Cryptocurrencies

What cryptocurrencies do you use/own?

  • Bitcoin (XBT)

    Votes: 30 27.8%
  • Ether (ETH)

    Votes: 16 14.8%
  • Litecoin (LTC)

    Votes: 15 13.9%
  • Peercoin (PPC)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Dash (DASH)

    Votes: 3 2.8%
  • Dogecoin (XDG)

    Votes: 4 3.7%
  • Blackcoin (BLK)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Zcash (ZEC)

    Votes: 3 2.8%
  • Other

    Votes: 14 13.0%
  • None

    Votes: 69 63.9%

  • Total voters
    108
In my current premises I have a fixed electricity allowance. Due to retiring some servers etc. I have about 4 kWh going spare i.e. already paid for. How can I best make use of this power to profit? Don't mind shelling out a bit of money to get started.
 
For $4,000 (the rough cost of this heater) I can build a 4 x GTX 1080 Ti rig that makes about $400 / month vs their $120 / month for an investment of $3,750.
 
For $4,000 (the rough cost of this heater) I can build a 4 x GTX 1080 Ti rig that makes about $400 / month vs their $120 / month for an investment of $3,750.

Complete noob to mining here - a few questions if you don't mind?
  • what currency are you basing your calculation on?
  • Is that at today's price? ($8k \ BTC approx)
  • Is that revenue or profit?
  • What's your electricity cost?
 
For $4,000 (the rough cost of this heater) I can build a 4 x GTX 1080 Ti rig that makes about $400 / month vs their $120 / month for an investment of $3,750.

I suppose the main selling points are:
1) It's "perfectly noiseless" due to the entire thing being one huge aluminium heatsink. No fans at all.
2) Looks good aesthetically. If it wan't for the LED's and buttons you would just think it was a plain heater.
3) Minimal technical knowledge or setup required.
4) Concealed unit. No wires or circuit boards on display for people to poke at. It's likely going to be placed in a public area so this is important. Imagine a mining rig placed in a call centre with 50+ non tech staff having physical access to it. They'd have it broken within a few hours!

I still wouldn't even consider buying one myself, and think the price is extortionate, but we as techs are not target market. I think with more adoption and lower pricing "mining heaters" could become quite popular.
 
Complete noob to mining here - a few questions if you don't mind?
  • what currency are you basing your calculation on?
  • Is that at today's price? ($8k \ BTC approx)
  • Is that revenue or profit?
  • What's your electricity cost?
Don't mind :D

Currency is US dollars.
It's likely down now with the drop in BTC value, although it's creeping back up tonight. I mine Zcash with it.
That is revenue
Electricity is about $0.10 / kWh, works out to about $72 a month for a 4 card rig.
 
In my current premises I have a fixed electricity allowance. Due to retiring some servers etc. I have about 4 kWh going spare i.e. already paid for. How can I best make use of this power to profit? Don't mind shelling out a bit of money to get started.
If noise isn't an issue, you could buy 3 x Antminer S9s for about $6000, inc. PSU (+ shipping + duty). The S9 runs at a little over 1.3kW, so around 4kW for 3 of them. Combined, they should earn approximately 100mBTC (0.1BTC) per month (a little under $1000 at the current exchange rate), not counting electricity costs.

The Antminers s9s are very loud though, they're a riskier investment and they only mine one algorithm (SHA256). Unlike graphics cards which will likely retain some retail value, if the S9 becomes unprofitable to mine with, it could become practically worthless. Having said that, it would take a much more powerful/efficient ASIC miner (and a lot of them) to have a significant impact on the global SHA256 hashing power, which is already huge.

Something else to consider: As a business, you should be able to class some of the mining hardware purchases as a investment expense or stock. In the latter case, you could probably claim stock depreciation from a tax point of view. Any electricity used is a business running expense and what you earn through mining does not become liable for tax until you either spend it or convert it into fiat (that's the present situation in the UK at least, although taxing cryptocurrencies directly is pretty much an impossible task due to their anonymous nature).
 
If noise isn't an issue, you could buy 3 x Antminer S9s for about $6000, inc. PSU (+ shipping + duty). The S9 runs at a little over 1.3kW, so around 4kW for 3 of them. Combined, they should earn approximately 100mBTC (0.1BTC) per month (a little under $1000 at the current exchange rate), not counting electricity costs.

The Antminers s9s are very loud though, they're a riskier investment and they only mine one algorithm (SHA256). Unlike graphics cards which will likely retain some retail value, if the S9 becomes unprofitable to mine with, it could become practically worthless. Having said that, it would take a much more powerful/efficient ASIC miner (and a lot of them) to have a significant impact on the global SHA256 hashing power, which is already huge.

Something else to consider: As a business, you should be able to class some of the mining hardware purchases as a investment expense or stock. In the latter case, you could probably claim stock depreciation from a tax point of view. Any electricity used is a business running expense and what you earn through mining does not become liable for tax until you either spend it or convert it into fiat (that's the present situation in the UK at least, although taxing cryptocurrencies directly is pretty much an impossible task due to their anonymous nature).

I'd like to reduce noise if possible and would be OK to build a graphics rig. At the very least I could stick on of the cards in my gaming machine if the whole thing goes tits up!! I could reclaim the VAT on the purchase of the hardware and (I assume) offset the cost of leccy and depreciation against any profit.
 
Another good talk by Andreas, if you haven't already seen it (posted a little over a week ago and filmed at the Slush Conference in Helsinki a few months ago).

In this talk, Andreas delivers a message to entrepreneurs and startup founders about why they must be brave enough to innovate faster than incumbents can write the permission slips.

 
Plus they're using an old GPU, a GTX 980. We're almost about to see a replacement for the 10x0 line of GPUs.
I have a GTX 970 now and am eagerly awaiting some new hardware. I know the price is going to be ridiculous but I skipped a whole generation of card and then some.. It's been a great card running 3 monitors and some great gaming... getting older now though.
 
Think we'll see another big surge at the end of the year? I've been mining and holding a bunch of Zcash. A few months ago it was $600-$800 per coin. Now it's starting to test the $200 barrier :(
 
The surges and drops are difficult to predict since they're largely due to hype and FUD. It's also very difficult to predict which coins will ultimately fail and which will succeed. I try to keep a very diverse portfolio and watch the total market cap rather than the price of any individual coin. Statistically and historically speaking, I believe it has been observed that invariably the total market cap follows a pattern whereby it takes 2-3 times longer for it to recover and reach new record highs than it does to fall from those heights. I'm not sure whether that pattern will continue but my guess would be that we'll see new record highs before the year is out. And this time, due to greater adoption, they'll be sustainable highs. Considering that mainstream adoption hasn't really begun yet, I think that a total market cap of several trillion Dollars within a few years is highly likely.


ETA: If you take a look at the total market cap here, despite the surges and plunges, there's clear and consistent growth, especially considering in just 12 months it's gone from less than 25 billion to around 300 billion today. If you put the chart in log mode, it forms a near-linear growth line that suggests that the market is presently undervalued, making an imminent upward surge more likely.

Capture.PNG
 
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