The sad truth about ASICs

Mining
1

Out of 122 ASICs listed and the profits they currently produce as of Oct.10/2018

71 ASICs are losing money. 58%

33 make less then $3 a day. 27%

5 make $3 to $5 a day. 4%

5 make $5 to $10 a day. 4%

8 make more then $10 a day. 7%.
All released last month(newest design), or is for Equihash(still adjusting to ASICs).

All ASICs made before March 2018 are unprofitable,
Exceptions
the A5 DashMaster($2.65),
and BK-X($1.96).

All ASICs made from April 2018 to August 2018 are unprofitable or make less then $3 a day,
Exceptions
A5+ DashMaster($5.31)
8 Nano Pro($5.40)
A9 ZMaster($21.24)- Equihash

If you JUST bought a ASIC in September 2018, your in luck! your hardware might not be crap yet…but just wait till next month, the new ULTRA IMPROVED MODEL can be yours for a low overpriced amount. Im sure you already ROI on your last unit right?..No? Oh well, why not DOUBLE DOWN, look at how many more hashes this new unit can do!

Really tho, the only ASICs that are current worth ANYTHING, are Equihash ASICs which are new, and the newest ASICs that just came out…each and every month… So if you bought one anytime before September and its not for equihash, you are probly(85% chance) losing money now or making less then $3 a day. 1 month lifespan on some of this hardware and it already losing money.

New hardware every two months or you cant compete, why does this seem like a terrible idea. You have a couple months to buy new hardware before your old stuff is losing money, and you are stuck in a cycle, the ASIC company wins, you lose. All profits goto the next newer/better machines or you have to turn them off.

GPU rigs have been going for 2+ years without becoming obsolete from a new card design. This seems much more healthy for the mining ecosystem and to peoples wallets, you get to stay in the game for years vs months.

ASIC profits or should I say losses, sorted by release date.

ASIC-Obsolete
ASIC-Obsolete681Ă—982 126 KB

Asic-Obsolete2
Asic-Obsolete2676Ă—983 128 KB

Asic-Obsolete3
Asic-Obsolete3675Ă—987 131 KB

Asic-Obsolete4

People who like ASICs, do you honestly not see a problem with this? Look at how quickly this hardware becomes obsolete.

4 out of 7 from August, a little more then 1 month ago, are losing money.
Avg profit $2.50 from the ones that are making a profit.
57% are losing money from this month.

3 out of 5 From July, 3 months ago are losing money.
Avg profit $1.56 from the ones that are making a profit.
60% are losing money from this month.

14 out of 19 from May, 5 months ago are losing money.
Avg profit $2.76 from the ones that are making a profit.
74% are losing money from this month.

50-70% chance your hardware will cost you money to run in 1-3 months makes ASICs a waste right now.
You have to keep investing again and again or you are done.

1 Like
2

I sold my two batch two Z9 mini for more than I paid for them, a month after I received them.

Sometimes the profits in asics are in importing and reselling.

3

Hehe I warned people so many times about this, but they are greedy. First batch ROI ed by now maybe, rest of them are slaves to the ASIC manufacturers :slight_smile:

2 Likes
4

2nd batch will ROI as well, with only USD 800, enough the price is stable or will rise further the next months. For 3rd+ batch i’am not sure, there it’s really up to the price and of course how many units will get sold. Ideally it would be a lower price for the next months so not that much units get purchased and than a rise, but who knows. I wouldn’t go with 3rd batch for sure…

5

Your list isn’t too correct for several reasons, just making some corrections if you don’t mind.

  • The cryptonite asics are still very proftitable, you forgot them somehow. The are even more profitable than the equihash ones!

  • The Baikal B is as well profitable, (not much but still), seems you forgot that one in your list.

  • That asicminervalue site only seem to use major coins, not taking into account all coins on a given algo. For example for Scrypt they use only 10 coins out of over 100. Hence the scrypt miners show up as not profitable while they still make a small profit with other than these coins.

  • The asicminervalue site only uses factory settings without over-/underclocking possible on many asics. This can make a big difference when you lower for example electricity usage with 50% but hashrate lowers only 20%, just as an example. Same like with GPU’s when under/overclocking.

  • This site is, like whattomine, just a for some orientation or advicer/helper but it’s for sure not the full picture of asic mining profitability.

Just adding these notes, as i personally don’t buy anymore any asics i don’t care, just thought i share some more insight while i still have some …

1 Like
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Lets say we did add the ASICs you mentioned to the profitable list, does 5 or 10 more profitable ones change the data much? Within 3 months almost all ASICs are loosing money.

Its sad that you have to void your warranty on a 2-3k item just to make it profitable. This also reduces its life dramatically and has a chance of frying your boards and you are left with nothing.

It shows pretty clearly, any ASIC older then 3 months has a hard time making money. Is this all 100% set in stone fact, no. But the trend is, you have 3 months to ROI or your stuck with a machine that gets you less coins per $ compared to just buying the coins.

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1.) No, these view asics don’t change the picture, neither was that my attention, just adding some more info to it, nothing less, nothing more.

2.) Not much different than to gpu as many producers as well limitations that even mining with them voids the warranty if we have to compare both. Additionally downclocking is on some older asics anyway the better option. Doesn’t matter to much, that warranty argument is useless as it applies to gpu as well as to asics, and with a 3 month warranty anyway on asics it really doesn’t matter. A better argument would be that the quality of some new asics like the E3 gets really worse, hashboards are mass failing. That’s a bigger concern getting asics that fail only after some weeks due low quality design… E3 for Ethash is the best example for this.

3.) Talking generally about asics and 3 months isn’t valid that way. Many Asics have been profitable for longer than a year, others are still profitable, and some just failed even after 2 weeks (example is the B3 for Bytom). So i wouldn’t say that they loss profitablity in generally after 3 months. It’s all up how many producers go for a given algo, how many coins are there, and biggest problem of course, how many asics are produced. Additonally it seems that indeed nowadays more and more people get familar with asics, maybe even switching from gpu’s to asics. Means a lot of more new miners choose asics and that of course drives the profitablity down, just logical. I would call it a gamble within the gamble to choose an asic, it could be way longer profitable than 6 months or even not a single month.

All over i think it would even make sense name the topic “The sad truth about POW” as it’s just coming to an end … Too many miners, less volume and price and way more producer competion with more and more units all around is killing private miners like me and you, no matter if gpu or asic actually. And more and more coins going POS makes it harder for all as more and more mining equipement gets squeezed into less left coins.
We will see it with ZCL which is leaving equihash and is one of the 3 big profitable coins on equihash, this will force more asics to ZEC and ZEN lowering profitablity even more. Same goes for gpu algo coins and the best example will be ETH later this month reducing the mining reward and later POS of course…

I agree absolutly with buying coins is by now the better and more safe option…

1 Like
8

You guys talk about ROI’s on Asic. But let’s called them what they really are BIG door stops. If your one of the lucky one’s to make there money back. By then you have a door stop. If not lucky then sell them fast to another sucker.

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If you would be so good in trading as for predicting on ASICs, you all would be sooo rich by now…

10

So true
ASIC,s is a true waste of good money invested.
by time you get yours the coin value is on rapid decline. ROI’s are never reached.

11

Well, this is the problem with ASIC miner, they just dont care, as long as they make money, they dont care. ASIC miner don’t care about the developer, just like the developer don’t care to ASIC miner as well, they just think on how to make money. Switching to ASIC is bad idea, I think it just become another ASIC coin, and only little ASIC coin is surviving.

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These ASIC manufacturers, all they care about is profiting off the coin… And China has too much hash rate. And to top it off, these digital monies are being used to buy Illegal Drugs!

I’m forced to conclude that the right thing to do is to alter consensus to better suit my moral preferences and for my immediate financial benefit. :wink:

13

In a bear market all mining looks bad, not just ASICs. Nobody is rushing out to buy new GPUs for mining right now because that would also be unprofitable.

The unprofitability has nothing to do with ASICs, it has to do with the bull and bear market swings for all cryptocurrencies.

4 Likes
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This is kinda true, however if ASICs were never released to the ZCash network. GPUs would still be making small amounts of money compared to mining at a complete loss. Right now you CAN NOT mine it with a GPU or you will be taking a loss. If the difficulty was still in the 10-15M range like it was before ASICs came out, you would still be making money, all tho small amounts.

ASICs have pushed out over 100,000 GPUs and replaced them with less than 10,000 ASICs. Lets force out the majority of miners, so a small amount of people that currently bought an ASIC can try to make some money.

This is a big problem, only a handful of people will benefit from this switch, mostly the first or second batch buyers. Judging by the main post, you have 1-3 months to make your money back or you are stuck with a machine that mines at a loss. Who wins with ASICs? The hardware manufactuers do…

2 Likes
15

I would have to disagree with this. The reason GPU’s are so unprofitable is because of the ASIC’s and the bear market. How much would Zcash miners make right now if Zcash was at the difficulty level it was at in May? More than twice as much. Ethereum is rumored to be over 1/3 ASIC mined. If the ASIC’s didn’t exist people would still be buying GPU’s.

16

AGREE!

NEW ASIC life cycle is 3-4 months around only…
no point to buy ASIC

1 Like
17

Maybe if you got a big house with lots of doors, it could be interesting :joy:

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Just from the ASIC side, use the GPU to mine coins that do not have ASIC machines built for them. Oh wait, you can’t do that either because of the umm Market??
So regardless of ASIC machines the market makes it unprofitable…

2 Likes
19

No. If there were no ASIC’s it would be more profitable to mine with GPU’s is all I am saying. That point is irrefutable. It is a moot point, but Root was saying the unprofitability has nothing to do with ASIC’s yet it does. If less ASIC;s were produced each ASIC and GPU would make more money. It is however pointless to debate it since that is not the reality.