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Mining For Beginners

oo7tk

So I have been buying crypto for about a year or so now and looking to maybe get into mining with some of my profits I have made to try something different..

Could someone point me in the right direction of a thread or person to learn for beginners... Also if it’s something I think I can manage who or where to buy and what to mine??

Thanks

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km991148

Ye it just about makes some money I guess. Depends on where Eth ends up!
What about other coins? How do they stack up?

grindle

km991148 wrote: »

Ye it just about makes some money I guess. Depends on where Eth end up.
What about other coins? How do they stack up?

Most stack nowhere, until they do. Much more of a coinflip, you have to get lucky with mining a ****coin early and then selling it when it booms (RVN was good for this a long long time ago).
i.e. Ethereum will be around for a long while, others may be more profitable momentarily based on flash-in-the-pan news and you selling the news. This also depends on why you own your GPU and if you want to upgrade it or not. Sunk cost that's paid it's way while gaming? Use it to mine beside your next upgrade. I still have my 390 for that reason, small beans of ETH currently mining alongside a 5700 XT but considering I'm massively bullish on Ether that small bean is going to be worth the cost of a couple of PCs or a very fancy monitor in a few years.
prays to winklevoss gods that he is correct

unkel

R9 390 is a great card in general and an excellent miner, but terribly inefficient. If you don't use it for anything else, you'd be wise to sell it, buy a RX470 / 570 for pretty much the same money and use that instead. At a typical electric rate that would save you about €100 per year in eletricity.

grindle

unkel wrote: »

At a typical electric rate that would save you about €100 per year in eletricity.

Landlord paying vs effort x gratuitous laziness.
I'll swap it into an emulation/games machine for a nephew the next time I upgrade and keep the 5700 XT as the second card.

unkel

grindle wrote: »

Landlord paying

Can I place a few rigs in your gaff? :pac:

Dunfyy

thunderdog wrote: »

Nice, surprised you sold the 5700xt, I’d be hanging onto that gpu!

My vague plan is to keep selling my rx 580 4gb for the 8GB equivalent until I reach my last gpu (6th card) where I plan to splash out on an rx 5700xt and work up from there

you should wait for cheaper better new nvidia and and cards when they are not sold out

unkel

Dunfyy wrote: »

you should wait for cheaper better new nvidia and and cards when they are not sold out

LOL, you trolling?

Pretty much all medium to high end cards are selling second hand well above the RRP of new ones. There's very little chance of that changing in the next few months.

Ryaner

Could someone confirm how mining works from a tax pov if holding the coins? I've heard differing opinions based on income tax vs cgt. Based on some previous comments here it seems some people have companies setup with vat registrations? Could a sole trader type setup also be used?

Most guidance I've seen says that the hardware can be depreciated via the 8 year rule for CGT purposes. However they also list income tax on profits, and even trackers like koinly.io list mining as income for tax purposes.

As an example with some very round figures, and ignoring any coin change in value to make it even simpler.

Purchase hardware: €900
Electricity costs: €100
Coins mined: €1000

Results in?
CGT allowance: - €112.5 (Hardware) - €100 (Electricity)
Income tax due on: €1000
Cost basis for the coins at €1000.

Previous comment from unkel suggests it might actually be
Income tax: €1000 - €100 (Electricity)
CGT allowance: - €112.5 (Hardware)

Liamo_mu

Would it be possible to get into this with a 500 euro rig or is that too little?

My electricity cost 0.13 Eur/kWH so I don't know if that would eat all the profits?

One room in my house is particularly cold and has an electric heater on in it for about 6 months of the year so if I did do a setup I could offset some costs for heating that room.

I tested NiceHash on my current PC with a 1060 and it has me making a measly 70 cent a day before you count electricity. Then its showing with electricity you'd make 35 cent. Obviously, these numbers make it not worth it but I would have thought running a PC for 24 hours would use more than 30 cent in electricity?

unkel

Liamo_mu wrote: »

Would it be possible to get into this with a 500 euro rig or is that too little?

Blatant plug: I have a mining rig for sale for €755. It has just one GPU in it at the moment, but you can add up to 2 more. If this is not allowed, mods please remove the link

Linky

Liamo_mu wrote: »

My electricity cost 0.13 Eur/kWH so I don't know if that would eat all the profits?

Above rig currently (checked today) makes $3 per day in Ethereum and at €0.13 / kWh (Energia, isn't it?

) it costs €0.48 per day in electricity

Liamo_mu wrote: »

One room in my house is particularly cold and has an electric heater on in it for about 6 months of the year so if I did do a setup I could offset some costs for heating that room.

Exactly. I've had my biggest mining rig in the living room, which is north facing and the coldest room in my house. I have saved hundreds on my gas bill this winter because of cryptomining with rigs in strategic places in the house, basically in the 3 biggest rooms.

Liamo_mu

unkel wrote: »

Blatant plug: I have a mining rig for sale for €755. It has just one GPU in it at the moment, but you can add up to 2 more. If this is not allowed, mods please remove the link

Linky

Above rig currently (checked today) makes $3 per day in Ethereum and at €0.13 / kWh (Energia, isn't it? ) it costs €0.48 per day in electricity

Exactly. I've had my biggest mining rig in the living room, which is north facing and the coldest room in my house. I have saved hundreds on my gas bill this winter because of cryptomining with rigs in strategic places in the house, basically in the 3 biggest rooms.

Sound for the info. How does adding a gpu work? Would it up the power consumption and electricity cost by much? I'm thinking short-term it might make a small bit of cash but if Crypto keeps increasing in Value maybe that's where the money would be made.

DO the GPUs or components in these rigs need to be replaced often?

unkel

Components should never have to be replaced unless you are unlucky, or i.e. if you picked an unsuitable (cheap) power supply.

To add a second similar GPU, switch the rig off, just click the GPU into a second riser combo and supply it with power from one of the leads coming from the PSU. Switch the rig back on and it will start mining immediately. Plug and play.

Electricity costs will go up by about 70% from €0.48 to €0.80 per day, mining revenue will double from $3 to $6 per day

Liamo_mu

Was looking at 3060 TIs as apparently they are efficient ( Not too high power draw)

It kind of sounded too good to be true though.

NiceHash have them as making 4 euro a day per one NET. 13 Euro Net with 3 cards.

So for about 1500-2000 investment you'd make just under 5k Gross in year 1. 3k Net

After 2 years you'd have approx 7k Net. Those numbers on NiceHash can't be right. Sounds way too easy.

That said Nice Hashes estimates where close to spot on for my current PC

Ryaner

I'm nearly positive you can't write off the cost of the hardware against the income from the mining, even when selling. You get to write down the hardware via the depreciation rule over 8 years which can be offset against CGT gains only best I can tell.

unkel

Liamo_mu wrote: »

Those numbers on NiceHash can't be right. Sounds way too easy.

Yes it is that easy. And payback periods / return on investment are extremely good. Don't go nicehash though whatever you do. They grab a huge part of your earnings, and for what.

Obviously the value of crypto can go up and down. And the more people join the bandwagon, the higher the difficulty gets, so the less you get paid. This difficulty has not been increasing all that much over the last few months as there simply aren't anywhere near enough GPUs being produced. And when they are, gamers and miners fight over them and pay top dollar

The main risk of getting into mining now is that you pay top dollar for hardware, coins might go down, difficulty will increase, and at some point supply of GPUs will get a bit better. And also Ethereum mining won't last forever. That said, what other non-leveraged investment pays you these sort of returns?

If things stay as they are my above rig will pay for itself in under a year. Or a return of 100% per year. Much quicker if you buy another GPU and stick it in. Much quicker again if ETH goes up (what a lot of people reckon is likely)

With the above caveats as well about mining difficulty, coins could go down, cards could become available, etc.

JibJabWibWab

Liamo_mu wrote: »

Was looking at 3060 TIs as apparently they are efficient ( Not too high power draw)

It kind of sounded too good to be true though.

NiceHash have them as making 4 euro a day per one NET. 13 Euro Net with 3 cards.

So for about 1500-2000 investment you'd make just under 5k Gross in year 1. 3k Net

After 2 years you'd have approx 7k Net. Those numbers on NiceHash can't be right. Sounds way too easy.

That said Nice Hashes estimates where close to spot on for my current PC

I bought a mining rig 2 weeks ago.

It has 8 RX5700 cards in a nice tidy closed case.
It's running HiveOS and puts out 442mhs at around 765w.

Today is day 16 of running it and it has 0.373 ETH in the wallet.

At that rate it should produce around 8-8.5 ETH in a full year.

It cost €8,500 + VAT.

I have it running in a quiet part of my workplace.
There's electric heaters in the building so it should cut down on heating there.

It's fairly noisy so I couldn't imagine having it running in my house.

unkel

JibJabWibWab wrote: »

It's fairly noisy so I couldn't imagine having it running in my house.

Crappy Chinese power supply? All the mining rigs I have built are virtually silent.

JibJabWibWab

unkel wrote: »

Crappy Chinese power supply? All the mining rigs I have built are virtually silent.

The noise comes mainly from the 4 cooling fans mounted on the case.

The advertised spec for the miner is 460m/hs at 1100w but on HiveOS it's showing 442m/hs at 765w.
The actual power consumption is way less than the advertised spec. Is that normal?

unkel

The only actual power consumption is at the wall. I bet it is far higher than the 765W you mention (that HiveOS is reporting). Put a wattmeter on it and report back

In other news, I hope to build a wee Ravencoin miner today with a GPU I'm picking up later. The card only has 3GB of VRAM so far too small to mine Ethereum, as the DAG is well over 4GB since late last year.

Liamo_mu

So what's the best way to mine Ethereum then?

I built a test setup with what I have at home.

Only a 3GB 1060 at the minute but am get an 8Gb card soon.

Will I be able to run a test so it's all good to go and then I can just swap out the cards?

Also does RAM type matter? I have a load of spare DDR3 ram but have no extra DDr4.

unkel

There's no "best way", any old motherboard / cpu from the last 10 years is fine and just 4GB of RAM will do. The graphics card alone determines how much coin you make (hash rate). For Ethereum you need minimum 6GB of VRAM (memory on the graphics card). You can do a test run with the 3GB VRAM card no problem, but the hash rate will just be 0

thunderdog

unkel wrote: »

The only actual power consumption is at the wall. I bet it is far higher than the 765W you mention (that HiveOS is reporting). Put a wattmeter on it and report back

In other news, I hope to build a wee Ravencoin miner today with a GPU I'm picking up later. The card only has 3GB of VRAM so far too small to mine Ethereum, as the DAG is well over 4GB since late last year.

What’s the mining plan for when Eth fully migrates to Ethereum 2.0?

On a separate note, I picked up a minebox there relatively recently as the psu on my open air rig died. Really handy, the gpu temps are kept low and no need for risers etc. The delta fans are pretty loud though so it might not be suitable for everyone.

On the 4gb DAG limit, I’ve seen videos online of people using lolminer to mine ethereum (in zombie mode), by plugging the gpus directly into the motherboard. It doesn’t seem to work for gpus connected to risers. I might try giving it a go over the next week or so to see if I can get that working

unkel

thunderdog wrote: »

What’s the mining plan for when Eth fully migrates to Ethereum 2.0?

You can't mine a coin that's proof of stake

When I started mining 4 years ago, people were saying ETH would be going PoS within months. And yet here we are, I'd say ETH2.0 is still a year or two away.

thunderdog

unkel wrote: »

You can't mine a coin that's proof of stake

When I started mining 4 years ago, people were saying ETH would be going PoS within months. And yet here we are, I'd say ETH2.0 is still a year or two away.

Ha yeah I’m presuming most will initially just move to mining ravencoin.

unkel

thunderdog wrote: »

Ha yeah I’m presuming most will initially just move to mining ravencoin.

I'm having a first go at mining ravencoin myself right now

Akesh

Looking to get into mining. Is it possible to get started for €500 and break-even after a year?

Are people still mostly mining ETH? Will ETH 2.0 impact the rewards for mining?

unkel

Akesh wrote: »

Looking to get into mining. Is it possible to get started for €500 and break-even after a year?

Yep. I'm this evening building a plug and play beginners rig running Windows 10, that I plan to sell for €395 which mines 3-4 Ravencoin per day and uses very little electricity (about 80W). This would include my time for helping you get started and mining into your own wallet. If it weren't for the big hit most coins took over the last few days, that would pay for itself in about a year (quicker if the coin goes up in value, slower if the coin goes down in value)

If you buy the parts yourself, and you buy well (which is not easy, it involves either luck or lots of time spent looking or both), you could deffo build a cheap rig yourself for less than that, that will pay for itself in well under a year

The beauty about Ravencoin is that there are no plans for it to go PoS like Ethereum (which ends mining) and that it is ASIC resistant, so you can only mine it with graphics cards. You can also mine it with graphics cards with 3 or 4 GB VRAM (unlike most other coins). And it is quite profitable, close enough to Ethereum.

Akesh

unkel wrote: »

Yep. I'm this evening building a plug and play beginners rig running Windows 10, that I plan to sell for €395 which mines 3-4 Ravencoin per day and uses very little electricity (about 80W). This would include my time for helping you get started and mining into your own wallet. If it weren't for the big hit most coins took over the last few days, that would pay for itself in about a year (quicker if the coin goes up in value, slower if the coin goes down in value)

If you buy the parts yourself, and you buy well (which is not easy, it involves either luck or lots of time spent looking or both), you could deffo build a cheap rig yourself for less than that, that will pay for itself in well under a year

The beauty about Ravencoin is that there are no plans for it to go PoS like Ethereum (which ends mining) and that it is ASIC resistant, so you can only mine it with graphics cards. You can also mine it with graphics cards with 3 or 4 GB VRAM (unlike most other coins). And it is quite profitable, close enough to Ethereum.

Thanks unkel.

Just doing a few quick figures (assuming everything stays the same):
Running 80W unit producing 4 RVN per day. Potential income - $285. Running costs (1.92 KwH x 13c x 365 days) $91.10.

Are there other factors I need to consider? I note you mention before not to use NiceHash. I had a look at 2Miners but it doesn't seem to mention cost anywhere.

Apologies if this is a stupid question

unkel

Akesh wrote: »

Are there other factors I need to consider?

The developers behind the mining software usually take 1% of the proceeds, and so does the mining pool. Also there will be downtime. All these eat a bit into your revenue (but not much)

Then there is potential maintenance costs, although it is rare that hardware goes wrong. And of course even taking that into account you are talking a very, very high expected return of what maybe 70% or so? Where else do you get that on a relatively low risk investment? I get 0.5% on my savings account and near half of that is taken by the tax man

I just wouldn't use nice hash unless you really had to. They take a large chunk of your profits and the transaction costs are high. You're better off either figuring out how mining works and DIY, or buy a turnkey mining rig where all this is already working

[Deleted User]

Any recommendations for Eth pools? I've been hitting Nanopool the last few days and I'm about a third of my way to the first 0.05 payout. It's been years (I mean, 2012) since I've done any mining and the landscape has changed a lot since then.