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One Bitcoin By the Numbers: Is There Still Profit To Be Made?

Posted by timothy on from the nature-of-money dept.

massivepanic writes with an article that "runs through the logistics of mining a Bitcoin on everyday gaming computers while keeping an eye on power consumption, time spent, and return on investment. From the article: 'I have mined a Bitcoin. This was not much of an accomplishment a year or two ago, but in 2013, after the infamous early-April peak at $260, unearthing a Bitcoin is no easy task. Competition is on the rise and we are getting close to the end of the good ol' days of Bitcoin; the time when a desktop computer or two have any real mining capabilities.'"

5 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Four ways to profit by onyxruby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can profit from bitcoin in four different ways:

    1. Have a special asic rig that is custom made for mining bitcoins.
    2. Have a botnet that you put to work mining bitcoins using other peoples electricity.
    3. Speculate in bitcoins and bet that they will go up or down in value.
    4. Hack someone else that has bitcoins.

    Two out of the four ways to make profits with bitcoins are illegal and one of the others is often accompanied by illegal activity (DOS) to manipulate the exchanges to try to force the value up or down. It's been a while since you could mine them on your own and come out ahead on electricity versus bitcoin value. Perhaps there are some good reasons bitcoins have a shady reputation?

    1. Re:Four ways to profit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The Native Americans once said "Only after the white man has killed every buffalo, and cut down every tree. Only then, will the white man learn he cannot eat money."

      "It is bad to ruin the environment. But it is far worse to misattribute modern environmental sayings to ancient Native Americans."

      - Native American proverb.

  2. Re:Remember the old adage by femtobyte · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And remember another old adage: "There's a sucker born every minute." Want to get some ROI? Don't mine bitcoin, sell bitcoin mining rigs. Like selling shovels and booze to miners in a gold rush, it's a great way to make sure you get the cash now, and leave someone else scrabbling in the dirt with all the risk that tomorrow's newer custom FPGA rigs and market prices will make today's mega mining cluster not worth the electricity to switch on.

  3. Re:Deflation, numbnuts by eln · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I agree that bitcoin is built to be scarce, and therefore valuable, but that sort of thing is the opposite of what you want in a currency. If the currency constantly increases in value, then the best option is to obtain as much as possible and stuff it under the mattress. Only an inflationary currency encourages investment, because you actually lose money by hoarding it rather than investing it. If everyone hoards the stuff instead of spending it, it becomes useless as a medium of exchange.

  4. Re:Remember the old adage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    But bitcoin is extremely wasteful. At least with real coins the metals are still useful.

    Bitcoin bits are infinity reusable. You could reuse those bits to make a picture, song, movie, spreadsheet, game, encryption key, etc.