Quote from: bigtee on September 06, 2017, 11:02:26 PM

Quote from: Za1n on September 06, 2017, 08:12:07 PM

Quote from: Cacapzarg on September 06, 2017, 06:01:21 PM

Quote from: Thetaj on August 12, 2017, 05:31:48 PM

Everyone and their Grandmother is mining in Asia with GPUs. And you wanna know the crazy part? They're OK with 1 year ROI! I'm not even joking. I had a friend ask me about GPU mining and I told him expect ROI in 6 month + and he went out and bout 200 P106-100.

So hey, I guess Darwinism at its best. If people are willing to work for little to no pay then why the hell not?

If you think the price of the coin will rise, it is OK with one year ROI.

Ahh, but here you have almost stumbled upon the most obvious question. If you think the coin will rise, why not just buy the coin?

I really do not see the point in this "I am ok with a 12 or even 18 month ROI period" mentality when investing so much into mining hardware, especially since everything is so overpriced. As I have said many times, in all cases you are pinning your hopes of profits on one simple fact, that the coin(s) you plan to mine will continue to increase in value. This means market prices must continue keeping up with or exceeding mining supply (which can basically be equated with the network hashrate and difficulty), thus making mining profitable.

So again, if your belief is that the coin(s) you are interested in mining are going to continue to go up in value, after all that is why you are willing to invest $1,000's of dollars in hardware that might in maybe 1 year break even, why not instead invest $1,000's directly into the coin(s) and in 1 year be in profit, not just at break even?

There are certain times in the crypto-lifecylce where mining makes sense and you can often net average your coins for far less than you could by purchasing them outright. However, for most current coins that ship has long sailed and only those with hardware already paid for, or who have super low or free electricity would be better off at this point buying hardware versus just buying the coin outright.

All fantastic points. I think a lot of it is looked at like "free money", even though obviously you do need to buy equipment, spend time setting up hardware and software, and spend money on electricity. It's very tempting from a psychological level - as opposed to just buying outright, where you are making a very concerted and quantifiable bet on a crypto.

But obviously I'm not expert in all that, just sort of a guess as to why so many flock to mining. It's also fun, sort of an interesting science experiment.

From my POV why would someone spend $200k for a property only to lease it out at $900 or $1000 a month rent(crossing fingers nothing breaks AND crossing fingers tenant doesn't stick you) vs spending $30k on mining hardware (which BTW is deductible along with the electricity) to make a steady $3k-4k a month mining? I chose the latter. My only regret is that I didn't spent $200k on mining.