is bitcoin mining worth it?

[Legolessed]

i have a pretty old computer that im not using and was considering starting it up with bitcoin mining. would this be worth it? would it cover the power bill?

[dalekphalm]

No.

 

CPU mining is an entirely waste of time, and even GPU mining is a waste of time these days, since the difficulty spiked way back in like 2014, so you need farms of GPU's to be even remotely effective.

 

I doubt you would even break even with electricity costs these days.

[No]

not anymore

maybe several years ago but not anymore

[Hackentosher]

If you get a dedicated mining machine like an ant miner or something that runs a custom software for mining. Even then it would take a shit load of time just to make back the cost of the machine. 

[Coaxialgamer]

No , difficulty is extremely high since 2014 and increases exponentially . even my 290x would take about a million years to earn one bitcoin . You're better off using faucets ( and god knows how slow those are ). 

If you want to earn money with cryptocurrency , you should invest instead of mining

[AlwaysFSX]

It hasn't been worth it for years.

[Legolessed]

20 hours ago, Hackentosher said:

If you get a dedicated mining machine like an ant miner or something that runs a custom software for mining. Even then it would take a shit load of time just to make back the cost of the machine. 

what about litecoin mining?

[Hackentosher]

Just now, Legolessed said:

what about litecoin mining?

I don't think that's established enough. I haven't done too much research into cryptocurrency as the USD is taken everywhere.

[LynxThe1st]

3 minutes ago, Legolessed said:

what about litecoin mining?

no, isn't there a coin for GPUs?

gimme a sec I'll find a link

edit:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=gpu+coin&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=hzskV-G-CbHb8AfPipGYAQ

it exists!

Edited April 30, 2016 by LynxThe1st

[GreezyJeezy]

unless you have an asic set up nope youll make 0 from it

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, Legolessed said:

what about litecoin mining?

Litecoin is what is considered an "Alt" coin. There are many, but Litecoin was probably the most popular (There were other ones, such as DogeCoin). It uses a particular algorithm that was resistant to ASIC design, so was more suited to mining on GPU's. Don't know if anyone's managed to design an ASIC for it yet, but it's only a matter of time if not.

 

In any case, I still doubt it's worth it. The difficulty for mining is constantly spiking, meaning you need more horsepower to mine the same amount of coins. Basically, unless your electricity is free, it's not worth it.

 

There's a calculator which uses the current difficulty level to allow you to check the estimated profit level.

https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc

 

For example, mine HD 7950 can get ~700 kH/s (seven hundred thousand hashes per second). At a very generous 300W total system consumption (Remember, your GPU is running at 100% the entire time - it'll actually draw more power then the most demanding game will), and an average energy cost of $0.10/kWh (Also very generous - that's a pretty cheap electricity rate), here's my profit, assuming I joined a shared pool, after the cost of electricity:

As you can see, I'm losing money after paying for the increased energy consumption of my PC. My rewards (Before electricity costs) after a month are about 80 cents USD ($0.80). Woot!

 

And if I try to solo mine, in which I gain the entire rewards of a block if I happen to mine it? Well the chances of you getting a block are ridiculously low when solo mining. After mining FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR, SOLO, there's a less then 10% chance I'll mine a block.

 

So yeah. Mining is dead unless you're investing in multiple thousands of dollars, purpose built Mining ASIC machinery.

[Enderman]

anything with "coin" in the name will make you lose money if you mine it with a regular computer

 

the only thing that can make money is an ASIC, which costs thousands of dollars to buy and you will probably never make the money back even if you have free power

 

if you're a software engineer and know how to hardware program your own CPUs then sure go ahead and make yourself an asic for mining