News Don't Start Crypto Mining Now: 500+ Days Just to Break Even

[sizzling]

Probably because those costs are entire illusory, and exist only in the heads of a deluded few.

Just like the tinfoil hat wearing, flat Earth believing deniers of globally scrutinised and accepted scientific evidence. There can be debate over the scale of the impact, but there is undeniably an impact.

 

[Endymio]

So for simplicity, you're going to assume all the money spent on hardware doesn't actually exist as a cost. That's amazing.

It's not a sunk cost, no. This is standard GAAP -- Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Any hardware purchased has residual value. If you purchase computer hardware for $10K and later sell it for $9K, your total cost is only $1,000, not $10,000. That's rather basic and shouldn't surprise anyone. Your cost on such purchases is the amount of depreciation sustained, not the original purchase cost.

You could invest $5 million in other endeavors that would require far less effort and earn back the investment much faster.

What you mention here is the "opportunity cost" I referred to in my first post. For capital (money invested) the GAAP opportunity cost is the interest lost if that money was instead parked in a no-risk IBA.

let's say you go all-in on RTX 3090 systems as detailed in the article. $10 million could buy 600 such rigs... but where do you put them all, and where do you get the infrastructure to support the 1.2 MW of power draw?

Come now, Jarred. You're going far overboard to try to make a point. Your article was written from the perspective of an individual consdering or attempting to enter mining, not someone investing tens of millions, and requiring their own datacenter space. And in any case, rental of such space is, when compared to investments of that magnitude, only a few percentage points of overall cost.

 

[Endymio]

There can be debate over the scale of the impact, but there is undeniably an impact.

The debate isn't simply over the scale, but whether that scale a positive or negative value.

 

[Co BIY]

What does the value of a cryptocoin represent ?

Is there a practical way to short crypto ? The house of cards must eventually collapse.

But I note that it is entirely possible to lose big even on a short that eventually craters in as anticipated.

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" - A. Gary Shilling