My family’s economic situation is dire, and I’m very new to all of this. I’m thinking of taking a loan to buy a Z15 to try to get myself a breath of fresh air. If all the variables were to freeze in their current state (ZCash value, kwh cost, etc.) I’d be able to pay this loan and the other 2 I have been negotiating with the bank eventually.
One variable is certain to change: block reward will be halved in a few days. What does that mean mid-long term? People say ZCash value will increase and mining won’t be affected much.
ZCash makes it clear that the algorithm could change. If it does, long before it happens will they let us know? (the asic in question can only solve Equihash).
Lastly, how hard is it to operate an ASIC? Do I need to know Linux for that?
Thanks for the advice! Can you tell me why is that? I’m completely new to the forum, maybe there’s a DM system in case this is sensitive information. ZCash looked so promising… I thought I had found the solution to everything. Plus, I thought its privacy feature would count for something and its value would eventually go up as the world goes crazy.
Hardware ROI need to be short and it is possible that you just will not be in time to back your investment due to miners competition. Soon will be halving of miners reward, it means that you will get twice less coins per block. To compensate it price need to go up, but in ZEC it could be vise verce as a lot of people bullish on ZEC, but there is no real demand on ZEC as “Zcash`s admidistration” that represented by 3 centralised groups of people are focused only on tech development and don’t care about adoption and price at all.
Also 20% of mined coins go into salaries in $ and events of these 3 groups, so they sell a lot of ZEC that also dump the price.
Also 54% of all coins on 171 addresses so if price will go up sell volume could be huge.
So in your case it would be success if a speculative price will go up, but if not?
I don’t have a better idea… The worst of all would be to buy the asic and, as it slowly makes its way through seas, ports, and customs, ZCash turns to dust, or they change the algo, or something. I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about all that. Thanks for your time, sorry for the little TMI outburst there.
No controversy, just facts:
My two Z15s from the first batch brought me 108 coins to date in 4,5 months. I bought two devices for 6.5k. I didn’t sell a single coin.
Like I said, I’m very new to this. Can the Z15 be set to mine any coin that uses Equihash? Does it come with a built-in firmware and interface, like a modem or something?
I also don’t understand the relation between the asic’s hashrate and the coin’s hashrate (in fact, I don’t understand the coin’s hashrate ate all… is it a scale of difficulty?)
Zcash is worth the most on equihash. If the whole market goes up the other coins might be profitable to mine, but would be more difficult to sell. I wouldn’t worry about an algorithm change. Go to whattomine and plug in the hashrate of the Z15 and check the profit. I imagine it will be 6 ZEC/month after the halving.
Well, my suggestion before buying anything (Z15 in this case, but it’s true in general) is to understand how things work.
Consider this: you’re going to buy your ASIC now, and you pay it now. If you’re lucky (I don’t know where you live) you will need at least a couple of months to have it home.
Then, you plug it and it starts mining. You need to be patient to have a good amount of ZEC ready for you…but meanwhile you’re going to pay several electric bills.
The investment probably makes sense only if ZEC go to the moon or at least if its value increases considerably. Of course, this is not guaranteed (as for any high-risk investment) and if it does, it probably needs several years from now.
I don’t want to turn off your enthusiasm, but if you’re not in the situation where you can afford to loose a good amount of money, think twice before taking your decision.