out in the middle of nowhere; even coal is too expensive to be competitive.