hardware for bitcoin: is it worth it in 2021?

[DiTBho]

This morning I was looking for a crypt-processor to offload some task to my poor SBC linux, I don't know what I did and what I typed, but after having Googled for a couple of hours, I got this promotional link in all the banners opened on the top web pages.

Why?What? And how they know my wishes?

I don't know, but as far as I have understood, it's not the VPN crypt-processor I am looking for, but rather a weird beast that now makes me wonder why someone would come into the need of that thing in 2021.

It looks you have to invest hardware for bitcoin: is it's worth it in 2021? most bitcoins have been already mined, and only a few are still hidden somewhere in the mathematical world ... and to find these residuals you need advanced hardware that will cost you an eye and a leg and will make you electricity bill very salt.


Anyway, this is what I *feel* without any scientific support under my nose, and I may be completely wrong.

The questions here are:
1) is it really worth it in 2021? to make some profit?
2) if #1 is True, then ... which hardware solution is the best?

[alpher]

I think that minning straight BTC at this time it's a lost cause, but you should definitely check this site:
https://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

[SVFeingold]

Depends on many things. High performance GPUs are generally the way to go. There was a rig I saw recently with ~78 Nvidia RTX 3080s that pulls in about $12-13k/month at current prices. Of course, that rig will cost you >$60k in upfront capital, just for the GPUs. Nevermind the power requirements.

Mind you that's $20k today. If BTC drops back to $10k then that becomes $3k. Much longer payoff. The math is only getting harder, regardless of the price.

As for power...78x 3080s will draw somewhere in the neighborhood of 25kW. That's ~208A of my 200A service. Don't turn the stove on...

For me in CA, 600 kwH per day * 30 days = 18MWh, which will cost me oh...$5k in electric bills alone. Likely much more w/ peak pricing.

But of course you don't need to go to that extreme. A few GPUs might make you a few tens of dollars per day. Maybe. If the price stays high. So is it worth it? Probably not, unless you have a lot of money to spare, and have really cheap electricity. If you happen to have your own solar farm then the math works out better.

[Syntax Error]

With BTC at $30K+ right now, mining is certainly attractive. But from the UK? Don't even think about it. Not even hashing for alt coins. Do the financial math before you do the crypto math. You'll be burning your money and making someone less skilled a lot richer.
Kind of ironic that what was meant to be a democratic currency free of control from banks and states, that would be mineable by everyone, is now 2/3rds under the centralized authority of the Chinese government. As for ETH, that's now decentralized into the hands of a few corporations.

Go invent something new. And take 100% ownership.

[SiliconWizard]

Even at $30k, is it worth mining it? Due to its nature, it's taking more and more resources per bitcoin to mine.
I'd be curious to see what the sweet spot would be to make some profit, if you take the initial investment AND the power consumption into account.

Not that I necessarily promote speculating, but I'd think at this point you'd make more profit with a lot less hassle just trading bitcoins rather than mining them. Just a thought, again I'd be curious to see realistic figures regarding mining.

[edy]

It's more profitable to create bitcoin mining malware and unleash it on the world, so that will infect 1,000,000 computers but add only 10% additional CPU load in the background so it doesn't necessarily annoy the user. I believe this is already being tried to monetize websites.

But seriously, isn't there an electricity cost factor now that is creating a barrier to profitable mining? Even if the hardware was free, isn't electricity cost the issue? Perhaps if you mine coin in a cold country next to a hydroelectric dam where electricity is cheap and you can pull the extra heat off the miners to replace your heating costs, it may be worth it.

NOTE: You may want to mine other cryptocurrency that is cheaper, easier to mine at this point. Once bitcoin "taps out" you may have better risk/benefit with others.

[tszaboo]

Even at $30k, is it worth mining it? Due to its nature, it's taking more and more resources per bitcoin to mine.
I'd be curious to see what the sweet spot would be to make some profit, if you take the initial investment AND the power consumption into account.

Not that I necessarily promote speculating, but I'd think at this point you'd make more profit with a lot less hassle just trading bitcoins rather than mining them. Just a thought, again I'd be curious to see realistic figures regarding mining.

Sure it is worth it. You just need to burn subsidized coal end ruin the environment, divert your most high-end production lines to calculate useless numbers, this. Instead of using those GPUs for genetics folding, simulation, or you know, something useful. We waste more energy than the country of Switzerland for running this bullshit. I mean, look at this:

Yes, it is exactly what you think it is. Highly intelligent aliens would see us, we wouldn't be able to explain any of this to them. Probably they would just blast us from orbit, making sure this stupidity doesn't infect others.

[Bud]

But seriously, isn't there an electricity cost factor now that is creating a barrier to profitable mining?

It is not if the goal is to hold to the mined coins long term. Look where BTC was 4 years back and where it is now.

[Syntax Error]

@NANDblog a cryptofarm is what the aliens really built on Mars in Total Recall, but abandoned it after they had to pay for the electricity.

@bud HODL ( hold on for dear life ) and hope some DF down the line will buy your wallet before Greta Thunberg raises an army to trash the crypto (coal) miners.

It's an irony that the freedom loving coffee drinker who pays in BTC, is oblivious their crappuchino produces more CO2 in blockchain nonce mangling, than a 787 on take off.

Some interesting metrics: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

[NiHaoMike]

Instead of using those GPUs for genetics folding, simulation, or you know, something useful.

There are altcoins that do useful work for mining them - Curecoin and Foldingcoin, which both use Folding@Home for mining. Only a small amount of energy is used purely to run the blockchain.

There are other altcoins that are a lot more efficient than Bitcoin as far as mining is concerned, I have mined several of those over the years. Sadly, they generally don't remain profitable to mine over the long run, either the coin crashes in value or the difficulty rises to the point where they're no longer energy efficient. I still have an old Nexus 7 (with a bad touchscreen) mining Swagbucks, making about $10/month at current difficulty while using about 3.2W. I used to have several more cheap smartphones and tablets mining, but the coins they were mining have become unprofitable. (What's interesting about Swagbucks is that it uses Scrypt as the hash algorithm, but does a trick with memory use based on the miner's IP address to "deparallelize" it. Thus it is "GPU resistant" and "ASIC resistant" because the memory requirements to parallelize it by any significant degree would very quickly rise to impractical levels. It's also somewhat sensitive to latency to the pool, at some point that ends up dominating performance so it doesn't make sense to mine it with a Ryzen.)

What I would like to see is an altcoin that's "mined" using bandwidth, where the primary purpose is to make a P2P Youtube alternative that incentivizes people to run "cache nodes" based on Raspberry Pi and similar.

[Halcyon]

No.

[daqq]

There are other altcoins that are a lot more efficient than Bitcoin as far as mining is concerned, I have mined several of those over the years. Sadly, they generally don't remain profitable to mine over the long run, either the coin crashes in value or the difficulty rises to the point where they're no longer energy efficient.

I'm kind of confused here. Is there any real application for them then?

I mean, I get that BTC can be an alternative payment method, but in reality it has turned into a tulip fest with a niche in illegal goods payments and an insane power demand. And in theory all of these altcoins can be used as a payment method as well, but aren't they at this point "look I just changed the magic number, the concept remains the same"-bucks with no realistic future?

[tszaboo]

Instead of using those GPUs for genetics folding, simulation, or you know, something useful.

There are altcoins that do useful work for mining them - Curecoin and Foldingcoin, which both use Folding@Home for mining. Only a small amount of energy is used purely to run the blockchain.

There are other altcoins that are a lot more efficient than Bitcoin as far as mining is concerned, I have mined several of those over the years. Sadly, they generally don't remain profitable to mine over the long run, either the coin crashes in value or the difficulty rises to the point where they're no longer energy efficient. I still have an old Nexus 7 (with a bad touchscreen) mining Swagbucks, making about $10/month at current difficulty while using about 3.2W. I used to have several more cheap smartphones and tablets mining, but the coins they were mining have become unprofitable. (What's interesting about Swagbucks is that it uses Scrypt as the hash algorithm, but does a trick with memory use based on the miner's IP address to "deparallelize" it. Thus it is "GPU resistant" and "ASIC resistant" because the memory requirements to parallelize it by any significant degree would very quickly rise to impractical levels. It's also somewhat sensitive to latency to the pool, at some point that ends up dominating performance so it doesn't make sense to mine it with a Ryzen.)

What I would like to see is an altcoin that's "mined" using bandwidth, where the primary purpose is to make a P2P Youtube alternative that incentivizes people to run "cache nodes" based on Raspberry Pi and similar.

Of course it is not profitable, the entire systems are based on the pyramid scheme. Something that is illegal is several countries, because it is one of the most basic scams. The average energy consumption for one single Bitcoin transaction in 2020 was 741 kilowatt-hours. That's as much electricity as people use in months. If you would get your salary in it, your carbon footprint would double-triple. That's how insane this is.

[Mechatrommer]

spending budget on burger sale or fishing equipment could be much more profitable.

[Halcyon]

There are other altcoins that are a lot more efficient than Bitcoin as far as mining is concerned, I have mined several of those over the years. Sadly, they generally don't remain profitable to mine over the long run, either the coin crashes in value or the difficulty rises to the point where they're no longer energy efficient.

I'm kind of confused here. Is there any real application for them then?

I mean, I get that BTC can be an alternative payment method, but in reality it has turned into a tulip fest with a niche in illegal goods payments and an insane power demand. And in theory all of these altcoins can be used as a payment method as well, but aren't they at this point "look I just changed the magic number, the concept remains the same"-bucks with no realistic future?

Basically.

In Australia, instantaneous intra-bank payments have been a thing for years and costs you nothing. That in itself largely eliminated the need for cryptocurrencies. Crypto is all well and good while they are worth something (and you didn't pay for them, either directly or indirectly).

[NiHaoMike]

I'm kind of confused here. Is there any real application for them then?

Just many attempts at solving the main problem with Bitcoin. Most were not successful since that's a hard problem to solve, but Swagbucks (which is a fork of Litecoin which in turn is a fork of Bitcoin) has been profitable for me to mine for over 5 years. It has a lot of other problems that I don't like, but I still mine it because it's profitable.

And in theory all of these altcoins can be used as a payment method as well, but aren't they at this point "look I just changed the magic number, the concept remains the same"-bucks with no realistic future?

Hence why I'm pushing for altcoins that do something useful apart from the currency itself. Curecoin and Foldingcoin use medical research as the "hard work" of mining, while my proposed idea of "mining" with bandwidth creates a P2P Youtube alternative that encourages the network to grow.

The average energy consumption for one single Bitcoin transaction in 2020 was 741 kilowatt-hours. That's as much electricity as people use in months. If you would get your salary in it, your carbon footprint would double-triple. That's how insane this is.

Most of that energy goes towards making new Bitcoins, would be interesting to see what happens when the making of new Bitcoins phases out and all the miners get are the transaction fees. It would definitely cause the mining efforts to scale back a lot, not sure if that would completely crash it or if it would adapt and finally become a sustainable system.

[Mr. Scram]

As far as I know the age of mining Bitcoin with GPUs is long gone. You need to invest in ASICs and hope no one beats you to it before you recoup your investment. You also need cheap power on an industrial scale. Domestic power is way too expensive. It's a big boy game individuals play no role in.

[Mr. Scram]

Basically.

In Australia, instantaneous intra-bank payments have been a thing for years and costs you nothing. That in itself largely eliminated the need for cryptocurrencies. Crypto is all well and good while they are worth something (and you didn't pay for them, either directly or indirectly).

The pitch and appeal never was replacing instantaneous intra-bank payments. The value of cryptocurrencies is similar to that of fiat currency. As long as people believe they have value, they do. There's nothing more or less substantial about a dollar than a Bitcoin, except maybe the former can be minted at will.

[NiHaoMike]

As far as I know the age of mining Bitcoin with GPUs is long gone. You need to invest in ASICs and hope no one beats you to it before you recoup your investment. You also need cheap power on an industrial scale. Domestic power is way too expensive. It's a big boy game individuals play no role in.

Unless you buy used ASICs for far less than the cost of new ones and have a source of fixed rate electricity to run them. That includes dorm rooms and a few apartments with electricity included in rent as well as those who have surplus alternative energy at home but no net metering or those who are exceeding the rollover cap for net metering.

In that situation, I would opt for buying used servers instead and mining Monero or earnhoney, since at least the servers would be useful for other stuff if it turns out mining wasn't worth it.

[Mr. Scram]

Unless you buy used ASICs for far less than the cost of new ones and have a source of fixed rate electricity to run them. That includes dorm rooms and a few apartments with electricity included in rent as well as those who have surplus alternative energy at home but no net metering or those who are exceeding the rollover cap for net metering.

In that situation, I would opt for buying used servers instead and mining Monero or earnhoney, since at least the servers would be useful for other stuff if it turns out mining wasn't worth it.

If ASICs are sold you can bet they're not very useful any more. You'd be better off serving burgers at your local McDonald's. Mining with servers hasn't been profitable since the early days. Being naive in this game will cost you either a chunk of cash or time, or both.

[ebastler]

[...] and have a source of fixed rate electricity to run them. That includes dorm rooms and a few apartments with electricity included in rent as well as those who have surplus alternative energy at home but no net metering or those who are exceeding the rollover cap for net metering.

In that situation, I would opt for [...]

Have you considered smelting aluminum or growing cannabis? 
There's more than one way to (ab)use free electricity...

[NiHaoMike]

If ASICs are sold you can bet they're not very useful any more. You'd be better off serving burgers at your local McDonald's. Mining with servers hasn't been profitable since the early days. Being naive in this game will cost you either a chunk of cash or time, or both.

Those would be the ASICs that have become cheap because they're not profitable to *most*. Likewise, the servers would also be extra cheap because they're inefficient. It wasn't too long ago when it was profitable to mine earnhoney on a Sandy Bridge, if I could get electricity at a flat rate or surplus electricity that would go wasted if not used, I would still be mining it.

Have you considered smelting aluminum or growing cannabis? 
There's more than one way to (ab)use free electricity...

Smelting aluminum in an apartment doesn't sound very safe to me. Growing cannabis would be an option if it's legal in that area, but then it would be a lot easier to just grow it in your backyard and not have to depend on artificial light at all.

I don't call it "free" electricity because the rent is significantly higher than similar properties without electricity included in rent. It's quite significant, as in you generally have to run quite a bit to end up paying less than if you paid for the electricity separately. Something like 2kW running 24/7 was the break even point back in 2009, I'm sure it has went up because of crypto mining.

I remember one time a company that made an app to get free music legally (keep in mind that was before Bitcoin, 2008 or so) by using your computer to do work in exchange. It targeted university students (who often pirated music, which made them prime targets for the RIAA) to try to offer an alternative to piracy. It didn't catch on largely because prior to cryptocurrencies, there was little demand for computation that exposed your data to random strangers. Had that started a few years later, the outcome likely would have been way different.

[SVFeingold]

The whole Bitcoin thing has been a pretty hilarious exercise in watching people lose thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars and as a result slowly reinventing the entirety of our modern banking system, which was supposedly the evil organization to begin with.

"Oh, I guess it's nice that banks remember where your money is so you don't lose a million dollars because you forgot your password."

Aside from that though, I genuinely had no idea how absurdly power-intensive Bitcoin usage was. I mean it's reasonably straightforward to ballpark it if you think about it, but I never did. ~700kWh per bitcoin? Holy hell.

[james_s]

The whole thing has always struck me as a pointless exercise and almost criminally wasteful of natural resources. Huge amounts of fossil fuels have been expended and millions of tons of e-waste produced doing useless mathematical busy work generating something that is as volatile in value as any collectible and not even tangible goods. The volatility makes it useless as a currency, and the speculative investment is risky to say the least. The fad has lasted longer than I expected, but it is still entirely possible that it will fall through the floor overnight. If not from people getting bored, then from people eventually getting old and wanting to cash in, and the next generation having even less interest in it than today's kids have in antique furniture.

[langwadt]

Basically.

In Australia, instantaneous intra-bank payments have been a thing for years and costs you nothing. That in itself largely eliminated the need for cryptocurrencies. Crypto is all well and good while they are worth something (and you didn't pay for them, either directly or indirectly).

The pitch and appeal never was replacing instantaneous intra-bank payments. The value of cryptocurrencies is similar to that of fiat currency. As long as people believe they have value, they do. There's nothing more or less substantial about a dollar than a Bitcoin, except maybe the former can be minted at will.

that there is a fixed limited supply can also cause problems