Buying bitcoins

h0neybadger wrote: »

Last year the difficulty was a LOT lower than it is today. ASIC performance is increasing, but so is power usage.

I guess this was always the risk of having hardware dedicated to one coin, if that coin becomes unprofitable to mine the hardware is effectively useless. GPU, while considerably less profitable per KW/H, is far more robust in that you can switch to mining whatever is profitable at any point in time and the GPUs still have some resale value at the end.

Grumpypants wrote: »

So you are making €285,000 a year after bills for doing nothing ? Sounds like it is plenty profitable

If you're looking at calculating profitability, you might want to do a few more calculations there. Things to consider are actual gross profit in each month over the last 12 months, as this will fluctuate wildly from month to month. Equipment costs. Setting up, kitting out and renting a server room or equivalent with three phase supply and necessary cooling for 12 months. Staff and equipment costs associated with maintaining this amount of equipment, including replacing obsolete and faulty equipment. Financial fees and transaction costs. Corporation tax on what's left.

Not saying that it isn't profitable, but having been in business for myself for many years, it is common to see people to confuse gross profit during a good period for net profit over a more realistic time frame and get a bit green as a result.

Dades wrote: »

Yeah, I guess I meant you need to file returns and director forms etc. for a company, no matter what the turnover.

I worked as a sole trader myself for some years before setting up my first company, and while its handy enough starting out, a limited company makes more sense long term as it is a distinct legal entity. This means that if things go tits up, which will happen to most self employed people at least once in a career, you have some degree of protection. If you mess up as a sole trader, or if you're subcontracting to someone else and they mess up, or if the person you're subcontracting to is subcontracting to someone else who really messes up, you can end up royally forked and in a bad place. For anyone who is getting all of their income independently of the PAYE system, IMHO limited company is the only way to go. Yes you've got to file returns and most probably have an accountant, but it is well worth it.