Quote from: odolvlobo on August 17, 2014, 09:04:38 PM

Quote from: Kieran Bass on August 17, 2014, 07:54:11 PM

so everyones against the idea of mining? but I was under the impression we require miners otherwise Bitcoin will fail?

Mining can be profitable if you know what you are doing. Many people got burned because they jumped into mining without doing the necessary research. They were hoping to make money and instead they ended up losing money. If you don't care about profitability, the go right ahead. Mining can be a fun and interesting hobby. It can be very educational.

If you want to make a profit, then there are two important aspects to mining that you must understand. The first is the investment in bitcoins. If you invested in bitcoins or mining equipment during the last 9 months, your investment is worth less now than it was when you made the investment because the value of a bitcoin has dropped. This loss of value is not specific to miners. It applies to anyone holding bitcoins over the last 9 months, and it is a big reason for the negative opinion of mining you see here.

Despite that, if you believe that the future of bitcoin is good, then you still might want to obtain some bitcoins, whether through buying them or mining them. This is where the second aspect comes in.

The second aspect (and the most important one to miners) is making a profit from mining in terms of BTC. If you want to obtain bitcoins, you have a choice of buying them or mining them. If you can obtain bitcoins more cheaply by mining, then you should mine. Otherwise, you should just buy them and avoid wasting time and money on mining equipment. Many miners (especially over the last two years) paid more for mining equipment than the equipment would mine. They should have just bought the bitcoins instead. Predicting the profitability of mining is difficult and complicated. Before investing in mining equipment a miner should first come up with a reasonable estimate for the amount of BTC the equipment will mine and compare that to the total cost of mining (in BTC). Many miners never did that, and now the realize that they made a bad investment. That is another reason for the negative opinion of mining that you see here.

Quote from: byt411 on August 17, 2014, 09:00:49 PM

No one is against mining. We'd all love to mine and earn money by doing nothing, but unless you have cheap/free electricity, you won't ever profit from mining.

That is not accurate. Compared to the cost of the equipment, the energy cost is small, though it is growing.

thanks for the information I would like to earn to profit but also to help the network as it continues to grow we need more miners for Bitcoin to be successful.

Kieran Bass

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