I have to say, this thread has been immensely helpful and intelligent. I only recently began mining Zcash on a single 1050Nvidia card on my laptop. I had to run the thing for 2 days straight on top of a baking tray with a fan to get even a minimum payout on flypool.
After realizing that it’s not worth burning out my machine I decided to upgrade my unit to a twin 1070ti running close to 1,000Sol/S with overclocking. I switched over to nanopool to get a better payout rate.
Then decided to upgrade to an ASIC 2 weeks later, after comparing the ROI to my GPU unit, that I just bought less than 2 months ago. And I’m waiting for my ASIC to arrive so that I can amp up my hash rate and really get into the game.
It’s interesting to see how concerned many people are with the introduction of ASICs to this ecosystem when many of you guys are mining with serious rigs. Some of you dudes have 20, 30, 50 or more GPUS! to me that’s nuts.
I began mining Zcash for several reason:
First the anonymous nature of the coin.
Second the fact that it’s not ASIC dominated (yet)
Third that it was immensely undervalued.
As of this writing is stands at #22 on coinmarketcap at $174.85 price and only $737 Million Market cap. When you consider the explosive growth rates expected in cryptocurrencies the Zcash project has great potential.
Considering the amount of coins that are in circulation, and across numerous blockchains you have to analyze the impact any change has to the coins image. Why are people using Zcash, and for what purpose? Why not Bitcoin? Why not Litecoin? Why not Dash? Etc.
I am no expert in algorithm programming, and I apologize if I ever sounded like one. But if you modify the main code of ZEC it ceases to be ZEC, and will be something different, will it not? Although I am not familiar with the parameters of 144,5 versus the current configuration. I am sure any hardware in the future will catch up to the Equihash modification.
If profitability is the question, it is far more profitable to mine with an ASIC over a GPU rig. If I spent 2800$ to build a rig that makes me 2.8$ per day, why would I not spend 850$ on one that make me 28$ per day? It seems like some easy math to me guys.
For me I’m more interested in getting Zcash recognized as a leader in innovation. So many people know about Bitcoin, but so few know anything about Zcash. Let alone mine the stuff!
When you look at the trade volumes of ZEC on any major exchange they are quite low. Rarely ever are they in the top 5 or 10 even. My impression is few people know about it even less use it to transact.
So if you consider that most of the people here are because they feel strongly about the project, or they are doing it for profits, consider that Zcash is a great great project whether your mining it GPU’s which most of us are, or ASICs which will do nothing more than serve your purpose by either allowing you more hashing power, either through purchase or rental from a hash provider, which will surely increase the value of the coins and the prominence of ZEC within the crypto universe of which there are many options, and elevate Zcash value, influence and acceptance.
I think this project has value, strength and intelligence behind it.
I’m on board and staying on board mining ZEC
/end