Profits Are Drying Up For Ethereum Miners

[kcarbotte]

As the price of Ethereum continues to drop week over week, the mining difficulty continued to rise. At this pace, mining profits are quickly thinning out.

Profits Are Drying Up For Ethereum Miners : Read more

 

[andrewkelb]

A new generation not coming out til possibly August, which will possibly also get swallowed up by crypto farmers and resellers who drive up the price to sell to crypto farmer. I made the terrible decision to go ahead and buy a ridiculously overpriced gtx 1070. The urge to build overwhelmed my senses.

 

[hannibal]

Yep. Those new generation GPU will be faster and use less electricity so miners are gonna get all they can get. And that means they will be extremely expensive a long, long time!

 

[enzoozzytiger]

$0.25/KWh in SF? You got to be kidding. My usage is just average and I could only wish I would be paying $0.25/KWh. If you have a few mining rigs, you will be looking at double that price.

 

[bit_user]

Don’t Expect GPU Prices To Drop

Haven't you been paying attention? They already are.

I don't know how long it's been since Newegg had RX 580's for close to $400, but now they have a bunch.

I see a dip in GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1080 prices, as well. I haven't been following others.

Not back to where they were 1 year ago, but prices are definitely falling.

 

[TJ Hooker]

$0.25/KWh in SF? You got to be kidding. My usage is just average and I could only wish I would be paying $0.25/KWh. If you have a few mining rigs, you will be looking at double that price.

From what you're saying it sounds like your electricity rates tiered, i.e. cost per kWh increases as your total usage goes beyond certain level(s)? Maybe the author just looked at the very cheapest tier available in SF.

 

[Tanyac]

I don't think GPUs, or any PC component is ever going to drop in price again. Manufacturers seem to prefer the current paradigm.

We also have flash, PSU and memory price hikes. Again, I'd be surprised if prices ever dropped again. I doubt I'll see a 32GB DDR4-3200C15 kit for $269 (or equivalent) ever again. That same memory is now selling for a much as $699.

GPUs here have just recently had another price hike. A card that cost me $249 in September 2016 is now $539 (It was $489 about a month ago).

Case prices have skyrocketed to. Personally, I think the scarcity is intended so that prices can be driven up. I don't think any manufacturer ever wants to return to the pre-mining era, or pre-flash shortage etc...

 

[zodiacfml]

It is not ether but all coins as a change in the market affects most, if not all, coins.

 

[csm101]

prices are slowly dropping at least in ebay for the past 2 months from 1000 to 600 when it comes to gtx 1070 at least. once the price is set to 450 i wil get one. dose not matter whether its eaby or amazone or newegg.

 

[andrewkelb]

Careful CSM101, yeah I am a sucker for paying full price but it will be new. I would be worried about paying a lot for a card that had been used for mining, might be like buying a high mileage rental car.

 

[Ninjawithagun]

What Tom's forgot to include in their payout chart was the cost to build the rig, cost of operation (electricity), and cost of maintenance over time. Mining rigs wear out quickly as they are running 24/7. The cost of electricity alone would negate most of the profits shown. Our beloved consumer desktop GPUs are NOT designed for 24/7 operation - period. When used for crypto currency mining, they are especially susceptible to capacitor burnout and premature cooling fan failures - hence reasons NOT to buy used graphics cards off of eBay. These are from miners folks, so don't be stupid. Buy only brand new cards. Wait for them to get back into stock at retail resellers only. Also, consider buying the bundles being offered by etailers like Newegg and Microcenter. Both offer GPUs at retail prices if purchased with other hardware ;-)

 

[Karadjgne]

Newegg, Amazon and a few others also advertise on eBay, so shopping there isn't an issue, just be careful of whom you buy from. Always check prior sales. Someone who has sold nothing but used gpus for the last several sales is guaranteed a miner, guaranteed hard usage cards.

 

[Ninjawithagun]

Newegg, Amazon and a few others also advertise on eBay, so shopping there isn't an issue, just be careful of whom you buy from. Always check prior sales. Someone who has sold nothing but used gpus for the last several sales is guaranteed a miner, guaranteed hard usage cards.

Not talking about known etailiers - specifically talking about 3rd party sellers. Of course you should have known this.

 

[logainofhades]

Newegg, Amazon and a few others also advertise on eBay, so shopping there isn't an issue, just be careful of whom you buy from. Always check prior sales. Someone who has sold nothing but used gpus for the last several sales is guaranteed a miner, guaranteed hard usage cards.

My cards for the past few years have been hard used F@H cards, and still are, so mining cards don't really concern me much.

 

[John Pombrio]

The problem with the simple statement that miners will just "switch to other coins" is that there are not whole lot of other coins to choose from that are both profitable to mine and have a substantial market. If Ethereum miners all switched to say Monero which has 1/4th the profitability and has a difficulty chart climbing faster than ETH, the coin will quickly become unprofitable to mine as well. Right now according to Coinwarz (where that chart above came from), even Bitcoin is a losing mining proposition unless you have extremely low electricity pricing.
The only thing that will save mining will be either huge new influx of new coins to mine or to have the price of the present coins once again spike. New coin ICOs are decreasing rapidly and the "get rich quick with digital coins!" crowd has been burned with this latest plunge in pricing. It COULD bounce back but there is no reason to do so unless a whole lot of people decide to once again take that leap into the coin bubble. Otherwise, the slide is bound to continue and there is going to be a whole lot of mining rigs that will become useless. bizarrely, there may not be any reason to have new family of graphics cards for sale as the price for the present cards may plunge to such a low price due to a flood of cards on the market.

 

[Karadjgne]

I swear, I saw some post almost exactly like ^, and a short while later, boom! Here comes a brand new way called Etherium and the whole coin mining craze starts right over. Happened a few years back, happened just recently, will happen again in the future. Only advice I can think of is wait till the bottom drops out, buy the biggest gpu you can afford, then wait out the next craze.