One Bitcoin By the Numbers: Is There Still Profit To Be Made? 239
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.'"
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Four ways to profit (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?
Re:Another bitcoin article? (Score:3, Insightful)
The pyramid scheme never ends...
That's because Bitcoin is not a pyramid scheme. You have completely misunderstood the meaning of one or both of these, to make a comment like that.
Re:Remember the old adage (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as you know when to get out. Otherwise, you'd be just like the miner - left with a lot of spare equipment of no value. Inventory isn't free.
Re:Four ways to profit (Score:3, Insightful)
You can get real money in four different ways:
1. Have a special skill or qualification that allows you to acquire money.
2. Put others to work earning you money for a profitable wage using other peoples special skills or qualifications.
3. Speculate, lol.
4. Steal.
Only one of these is ethical.
Re:Deflation, numbnuts (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is the problem with bitcoin (Score:3, Insightful)
That miners want to make a profit, a fat one if possible. It would be like the US mint being a for profit organization. It isn't. Even republicans can see why not and that is saying something.
Bitcoin mining was NOT meant as a profit generation scheme but as a way to keep the coins in relative limited supply, to avoid the "tree leaves for currency requiring the burning down of all the forests to control inflation" problem. Bitcoin was originally meant as a barter currency, where you kept the barter. You provided something to somebody for bitcoins and in turn you use them to barter for something else. The idea was to create an altnernate barter market seperate from established currencies. To however create a "secure" currency, where somebody couldn't just print a lot of fake bills, both the mining and transaction require serious computation. In order to get volunteers to do this, a small amount of bits coins are set aside as a reward for handling transactions and miners get the bitcoins they intoduce into the pool to barter with.
BUT the original idea was that the mining would be a tiny amount compared to the flow of bitcoins. A bitcoin was supposed to be traded thousands of time before a new one was generated.
But as always, greed took over. Mining bitcoins was being seen as the ability to mint money and so people did it. Bitcoins became about speculation, who could mine them the fastest, hoard the most and then exchange them for something with real value. The MORE people shout about how many dollars bitcoins are "worth" the more bitcoins loose their value as a barter currency. People don't seek to make a profit from trade through a new way to exchange currency but by speculating in the currency itself. It resembles the gold market a lot. Not the real one, the gold market that has vending machines with tiny gold bars inside, the kinda people that believe that if they got a tiny fortune in gold, when the apocalypse comes, they will be rich because EVERYONE will be wanting gold then... nothing like dealing the end of civiliation then a gold bar.
Bitcoins as a paypal alternative for small traders makes some sense, keep some"value" in bitcoins as a user who sometimes buys and sometimes sells, avoid the traditional exchange fees. But for this to happen, the currency needs to be stable. It isn't and traders are either seeking to get bitcoins "cheap" and sell them high or just doing it as a novelty to create some press.
Google for places that accept bitcoins. The trade is simply non-existent. Places that reached the news have stopped accepting them and the remaining online shops are the ones you would normally stay a million miles away from. Shady doesn't even begin to describe them.
It was a nice idea but human greed and the lack of any counter measures have doomed it from the start.
Re:Remember the old adage (Score:3, Insightful)
In college dorms, electricity is "free".
Re:other ways (Score:2, Insightful)
Involves a trusted third party. The one who prints the money.
Re:Remember the old adage (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin appears very strongly to have been designed so that the inventors and early adopters got the most money for free, the late adopters have a difficult time getting the money out of it, and may even be spending money to try to get some faster. At least with a real gold mine there was actual work and sweat required even by the first miners and they never lied and said they were doing this for the good of others or to try and create an alternative system.