Mining Cryptocurrency..?

[Anonymous]

Just wondering if any of you have tried doing this..?

Some of you may have noticed that AMD some Nvidia GPU prices have gone up and stock is low. This is primarily down to Cryptocurrency miners building machines to mine Cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and Etherium.

The way it works is this - mathematical formulas are solved by your hardware and for each one that gets solved you get a part of a Bitcoin or whichever Cryptocurrency you've chosen to mine.

1 Bitcoin is currently worth around $2500 and like traditional currency the value spikes up and down, but unlike the US Dollar or Pound Sterling there is only going to be 21m of these things made which practically guarantees that they're going to rise in value because as each one is made there are going to be less of them available to mine, making them rarer.

They reckon all Bitcoins will be made by 2040 but I can personally see that date being MUCH earlier as more people get into it.

I'm going to be doing my Bitcoin mining by using a company called Swiss Gold Global as soon as I can get some Photo ID to get the ball rolling. You basically pay them between $30-2500 to use their hardware and by my calculations you'll break even after 5 or 6 months. But as you start to get parts of Bitcoins paid into your account you can compound that Bitcoin by paying for for more processing power with that Bitcoin , earning you more Bitcoin.

Some (sensible) estimates have put the value of 1 Bitcoin being worth $40,000 at the end of the run, and some RIDICULOUS estimates are saying $1m lol.

I'm going to be at retirement age in around 20 years time so am going to give this a go I reckon, but I'm not going to put my house on it or anything...and if any of you guys try this out please do so at your own risk. I'm not a qualified financial adviser and this thread is NOT giving any sort of financial advice. Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies may all end up being WORTHLESS TOMORROW for all I know so don't invest more than you afford to lose!

You might even see governments and banks doing something to kill this all off because once people start getting their wages paid in Bitcoin or other Cryptocurrencies and paying bills and rent with them these banks and governments will lose A LOT of money. 😮

[kojack]

kojack said:

Sometimes I think about the fact that I have access to 200+ computers and don't pay the electricity bill for them... but I would never do that.
(Set them up as a distributed ray tracer or genetic algorithm servers? Maybe. But not mining)

Although most of them are imacs, so I'd probably get bored of them long before earning any money.

I was thinking about buying a bitcoin ATM and setting it up at my college. I can set it to take a percentage of all transactions. Except:
- my college might not like that
- students are too poor to be playing around with bitcoins
- there's only one other bitcoin ATM in my city, and it was seized by the police because it was used as part of a bikie drug ring. So there's a negative image to them.
- to really get money I'd need the public to be using it, which would be against campus rules.

[kevinw729]

Funny you should be discussing this – was doing some research of my own into this sector. Particularly the validity of the currency mining operations. The research part for my own attempt to have a go, and that our industry is looking at accepting cryptocurrency as payment on some transactions.

I came across a good introduction for those not getting their heads round what they represent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktK6Yx3_czs

[Zenbane]

An alternative view of this type of investment from a popular finance dude...

Billionaire investor Marks, who called the dotcom bubble, says bitcoin is a 'pyramid scheme'

Howard Marks, one of the most respected value investors out there, starkly warned his clients to avoid high-flying digital currencies.

"In my view, digital currencies are nothing but an unfounded fad (or perhaps even a pyramid scheme), based on a willingness to ascribe value to something that has little or none beyond what people will pay for it," Marks wrote in the investor letter Wednesday.

The co-chairman of Oaktree Capital is famous for his prescient investment memos, which predicted the financial crisis and the dotcom bubble implosion.

The manager then went on to compare cryptocurrencies to the Tulip mania of 1637, the South Sea bubble of 1720 and the internet bubble of 1999.

"Serious investing consists of buying things because the price is attractive relative to intrinsic value," he wrote. "Speculation, on the other hand, occurs when people buy something without any consideration of its underlying value or the appropriateness of its price."

Source:
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/26/billionaire-investor-marks-who-called-the-dotcom-bubble-says-bitcoin-...

[nalex66]

"Pyramid scheme" was what went through my head when I read the OP.

@snowdog, before you get in too deep with these Swiss cryptobankers with hearts of gold, you might want to test that you can take what you've mined and walk away. You can always bring it back later if it's all good, but if you encounter unexpected resistance, then that's a sign that they're milking you and you'll never get your money out.

[Anonymous]

nalex66 said:

"Pyramid scheme" was what went through my head when I read the OP.

@snowdog, before you get in too deep with these Swiss cryptobankers with hearts of gold, you might want to test that you can take what you've mined and walk away. You can always bring it back later if it's all good, but if you encounter unexpected resistance, then that's a sign that they're milking you and you'll never get your money out.

It's okay, I know someone that has given this a go and it has worked out fine. Swiss Gold Global are having IT issues at the moment though so haven't paid any daily payments for a few days but they're working on fixing the issue and will pay out the Bitcoin once it's done.

The cryptocurrency markets have been crashing for a couple of weeks, probably due to the change to Bitcoin that's going to happen on 1st August. Every Bitcoin unit has a header (pointing to another Bitcoin) and an area for calculations (which create Bitcoins). Someone realised that the area for calculations isn't big enough so they need to increase the size of it. Now when this happens (as far as I understand it) if not enough people mining support this new and bigger calculation area the Bitcoin will end up splitting into 2 different Bitcoins (known as a hard fork) so a lot of people are panicking and selling their Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies which of course is lowering the value of them.

Haven't got my Photo ID yet and by the time I sort it out 1st August would have passed and I'll get some sort of idea where the Bitcoin situation is heading.

[elboffor]

Whilst i agree its an elaborate pyramod scheme, you are very very mis informed @Zenbane

Howard marks never said anything about crypto currency.

He was too busy smoking hash and smuggling the herb into the uk.

[Syrellaris]

Meh in my opinion these Digital Currency will eventually burn out and become useless.

[Percy1983]

With the cost of energy in the UK its not really worth doing.

But I figured on thing, in the good old gold rush who were the winners? the guys selling the shovels.

So I have dropped one of my 290xs from my crossfire and its now on ebay for what I paid for it years ago.

[cybereality]

Been mining for a month. Made $600 so far. Seems nice, but I just got my electricity bill and it was over $300!!!! Still a gain I guess, but maybe not worth it considering what I invested in the parts. Will try this month to mine without my AC on, I think that was what consumed most of the electricity (and hopefully the rig won't go up in smoke).

[CrashFu]

I really don't understand how this made-up digital currency can be worth so much money. Like.. WHY does it have value in the first place?  Seems like something PCMR people made up just to justify their otherwise pointless hardware expenses...

Stock investments/trading seems like a more practical pursuit.  Granted, sometimes that doesn't make any sense either.. for example, AMD announces record high profits and their stock drops by about three dollars over the following weeks??

Hmm. Maybe I'd be better off just investing my money in the nearest slot-machine???