Cryptocurrency and Mining

[Melbosa]

NiceHash is back... and cause lots of people jumped ship or haven't started back up, I'm doing almost 8 USD / day with my 3 GPU setup at home!  Yay for as long as that lasts lol.

Any idea how much electricity you're using per hour or day?

That calculation / day is based on a 0.10/kWh, which is higher than what we pay in Edmonton AFAIK.  As per what it is using, the Kill-A-Watt I bought doesn't calculate that over time - bought a cheap on to just see what I could run off my 1000W PSU.

I'm going to monitor my Electricity usage over the next two months to really see what it turns into.

I think it's gonna be pretty impossible to get a clear idea of how much extra electricity you're using just looking at the monthly bill.  There's so many things to balance out - how many Christmas lights are on this month?  How much more or less are you watching TV?  With the warmer winter, how much more or less are you plugging in your car?  etc

Yeah I knew it was going to be more a relative thing compared to last year's bills and previous months bills.

If all three cards work off your 1kW power supply, then that's your upper limit, so you could say you're using 1kWh/h or 24kWh/day or 720kWh/month.  EPCOR is currently charging $0.03287/kWh, so that's $23.67/month.  But wait, there's more!  EPCOR creates the electricity, but then a company transmits it and distributes it.  In my case, that's Fortis Alberta, here's their most recent rates.  There's a daily charge of $0.7577 per day, you pay it no matter what.  Then there's a charge of $0.037009/kWh for transmission, and $0.021342/kWh for distribution.  Add that to the cost of the actual electricity and you've got $0.03287 + $0.037009 + $0.021342 = $0.091221/kWh.  That works out to $65.86 per 30 days, or $2.19 per day.

So $2.19 per day is the upper limit of cost, and that's in CAD, and you're getting paid in USD, and the exchange rate is around USD$1.00 = CAD$1.25, so you're making about CAD$10 and spending about CAD$2 or less on the electricity.  So you'll make about $240 by the end of the month.  Given that you are using old hardware you'd already bought anyway, that's not bad, it's some pocket change, but if you'd had to buy the video cards, it'd take several months before you even break even...

I knew you would want to break it down more than just an estimated monthly thing... just how you are .  So thanks for this!  BTW my rates are similar through my distributor, so will be close to your calculations.  Although I am not maxing out my Power consumption, so your calculations are at full load, and mine currently is averaging half load when I spot check it.

[Thorin]

Well yeah, you're right that doing the math is totally up my alley. Also, I learned that leaving a lightbulb on all day and all night all month costs about seven cents per watt per month, so using 26 watt CFLs saves about $2/month over using regular incandescents.

Oh, and my minimum bill if I use zero electricity will be around $30 just for the fixed fees.

[Lazybones]

Crypto market took a 20% dip since yesterday so all of the profit math needs adjustment.

[Mr. Analog]

We should build a ROI calculator haha

[Lazybones]

There are a number of tools that already exist.

[Melbosa]

Crypto market took a 20% dip since yesterday so all of the profit math needs adjustment.

The way the value fluxes is might be better to gage profits after month or two of actuals is in.  And while in not mining particular currencies, just selling my compute,  my payout is relative to Bitcoin's value in USD. So I to am affected by the markets, but my profit is based on my compute sold rather than trade value of a single currency, and right now my compute is still in high demand. I'm hopeful to meet 100$ CDN/month. If I can then I'm doing what I set out to do

[Lazybones]

Calculating monthly is probably best.

[Melbosa]

So what did I learn today?  Keep your miners up-to-date... lol I haven't touched mine in a month until I checked today and I was mining cents on the dollar per day cause I wasn't mining new currencies.  Had to update my client lol.

[Lazybones]

I just stopped mining when monero did there most recent code change.

Too much heat / cost for the summer.

[Darren Dirt]

Yep crypto / blockchains are a crazy mostly unregulated place which is what makes them more nutty.

Expect things to get even crazier over the next two weeks as wall street opens two futures markets for bitcoin... Some people think it will keep pushing the price up, others figure that wall street will bet against bitcoin and pull out any investments in it, which will collapse bitcoin.

Bitcoin mid-December 2017 = OVER 19000!!!

Bitcoin now (mid-September 2018) = just under 6500 O_o

Ouch, for some folks.

via this friendly graphical chart thingie:
https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/price/ https://archive.is/6OvDp (archived today)

Compare to https://99bitcoins.com/price-chart-history/ archived Dec.2016 = https://archive.is/65Qg2 = graph covers mid-2010 thru late 2016, with price peaking at < 1500 in mid-2014!

SWINGS! MADNESS!

[Lazybones]

With Bitcoin and Ethereum prices high again and my system upgraded I looked back into this.

Looks like running NiceHash on my machine could net up to $5-8 CAD per day (if ran 24/7 which it won't)

[Thorin]

$4.80 / 24 hours is $0.20/hr.  So, the question is whether that outstrips the cost of electricity.  So I started looking at my Epcor electric bills in depth, expecting that there will be some unchanging admin fees and some that change depending on usage, but all the numbers change every bill

After an hour of digging, I'm still not sure how the numbers are calculated, although part of the numbers are hiding a couple of non-changing admin fees.  But there's no breakdown _anywhere_.  So all I'm left with is total bill divided by kWh used.

Dec - $202.61/1,201kWh = $0.1687/kWh
Jan - $163.73/  896kWh = $0.1827/kWh
Feb - $215.82/1,092kWh = $0.1976/kWh

I did check, the price per kWh has gone up, so it makes sense to see these increases.

So how much electricity do you use to generate that $4.80 per day?  If it's 1,000W/hr then you're breaking even.  For every 100W/hr below that, you're making $0.02/hr or $0.48/day or $14.40/month.  I'm guessing a good rig is using 500W/hr so you're making about $72 per month or $864 per year.  So three years until the computer doing the work has paid for itself?  Does that sound about right?

It's not a lot of money, but the pennies slowly pile up if you stick with it.

[Lazybones]

I'm guessing a good rig is using 500W/hr so you're making about $72 per month or $864 per year.

Only GPU you have to look at your states, but my 3060 TI tops out at 200W + 142W in theory if also CPU mining but that might not be efficient.

Haven't stuck a meter on my system at full blast to double check recently. However as noted going GPU only it should be less than half that power estimate.

My power is also much cheaper, even if mining pushes me up to the step two rate.

Step 1: 1,302 kWh @ $0.0930 /kWh
Step 2: 0 kWh @ $0.1394 /kWh

Edit: side note replaced the home furnace with a new high efficiency two stage gas unit back in nov. so BOTH my gas and electrical consumption are lower this winter as I am no longer using space heaters to warm the cold spots and I am using less gas to get more heat.

Edit 2: Mining only ETH on the 3060 Ti 51.28 MH/S Power as reported by the card in software: 196W Efficiency 262kH/W

[Thorin]

Now you have me curious, how does the new furnace warm the cold spots that the old furnace didn't? Did you do something to improve air flow?

Also, good breakdown on the power used and cost per kWh. Remember that some of the admin fees will be variable based on consumption and will not be included in that per-kWh rate, so you have to add them in.

[Lazybones]

Howie you have me curious, how does the new furnace warm the cold spots that the old furnace didn't? Did you do something to improve air flow?

We could have a separate thread, but I have a 1400sqf town house that is 3 stories where the bottom is a walk out basement. In the past the top would be SUPER hot and the basement VERY cold in winter. My 70s-80s gas furnace was single speed, and the fan was only controlled by the furnace. So the fan only ran when heating (two wire on or off).

The new furnace is a high efficiency two stage with different fan speeds and separate fan control wires for the thermostat. In the thermostat I now have a min of 15min run time set for the fan per hour. This was primarily for better filtration (another improvement in this furnace) but the added benefit is that it recirculates the air and evens out the home temp reducing hot and cold spots. The new furnace fan is also just simply more powerful even on the lower stage 1 setting, in stage 2 is even more powerful. So in general, it is not struggling to get heat into all the parts of the house, if it goes into stage two it really blasts heat.

I did also install a folding door to break up the basement and make the area I work in smaller, which also helps it retain heat.

The new thermostat (ecobee 3 with remote sensors) also doesn't take readings from just the middle of the home, it now takes readings from all 3 floors and can average the room temps. This only changes the target for heating but helps make sure that if no one is up stairs the heat gets called to make the occupied space more comfortable.

Edit: pay back on a furnace upgrade on efficiency would be hard as they are expensive. I replaced the furnace to get better filtering (forest fires have been very hard on us for breathing in the summer), and the old furnace was struggling to keep the home warm and age was due for replacement. Several of my neighbors have had theirs fail (same age/unit the town homes are the same) in the last year or so.

Also, good breakdown on the power used and cost per kWh. Remember that some of the admin fees will be variable based on consumption and will not be included in that per-kWh rate, so you have to add them in.

Currently playing around with different ways to mine.. Right now trying T-Rex directly with nanopool and going to let that run for a while.. Will take about a month to find out what the real pay out rate is as most of the best miners have a 1% for the developer built in and then there is also the take by the pool.

At any rate the point of the post was that with Bitcoin and Eth high right now it might be profitable to mine with a good GPU again. XMR/Monerio doesn't look profitable at the moment so I am not CPU mining.