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>Solis bought a Bitmain Antminer S9 on eBay for $2,400. >As of this weekend, Solis has mined 1.01 BTC, worth a little more than $2,584 in his bitcoin wallet. >S
by aqme28 9y ago
>Solis bought a Bitmain Antminer S9 on eBay for $2,400.
>As of this weekend, Solis has mined 1.01 BTC, worth a little more than $2,584 in his bitcoin wallet.
>Solis said:
>"When I bought the miner, the price per bitcoin was around $1,200. I thought I’d break even in one year, but actually it’s been about five months."
So he would have been much better off just spending that 1,200 on Bitcoin rather than on a mining rig.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> he would have been much better off just spending that 1,200 on Bitcoin rather than on a mining rig TL; DR Why economists don't like deflation.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- danmaz74 9y agoEven more importantly, electricity costs weren't accounted for, while they should be pretty relevant.
- Analemma_ 9y agoAccording to its Amazon listing, the Antminer S9 consumes 1247 watts at the wall. Assuming he ran it 24/7, over a year he would consume about 11,000 kWh, or about $1,300 at the average U.S. electricity price of $0.12/kWh. Without knowing how much he was paying for power of course we can't know exactly how much he spent, but this certainly doesn't seem like a slam-dunk win, compared to just buying Bitcoins outright. And indeed, it couldn't possibly. The EMH almost guarantees that hobby mining can't be profitable once the coin is popular enough.
- Nursie 9y agoIncidentally, 11K kWh is roughly the average energy consumption of a US household. So given his current return, of 1.01 bitcoins, that means each 2.4 bitcoins mined use around the electricity that a US household does annually. And people wonder why there are those of us who are concerned about the environmental impact...
- hanklazard 9y agoGood point. This sort of waste is one of the big reasons for the (hopefully soon) shift to PoS rather than the current PoW.
- Valodim 9y ago11MWh average, 0.12 cents/kWh?! Power costs more than twice as much in Europe, and the average household uses half as much. No wonder you guys (in a twisted democratic sense of the word) aren't too fond of climate treaties.
- Analemma_ 9y agoI know you're sort of joking, but that doesn't really explain it: the places where power is cheapest in the U.S. are the places where the most renewables are used. Here in Pacific Northwest power is closer to 8 cents/kWh because it's mostly hydro; Texas is cheaper than in the surrounding South because it has more wind power, etc.
- yuhong 9y agoIn this case, the server room location is Allen, Texas, likely paying commercial rates.
- yuhong 9y agoI think commercial rates are generally lower than residential rates, right?
- bigtunacan 9y agoIs anyone tracking the electric costs for mining? I would love to see the stats on that. What about using something like solar to power this? Then you would have your upfront costs for the solar panels, but not have recurring electric costs?
- Analemma_ 9y agoThe biggest mining operations are Chinese and Russian farms getting their power through questionably legal arrangements, so those statistics probably don't exist and wouldn't have much relevance if they did.
- flashdance 9y agoYou can't bribe your way into 30 megawatts of power. The biggest mining operations have legal partnerships with local and national governments.[1] As well, Russia isn't a major place for bitcoin mining: instead, mining is mostly concentrated in Georgia (the country, not the state) and China. [1] http://ifact.ge/en/bitfury/ http://ifact.ge/en/bitfury/
- flashdance 9y agoI used to track where large bitcoin mines were. Mostly they're concentrated around cheap hydroelectricity, with major mines in Labrador (2c/kwh), Central China (varies, but <4c/kwh), and Georgia (unknown, bitfury likely has a special deal with the local government). A few exceptions are Northern China (coal grid @ ~3c/kwh) and Iceland (geothermal @ maybe 5c/kwh, this isn't too clear either). Solar panels are not effective for bitcoin mining, because hardware needs to run 24/7 (a shitload of batteries are needed) and the upfront cost is high.
- chx 9y agoThis is hindsight. He would have been best off staying the fuck away. As I mentioned a billion times cryptocurrencies (which are not currencies either) have zero legal real world use cases, currently the two uses are illegal money transfers out of China and hype. It's the worst sort of gambling: you do not even know the odds.
- CyberDildonics 9y agoPeople keep saying things like this but reality does not support this is any way. There are many thousands of places that take cryptocurrency.
- jchw 9y ago>zero legal real world use cases I pay my VPN using bitcoin. Also have a GPU bought with bitcoin. Just saying.
- astrodust 9y agoYeah, and people have bought pizza, too: http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-pizza-day-passes-2000-20-million-2017-5 http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-pizza-day-passes-2000-...
- stale2002 9y agoCrytocurrencies transactions are significantly cheaper than wire transfers. That's a real world use case.
- chx 9y agoLOL! Congrats to HN for going 24 days without bringing this up. I have written it up last time in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14563751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14563751 so let me copy > Every time I ask, people come and say but... but... international transfers! and I point it out that for that transfer the sender needs to buy bitcoins, transfer and the receiver needs to sell them because there is no legal, useful application of it :) And this is untenable, you can't have the receiver go through hoops to receive money. And when I compare this to how Transferwise combines a fantastic user experience with favorable rates (which I actually compared to an FX company not to a bank) then I am a Transferwise shill despite it's usually not me who brings up the transfer argument so I now I did just so we don't need to have that conversation again and again.
- paulpauper 9y agoThe major problem with buying mining rigs is that they may be pre-mined. Often the developers will use the rigs for mining and then when the rigs stop becoming profitable (assuming the bitcoin price is stable), sell them as 'new'.
- saurik 9y agoThis analogy makes it sound like there were a certain number of Bitcoins inside the computer and they are all already discovered... why does it matter if a computer is used or not: all that should matter is how fast it is (and that would be difficult to lie about as you would notice immediately upon receiving it if it wasn't as fast a second claimed), and the buyer should know how fast of a computer they are willing to buy at a given price.
- astrodust 9y agoYou sure do get a lot of suspiciously dusty gear from some of these vendors.
- arcticfox 9y agoThis doesn't make any sense at all as a major problem. Used vs. new is basically irrelevant as long as no one is lying about the hashrate. As long as the sale is immediate there's basically no problem at all there. The actual problem, especially in the past, was that you could pay for the hardware but not actually obtain it for months, by which point it was no longer profitable. Presumably, the manufacturers were using the hardware themselves during that period.
- SippinLean 9y agoIt was certainly a major problem, if you bought a new car but the dealer gave you one with 50k miles on it would you shrug it off if the gas mileage was still the same? At a basic level it's fraud. There are practical concerns as well, these machines are usually pretty poor quality and the immense heat + poor cooling typically means the chips will burn out one-by-one over time. The PSUs are especially poor and will burn out and need replacing as well. Getting a used ASIC means these will be problems sooner.