If I had $500 to invest into a bitcoin venture, would this be the best way to go? Can anyone suggest alternatives or is this the best? This is sort of for me but also for some folks I know thinking of getting into bitcoin.
Seems like this is a pretty hot item. Opinions? Thank you.
With the current exchange rate and where the difficulty is heading it might be better to wait or just buy bitcoin itself as some are suggesting here. Spend that time learning how to calculate mining profitability if you haven't done so yet. If after 2-4 weeks you see a good opportunity and fully understand the risks - try it. But generally speaking small-scale mining is very unlikely to be profitable these days. More of a hobby perhaps.
Thanks, suchmoon. Man, that's a bummer because I really like putting my hands on equipment. It's too bad it can't be more appealing to the average techie such as myself. I'm ditching most of my GPUs and was hoping to find a mining-based alternative. Looked a little at cloud mining but most of them are scams or don't even have mining equipment.
bleh sadface
Just because it won't be profitable doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. If you like putting your hands on equipment then you might enjoy this hobby. I actually maintain that they will be profitable if you sell your equipment in 5-6 months. It seems most of the calculations on here never factor in a re-capture of capital from selling your used miner, and that seems to tip the scales to profitability, at least for me.
That's true, although resale value is not easy to predict, and is largely affected by the same factors as profitability, i.e. higher difficulty, lower exchange rate, more people dumping their miners on bitcointalk/ebay/craigslist/whatever - lower resale value.
Also for people in the colder climates - winter heating cost offset might be something worth considering.
