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I find it humorous that Tiger Direct and Newegg are promoting Bitcoin mining with GPUS. The returns from such cards are so small now its not even worth mentioni

I find it humorous that Tiger Direct and Newegg are promoting Bitcoin mining with GPUS. The returns from such cards are so small now its not even worth mentioning. Even with a high end GPU you are only making around $0.96 a week. With the card costing $440 it'll take 8 years to make your money back, assuming the difficulty won't increase. Which it will so there is no hope of making a profit.

1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
Yes, mining is tricky, risky business, too much so for my blood. But, I think some find ways to ROI. But, you know, a merchant wouldn't stop selling pickaxes during a gold rush, just because the customer isn't profiting. I wouldn't expect online retailers too either.
- BlackDeath3 13y ago
  Did those merchants ever sell miners toothpicks?
  - columbo 13y ago
    In a manner of speaking yes. Would-be miners were sold all sorts of devices, potions, clothing, divining rods, measurements, maps, and sorting machines that all turned out to be completely unusable when applied in the field.
eudoxus 13y ago
Anyone who is mining with GPUs isnt mining Bitcoin, their mining the various other cryptocurrencies (known as altcoins) that use the scrypt hashing algorithm, Such Litecoin. See here the profitability of scrypt based coins, hint: It's alot http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
fallinghawks 13y ago
There's a strong market for other cryptocurrencies, such as Dogecoin.
smtddr 13y ago
>>The returns from such cards are so small now its not even worth mentioning. Well, I dunno about mining BTC specifically but I got a co-worker making about 0.45 - 0.6 BTC a month on a 2 GPU rig from Newegg at $1200. He's using the middlecoin.com pool which rotate-mines different altcoins, converts to BTC and pays out. The rig is on track to paying for itself soon and apparently his electric bill didn't shoot to the moon.
- ssmoot 13y ago
  It's tricky finding a reliable pool so you can "set it and forget it" for sure. It's an adventure: * First you need parts to build a system (and if you're ordering from Newegg good luck getting your "overnight" order in <5 business days). * Then you need to setup the software (hint: latest Ubuntu combined with latest Catalyst drivers is a world of frustration). * Then tune cgminer (which took me a few days between other obligations) which is somehow not a copy-paste job. * Then you spend a couple weeks fighting unreliable or hacked pools until you find something that works for you. And reliability matters a lot if you're using the most common PPLNS payout pools since every round you're not mining at 100% sets you back. I'd definitely recommend Proportional pools like middlecoin. The fees are higher (~+3% over PPLNS typically), but getting paid for 96% of your shares on something reliable is definitely preferable to 99% or even 100% of your shares, minus previous-round penalties (up to 20% or more?) on something unreliable. Anyways, here's what I've done with the three R290's I bought back in December: http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/reports/1PJcbzM3rFiBHPJMcp93XkYmSgGpLMZAxG.html http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/report... Thought peeps might be curious seeing it in concrete terms, and middlecoin's charts are the best IMO. Simple, everything you need, and nothing you don't. Once I switched to middlecoin (with multipool as a backup) I've earned almost 0.5BTC in 2.5 weeks. And (very) surprisingly, I don't seem to be suffering all that much due to rising difficulty (the brunt of that hit a week or two before I had everything going I guess). This doesn't include the balance I carry at multipool BTW, which I don't bother to do much with (Cryptsy: meh). Still, I'm planning to sell the system for what I paid for it (~$1800) tonight. It's made me some money, and that's nice, but wondering when the right time to sell (because of rising difficulty) is weighs on you a bit. And I figured if I can get my money back, well, it's been nice, but yeah, best get out while the gettin' is good. Especially with the possibility of ASICs hitting in a few months (even if they aren't faster, if their hashes-per-watt figures lure in even bigger miners, that's going to hurt). It's crazy to see cards I paid $409/each for (R290) go for up to 30% over what I paid a month or two before. I've never seen that happen in 20 years of messing with computers. I mean hell, I've never even got more than maybe 20 to 30% back of my initial purchase back on a PC before. Aside: That's one reason I love Macs so much since switching ~7 years ago: I can upgrade to the latest iPad every year for $100 out of pocket, and even a 3 or 4 year old laptop like my two MacBook Air's will easily retain 50 to 60% of their value. Which makes the whole financial/cost arguments against Macs pretty bogus (and believe me, I used it often enough myself as a PC fan in a past life), but I've definitely spent far less in TCO on my Macs than I did on my PCs. You just have to bite the bullet and get over the buy-in hump. Used Macs hold their value even better though. You might easily find a decent deal on a used Mac, use it for a year, then sell it for more than you bought it for. I did with my first (G3 I think) Mac Mini.
notatoad 13y ago
There are other reasons to buy graphics cards than just bitcoin mining. If you get $400 worth of enjoyment from the graphics card and $2 of revenue from mining, that's a profit.
geminitojanus 13y ago
> I find it humorous that Tiger Direct and Newegg are promoting Bitcoin mining with GPUS. Why wouldn't they? They both sell GPUs and have a large backlog of them. Somebody who isn't knowledgeable enough about the topic and wants to get in on the latest fad is likely to see that ad and jump on it. If I sold video cards for a living I'd be pushing them just as hard as I could too. "Bitcoin mining, OpenCL, desktop virtualization, they can do it all, come buy your video cards from me and not the other guy!"
sks 13y ago
Mining bitcoins may be non profitable, but I recovered my investment in less than 3 months of alt coin mining.
gigq 13y ago
Nobody GPU mines for bitcoin anymore (ASICs killed that long ago). My 2 year old ATI card makes $4/day mining litecoin or even $8/day mining dogecoin. If you want bitcoin you simply send the alt currency to an exchange and trade for bitcoin.

1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago

Yes, mining is tricky, risky business, too much so for my blood. But, I think some find ways to ROI. But, you know, a merchant wouldn't stop selling pickaxes during a gold rush, just because the customer isn't profiting. I wouldn't expect online retailers too either.

BlackDeath3 13y ago
Did those merchants ever sell miners toothpicks?
- columbo 13y ago
  In a manner of speaking yes. Would-be miners were sold all sorts of devices, potions, clothing, divining rods, measurements, maps, and sorting machines that all turned out to be completely unusable when applied in the field.

eudoxus 13y ago

Anyone who is mining with GPUs isnt mining Bitcoin, their mining the various other cryptocurrencies (known as altcoins) that use the scrypt hashing algorithm, Such Litecoin. See here the profitability of scrypt based coins, hint: It's alot http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

fallinghawks 13y ago

There's a strong market for other cryptocurrencies, such as Dogecoin.

smtddr 13y ago

>>The returns from such cards are so small now its not even worth mentioning. Well, I dunno about mining BTC specifically but I got a co-worker making about 0.45 - 0.6 BTC a month on a 2 GPU rig from Newegg at $1200. He's using the middlecoin.com pool which rotate-mines different altcoins, converts to BTC and pays out. The rig is on track to paying for itself soon and apparently his electric bill didn't shoot to the moon.

ssmoot 13y ago
It's tricky finding a reliable pool so you can "set it and forget it" for sure. It's an adventure: * First you need parts to build a system (and if you're ordering from Newegg good luck getting your "overnight" order in <5 business days). * Then you need to setup the software (hint: latest Ubuntu combined with latest Catalyst drivers is a world of frustration). * Then tune cgminer (which took me a few days between other obligations) which is somehow not a copy-paste job. * Then you spend a couple weeks fighting unreliable or hacked pools until you find something that works for you. And reliability matters a lot if you're using the most common PPLNS payout pools since every round you're not mining at 100% sets you back. I'd definitely recommend Proportional pools like middlecoin. The fees are higher (~+3% over PPLNS typically), but getting paid for 96% of your shares on something reliable is definitely preferable to 99% or even 100% of your shares, minus previous-round penalties (up to 20% or more?) on something unreliable. Anyways, here's what I've done with the three R290's I bought back in December: http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/reports/1PJcbzM3rFiBHPJMcp93XkYmSgGpLMZAxG.html http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/report... Thought peeps might be curious seeing it in concrete terms, and middlecoin's charts are the best IMO. Simple, everything you need, and nothing you don't. Once I switched to middlecoin (with multipool as a backup) I've earned almost 0.5BTC in 2.5 weeks. And (very) surprisingly, I don't seem to be suffering all that much due to rising difficulty (the brunt of that hit a week or two before I had everything going I guess). This doesn't include the balance I carry at multipool BTW, which I don't bother to do much with (Cryptsy: meh). Still, I'm planning to sell the system for what I paid for it (~$1800) tonight. It's made me some money, and that's nice, but wondering when the right time to sell (because of rising difficulty) is weighs on you a bit. And I figured if I can get my money back, well, it's been nice, but yeah, best get out while the gettin' is good. Especially with the possibility of ASICs hitting in a few months (even if they aren't faster, if their hashes-per-watt figures lure in even bigger miners, that's going to hurt). It's crazy to see cards I paid $409/each for (R290) go for up to 30% over what I paid a month or two before. I've never seen that happen in 20 years of messing with computers. I mean hell, I've never even got more than maybe 20 to 30% back of my initial purchase back on a PC before. Aside: That's one reason I love Macs so much since switching ~7 years ago: I can upgrade to the latest iPad every year for $100 out of pocket, and even a 3 or 4 year old laptop like my two MacBook Air's will easily retain 50 to 60% of their value. Which makes the whole financial/cost arguments against Macs pretty bogus (and believe me, I used it often enough myself as a PC fan in a past life), but I've definitely spent far less in TCO on my Macs than I did on my PCs. You just have to bite the bullet and get over the buy-in hump. Used Macs hold their value even better though. You might easily find a decent deal on a used Mac, use it for a year, then sell it for more than you bought it for. I did with my first (G3 I think) Mac Mini.

notatoad 13y ago

There are other reasons to buy graphics cards than just bitcoin mining. If you get $400 worth of enjoyment from the graphics card and $2 of revenue from mining, that's a profit.

geminitojanus 13y ago

> I find it humorous that Tiger Direct and Newegg are promoting Bitcoin mining with GPUS. Why wouldn't they? They both sell GPUs and have a large backlog of them. Somebody who isn't knowledgeable enough about the topic and wants to get in on the latest fad is likely to see that ad and jump on it. If I sold video cards for a living I'd be pushing them just as hard as I could too. "Bitcoin mining, OpenCL, desktop virtualization, they can do it all, come buy your video cards from me and not the other guy!"

sks 13y ago

Mining bitcoins may be non profitable, but I recovered my investment in less than 3 months of alt coin mining.

gigq 13y ago

Nobody GPU mines for bitcoin anymore (ASICs killed that long ago). My 2 year old ATI card makes $4/day mining litecoin or even $8/day mining dogecoin. If you want bitcoin you simply send the alt currency to an exchange and trade for bitcoin.