Getting started w/ modest initial investment - Mining, trading and more, worthwhile?

RanceJustice

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jun 9, 2003
Messages
6,599
Hello everyone. I thought I'd ask here to get your impressions compared to a forum dedicated exclusively to crypto. We also have some people who are technically (and hopefully financially) knowledgeable.

I've been aware of and on the periphery of crypto for quite some time; I've mined a little here and there years ago, following the technology etc... but have never made a concerted effort or a real investment thereof due to a variety of factors (healthcare expenses come first ). Everything I read suggests that blockchain tech and cryptocurrencies are going to continue to grow as a whole, but the particulars are the issue. Looking back at the missed opportunities is frustrating, so I am trying to figure out if it is still worth stepping into crypto with some sort of investment of time and/or resources.

I've heard lots of stories about how those who start with modest resources and then use their profits to reinvest into expanding their operation, both in terms of mining and trading. However, this is a fast moving world and what was viable in the past may not be presently. I'd greatly appreciate some informed advice on how to proceed in this regard. I'll break things down into mining and trading individually.

Mining - At the moment, I have a pair of computers with mining-capable GPUs - an AMD RX 480 8gb and an Nvidia GTX 1070 8gb. The RX480 can run most of the day mining away with a few exceptions as the PC on which it is used typically isn't doing GPU-intensive work, while the Nvidia 1070 is currently in my primary rig and thus would not be able to work when I was gaming or whatnot. Both of these cards are strong miners from what I've read, but I am curious how to put them to work or if it is possible/advisable to do so at this point. Would there be a way to maximize steady profit? I'm guessing this either goes toward mining one of those "whatever is profitable at the moment and then cashing out in BTC" pools and/or I can actually mine certain currencies directly to exchange and/or HODL and wait for value to rise.

Ideally I'd like to use existing hardware to turn enough of a profit to invest into more hardware for mining, but I am not necessarily opposed to an investment in new mining hardware - but I really will need a clear picture of what can provide a reasonable ROI. Putting out several hundred dollars for a single additional card (I had considered adding a 1080 Ti or Vega, allowing my 1070 to be mining non-stop) is one thing, but if I was to invest in either ASICs or try to build a stand-alone GPU mining rig with multiple cards it would really need to justify the outlay. Given your experience, are any of these mining-related paths worthwhile?

Trading - I've also considered trading in addition to/instead of mining, especially considering certain crypto operate without mining, including some big name ones. For the purposes of starting out, I was thinking of taking between $100 - $1000 (with $250 or $500 likely starting points) as an initial investment, ideally expanding over time with success. Besides "buy low, sell high" what are the principles of trading you follow when it comes to crypto? Do you practice short term/day trading , longer term or both? What guides you in each situation? How do you decide to diversify? How much do you dedicate to long-shot coins with potential for a larger raise in valuation? I've heard of various crypto investment strategies (ie pump and dump) that would not be permitted with other commodities but can be very lucrative though potentially risky - even whole communities who organize time to buy and sell one coin or another? I'm extremely wary of ICOs/premines given that so many of them end up as some sort of scam; I wonder if there is even a way for an ICO can be organized to legally promise something of value, so those behind it can't just take the money and run or let the crypto fall into obscurity.
There are also other possibilities out there in which I'd be interested, such as running a DASH Masternode, but the cost would be incredible as it takes 1000 DASH to run one; expensive even when the coin was $1, but exorbitant at the several hundred dollars a single coin commands. I know there are "shares" of sorts, but most of the time it still requires something like 25 DASH minimum which at current calculation is around $12,000! I haven't even looked into ROI seriously, but I am curious if anyone here owns a Masternode or a shares of one. I'd be interested to hear any ideas or other ways people have invested in the crypto/blockchain economy, especially as we look towards new generations thereof.

While the days of accepting a 50 Bitcoin for a pizza and then finding oneself a year or so later with thousands or hundreds of thousands to reinvest are likely over, the crypto/blockchain wave continues and I do not want to miss my chance to get in. There are various coins or projects that I would follow or mine simply as a hobby because I have interest in their underlying tech or ideals, but that isn't enough on its own if I am to make a sizable investment. Any insight or experience is appreciated. Thank you.
 
That was a long post with no real questions I could discern other than "can I make money mining?" - go to whattomine.com and do some basic math. The problem is predicting what a coin will be worth in 1 year. The market is flooded with shitcoins.

Second question, can I make money trading? Crypto is just like day-trading the stock market- only more volatile and unpredictable. If you know what you are doing, you can do very well trading. You can also lose your ass very, very quickly.

Do your research.
 
I've done research. The difficulty is knowing what is credible and what's not, that's why I've come here for the experiences of others. I already know the principles listed "Yes, you can make money sometimes if you do things right", but I was looking for a bit deeper discussion.

First of all as a general "tl;dr" overall question, its not just "can I make money doing X", but specifically about starting from a modest investment in hardware or finances. There are tons of sites and videos selling the idea of making a fortune but most push the whole "gotta dive in/spend money to make money" avenue, some because it is a legitimate belief that your returns will be larger with such an investment, others with ulterior motives of one sort or another. Someone has a coin to back, or a device to sell, or a scheme to push etc. There's surprisingly little about a modest investment out there that is legit and up to date, thus I was asking here. A

Specifically when it comes to mining, I know of various calculators (assuming they're accurate) and they are helpful but it isn't always as helpful making long-term plans. They can't help you decide if its likely worth to put the money in to build a rig and how it will likely perform over a significant term and varied coins. They can't tell you if its worth to mine a certain amount of certain coins not for immediate exchange but to be held to trade over a longer term. Looking for someone's overall experience with GPU mining (or ASIC) over the various peaks and valleys, difficulty spikes, and over a number of coins coming and going, hold vs trade, and if/how they scaled up etc.. is a different perspective that a calculator page can't give you. As you said, its hard to predict what a coin is worth in a year, but the experiences of those mining can help know if say... its likely worth it to keep you hardware as something else will come along, or If its time to get out when X and Y are below profit level for Z period of time and didn't rebound.

I know that day trading anywhere is volatile and crypto even more so. That's one reason I was asking here if people did so at all, or did they stay to medium or longer trading and what kind of proportions they selected for their portfolio. Even if day trading there's a lot of often conflicting info ranging from insightful to exploitative for someone learning "what they are doing" with crypto trading, so I again I was asking for the experiences of those here.

Overall I was looking for people's experiences because of all this - I asked various questions to hopefully give that request shape. Hypothetically if you (the collective you) were starting now, what would you want to know and how would your experiences thus far impact your decisions? What would change given the parameters of starting with a relatively modest investment and the path forward balancing profit against the potential from reinvestment etc. I hadn't even gotten into discussing individual coins (with the exception of Dash and its masternode system), what people are excited about and why, and people's impressions of their merits (for instance IOTA/Cardano/EOS/NEO and other no-mine types. Tron/TRX just seemingly exploded onto the scene for investment. What does everyone think of i? It ostensibly has noteworthy features but it is based in China and has some elements that could be an issue etc).

I've gone onto various crypto discussion sites and watched various videos, all pushing one avenue or another as "the thing to do"; in general I'm skeptical of it and that's one reason I came here - to ask the experiences of community members and what their knowledge/impressions on the situation might be.
 
IMO right now its better to trade than mine. The only exception would be if you have free electricity and don't mind the wear and tear on your hardware.

I've talked to some folks with good hardware (1080ti and Vega 64) and are making 3ish dollars a day now on Nicehash. <- not worth it.

If you are a saavy miner and know how & when to switch mining which cryptos as the market conditions change (i.e. not rely on an auto switching mining program) - it might still be worth it by cutting out the middle man.

But I'd go with buy / trade and hold personally.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Parja
like this
Before putting money in any crypto coin, i'd first examine the actual use case.


The use cases for blockchain are immense.... but do you think any of those will be using some random forked open source coin?
 
If you're not going in with at least a couple of computers (10+ cards) then I say better to just trade. With few cards the gains would be too slow.
I think Ripple is going to have some nice gains for a top 5 coin. I actually have no money invested in Ripple so I'm not trying to shill it, I don't even like it because it's a stupid bankers coin, but I think it will be worth about 5 times its current value before summer 2019, probably even earlier.
 
Mine with what you have and buy coins with the rest of your "seed money". Investing in hardware right now isn't a great idea as the ROI is very long.
 
If you're not going in with at least a couple of computers (10+ cards) then I say better to just trade. With few cards the gains would be too slow.
I think Ripple is going to have some nice gains for a top 5 coin. I actually have no money invested in Ripple so I'm not trying to shill it, I don't even like it because it's a stupid bankers coin, but I think it will be worth about 5 times its current value before summer 2019, probably even earlier.

Well if you buy your GPU's smartly, when you are done mining you can sell them all. I dumped 4x 560's i was using for cryptonite for considerably more than i paid for them.


I made more on the gpu speculation than all the coins i mined are worth right now.
 
Personally I think it makes more sense to buy in unless you get lucky and pick the right shitcoin to mine and get in early. But even mining relatively obscure coins to any significant degree requires decent equipment, it seems like.

Take whatever amount of money you are comfortable totally losing and do one of the following: (a) take the ultra passive route and just buy Bitcoin and Ethereum and hold them; (b) put it in an index like HODLbot (holds top 20 coins on CMC, rebalances every month depending on what is in and out of the top 20); or (c) do your own research (think in terms of weeks, not hours or days researching) on the projects you think have a chance, and buy those and hold them. Keep an eye on the markets and rebalance as necessary or take advantage of wild swings. Avoid day trading if you're not ultra familiar with trading.

If you do option (b), I'd take the time to do the balancing yourself, on your own wallets, rather than leave it up to HODLbot which just holds it all on Binance (holding coins on exchanges is risky).
 
Historically, even going back 5-7 years with Bitcoin, the main way to earn money via mining is to mine for about breakeven and HODL for long term gains. Back in 2012 you could make 1 BTC/day with 4x 7970 class cards mining. At the time they were worth $1-10 (down from their peak of $30 the year before) - almost enough to pay for the power to make them. If you HODLed then you'd be doing pretty well today. What has always seemed to be true is that getting ROI on purchased cards is virtually impossible unless you're at the front end of a major price run up where difficulty hasn't caught up to the new price level.

Of course, when you compare that to investing, you could have spent $300 buying BTC in 2012 and achieved the same amount of value HODLed with significantly less expense...
 
You missed the boat by a few weeks writing your super long posts, should have bought at the most recent crash prices!
 
Back
Top