Hi guys, any advice?

Hey everyone, I’m not entirely “new” to mining crypto-currency but I haven’t really thought seriously about it until now, and I just want some advice as to what I should do.

I’ve used Profitability calculators for FTC and other similar currencies and from the calculations it seems a no-brainer to get some nice hardware (a handful of 7950’s in my case) and set them up to mine in the garage (gets extremely cold in there so nice and cold for the cards running on max intensity!)

But everywhere I look people are saying “don’t bother mining” and “you’re better off giving up” e.t.c but I can’t see what’s so bad about it;

In my case I plan on getting 3-4 7950’s at Â£170 each which would be a total of Â£680 and maybe allow Â£200 for other hardware to run it on so let’s say Â£900 for the total setup and ofcourse I factor in the cost of the electricity and it works out that I break even in just over 2 months of constant mining for FTC.

Even if the mining turns sour I still have 4 nice 7950’s to sit on so I can’t really see what the downside is here

…anyone care to input anything to give me some guidance on what path I should chose I’d greatly appreciate it :)

Kevlar

The argument is simple: What you will pay for in electricity and hardware you will not recoup the value of UNLESS the price goes way up later. Assuming the price IS going to go way up, you’re probably better off purchasing them, as the cost you will pay will be significantly less than your upfront cost of hardware + your ongoing cost of electricity.

Now, is that true? It’s impossible to say. The price could go up 1,000% like in the case of Bitcoin, or it could not. If it does, the difficulty is sure to increase, driving your production rate down, making a quick investment more profitable over the long term because you’ll be holding more for the gain. Or, it could go up 20%, at which point you probably made a good choice to mine because you can recoup your costs over the long haul. It could also go down.

Either way, you are speculating. But unlike most speculative markets, it’s entirely possible to have a TON of influence over the price long term. The thing that drives up the price the most is adoption, and the thing that drives adoption is utility, and the thing that drives utility is services, and acceptance, which means people using it like a currency. This means YOU are more in control of the price than you may at first realize. By using them as a currency to buy things, you’re encouraging adoption. By mining them, you’re helping to secure the blockchain. Both these things affect the price greatly, especially when it’s you and the rest of the community working together to achieve what one person can’t.

You really can’t take the short term perspective on this. Look at the market, look at the demand, look at the community, look at the price, look at the fundamentals, and make a choice that best aligns with your viewpoint.

And if all else fails, you can always game on them.

Welcome, glad to have you! :)

As the difficulty goes up, you might find that your income from mining might decrease so it’s always a risk to buy hardware to mine.

In 2 months, the difficulty could increase many times, so I would take that calculation with a grain of salt.