Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on April 14, 2013, 11:26:18 PM

Well first you aren't making money out of thin air. You can think of mining new coins as "buying them" using your hardware & electricity. Currently you are buying them at a continual loss. The second thing is the network has a concept called "difficulty" which adjusts. More hashing power = higher difficulty = harder to solve a block. You won't break even in a week because even if you bought one you would be at the end of the line. Long before you received your unit difficulty likely would be 10x to 20x higher than it is now. Redo your calculations with difficulty being 20x higher and use some realistic electrical costs.

I'd rather think of it as making money out of running hash routines because that's what it is. Tongue

But yeah, I didn't think of the time it takes to arrive, that's a valid point, adding that to my calculations.

Quote from: anonymous_hero on April 14, 2013, 11:30:52 PM

DeathAndTaxes is correct, of course. A much more complicated estimate of the future difficulty is here.

There's also the fact that the price of Bitcoin itself is volatile -- no one knows for sure what the future price will be.

But, yes, especially if you started much earlier and even if you started now, if you play your cards right, it can be a pretty sweet gig. But of course do not under any circumstances invest anything more than you can afford to lose. Essentially there is a lot of risk with the potential for a great reward or a substantial loss.

That's and extremely useful link, thanks a bunch, it explains a lot and has plenty of things I didn't think about.

I definitely wasn't planning on spending more than I would lose; I just have a tiny bit of money put aside that I might use for an ASIC.

Quote from: Aahzman on April 14, 2013, 11:33:23 PM

The "catch" is that you are grossly under-informed about how the bitcoin works, how they are generated, how the hashing network operates, and just about every other aspect. I suspect you have a few more hours of browsing the forums before you shed your newbie status. I suggest using that time to become more educated about bitcoin.

That's wildly unhelpful and you might as well have not made that post.