Investing in mining equipment in 2021

greatjay

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Feb 22, 2021
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Hi all,

I'm new to the forums and fairly new to mining cryptocurrency. A little backstory... Nearly 2 weeks ago, I invested in two used Antminer S9's on eBay, and have been mining Bitcoin with them along with my Quadro RTX 4000 when I'm not using it. I currently make about $10-$11 a day after electricity. So in a little over 100 days I'll have my return on investment.

I've been hearing a lot about Ethereum an honestly believe it will explode very soon. So I have been doing some research. I have been reading about this miner by Innosilicon, the A11 Pro ETH (2000Mh). According to asicminervalue.com, it is estimated to make about $359 a day. It will not be released until June, they are taking preorders currently at the tune of just over $20,000.

Here's my questions... is that kind of profit possible with this machine mining ETH? It seems too good to be true. I don't mind putting out a pretty penny like that if it will pay itself off in a matter of a few months. And also, I heard it was no longer going to be possible to mine ETH with an ASIC. Is that essentially going to make any A11's mining ETH a $20,000 paperweight in the near future?

If anyone wants to weigh in on this I'd be happy to hear your opinion. I'm just looking to invest in some profitable mining equipment and wonder what everyone who has more experience than me thinks.

Thanks,

Jay
 
ETH is going to POS at some point, no way in hell I would invest in an ASIC that isn't going to be delivered until after June at that price.
 
If you are deadset on mining and spending that kind of cash, spend that money on $800 3070s that get 60MH/each and get say 20 or so cards + mobo/cpu/mem/hdd, etc. At least then you will have resale value if there isn't anything profitable to mine. Likely that the 3000 series will be in demand for the forseeable future and at $800/card, you can get them today.
 
Paying todays rates for tomorrows mining potential is a huge gamble. Doubly so when considering ASICs as their resale value is so tightly controlled by their mining potential.

You'd be much better off buying consumer GPU's as they will at least hold more of their value and have a larger market willing to buy them later. Even with crazy scalping prices an rx 6800 for $1250 should pay back within 5 months or so with current figures. Spend the time/effort to find rtx 30 series cards and/or rx 6800's at or near MSRP and you'll have a much better pay off time.
 
I'd like to get into ETH but honestly the whole PoS transition is what holds me up investing in that A11 Pro. I'd really kick myself if I purchased it and there was no work for it. Although I've read articles where its said that there will still be work for ASIC's in ETH for another year if not two. But the problem is no one knows for sure.

I've also seen something from ASICLine that had some really good hash rates, the Powerbox. I've seen people say that they are a scam, but I've also seen numerous write-ups that make them seem legit. The Powerbox is about $12,000 if memory serves, and if I recall from their website can mine a number of different cryptocurrencies including ETH and BTC. I feel like if ASICLine *is* legit, the Powerbox wouldn't be a bad investment. It's way less than the A11 Pro, I could get into mining ETH, and when ASIC's are no longer able to mine ETH, I could use it to mine BTC. Anyone know much about ASICLine? Their site has been down since this morning.
 
Honestly, in the 2011-2012 time period I received sage like advice on this forum which I did not follow - but should have (of course, you only have perfect information in hindsight). If you think ETH is going to explode, just spend the 20k on ETH. Or some mix of BTC/ETH.
 
www.asicminervalue.com

innosilicon is a real legit company, have been around for years. Ethereum could go to proof of stake at any time, but chances are they won’t. They’ve been threatening it for years.

Make sure you get in on first wave of any given asic of you won’t likely make money. The only reason that s9 you bought is making money is because BTC skyrocketed. It was losing money to electricity for quite a long while.

Keep in mind that Ethereum has been like $300 for a couple years and now it’s jumped $1800 in a matter of a couple months. That’s a factor of six. Do the math with ETH as 6x less profit and see if you can still feel comfortable with the A11.
 
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I'm seriously debating the Innosilicon. The more I read about ASICLine I don't think I want to chance it with them. And the Innosilicon should mesh well with my NiceHash setup I already have.
 
I am in no way endorsing this, but if you think etherium is going to explode you should put the money you would spend on the asic (20k) into the crypto coin and see where it goes. so say you could actually make 350/day vs 20k at a 6x jump =120k (instant) vs the year to make it there assuming complexity does not increase and you can still get the payout..... Oh and I personally would set a high or low threshold to eject just incase it tanks...
 
Ditto. Just buy ETH. I spent $12k on BTC asics, and about $9k on gpus & mining equip back in 2013. Then I spent another
~$4-$5k on electricity over the course of a year.

I would have gotten FAR more coins if I'd just spent that money directly buying coins.
ASIC deliveries get delayed ALL THE TIME. Network hash difficulty can be predicted, but not very well more than 3 months out.

So, only buy video cards you're planning on using for gaming, or plan on mining for 2+ years to make it worthwhile.
Home mining operations aren't worth the stress, IMO. Just buy the coins.
 
Advice to buy the coins always stems from the assumption the value only goes one way over time ..... up.
That’s not really logical, but I guess good while it lasts.

Buying GPUs is the safest play for obvious reasons. Crypto goes dormant in value you can still sell GPUs and for the most part are only out electricity. ASICS from reputable companies (Bitmain, Innosilicon, etc) have proven over the years they almost always make their purchase price back if you get in on the preorder and have one for launch date. Second wave might break even. Third wave is for greenhorn suckers who lose money. (With typical 2-4 months between waves.)
 
I have heard that unless you have a large mining operation, you're better off to just buy the coin vs mine
 
If I do take the plunge on the miner, I noticed miners.eu who is selling preorders offers a miner hosting service. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, that eliminates me having to deal with all the heat, and although we all love the sound of money, the fans on my S9's are quite loud, I know the A11 wouldn't be any quieter. However, their rate on electricity is double what I pay. Plus just the way I am, if I spend that money on a machine, I want to be able to actually see it.

I've heard that people have had luck immersion cooling miners, and have thought about doing that soon. The S9's heat up my basement really well, but once winter is over that will get really old really fast. I'm thinking of using an aquarium pump to pump the mineral oil outside the house and run it through a heat exchanger with a fan outside. If I did get the A11 I know I'd have to do that.
 
If I do take the plunge on the miner, I noticed miners.eu who is selling preorders offers a miner hosting service. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, that eliminates me having to deal with all the heat, and although we all love the sound of money, the fans on my S9's are quite loud, I know the A11 wouldn't be any quieter. However, their rate on electricity is double what I pay. Plus just the way I am, if I spend that money on a machine, I want to be able to actually see it.

I've heard that people have had luck immersion cooling miners, and have thought about doing that soon. The S9's heat up my basement really well, but once winter is over that will get really old really fast. I'm thinking of using an aquarium pump to pump the mineral oil outside the house and run it through a heat exchanger with a fan outside. If I did get the A11 I know I'd have to do that.
Look up just dropping the entire asic in a 55 gallon barrel of non conductive oil, with a small radiator routed outside to expel heat if necessary. Some people do that, and just leave the fans in place to help swirl the oil through the asic. It's a mess if you need to take your ASIC out, but that shouldn't really be necessary. It's silent, and runs much cooler.

I didn't take my asics to that level, but I did buy some muffler tubing (for lack of a better name) that does a tremendous job in quieting down the asics. You put one tube on either side and the airflow goes through the muffler - you'd be absolutely surprised how much difference it makes. It makes it bearable to use ASICS inside the house.

Something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Rubber-Cal-Insulated-Flex-Ducting-Ventilation-25-Feet/dp/B00N2IMR6W/
or this:
https://www.amazon.com/AC-Infinity-Reduction-Hydroponics-Ventilation/dp/B0829F2VXP/

If you buy an asic, in my experience/opinion. It's best to run it for 3-6 months, then sell it. You'll likely have paid it off in tokens by that point, and you can get 1/2 - 2/3's the amount you paid if you are lucky. (get out before it's a brick).

Also consider ETH difficulty is ramping up seriously fast lately. That means reduced profits. That could be a combination of the ampere cards coming online and also these new ASICS that are almost surely being pre-mined with before they are sold to assure profit for Bitmain and Innosilicon, and also to verify they won't burn out on the customer during the first 30 days of use. Each of those A11 is the equivalent hashing power to twenty, 3080s, or forty 1080TI's or 5700s. That's a lot of hashing power in one box! (but as I said - I suspect they are already showing to a partial degree on this recent difficulty ramp.)


https://etherscan.io/chart/difficulty

1614139012153.png
 
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You can read a bit about my first asic adventure here:
https://hardforum.com/threads/antminer-a3-815gh-on-blake-2b.1952647/

I still have 47,000 sia coins from that asic that I've never sold. They were worth as much as 10 cents each at one point. Lately have been more like 1 to 2 cents each.

I ended up buying some zcash miners too later - - - probably made out better on the zcash miners - but didn't set the world on fire with either.
 
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