Since the beginning of the second half of 2017, I call myself a proud crypto investor - currently investing in the 4 major cryptocurrencies - bitcoin, ethreum, litecoin and ripple.
Starting July 2017, using dollar cost averaging I keep buying crypto coins once in the month. So far, the total crypto portfolio shows an awesome 132.98% year to date value growth.
Update, lately I've been playing with bitcoin cloud mining contracts from HashFlare, see Should You Invest in Hashflare Ethereum Cloud Mining Contract or Build Your Own GPU Mining Rig
HashFlare.io (Affiliate link here - if you will click, register and decide to invest, I might earn 10% commission from that)
A couple of days ago I decided to give it a try and set up a 12 GPU ethreuem mining rig, for that I headed to Amazon.com and ordered goodies (motherboard, graphics card, risers, processor and so on)
Now, in total, I spent $960 for a bare minimum, just one GPU, which I'm planning to extend during 2018, by adding a new card once in the month.
I decided to compare/forecast/predict - should I rather had invested $960 directly purchasing ethereum, zcash or monero, instead of building a mining rig.
From money invested in mining rig ($960), I could buy 2.03 ETH.
By knowing approximate hashing power (22.5MH/s) and electric costs ($0.08) I calculated how much I could earn with just 1 GPU in one year. The result is not at all impressive - just 1.23 ETH.
Apparently, if you are deciding to invest in mining rig - one GPU might be too short to get back your investment in a foreseen future.
Ethreuem calculator
As I'm planning to run a full 12 GPU Ethreum mining rig, the cost for it would be, if all parts bought at once - $3,880.93.
For that money, I could buy 8.21 ETH.
Let's see how much ETH a 12 GPU mining rig could theoretically produce in a year:
Ethereum calculator for 12 GPU
14.73 ETH - Now, that already seems as a nice result. If converted back to the USD using today's ETH pricing (which is wrong, as we have no clue what will be the price for ETH at the end of 2018) we could get $6959.33, or profit at $3,079. Nice.
These calculations are just for the illustration as we don't have any clue what will be the ETH price in a year - it could go to the moon or it could dip.
It's still like a gambling to me. Also, there is a huge possibility Ethereum switching from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, putting miners in unclear future.
On the other hand, there are other coins we could mine with GPU in 2018, Zcash or Monero for example.
Let's apply the same maths for Monero (XMR)
- 1 GPU $960 = 3.77XMR
- Mined in a year = 1.57 XMR
Monero Calculator 1 GPU
Let's see what happens with 12 GPU Monero mining rig:
- 12 GPU $3,880.93 = 15.26 XMR
- Mined in a year: 18.89 XMR
Monero calculator 12 GPU
Profitable, but not as lucrative as mining ether. Mining Monero would break even after a year of operations.
Zcash (ZEC)
- 1 GPU $960 = 3.09 ZEC
- Mined in a year = 1.6 ZEC
Zcash calculator 1 GPU
Again, let's calculate 12 GPU Zcash mining rig
- 12 GPU $3,880.93 = 12.51 ZEC
- Mined in a year: 19.24 ZEC
Zcash 12 GPU calculator
Now, better than Monero, but worse than Ethereum. Well, it's clear where most GPU power will go in case Ethereum implements PoS protocol in 2018/