Bitcoin is still early

[nycEMMD]

Serious question as I know nothing of this subject. Is $80 a month considered good for home mining? Seems like its not worth it, especially considering you have to have the equipment.

It's pretty good for the equipment he has, his GPU is not the newest generation. I'm getting about $20 a day with 4 GPUs, mix between 3060s and 3080s

[goldenchimpy]

Still doesn’t seem worth the hassle or initial equipment expense.

[nycEMMD]

Still doesn’t seem worth the hassle or initial equipment expense.

Everything gets deducted. Electricity, room where rig is located and equipment gets depreciated over a few years. The only thing you are losing is time. It does take some time to learn how to set the rig up, a lot of trial and error, dealing with stability issues in the first few months. But once you're up and running and your rig stops crashing, it's pretty easy money. As you scale up you can get yourself a nice little side income that's completely unrelated to medicine

[goldenchimpy]

Everything gets deducted. Electricity, room where rig is located and equipment gets depreciated over a few years. The only thing you are losing is time. It does take some time to learn how to set the rig up, a lot of trial and error, dealing with stability issues in the first few months. But once you're up and running and your rig stops crashing, it's pretty easy money. As you scale up you can get yourself a nice little side income that's completely unrelated to medicine

I can see the appeal as a hobby of sorts. 5-10 years ago I would have probably tried it out for yucks. But now with real life time constraints (kids and their constant destruction of everything they touch) it seems like throwing some cash to stake stable coins for 8-14% is an overall easier way to dabble in the crypto world and make a bit of return.

[Lordosis]

If the prices of these coins stabilize or go down would mining still be profitable?

[goldenchimpy]

If the prices of these coins stabilize or go down would mining still be profitable?

It depends on the inputs for each miner. Those at the higher energy prices would be the first to not make a profit and arguably be forced out. However there are plenty of people, at least on the small scale, that will operate at a loss for awhile with the belief that the price will rebound and eventually their mining will be profitable. It’s similar to how some landlords buy/hold properties which are cash flow negative for a time in the hopes that appreciation will eventually provide them a return.

[Lordosis]

It depends on the inputs for each miner. Those at the higher energy prices would be the first to not make a profit and arguably be forced out. However there are plenty of people, at least on the small scale, that will operate at a loss for awhile with the belief that the price will rebound and eventually their mining will be profitable. It’s similar to how some landlords buy/hold properties which are cash flow negative for a time in the hopes that appreciation will eventually provide them a return.

But I imagine the equipment costs something. Spend a few thousand (or more I really do not know) on setting this up to make a few hundred a month and than if the price stagnates you are screwed?

And If you are just banking on the price increasing to keep mining profitable why not just buy the coin and hope for the same appreciation?

[goldenchimpy]

But I imagine the equipment costs something. Spend a few thousand (or more I really do not know) on setting this up to make a few hundred a month and than if the price stagnates you are screwed?

And If you are just banking on the price increasing to keep mining profitable why not just buy the coin and hope for the same appreciation?

It’s essentially like any business. There is upfront costs (hardware) and then ongoing costs (mainly electricity). It’s easy to figure out what your expected return would be depending on your hardware set up. You also know your expenses from initial setup costs and your power costs. From there you can calculate your break even point. For some people it’s profitable now but would be priced out of business with a price drop. For others they could see a big price drop and still be profitable (people who have access to very cheap power). Also, some may continue mining in the short term if there is a price drop and they operate at a loss in the hopes of appreciation. Or they could easily resell their hardware and recoup some costs. It’s overall a very simple business model with few inputs.

Personally I don’t think it’s worth the headache.

[xraygoggles]

I'll agree with you about the Eth 2.0 momentum

As far as Zcash, you're absolutely wrong. Nobody beats XMR at privacy, if you want I can explain to you why but I think there's much better articles online that you can research yourself. There's a reason the IRS has a bounty of $625k for anyone that can crack Monero but no bounty on Zcash.

Monero maxi eh?

[NapoleanDynamite]

Monero maxi eh?

As far as I am aware (no I do not have all knowledge of all 10,000 cryptocurrencies), Monero is the most private of all cryptocurrencies. It is more private than Bitcoin.

Because of this, I actually believe Monero MAY have some use case...which I can't say for almost every other cryptocurrency. However, I hold no Monero. Monero's use case is for privacy. People that need this level of privacy are usually not doing good things in the US. In other countries I could envision a significant use case for this though.

But, I don't think it belongs in most high net worth individuals investment portfolio so I don't discuss it here.

[udrag14]

Serious question as I know nothing of this subject. Is $80 a month considered good for home mining? Seems like its not worth it, especially considering you have to have the equipment.

I'm mining from a gaming computer that I bought for personal use. It has no special equipment on it.

So, yeah 80 bucks a month on a computer that sits idle most of the time is worth it in my books.

Also, that 80 bucks a month has gone up since I mined it.

[NapoleanDynamite]

No...I am not valuing Bitcoin based only on my feelings.

The global gold "market cap" (gold is used as a store of value) which is the first piece of the pie that Bitcoin will take over, is about 12 Trillion. IMO Bitcoin will first overtake gold in "market cap". That alone is a 10X from here.

But that is just the tip of the ice berg IMO. The next piece of the puzzle is the global bond market. Bitcoin will eventually take a huge chunk of the global bond market if not all of it one day. But let's say that it only takes over about 5-10% of the global bond market. The current global bond market is somewhere between 100 Trillion and 400 Trillion depending on what you are measuring and where you are getting your data from. But let's conservatively say 10% of 100 Trillion. That is another 2X from the already 10X increase above. So that is 20X right now.

Next lets consider that Bitcoin may not be used only as a store of value going forward but also a unit of account. Again, the global value of all currencies is quite large and debated. But let's use the CIA's number of 80 Trillion and assume that it only takes 10% of that market.

Now let's think about the global real estate market and consider that some of this may one day get re-priced in Bitcoin. That's another 300 Trillion dollar market.

You can start to understand why Bitcoin is currently undervalued IMO. If you disagree with any of the above assumptions that I am making, then you might think that Bitcoin is highly overvalued.

So I agree that it's possible I might be wrong about each and every one of these things and Bitcoin has no inherent value. But if there is even a 5% chance that I am correct in this 2 minute analysis, then it is something everyone should consider. This is about risk evaluation and long term investment strategy. This is not about trading for a quick buck. I have made plenty of quick bucks.

Your other comments on the world being in an "Everything bubble" I actually agree with. I think it is very possible that we see a huge global problem (depression, WWIII, etc) over the next 1-20 years. But as you have mentioned, I have no idea when that will be. "Bubbles" can inflate for a lot longer than most people would ever imagine.

Regardless, I am happy to hold what was initially a small part of my portfolio in Bitcoin. And yes, even though I believe that the Equity market and Real Estate market are highly overvalued, I am still investing in them. I don't try to time much of anything. I just try and figure out what assets might be good to invest in and diversify into those area's.

Someone way smarter than me, just broke down what I was discussing and included the below graphic of their findings. I understand that you might not agree with some of the assumptions that are made here, but if there is even a 1% chance of this being correct, then it supports my opinion that high net worth individuals should hold some BTC in their portfolio. Only including Store of Value, this suggests BTC price will >200X from here. This does not factor in the possibility that BTC could one day be used as a Means of Exchange.

[blippi]

how many potential investments right now have at least a 1% chance of dramatically increasing in value?

i am still quite ignorant, but as an outsider all these comments to the effect of “there is a chance this could turn out to be really huge” while talking about “bull cycles” and graphs showing crashes and recoveries, sound like people justifying what they are investing in when some part of them knows there is a good chance it will tank.

[CordMcNally]

how many potential investments right now have at least a 1% chance of dramatically increasing in value?

In today's world...all of them.

[Lordosis]

In today's world...all of them.

Maybe I will get lucky and VTI will become a meme stock :P