Questions tagged [mining-profitability]

The economics of mining operations.

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In the ASIC-age, is it worth starting mining Bitcoin at home?

I have recently learned about Bitcoin and would like to get rich quickly into mining. I have control of a laptop library full of ancient computers powerful gaming PC cluster of GPUs an old ASIC, I ...
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How much Bitcoin will I mine right now with hardware X?

Say I have a given piece of hardware (CPU/GPU). Where can I find out how much Bitcoin will I mine per day?
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Why doesn't the same miner always win?

If the miner with the strongest ability to solve the block wins, why doesn't the same miner win every time? Wouldn't that miner still have the strongest ability to perform the proof of work on the ...
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10 votes
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Why does mining profitability tend towards zero?

Why does mining profitability tend towards zero? Is it different for short term miners than it is for long term miners? Example: if I mine now and sell them next year, they may be worth more as ...
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How can I compute mining profitability? [duplicate]

It was asked elsewhere, but I'm re-asking the question in a less time sensitive way. Can you please list some of the techniques, charts, spreadsheets, calculators or other tools that help someone to ...
Joshua Kolden's user avatar
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Is Gpu mining still an option?

My friend asked me to do a research for him on bitcoin mining, I don't know a lot so I'm asking. He's consider buying either NVIDIA gtx titan or NVIDIA gtc 980. Decent motherboard and internet speed. ...
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Is CPU mining even worth it? [duplicate]

I would like to start mining, but my GPU isn't the greatest and I don't really want to spend the money on a dedicated rig. Is mining from my CPU (in a Linux environment) still worth it? Or will I not ...
nopcorn's user avatar
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Solo mining just for luck, realistic?

Just turned my attention to mining and the concepts are quite new to me. First of let me be clear: I realize that my hardware setup is far from ideal for mining. This is also the reason why I do not ...
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What are the odds of discovering a block as a solo miner?

I understand that during mining, one does not discover individual coins, but rather blocks of coins, and I heard that one block equals many coins (but how many?). I am wondering though, as a solo ...
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How does one calculate the profitability of GPU mining?

As GPU mining made CPU mining non-profitable, at some point in time more specialized mining hardwares (FPGA and ASIC) would make GPU mining non-profitable. When is GPU mining considered not-...
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What is pool hopping?

What is pool hopping and how do pool hoppers affect other miners? Are there ways to prevent it?
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What happens once the mining reward gets cut in half?

Sometime around the end of 2012 the mining reward is expected to be cut in half from 50BTC/block to 25BTC/block. What effect will this have? Doesn't this mean that it will be less economic to run a ...
Yuval Adam's user avatar
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Lottery Mining?

I know mining is extremely difficult now. I just wondering has anyone "won" by solo mining a block? How does the chances compare against say wining the lottery? Assume 3 Giga Hashes Per Second say.
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Is mining still profitable? [closed]

We all know that mining is supposed to keep the Bitcoin system secure. However, difficulty has risen so much that costs for power currently outstrip possible revenue for mining for a large portion of ...
Mononofu's user avatar
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Why are companies selling mining hardware instead of using it themselves?

I'm not (yet) using Bitcoin, and I'm just approaching this world as of now. I stumbled upon some merchants that sell mining hardware (with some GH/s). But I've yet to understand what they gain, apart ...
Helios's user avatar
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What is the incentive for continuing to mine bitcoin as we get very close to the 21 million cap?

The Investopedia article on Bitcoin explains the Bitcoin issuance schedule and how it's halved every four years. Currently, roughly 18.5 million have been mined, with the total cap being 21 million. ...
Aleksandr Hovhannisyan's user avatar
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4 answers
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Solo Mining vs Pool Mining for users with high computing power

Let's say that a user has a decent amount of computing power. At the current difficulty of 1777774.4820015, he could have for example 10Gh/s (he would earn around 5 BTC per day according to a ...
nmat's user avatar
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How would faster blocks cause mining centralization?

I've heard that faster blocks would cause mining to become more centralized. How do these things fit together?
Murch's user avatar
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How does a difficulty increase affect a miner's income?

At the time I write this, there are a lot of people getting into Bitcoin mining for the first time. Many buy ASIC hardware and are later surprised that their mining income suddenly drops due to a ...
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Mining profitability sounds too good, where is the catch?

I am a beginner looking into Bitcoin mining. I don't want to waste time (or electricity) so I started looking into hardware mining rigs, for example: Saturn priced at $3000 USD, 275GH/s, consumes ~...
mindbomb's user avatar
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How do cloud hashing companies profit? (leasing hashing power)

I think I'm missing something. There are a bunch of cloud hashing companies that lease hashing power. Let's take cointellect for example. They have contracts from 10 days to 24 months. If I buy a 10 ...
Coup de Grace's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
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How much is enough

I recently acquired a BTC mining package with total GH/s: 342.56 I realize it is small - but it is a start. What amount of GH/s is good for a beginner to start off with. Do I have a significant ...
Moondancer's user avatar
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Unlocking a Private Key from watch status

I received Some mining profits to my Blockchain. However the person who sent them to me send them to me with a private key. They then wanted me to send them money to unlock the private key. Does ...
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How much did I make in profit from Bitcoin rising in price [closed]

I bought $30.00 of Bitcoin. The price at that time was $6,896.00. The price now is $8,074.00. How much did I make? And how do I do the math?
Badrobot's user avatar
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Is there any point to casual mining?

Is there any point to casual mining anymore? I recently discovered bitcoin and was wondering if there was any point to running mining software on my laptop while I work on essays or other non-...
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Do these new ASIC miners really pay for themselves in 5 days?

The Bitforce 50GH/s miner costs $2,500 today, and according to the following calculation it would mine enough coins in about 5 days to pay for itself. I am sure I am missing something here. Why would ...
Simon's user avatar
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Will the amount of electricity used for mining be huge if Bitcoin is widely adopted?

A quick and very rough estimation: If the USD/BTC exchange rate grows to $1000/BTC (not that far-fetched if Bitcoin is actually widely adopted) bitcoins for a value of $300000 would be produced every ...
D.H.'s user avatar
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9 votes
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Pool Hopping Math

It's been discussed and argued at great length whether pool hopping is ethical, but there is no debate about whether it works - I even have some first hand experience that says it increases mining ...
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Is a cloud mining subscription worth it?

I just started investing in Bitcoin and before I actually implement it, I want to verify my strategy / steps. 1) I made a wallet account on blockchain. 2) I want to purchase subscription from ...
Taimoor Ali's user avatar
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1 answer
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Can I CPU mine other coins to win Bitcoins?

I have a useless Nvidia, until now, unconfigurable to mine (7300) So, if I mine just with CPU, can I get more coins mining others coins like NMC,LQC,LTC,SC, or whatever, and trading after for BTCs?
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What is the algorithm to create a Bitcoin mining calculator?

I want to know how I can calculate the profit of bitcoin mining in bitcoins. I am interested in the formula that is used by calculators. For example lets say I have 700mh/s hashrate, current ...
user1761818's user avatar
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What should I consider when deciding to whether or not to mine?

I go here http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator I put in the amount of hashing power I am willing to purchase, EG: 100 GH/s. It tells me I will make $2,094.25 a month. I am aware that the ...
user10251's user avatar
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3 answers
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Wouldn't the expected return of a mining pool be no more than solo mining?

I don't understand the advantages of pool mining if you want to maximize your return. It seems like all it does is even out your return to make it more predictable by paying you smaller amounts more ...
RentFree's user avatar
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What is the smallest fee you can pay for an on chain transaction?

From what I understand, the smallest fee you can pay to miners per transaction is 1 Sat/byte. With a basic Bitcoin transaction being roughly 250 bytes that would obviously mean the fee is 250 sats. ...
Joe's user avatar
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Will ASIC miners hold the network "hostage" and demand a fee for their services?

I can see a trend coming where miners will likely hold the network "hostage" by mining blocks with no transactions in them... even when the block reward nears zero. This would leave transactions in ...
makerofthings7's user avatar
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1 answer
472 views

Does mining power of different miners add up in mining pools?

I have this doubt regarding bitcoin mining, assuming I have two miners of hashpower 500 H/s . Can I add up my hashpower and make it work like a single processor of 1000H/s OR Both both miners would ...
Piyush Chittara's user avatar
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2 answers
914 views

How long to earn fractions of bitcoin [duplicate]

I started mining today, and I'm using the bitcoin GUI miner, along with rpc2013-cuda. I'm running algorithms on the CPU(completely maxed out - It's a core i7 quad-core/Hyperthreaded at 2.3GHz) and the ...
Pedro's user avatar
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18 votes
4 answers
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Can casual people still mine for bitcoins, now that the difficulty is much higher than it was?

Can casual people still mine for bitcoins? As of October 2012, the difficulty seems very high, being over 3,000,000. I've seen a ad for bitcoins, and watched the video. It said I could mine for them ...
Rook Ward's user avatar
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7 answers
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Do USA-based miners need to register with FinCEN?

As seen in recent news, FinCEN has issued a statement on its classification of virtual currencies: http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html Hypothetically suppose I mine ...
Streblo's user avatar
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Why are the mining rewards set to reduce in such dramatic steps?

The mining rewards are scheduled to drop from 50btc to 25btc. The next drop again will be from 25 to 12.5btc. In each of the steps into a new "era" the mining reward is reduced by 50%. This seems ...
Andrew Vit's user avatar
14 votes
2 answers
4k views

Is Lightning Network a risk for Bitcoin security since it reduces miner fees?

does LN represent a risk for the Bitcoin ecosystem since it will reduce miner fees (the only income they'll have in a post-btc-minting world) and displace them into second layers? I couldn't find any ...
joe.js's user avatar
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How to choose the most profitable pool?

Say I have a moderate amount of hashing power and I want to maximize my profit by using the pool that would give the best rewards for mining with them, what should I look at when choosing a pool?
ThePiachu's user avatar
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Calculating average number of hashes tried before hitting a valid block

I'm toying with the idea of starting to mine, and was wondering how to calculate how many hashes on average must be tried before one will "hit" a valid block? I'm talking about a single user (not a ...
Baard Kopperud's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
28k views

Equation for mining profit [duplicate]

I'm a newbie. What is the basic equation for computing profit from mining given gigahash per second of the miner, timeframe, miner costs, and current bitcoin economy stats like mining difficulty and ...
Troy toy's user avatar
8 votes
5 answers
9k views

Will expensive mining equipement have any worth in the future?

With more and more people picking up advanced ASIC miners, the difficulty is going up while the remaining coins are going down. If miners continue joining at this or a faster rate, the limit might be ...
ZCoder's user avatar
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7 votes
2 answers
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Has someone compared the cost of mining vs. that of brute-forcing addresses?

It is known that the type of computing power required for mining is the same used to generate addresses, and it is known that "in general" it is much more profitable to simply mine, rather than try to ...
o0'.'s user avatar
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7 votes
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How much energy will the Bitcoin network eventually consume? [duplicate]

A recent Bloomberg article stated that the Bitcoin network currently consumes about half as much energy as the Large Hadron Collider or enough to power 31,000 US homes. Even if the article is way off ...
Manish's user avatar
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Is there a uniform measure of "difficulty", that when multiplied by price, will give "profitability of one hour of mining"?

I recently open Bitcoin Pie, a site that compares crypto-currencies. Given the exchange rate in BTC, I would like to add another column that tells "relative mining profitability", regardless of the ...
ripper234's user avatar
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6 votes
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Is the current network difficulty algorithm appropriate for "Peak transaction-only mining"?

At some point in the future miners will depend more on the Tx fee than per-block payout. Right now people turn on and off their equipment based on local trends such as price of electricity, etc. On ...
makerofthings7's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
786 views

Does difficulty ever stop increasing?

I know we don't have to worry about this for a very long time, but... One argument against Bitcoin, and really, digital currencies as a whole, is that, in order to time blocks with reasonable ...
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