5 ms·

I just spent a half hour or so figuring this out because I have several old laptops/computer laying around: you will not make more than a few cents per month i

I just spent a half hour or so figuring this out because I have several old laptops/computer laying around: you will not make more than a few cents per month in bitcoin as a miner unless you have specialized equipment. Setting up your home computer to mine when you are not using it is literally worth zero bitcoin unless you have top of the line graphics cards, and even then it is worth very little.

sanswork 9y ago
Even if you have a top of the line graphics card you will be spending more on electricity and wear than you'll ever make back since you will likely not mine enough in any pool to qualify for part of the block reward. The top GPUs are looking at thousands of mhash/s. Where the most common ASIC miner does 14,000,000 mhash/s.
- iak8god 9y ago
  For BTC this is absolutely the case now. Other coins can't be mined with ASICs.
  - budadre75 9y ago
    No, you can mine Scrypt-based coins with Antminer L3+, X11-based coins with Baikal, which are both more profitable than mining BTC in terms of ROI ratio and return time.
RexetBlell 9y ago
Bitcoin can't be mined even with graphic cards any more. You need specialized hardware (ASICs). The current total hash rate of Bitcoin is over 10^18 hashes per second which is insanely high. However, it's still profitable and relatively easy to mine on other public blockchains with graphic cards because the hashing algorithm is ASIC resistant (like Ethereum). You could make a couple hundred bucks a month with 6 graphic cards. Check out https://whattomine.com/ https://whattomine.com/
- iak8god 9y ago
  I've been poking around the last couple of days trying to figure out how likely one is to at least break even on a ~$1500 "investment" for the 6 GPUs and barebones components required to run them. My conclusion is: who the hell knows, but it'd probably be a lot easier to just put $1500 into Ether. It seems like mining is riskier without much potential extra reward.
- mamcx 9y ago
  What cryptocoins are the best (outside BTC), not just in ability to mine but also to actually sell/buy? I don't know what have good reputation (are not scam, too much gamble?)
iak8god 9y ago
That's been true of Bitcoin for several years now. Even if you have free electricity, "very little" is a bit of an understatement.

sanswork 9y ago

Even if you have a top of the line graphics card you will be spending more on electricity and wear than you'll ever make back since you will likely not mine enough in any pool to qualify for part of the block reward. The top GPUs are looking at thousands of mhash/s. Where the most common ASIC miner does 14,000,000 mhash/s.

iak8god 9y ago
For BTC this is absolutely the case now. Other coins can't be mined with ASICs.
- budadre75 9y ago
  No, you can mine Scrypt-based coins with Antminer L3+, X11-based coins with Baikal, which are both more profitable than mining BTC in terms of ROI ratio and return time.

RexetBlell 9y ago

Bitcoin can't be mined even with graphic cards any more. You need specialized hardware (ASICs). The current total hash rate of Bitcoin is over 10^18 hashes per second which is insanely high. However, it's still profitable and relatively easy to mine on other public blockchains with graphic cards because the hashing algorithm is ASIC resistant (like Ethereum). You could make a couple hundred bucks a month with 6 graphic cards. Check out https://whattomine.com/ https://whattomine.com/

iak8god 9y ago
I've been poking around the last couple of days trying to figure out how likely one is to at least break even on a ~$1500 "investment" for the 6 GPUs and barebones components required to run them. My conclusion is: who the hell knows, but it'd probably be a lot easier to just put $1500 into Ether. It seems like mining is riskier without much potential extra reward.
mamcx 9y ago
What cryptocoins are the best (outside BTC), not just in ability to mine but also to actually sell/buy? I don't know what have good reputation (are not scam, too much gamble?)

iak8god 9y ago

That's been true of Bitcoin for several years now. Even if you have free electricity, "very little" is a bit of an understatement.