I realise I am new here here but I am very interested in people’s opinions on things so forgive me if my post is off on a tangent and not just talking about hardware etc.
As background I worked for many years in financial services, and as such I am quite familiar with most types of investment, probably like many of you guys here… I have seen scams, made and lost sums on financial markets.
Anyway what I’m getting at is, in all this time I never came across a financial asset or instrument that could consistently produce 5% per month as a return on average, let alone produce 10% or more per month without risk of total loss (massive leverage etc) and with the capital investment remaining in tact in a physical asset that has intrinsic value (rig, cards etc) albeit with some depreciation.
I keep reading people saying the next two years, the next two years is where its at… But I’m guessing most people here are young, and horrific as it is having just turned 40 I still count myself as young haha. But, there is a whole lifetime ahead so why aren’t more people focused on the long game (maybe they are and I’m missing it)…
I can’t imagine these crypto currencies will go away even if there is a current bubble, like anything the prices will reset, and the less favoured currencies would be converted to the better ones and those less favoured ones would drop off… But the mining industry would on average continue to produce its 5-15% per month regardless of whether the market goes up or down, and in many ways the market going down is the best thing possible for miners because of the unit cost averaging effect.) (For those not familiar, when buying units regularly volatility is your best friend, and corrections even better, because if you keep buying regularly you buy more when its cheap and accumulate more units and when it recovers just to where it was even if there’s been no growth, you made more than you would have if it just kept going up.) this easily translates to mining through volatile times being the best way to amass coins with a premium having to be applied to upping your capacity as difficulty goes up, but also the coin value going up would offset a lot of this.
Anyway, am I mad to think that miners should be be planning now not how to mine and make the most they can for the next couple of years, but how to build their mining capacity so that they can mine for the next 25 years?
People once thought the same about automobiles, people once thought the same thing about the original wireless box now known as RADIO.
Then there was T.V, then color T.V., then who needs a personal computer in their home, to why do you need more than a 56k modem…along comes cable… all thought to be bubbles and speculatory investments
Now you have wallstreet with futures and the IRS saying you owe us taxes…
There will be coins that come and go like MS attempt ata digital mp3 player, or the Tucker automobile, and remember there use to be a company that no one could ever over take?? Yahoo
Me, I’m mining along, completely in the black no matter what happens.
I’d agree with this… The difficulty from the OP’s email about “how to build their mining capacity so that they can mine for the next 25 years” is that technology is moving at such an incredible rate that you cannot predict how different things will be in 2-3 years, let alone 25 years… We get get Quantum computers or reach the technical limits of microprocessor circuitry…
Personally, I’m planning ahead 3-4 years for mining - but plan to be in it for much longer as long as things don’t crash and burn which I feel is unlikely.
It is hard to think in terms of 25 years especially when so much of the world’s technological progress is attached to Moore’s law. Technological advances have so far, and will probably continue to, cause your mining computers (the GPU or ASIC part at least) to not be worth running in less than 5. For me it all has to come back to energy. For the Fremen in Dune, spitting is a sign of respect because it meant giving up some of their water, their most scarce essential resource. For us it is has been and will increasingly be energy. We spill some energy into the crypto world to create trust. I’m reminded of a thread I read a while ago (sorry, can’t find the link) where someone was talking about setting up solar panels and battery banks in the desert. The poster had originally planned to grow hydroponic lettuce with all of his capital equipment, but found that cryptocurrency mining was twice as profitable as lettuce growing. No one could believe it was worth the expense of buying solar arrays and battery banks to mine crypto, especially when competing against cheap Chinese coal. Maybe long term crypto goes away, but if your capital assets can be re-purposed to other energy intensive activities, be it training “AI” models on your GPUs or growing hydroponic lettuce with your electricity, then you have hedged your bets pretty well.
Yes I didn’t mean that the gear we buy now will be working in 25 years, just wondered if people think there will still be mining in the future, if its here to stay or if its a momentary thing. It feels to me as I get older, that a lot of younger people have adopted it and are comfortable with it and therefore it is here to stay.
IMO the system always finds a way to cut out anything that it doesn’t control. Difficult to put into words, but I whole heartedly believe the corporations/banks/crypto market will find a way to accomplish the task of mining without independent miners. Why pay others what you can keep for yourself, so I intend to mine and accumulate as much as I can, while I can…
I can’t imagine there will be private crypto mining in the future. This is precisely why I stopped buying more gear when I did. Personally, I’m working my rigs until they die and that will be the end of it. Also I’m hoping to cash in on the falling share price of Nvidia.