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Comment by pfooti | Hacker News Reader

But that's 385 / month revenue? On a setup that's what, $3400 to buy, for seven 1070s? Seems like asking for 10 months to cover capex is a bit thin, given the price instability.

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Miners shouldn't be meaningfully exposed since they can sell off their ETH as soon as they mine it (deposit it to an exchange address and sell off every few minutes via an API, or something like that). And while ETH might crash enough to make it no longer profitable and risking your capex, you can switch your GPU to mine whatever is most profitable, so you're more diversified than it looks and insulated from the instability.

If Eth crashes (more) and bitcoin continues to drop, no crypto is going to be worth anything.

Bit coin isn't dropping, yeah it had a small peak the last month but it is still at $2300 which was only first achieved in in May.

Resale value on the GPUs is also worth monitoring. While it remains high enough, you can discount much of the capital cost because you'll get a high fraction back if you decide to sell the cards.

I doubt resale values on GPUs running at 100% for months on end is going to be high.

Miners don't want to push their GPU's that hard, a hardcore gamer may overvolt their card to get a more stable overclock but a miner will undervolt it to run it cooler and increase the life of the card.

I'd rather buy a used Fury X off a miner than a gamer.

Gamers might play 3 hours a day but miners run 24...

You are much more optimistic that me if you think they'll come with a usage disclosure. There's a reason cars have immutable(ish) odometers.

High risk, high reward. If you buy the average piece of real estate and rent it out, you are looking at 30+ years to cover the cost.

You can also lose it all (housing bubble) or quadruple your investment (investing in SF 10 years ago)

Which is why you use leverage...

also weird analogy cause the houses value will (theoretically) appreciate... a GPU prolly not so much.

Barring natural disasters and other extreme events, your real estate risks losing (let's say) 50% of value if you made a good purchase

The intrinsic value of 1 BTC is ZERO

But you bought the GPU not the BTC?

Even if BTC becomes worthless, you still have the GPU to sell

True, that applies for investing in mining

(there's also the electricity you used, but if you live in a cold place you saved on heating so that could be something not lost as well)

Buying ASICs is high risk and (probably) high reward - in event of crash you are left with worthless machines. GPUs will still have some value, even after all crypto currencies drop.

> On a setup that's what, $3400 to buy, for seven 1070s?

Well you can always resell them on the used market after stopping the mining operation and get a decent chunk of the money back...

Or just, you know, buy ETH with money right now.

That would have got you in trouble a week ago.

GPUs don't depreciate that fast.

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