Bitcoin Mining in UK?

exocet

Just seen a feature on Bitcoin mining in U.K on Newsnight.
The “owner” of the featured facility located somewhere in West London claimed that the cost of manufacturing (mining) was only 25% of the total value ie 75% profit.
Obviously the current high Exchange rate for Bitcoin is having a bearing on the profitability but I was under the impression that the U.K with its relatively expensive electricity and mild climate was not a good place to carry out such an operation?  

BloodEagle

I don’t understand what bitcoin mining, or even bitcoin, is to be honest

fields5069

A friend of mine is just starting to do it as a hobby, with a PC set up with 6 or 7 graphics cards or something. He expects to cover the cost of electricity, but probably not much else, it's just an interesting hobby.

There's probably more money to be made by having a small flutter on the latest up and coming currency. Lumens are estimated to increase in value by 7000% this year, for example. It's all a bit speculative, so as usual only invest what you can afford to lose.

thecolourbox

fields5069 said:

There's probably more money to be made by having a small flutter on the latest up and coming currency. Lumens are estimated to increase in value by 7000% this year, for example. 

What so we should all buy a load of light bulbs then?

joeyowen

This tells you a lot:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42774882


However, my understanding is in the UK you need quite a lot of hardware to make it viable.  There isn't much use starting your home PC (even with a 1080) on a mine.

Also, imagine being paid in sterling, but the price of sterling can fluctuate 40-50% some weeks.  A lot of people love to brag about their big hauls, but are very quiet at other times....

hywelg

I also do not know what 'bitcoin mining' is but it do understand that's it's nothing like mining. Just like 'surfing the internet' was nothing like surfing. 

Neil

joeyowen said:

This tells you a lot:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42774882


However, my understanding is in the UK you need quite a lot of hardware to make it viable.  There isn't much use starting your home PC (even with a 1080) on a mine.

Also, imagine being paid in sterling, but the price of sterling can fluctuate 40-50% some weeks.  A lot of people love to brag about their big hauls, but are very quiet at other times....

Very, very speculative.

As you say some people like to brag about successes and to be fair if you've been in it for over a year you will have seen some gains but if you'd invested in December as many did you'd probably have lost 50% by January! 

Danny1969

When it comes to electric at home in the UK it's a bit harder as the standing charge is low but the unit of per KW hour is high ... with business electric though you can choose a high standing charge but low KW hour tarriff .... then you can get your electric a lot cheaper. A friend of mine had a meat processing business and the blast freezers in that will munch through around 2.8K's worth of electric a month but he doesn't pay the KW hour tariff we do so the 2.8K get's him a lot of 3 phase power

Is bitcoin mining still basically proof of work for the block chain ? if so then the more popular the thing is the more proof of work is needed I guess

joeyowen

Neil said:

joeyowen said:

This tells you a lot:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42774882


However, my understanding is in the UK you need quite a lot of hardware to make it viable.  There isn't much use starting your home PC (even with a 1080) on a mine.

Also, imagine being paid in sterling, but the price of sterling can fluctuate 40-50% some weeks.  A lot of people love to brag about their big hauls, but are very quiet at other times....

Very, very speculative.

As you say some people like to brag about successes and to be fair if you've been in it for over a year you will have seen some gains but if you'd invested in December as many did you'd probably have lost 50% by January! 

I know someone who went for LTC at £230

It dropped to £101 at one point last week.

He's hoping it gets back to £230 just to get his money back

Buy low, sell high.  It is the most basic principle.  

goat

You need specialised ASIC hardware to mine Bitcoin, it hasn’t been possible on home PCs for many years. You can mine some alt-coins with a multi-gpu PC  setup though and some of the pools will pay out in BTC.

I do think the opportunity for massive profits with crypto has passed and a many coins are overvalued at the moment. Lots of people are pumping various alt-coins but they all have their own agendas and all the markets are being massively manipulated, including Bitcoin.

57Deluxe

so if you take the 1849 gold rush as an example, the biggest winners were the services and materials suppliers.

So, I am looking to be running-up some Bitcoin trousers...

Travisthedog

I'm doing the USI-TECH Ponzi/pyramid scam/scheme thing - literally no idea what I'm doing or how it works though

Doing very well actually but I fully expect it to go tits up now I'm making a return

darcym

in terms of making coins - it's over without serious investment and patience - home hardware won't cut it, virtual infrastructure from cloud providers won't cut it, only custom hardware with a large price tag have the potential at this stage in the evolution. 

it's all about the market and trade at the moment. 

Garthy

The more I read about it, the more it seems like a fucking massive scam.

exocet

darcym said:

in terms of making coins - it's over without serious investment and patience - home hardware won't cut it, virtual infrastructure from cloud providers won't cut it, only custom hardware with a large price tag have the potential at this stage in the evolution. 

it's all about the market and trade at the moment. 

That's what I thought. The feature last night showed the protagonists "Datacentre" which contained quite a few bays of dedicated hardware but it wasn't "high density" from a space efficiency perspective. So expensive dedicated hardware, installed in a low density configuration in expensive floor space in West London. He must have rigged the meter so that someone else was playing the Bill!

darcym

I'd be interested in the hardware, as it won't be standard, it would have to be the custom crypto machines, be real as features aimed at the majority won't really paint a good headline story, newsnight is not somewhere I would depend on for solid bitcoin style tech information 

exocet

darcym said:

I'd be interested in the hardware, as it won't be standard, it would have to be the custom crypto machines, be real as features aimed at the majority won't really paint a good headline story, newsnight is not somewhere I would depend on for solid bitcoin style tech information 

The hardware shown was the ASIC style. It just struck me as odd that someone would even attempt such a venture in that location given the investment and running costs required. There was no company name mentioned so it’s not as if the “owner” was getting good publicity out of the piece.

Nitefly

Garthy said:

The more I read about it, the more it seems like a fucking massive scam.

The South Sea Bubble all over again! 

Clashman

https://www.coindesk.com/rapper-50-cent-now-bitcoin-millionaire/
The whole world is going mad....Soundsl ike a G rate T i tle to a s ONG.

Neil

exocet said:

darcym said:

in terms of making coins - it's over without serious investment and patience - home hardware won't cut it, virtual infrastructure from cloud providers won't cut it, only custom hardware with a large price tag have the potential at this stage in the evolution. 

it's all about the market and trade at the moment. 

That's what I thought. The feature last night showed the protagonists "Datacentre" which contained quite a few bays of dedicated hardware but it wasn't "high density" from a space efficiency perspective. So expensive dedicated hardware, installed in a low density configuration in expensive floor space in West London. He must have rigged the meter so that someone else was playing the Bill!

Here's something I read a while back, Bitcoin mining uses more electricity per year than the Republic of Ireland. 

 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/27/bitcoin-mining-consumes-electricity-ireland

Aside from the cost, think about the energy wastage. 

randella

57Deluxe said:

so if you take the 1849 gold rush as an example, the biggest winners were the services and materials suppliers.

So, I am looking to be running-up some Bitcoin trousers...

@57Deluxe - you can joke, but the way it's going I think the only winners are going to be the ones selling high-end graphics cards on eBay at a massive markup.