Best way to obtain/earn bitcoins

Question

I would like to know what bitcoin enthusiasts and experts would suggest me for earning or mining my first BTC. I own some BTC but the idea of mining is a lot more exciting.

I read some articles but it seems to me that I have already missed the big "boom" of mining year or two ago, when you could mine with GPU or even CPU. Some people say, that investing into ASIC miner is a non-sense because it takes a long time to deliver and during this time the difficulty of network increases and when the ASIC miner finally arrives, you are satisfied when you don't loose money at the end.

So my question is how do you mine? What is the best way to earn few bitcoins and don't loose money?

This is quiet exciting article that I read months ago, which turned out in great ROI.

EDIT: I would like to know, if it is good time to start mining for someone who haven't done that yet.

Answer 1

Mining was never supposed to be profitable. And it's a derivative of bitcoin which is already risky speculation.

Don't add the extra, annoying risk-without-an-upside of wondering whether BFL will ship your machine in time to turn a profit. Even they state that there's no guarantee that their machines are profitable.

If you are sure that the price of bitcoin will go up, or even if you're not sure and you just want to take a bigger risk with more money, just buy more bitcoin.

Answer 2

For me the Best solution is to mine Scrypt based currencies like Litecoin etc.
You can mine them easily with common Graphic cards which are easily available. You can than trade these currencies for Bitcoin if you want.
It will probably take more than a year before first Asics for Scrypt will be available. So you still have some time left. Even when asics arrive your Graphic cards will still have some value and can be used for something else (i.e. gaming).

Answer 3

Bitcoin mining has become an industry and is no longer a viable path for home users to earn cheap coins. At best it is a financially risky and expensive hobby. Especially with the current low price, it is a very competitive market, and not one that I would recommend anyone to enter on a whim.

Instead, buy bitcoins directly from a reputable source, offer a service or goods for Bitcoin, or add a Bitcoin address to content that you are producing on the web, where people can send you a donation as a "Thank you!".

@Keith Wolters' answer:
I have trouble understanding how Cloud Mining could actually be a legitimate business. (If you do know, please enlighten us all on: How do cloud hashing companies profit? (leasing hashing power)).

I'd suggest, one might rather stay clear from Cloud Mining unless one has done more research than I have and is still convinced that they actually do have some sort of business.

Answer 4

If you do want to mine, one way to do so without a capital investment is to use a contract mining site such as cex.io or cloudhashing.com. With cex.io at least you trade ghash/sec capacity allowing you to sell you ghash depending on price vs deifficulty or whatever metric you choose to use.