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A comment on Ask HN: I'm late to the crypto currencies boom, what are my options?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: I'm late to the crypto currencies boom, what are ... by jrs95 on Friday August 11, 2017 @11:05AM (#14990367)
What about GPU mining ETH and others via something like nicehash? Is this a reasonably safe bet (relative to just buying the coins outright)? I'm mostly looking at it as a means of building a new workstation and have it pay for itself over the course of a year or so while I'm not using it.
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Re:Ask HN: I'm late to the crypto currencies boom, what are ... by jliptzin on Friday August 11, 2017 @11:07AM (#14990402)
Unless you are situated next to a hydro electric power station that provides very cheap electricity stay away from this. you will build a rig then as the difficulty goes up you'll watch all your profit eaten away by electricity costs.
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Re:Ask HN: I'm late to the crypto currencies boom, what are ... by jrs95 on Friday August 11, 2017 @01:35PM (#14992311)
Yeah, I was sort of concerned about what 20xx Nvidia cards could end up doing to the difficulty. I'm really only considering it because I'd also use those cards for other things.
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Re:Ask HN: I'm late to the crypto currencies boom, what are ... by where_do_i_live on Friday August 11, 2017 @11:08AM (#14990408)
A year? the ROI for that would be like 5 years - you over-estimate the profits currently. It was profitable back in March far more than it is now - the gold rush with mining is over.
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Re:Ask HN: I'm late to the crypto currencies boom, what are ... by jrs95 on Friday August 11, 2017 @01:38PM (#14992346)
Based on my electricity costs it looked like it should be a little over 8 cents an hour for a ~$500 GPU, but I could've had something wrong there.
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Re:Ask HN: I'm late to the crypto currencies boom, what are ... by where_do_i_live on Friday August 11, 2017 @02:23PM (#14992763)
Sure, but how much crypto currency are you going to get out of it from a pool? if you get 8.1 cents per hour, well that's not exactly that exciting.

I've been a miner for years, and I'd recommend you take a look at your expectation of profit, it is profitable still, but get ready to be disappointed.

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Re:Ask HN: I'm late to the crypto currencies boom, what are ... by xur17 on Friday August 11, 2017 @11:25AM (#14990597)
If you're going to use the video card anyways, mining will easily cover the electricity cost of mining in most areas, and can be a decent way to cover part of the cost of the card.

That said, I wouldn't buy video cards specifically for mining unless you have access to very cheap (or free) electricity.

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Re:Ask HN: I'm late to the crypto currencies boom, what are ... by jrs95 on Friday August 11, 2017 @01:52PM (#14992495)
What is "cheap" though exactly? In my area, costs vary a lot, between 3.5 and 10.5 cents per KWh
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Re:Ask HN: I'm late to the crypto currencies boom, what are ... by xur17 on Friday August 11, 2017 @02:01PM (#14992578)
It's profitable at most electricity rates:

https://whattomine.com

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