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I've read many comments that mining is not profitable, or barely.
Using the machines' data at Hardware Comparison in online mining calculators do show some with good profits. Am I missing something or misunderstanding the data? I only used the Mhash/s, watts, and price.
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The problem is that the difficulty rating is going up, and going up significantly. This happens for two reasons. First, the number of mining rigs increases as people try to get involved with Bitcoin mining. Second, ASIC-based miners which can run over 60GH/s using around 600W are just arriving in the market and once more generally available will cause a big leap in the difficulty.
Thanks. That makes sense. Is there any way to guess what the difficulty will increase to in order to input that into a calculator? – cookyjar – 2013-04-13T08:03:42.913
@cookyjar It requires you to predict the rate at which ASICs will come out and how fast those ASICs will be. Another factor is the change in the value of Bitcoins -- good luck predicting that. – David Schwartz – 2013-04-13T08:05:21.670
As David said it is hard to predict, however the current total network rate is around 55TH/s, so just 1,000 of these ASIC-based miners will double the rate and more likely it's going to go up 10-fold to 100-fold. – jgm – 2013-04-13T08:12:37.270
@David Schwartz I see. There are a number of factors. How efficient and how much profit will they still be with more difficulty... value of coins, etc. I keep thinking of those old hair dryers with "1200 Watts" prominently stamped on the sides. – cookyjar – 2013-04-13T08:17:47.867
@jgm That is interesting. Any idea what this may have, if anything, on the value of the coins? – cookyjar – 2013-04-13T08:21:01.020
Shouldn't have any impact on the value of the coins themselves. The network self-adjusts so that 1 block is solved roughly every 10 minutes regardless of the hash rate. – jgm – 2013-04-13T12:29:29.223