Hello, dear readers of my blog! In this article we will try to figure out what is the best thing to do (read: more profitable): mine yourself on your own equipment; invest in cloud mining projects; or just buy bitcoins cheaper, wait until the price rises, and sell them at a much higher price, making money on the difference in prices? I think this question has been tormenting many minds for a long time. Someone is still thinking about it, someone has already decided everything for themselves and is acting, but in both cases, this article may be interesting and useful to you. For each of the above methods there are many arguments, both FOR and AGAINST. Moreover, in most cases, these arguments are subjective, and for different people the same argument (fact) can have different weights and different meanings, including neutral ones. In general, let's look at all the methods in order, and at the end we will draw a conclusion.

We won’t talk about mining on processors, because... Currently, this is just self-indulgence, and this activity does not bring real income. Now mining farms are mainly used for mining ether (ethereum), zcash mining (zicash, zec), or mining monero (monero). ASICs are mainly used for mining bitcoins (using the sha-256 algorithm) and litecoins (using the scrypt algorithm), and there are also, albeit expensive, ASICs for mining the Dash cryptocurrency (using the x11 algorithm). Of course, both mining farms and ASICs can mine any altcoins and forks based on algorithms that suit them. I have a separate playlist about mining on my channel, you can watch it here link. There I show and tell you how to assemble and launch the mining process on your mining farm.

Arguments in favor of mining on your own hardware:

a) The equipment is always with you. If anything happens, you can always sell it and partially recover the losses.

b) You have complete control over the entire process of making a profit. No hidden costs, what you mine is what you get.

c) You can always choose what to mine, thereby increasing profits by choosing the most profitable coins in a certain period of time.

d) You can sell cryptocurrency at any time, thereby holding the coins until the pump, and selling them at the peak of the price.

e) Even taking into account the fall in the price of cryptocurrency and/or the increase in complexity, you will sooner or later recoup your investment.

f) In the case of a mining farm, you can save on some parts if you already have them, or buy a used one.

g) Passive income is possible (if you don’t bother too much).

Arguments against mining on your own hardware:

a) You are responsible for the entire process yourself, from purchasing equipment, assembly and installation, to selling coins and withdrawing money. This is a disadvantage only if you are poorly qualified for any stage of the process, which can lead to various negative aspects, ranging from wasted time studying the issue to loss of money in case of unsuccessful actions.

b) The equipment may break down partially or completely. This will have a particularly negative impact on you if you do not have a warranty or the breakdown does not fall under the terms of the warranty.

c) The equipment must be constantly monitored, otherwise the risk of point “b” occurring increases sharply.

d) You need a specially allocated room and certain operating conditions (temperature, humidity).

e) If you install it in a house/apartment, there will be constant noise, especially from ASICs, and the required temperature in the room will not be maintained.

f) Electricity costs. It all depends on the area where you live, you may pay less than with cloud mining, and some may even have access to a “free outlet”, but such people are much less numerous.

g) With any equipment downtime, you lose money, and the payback period increases.

h) You need to have special skills and knowledge in this area to make a successful living.

Recently, a lot of hype projects have begun to appear under the guise of cloud mining, and a person who is not savvy in this matter can easily confuse them. This “BOOM” of pseudo cloud mining is associated with the increased popularity of cloud mining, and HYIP administrators could not ignore it. On my channel cloud And pseudo cloud Separate playlists are dedicated to mining. Also, on my blog, I write in the “news” section about the latest news from highly trusted cloud mining projects, for example, Hashflare. Next, we will analyze only cloud mining projects; we will not take into account HYIPs, because they obey their own laws.

Arguments in favor of cloud mining:

a) You don’t have to spend large sums of money. The minimum amount to invest in cloud mining usually ranges from $1 to $10, so anyone can try it.

b) The equipment is not located at your place. This leads to the following advantages: no noise; no need to monitor and care for the mining farm; think about where to place it; collect it, etc.

c) In the event of a breakdown, repairs are “at the expense of the establishment.” You will not be charged a separate fee.

d) Profit comes in around the clock without interruption, even with equipment downtime.

e) Completely passive income. Nothing is required from you, just rent the capacity and periodically withdraw your income.

e) You do not need to have any special technical knowledge or skills.

g) Periodically there are promotions, discounts and sales, through which you can save money.

Arguments against cloud mining:

a) The equipment is not located at your place. This is both a plus and a minus. The downside is that if something happens (for example, no one needs all the cryptocurrencies), you will not be able to receive income from its sale.

b) Any project (company) on the Internet is at risk of burning out and closing (as, in fact, offline). Only offline you can still try to sue yourself for something, but on the Internet the likelihood of this is almost zero.

c) You do not control the income received from mining. Almost always, the income accrued to you is not transparent. They simply send you a certain amount, but no one will show you why exactly that much was obtained. All that remains is to roughly estimate whether they have squeezed out a certain percentage of your income, or whether everything is fair. In addition, there is always a chance that you yourself could sell the coins at a higher price (or not 😉).

d) There are fees for electricity and maintenance. This is not always a big disadvantage, it all depends on how much electricity costs you.

e) You do not control the mining process. This is a minus only if you know how and can do it, including choosing what is most profitable to mine in a certain period of time.

e) The price per unit of power is usually higher than when purchasing your own equipment. This can be compared with the wholesale price and retail. True, this is not always the case, for example, some ASICs now cost so much that the price per unit of power is the same as in cloud mining, and sometimes even higher.

g) Some contracts are for a specific period (usually 1-2 years). There is a risk that you will not be able to recoup your money during this time, much less earn money. And with conditional lifetime contracts, there is a risk that they will become unprofitable for the project administrators (for example, the price of cryptocurrency will drop sharply and/or the difficulty of mining will jump), and they will be closed before you get your money back.

h) There is a risk of your account being hacked.

You can buy and sell bitcoins (and other cryptocurrencies) both on exchanges (for example, Exmo) and in various exchangers (see monitoring Bestchange exchangers). I talk about how to work on exchanges and about proven exchangers in my videos on the YouTube channel (you can watch). The process itself is called trading. And it doesn’t matter whether you constantly buy and sell cryptocurrency, making money on price differences, or you bought several bitcoins once and sold them six months later, when the price rose, in any case, this is the same trading. And, as you know, trading has its own laws, it is an entire profession, and if you do not know how to do it correctly, then there is a high probability that you will waste all your money. Even with the same bitcoin, buying it with the aim of further selling it at a higher price is just “roulette” for non-professionals.

Arguments in favor of trading:

a) You can quickly make a lot of money.

b) You can handle small amounts of money (especially useful during training).

c) If your goal is simply to get cryptocurrency, then this is the best way.

d) Compared to mining, there are all the advantages of the lack of equipment.

Arguments against trading:

a) You can quickly lose a lot of money.

b) For regular trading, it takes a lot of time, for one-time trading, it makes financial sense to use only a large circulating amount of money.

c) There is a risk of your account being hacked.

d) You need special skills and knowledge to make a successful living.

e) You receive income only when you trade.

Conclusion.

What do we end up with? As I wrote above, any conclusion will be subjective, and everyone decides for himself what will be more profitable for him, where the scales will tip under the influence of the above arguments, what he can afford and what he cannot. Personally, I made a conclusion for myself, and I stick to my decision, namely, I applied the universal principle of not only investing, but also making money on the Internet in general - the principle of diversification (the full list can be seen). If anyone doesn’t know, diversification is distribution. The distribution of funds and risks in all three areas makes my earnings as stable and sustainable as possible due to each of them insuring each other, i.e. the occurrence of any negative consequences of one of the methods is compensated by income from the other two. Of course, this also equalizes income. Of course, my option will not suit everyone. This can happen for various reasons: lack of money, lack of time, lack of knowledge, or other opportunities. In any case, I think there are different ways to start, but this is the model you should strive for. I wish you all good luck and big earnings!

Updated: January 26, 2017 — 5:43 pm

Someone is already mining on a farm, and someone is mining on an ASIC, but those who have not yet decided are deciding what is better to buy so as not to make a mistake. To begin with, you need to calculate what will pay off faster. There are special calculators on the Internet for calculating the payback period. The basis there is the cost of electricity and how powerful the farm is. But everything is not as simple as it might seem, since calculations can only be made approximately. The value of a currency cannot be predicted in any way, and therefore today the term may be a year, but in a week the rate will skyrocket and the term will be reduced significantly. Even if the growth is slow, this still does not mean that there will be more profit, since the number of people willing to mine is only growing.

You should calculate the cost of equipment in your country of residence, for example in Russia the markup on ASICs can reach up to eighty percent. But at the same time, you can order on the manufacturer’s website, but you will have to wait about two months, and this time it would be possible to mine. You will have to decide what is more important at the moment, start mining right away, or save a lot of money.

Both ASIC and mining farm have advantages and disadvantages.

For example, a mining farm can easily work at home; it does not interfere and is not very noisy. It doesn't take up much space and is a very compact option. It is very easy to buy video cards in the store; at the moment, the markup on cards has dropped and they are available as before. You can mine almost any cryptocurrency, the choice is huge. Video cards purchased now will be in demand for at least another 2-3 years; they can always be sold in used form. The warranty often lasts more than two years; if the card fails, it can be quickly replaced with a new one in the store.

But there are also disadvantages to a mining farm. To assemble it you need experience; an ordinary user must spend a long time working on it and setting everything up normally. But there is always YouTube, which has a lot of videos on this topic. You will also have to learn how to install software on this farm; not everyone can do this. Sometimes a farm can take up quite a lot of space if you need a lot of computing power. A farm often takes a little longer to pay for itself than an ASIC.

ASICs have a huge advantage in that they work right away, you just need to turn it on and that’s it, the settings are minimal, it’s very simple for the average user. This device also pays for itself faster than a farm.

But to get an ASIC you will often have to wait or overpay to resellers. Sometimes they are out of stock for several months, and few people want to overpay a huge amount. It is a bad idea to install an ASIC in an apartment, as it is very noisy. If you really want to, you can install it at home, but you will have to endure the sound. You also need to make good ventilation at home, because it generates a lot of heat for the apartment. He also mines coins using only one or sometimes two algorithms; if they become unpopular, then they will not be useful to anyone at all. If you get a defective ASIC, then replacing it will be very difficult and not cheap.

The most common method of mining cryptocurrency remains the use of mining farms. They can be assembled at home without any problems. The only requirement is to select the components as carefully as possible. But recently, conventional video cards have faced very serious competition from alternative technology in the form of ASIC miners. Since the interested party faces two options - ASIC or video card - which is better for mining in this case? In this article we will try to understand this issue.

How to determine your potential income level

Both fortunately and unfortunately, the global market for cryptographic currencies is a very dynamic structure. Coin rates increase each time, and due to the constant demand for mining equipment, its market value is determined. Profitable hardware almost instantly increases in value, which leads to a shortage in the market. On the other hand, equipment that was previously in great demand, but due to the irrelevance of technical characteristics has lost popularity, is quickly becoming depreciated.

Cost analysis is a very long and painstaking procedure, but in fact it will not give the desired result. And there are reasons for this. For example, the Antminer D3 ASIC miner has very high performance indicators. Moreover, they are so large that, according to calculated indicators, a full refund of the amount spent on the purchase will occur within 4-6 months. But there is one problem - it is almost impossible to arrange its purchase.

You can, of course, order equipment from manufacturers directly, but you will have to face a number of difficulties.

1. The first difficulty is that the equipment is delivered for two months (at best). This is quite a long time for cryptocurrencies. It is quite possible that during this time the level of complexity of the network will increase so much that profitability indicators will drop sharply.
2. On the domestic market you can only find a damaged ASIC miner, which is virtually impossible to restore. Components for this type of equipment are not produced separately - repairs are carried out only on the premises of the manufacturer. No one will restore used equipment - this opportunity is provided only to the first owners. But no one will sell a properly working miner, because it is capable of making good money from almost nothing.

On the other hand, video cards are more affordable on the market than ASICs. But the overall performance level is less high. Although, again, a lot depends on the technical characteristics of a particular assembly.

Video cards are characterized by the presence of one serious advantage. The manufacturer provides a massive cooling system, which can be equipped with heat pipes to remove hot air, as well as fans. There is also its own radiator. Theoretically, ASICs are more likely to break because there are a huge number of chips inside, installed on several boards. Ventilation is possible thanks to only two, maximum three fans.

Considering the layout features, ASIC miners are less demanding in terms of the amount of free space required for a full installation. But at the same time they tend to make a lot of noise. The owner should install the equipment only in well-ventilated areas. Video card farms are the complete opposite. Yes, you need a lot of space, but the noise level is much lower. This is a good option for those who want to install equipment right at home. But the fact that video cards are not so loud does not mean that noise is completely absent.

From this we can draw the following conclusion - when considering which is better than an ASIC or a mining rig in terms of free space and temperature, if you have a cool, dry room where noise does not create any discomfort, you should use an ASIC miner. If you have enough space, you can start a farm.

Scalability Features

An ASIC miner is an already assembled device that requires the user to perform a minimum of actions. You just need to connect to the power grid, enter information about the pool and start working. A video card farm requires self-assembly, followed by software installation and configuration. On the one hand, this is extra hassle, but it also has a number of advantages.

At the initial stage, you will have to pay at least a thousand dollars for the ASIC for the cheapest option. A video card farm is a complete device that can be assembled gradually, taking into account profitability indicators. It is enough to assemble a simple system, and only then upgrade it at your discretion. The only way to increase profitability through ASICs is to purchase another piece of equipment.

So what is more profitable - ASIC or farm? In terms of power, an ASIC would be a more profitable option. But its owner must be prepared for a large number of problems. It is impossible to repair it, it takes a long time to be delivered directly from the manufacturer, and it is not a fact that customs will let it through. A mining rig is an ideal space for customizing your own power, it is easy to assemble, and it can be used to mine anything.

The cryptocurrency rate is growing again, and this in turn provokes an increase in demand for its production. Everyone who was unable to become a breadwinner last year will definitely want to try themselves. After all, everyone wants to catch luck. Those who are interested in this topic are probably wondering: what will be more profitable for mining crypto coins: a mining farm or an ASIC? Let’s try to understand this topic so that there are no questions about what and how to mine crypto-assets.

Mining rig or ASIC

What are the payback periods?

First of all, you can calculate the possible volumes of earnings on video cards or on ASIC. There are special calculators for this. On a special website you can enter all the necessary data and receive a table with daily profit data. This can also be done in ASIC. You just need to enter the characteristics of your device.

The data you receive will need to be divided by the price of the farm. This way, you can roughly calculate how long it will take to pay off. Of course, these are very approximate dates, since the rate (cost) of crypto coins changes every hour. Therefore, you will not be able to get accurate calculations. The price may rise or fall every day, but this data will help you navigate your benefits when buying a mining rig.

Be aware of the complexity of the networks of crypto assets you intend to mine. The daily rewards that all miners receive are a constant value when measured in crypto coins. Every day a huge number of new farms are launched around the world. Everyone wants to mine coins and that is why it is becoming more and more challenging every day. The same can be said about profit onASICdevices. That is, your yesterday’s profit today may be shared with new miners.

Mining rig or ASIC

Last year, many coins rose greatly in price. As a result, even losses in dollars became unnoticeable for miners. Although every day the earnings became smaller. Let's take a closer look at what advantages and disadvantages a mining farm has? In addition to the issue of payback, there are many other factors that must be taken into account. This way you can make the right choice.

Pros of the farm:

There are no problems with purchasing video cards. Come to the store, purchase the cards you need and collect them.

You are given a long-term warranty for the cards for a period of 1-3 years. That is, if you have a breakdown, the component is replaced under warranty.

You can set up a farm at home. You will not get any noise or overheating.

If you no longer need it, you can sell the equipment as components. Every detail is useful in a regular computer, and video cards are needed by gamers.

You can mine different crypto funds, since the cards have a wide variety of algorithms.

Advantages ASIC- devices:

No assembly required, you can start working right away.

Easy to configure equipment. Just a couple of simple steps - turn it on, enter your wallet and everything is ready to go.

Today, the payback period is ahead of the farm.

What are the disadvantages of a mining farm? The following disadvantages are highlighted here::

The first thing concerns assembly. To complete it, you need to have certain skills and knowledge.

Computer knowledge is also necessary. You will have to configure, install the operating system, overclock the cards. As an alternative, you can use a ready-made build option from Linux, but as a rule, this also requires some skills.

Need more space.

The payback is inferior to ASIC.

Cons you get with ASIC:

The price is high. If you want to order equipment, you will have to wait up to three months.

The guarantee is located in China, which means that sending it there, waiting and getting it back will again take a lot of time. There are no spare parts available, and repairs are not cheap.

Makes a lot of noise. The work will be heard even several floors above. To perform placement, you will need to rent production space.

Creates a lot of heat. Thus, a person will need to take care of ventilation and heat removal.

Mining occurs through one algorithm; if it is not popular, then the only thing left to do is get rid of ASIC.

There are, of course, other reasons why ASIC miners choose a video card farm. But everyone comes to the conclusion that the mining farm is less productive. At the same time, it is lighter and provides a lower level of risk. Today, the development of new miners does not stand still and is actively developing. It is no longer profitable to mine bitcoins as before, but altcoins show promise. That is why the production of devices with a budget cost occurs. This suggests that ASIC miners may soon appear for other altcoins that are more common.

It is impossible to draw exact conclusions about what will happen to this industry, since in this area everything can change very unexpectedly. It may be that manufacturers will take care that one device can perform many different algorithms. We can only conclude that these devices will experience the same fate as personal computers once did. After all, the first of them took up half the room, but now they are convenient and compact devices. Fortunately, in our time, the development of information technology is happening so quickly that tomorrow devices for mining cryptocurrencies can be mobile and fit in the hand.

So what should you choose? Farm or ASIC?

Only you can decide for yourself how to mine. Assess your capabilities, skills and abilities. Then you can make the right decision in favor of choosing one or another equipment option. We tried to reveal all possible pros and cons in this article. The choice will be yours, and first you should carefully assess your risks and potential profits. This way you can choose the ideal solution for yourself and select a convenient device with which you will mine crypto coins and earn money. We wish you to make the right choice!

Mining farm: how does it work?

Let's conduct a short educational program on the bitcoin algorithm. Many people guess that this virtual currency functions independently and does not have any central authority. Transactions and information are processed using a special program. In the payment register, data about wallets is duplicated on all blocks of the network.

Bitcoin farm, why is it interesting?

Transactions are stored in the ledger in the form of sequential entries collected in blocks. The chain is formed by computers, and if the goddess of luck smiles on someone to be the first to solve the problem, then he is awarded a bonus, a certain number of banknotes. Low-power farms that are not productive enough to produce currency will be inferior to faster and more powerful units.

How does the farm function?

The distribution of earned currency is proportional to the expended power that you use to develop the virtual currency. Immediately with the emergence of virtual currency in the public domain, business people began to manufacture various mechanisms for the extraction of virtual gold. For many people, the farm became a source of high prosperity, while others got what was left and realized very late to start implementing this idea.

How to introduce a farm? In technical terms, it represents an assembly consisting of packages of powerful modern video cards connected to high-performance computers. The main processor also takes part in the mining process, but its computing power in mathematical calculations of a SHA-256 hash is extremely low.

What else is needed for a farm to be truly productive? As the number of video cards in a package increases, it is necessary to increase the power of the power supplies. To effectively cool equipment, you need to install powerful air conditioners and fans. As a rule, it is necessary to install general supply and exhaust ventilation. As this business develops, large hangars equipped with racks with cascades of video cards are allocated for the farm. Electricity costs are rising accordingly. But even after the depreciation back in 2011, the number of miners did not decrease. Undoubtedly, the signs of mass psychosis in society have not yet passed.

Many users have become millionaires through Bitcoin mining. The mining industry was in awe when manufacturers showed an ASIC device designed to work with SHA-256. This hash function was created for one task - to obtain a “beautiful hash” by searching numbers, which will enable the pool to lengthen the chain of blocks and receive a bonus for this. The farm operates at a speed of three terahash. Advanced assemblies are assembled on multiple processors. They are manufactured on a chip basis with power supplies and fans.

In essence, this is a ready-made farm for the production of virtual currency. Buy and start minting coins right away. The new generation of these chips has become even more productive.

ASICs provide greater payback than the leading Radeon R9 380 cards and are four levels ahead of them in performance. Since microcircuits and power supplies consume less energy, the cost of purchasing and installing the farm is several times lower. The introduction of ASIC integrated circuits upset the plans of prospectors for serious influxes of bitcoins using the Radeon R9 380 video card. The payback on server racks has fallen quite deeply and continues to fall to zero.

How is a virtual currency farm completed?

A detailed guide especially for those who have not yet lost hope of mining gold Bitcoin. We buy video cards. We provide them with intensive cooling. We buy a powerful power supply for assembly. The board consumes about 300 watts.
Everything is mounted on a server rack. Fans are selected for air supply and exhaust. Or air conditioners are used. The cassettes are connected to the computer, and it is connected to the pool. Starts working. Powerful farms are located in Iceland. It's cool there all year round. This saves resources on cooling the farm.

Let's decide how much such a device costs, and what kind of profit can be expected from the farm?

Approximate initial characteristics.

Video card– costs about ten thousand Russian rubles.
Electricity– four rubles per kilowatt-hour.
Computer power– 375 W (in fact, this figure is much higher).
Let’s imagine that the Bitcoin rate is one thousand eight hundred green tickets with a portrait of the American President for one Bitcoin.
The total computing power at a speed of 0.5 Ghash/s (gigahashes per second) and not taking into account the electricity used, we get -1.6 rubles per hour. Unprofitable event. A farm on a balcony or in a kitchen cannot produce Bitcoin currency. It will be unprofitable.

Let's say you increased the number of video cards to six. Energy consumption will cost 2.5 kilowatts and the data processing speed will be three Ghash/s. As a result, we end up with a loss of ten rubles per hour. The farm does not provide income.

Let's move aside the bitcoin farm and take a look at another type of bitcoin mining. We assemble a farm using AntMiner S9 ASIC controllers, its characteristics are as follows:
About 100,000 Russian rubles must be paid for AntMiner S9.
We pay four Russian rubles per kilowatt-hour for electricity.
The farm consumes about 360 kW of energy (not taking into account the computer for now).
Let's leave the course the same.
The performance of such an assembly is 28 thousand times higher than that of a farm with video cards. As a result, such a virtual currency farm gives the same -1.4 Russian rubles per hour. Even with such powerful equipment, gold bitcoin mining is unprofitable.

The most powerful assembly will not reduce electricity consumption. The road to getting rich with such an assembly is closed.

Bottom line.

No home farm makes any real profit. Large companies create huge cassettes of powerful ASIC controllers. Perhaps the creation of such installations from ASIC cascades has a right to exist for new young cryptocurrencies, but for Bitcoin the time has already passed.