Bitcoin Mining

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Should I get involved with Bitcoin Mining?
In this eBook you will learn about the cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin, which is experiencing explosive growth in internet transactions. You will also learn how you can actually make money 24×7 using your computer, graphics card or dedicated hardware, with only minimal time spent managing your Bitcoin mining operation.


The second most important thing you will learn is that Bitcoin mining is a risky business. The BTC is a highly volatile currency and has experienced at least one panic-driven crash. The future of BTC is not known – will it thrive or will usage fade away to nonexistence? Will governments swoop in to regulate and control its use – even stamp it out completely? Will Bitcoin mining continue to be profitable in the future?


So, at the end of the day you ask yourself, should I get involved with Bitcoin Mining? The answer as they say, can only be answered by yourself. If you enjoy a technical challenge and you are not afraid of risking a few bucks, then yes, Bitcoin mining may be for you. If you think it sounds exciting to be a part of possibly the biggest sea-change taking place in the history of modern fiat-currency based monetary systems, then its a big YES.


Now that you know a little about the opportunity and risks, what is Bitcoin itself? Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin’s currency code is BTC, and the commonly used currency symbol is a capital B with two vertical bars through it, as seen in the symbol for the Euro. Bitcoin is one of the first implementations of a concept called CryptoCurrency, which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list(ref Bitcoin wiki, see Appendix A).


There are a number of places to spend Bitcoin and many common products and services can be purchased with it. There are exchanges for trading BTC against many major currencies. Perhaps most compelling, is that Bitcoin transactions are absolutely anonymous and untraceable.
“We can never see past the choices we don’t understand.” -the Oracle
Chapter 1 Why Mine for Bitcoin?


What is the benefit of mining Bitcoin over just buying it with your own currency? This is a good question. Some people mine for the technological challenge of it. Some very bright minds are bending their will towards achieving new performance levels in mining.


Most people are participating in Bitcoin mining because using an existing pc, one can literally make money from the processing power already sitting beside your desk. Still others are approaching mining with a gold rush mentality, pouring cash and mining revenues into more and more hardware in order to increase mining capacity. As you’ll learn in this eBook, this “arms race” has the effect of accelerating the increasing difficulty of actually finding blocks, which are the the fundamental rare-commodity that backs the currency. This is an important point because basic economics says that as the difficulty rises, scarcity occurs, which should cause the value of the currency to rise. Some players are banking that Bitcoin mined at current prices (~$6.75 USD/BTC) may someday be worth many times that amount, due to the fact that difficulty will rise over time – its part of what makes up the Bitcoin protocol itself. More on that later.


So, why might you mine for Bitcoins? There are lots of reasons. Bitcoin mining can be considered a valid small home-based business opportunity. As with any business opportunity, there are risks, however it truly presents a business you can start with a small investment and grow over time. Management of your mining operation shouldn’t take up too much time, provided you’ve done your research and invested in reliable hardware that you’ve configured correctly.


Perhaps you are interested in owning BTC from a speculative standpoint – i.e. you think BTC is liable to rise against your home currency. Many miners are saving their coins for this very reason. They believe that as mining Difficulty increases over time, Blocks will become more scarce and thus the value of BTC will have to rise. Many retailers and service providers are beginning to accept Bitcoin as payment. You can earn Bitcoin using your processing power, and then turn around and buy something of real value in the real world. If that sounds good, read on!


Maybe you just want BTC, but don’t want to pay for it! Since you can spend your BTC in a variety of ways, or even just convert it to your home currency, it makes sense to set something up that will constantly contribute small amounts of money into your account day and night, with very little effort. Others are recognizing that Bitcoin is a great way to store money “off the grid” away from prying eyes, or governments that want to control how your money is loaned, leveraged or taxed.
The Bitcoin space by its nature has a core group of intellectual tech-savvy gamer types leading the charge. The more experienced hardware development experts are bringing significant advancement to the space through engineering of technologies like FPGA and ASIC. Economics buffs that believe fiat currency systems are doomed to fail can also be found buying into BTC as a truly decentralized and identityless currency system. Unfortunately a system like this also attracts unsavory individuals. Hackers have already incorporated CPU and GPU mining into their botnets and malware programs. In late 2011, a hacker gained access to a popular BTC trading exchange and made off with BTC worth hundreds of thousands of USD, in addition to publicly posting screenshots documenting the deletion of the company’s virtual servers. Criminals have found that they can convert their cash to BTC using a variety of methods, selling it back as their home currency, thus laundering their illicit capital.
Still interested? Good, you have been informed of a few of the risks, but obviously are tough enough to get in the game. If you want to get a sense of how mining works, you can get your computer mining in just a few minutes. Try CPU mining – grab a CPU/GPU miner, like GUIMiner, make an account at a Mining Pool such as BTC Guild, and hit go. Soon you’ll see your shares being counted at the pool, and tiny amounts of BTC will begin adding up. Think of this as gold dust – you’ll need a ton of it to be worth much – it will take a lot of time, and you may never see a nugget. There’s got to be a better way!
Graduate to GPU mining – use an existing video card or two. You can use a couple newer video cards you may already have, or find some used ones on eBay or Craigslist. You can use the same GUI Miner or other free and easy to find miner program to discover your GPUs and increase your mining capacity by a few orders of magnitude. Keep in mind only more recent GPU’s will work, and there are other compatibility considerations that may mean that even your fancy new video card can’t make BTC when you aren’t using it. Watch out for burned out miner cards being dumped on the market by existing miners, and calculate your electricity costs first if you care about profits. Use the Bitcoin forum before deciding on a purchase – I can’t stress this enough. We’ll cover these concepts more in detail later.

 

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When you’ve gained confidence in your mining ability and understanding, you can make the leap to building a dedicated Mining Rig. This will require an investment in money and time to build, but you’ll see big gains in your hashing capacity, and BTC in the bank!
A less technical way to be involved with Bitcoin mining is to invest in a mining company, or buy mining bonds. There are exchanges such as GLBSE where you can purchase shares of ownership in a mining operation run by an experienced operator. He or she will be well versed in the technical details involved in maintaining and growing a large scale mining operation. When you buy bond shares you are funding the creation or growth of the enterprise. The Bond offering will have specific details outlining the dividend payment plan or other method of deriving revenue from your investment.
Why would a person rent hashing power or buy into a mining bond?
There are actually several reasons to go the investor route, rather than buy BTC outright, or start mining on your own. The future ratio of how much money you can earn with a given hash power could become more favorable, so a long-term contract could make sense. Mining pool operators wanting to attract miners to their pool may take this approach. A person holding other types of cryptocoins could utilize rented hashing power to force difficulty and price higher in that currency.
Finally, you can always just buy into Bitcoin yourself. There are several ways to do this, perhaps the easiest is to simply do a transaction with a company like SpendBitcoins.com, where you can purchase a MoneyPak at major retailers or even online and then use that to get Bitcoin sent to you instantly. Owning Bitcoin as an investment means you will want to watch the value of Bitcoin against your home currency – hopefully it will go up and your investment will be making a profit!
Bitcoin is volatile! That means price can rapidly go up or down quite a lot. In fact, in the time of writing this eBook, BTC has already risen to $9.50 USD/BTC – that’s nearly a 100% increase! You can play the market with your BTC if you want to try it. Volatility can give you opportunities to sell your BTC and then buy it back again when price drops (if price drops). This currency trading can be fun, profitable or stressful if you get the timing wrong!
What kind of results can you expect? You’ll quickly realize CPU mining has been far surpassed by new technology (this may have resulted in a difficulty spike that drove BTC to over $30USD/BTC! If you are still interested in mining with your CPU, you can mine LiteCoin as an alternative, hoping that it too may achieve a stable value – and heck its pretty fun. With an investment in GPU hardware you’ll see much more mining capacity, however most ROI analysis looks for the hardware to make a profit against the power it consumes. Depending on what you pay per Megawatt, GPUs may not be profitable. You can go to your local PUD website to look up your rate for electricity. You are likely to end up with a mix of GPU and newer technology such as FPGA (dedicated programmable chips that have recently been brought to market). Either way, you can expect a big learning experience, some excitement, some disappointment – but definitely an Adventure in Bitcoin Mining!


Chapter 2 – The nuts and bolts of mining BTC
History of Bitcoin
Who is Satoshi and Where is He Now? (Bitcoin Wiki)
Satoshi Nakamoto is the founder of Bitcoin and initial creator of the Original Bitcoin client. He has said in a P2P foundation profile[1] that he is from Japan. Beyond that, not much else is known about him and his identity. He has been working on the Bitcoin project since 2007.[2]


His involvement in the Bitcoin project had tapered and by late 2010 it has ended. The most recent messages reportedly indicate that Satoshi is “gone for good”[3].


His identity and nationality are unknown. The few bits of information available[1] about him point to Japan, he never wrote a single line of Japanese, the Bitcoin client has no Japanese version and there is no Japanese page on bitcoin.org.
He is entirely unknown outside of Bitcoin as far as anyone can tell, and his PGP key was created just months prior to the date of the genesis block. He seems to be very familiar with the cryptography mailing list, but there are no non-Bitcoin posts from him on it. He has used an email address from an anonymous mail hosting service (vistomail) as well as one from a free webmail account (gmx.com) and sends mail when connected via Tor. Some have speculated that his entire identity was created in advance in order to protect himself or the network. Perhaps he chose the name Satoshi because it can mean “wisdom” or “reason”.


Hashes, Nonces, Shares and The Block Chain – Genesis of the Bitcoin
If you are new to cryptology, all these terms are new as well. Don’t get overwhelmed – its best to experiment with a CPU mining client while you try to understand how this works. You will be able to see the primary components that make up a Block, which translates to the creation of new Bitcoin.

 

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Lets start with the ultimate computational goal of the whole system – the Block. Blocks make up the transaction record of the Bitcoin system, and are publicly tracked in a series called the Block Chain. When you exchange Bitcoin, your transaction ultimately ends up in the Block Chain. In order for the transaction to be recorded, a Block must be found. This is where mining comes into play – and also why there is a Bitcoin reward paid to the miner who finds each Block. The constant need for ongoing Block discovery, combined with transactions that need to clear produces a self-supporting system.


Hashes, or Hashing refers to the repeated performance of a cryptology algorithm called SHA-256, which outputs random numbers in a way which requires a predictable amount of processing effort. The miner is looking to create a target value that matches the requirements of the Bitcoin system (i.e. extremely rare and difficult).
Nonces are essentially a seed value to the hash of the block, such that the Block created will be an extremely rare one – meeting the scarcity requirement of the Bitcoin network. Essentially, the definition of a highly rare Block is simple: the hash of the Block must contain a run of zeroes – a very difficult task indeed! Once the Block is solved, the Block and its correct Nonce is presented as a proof of the work that was done. With the Block and the Nonce, the network can easily and quickly confirm that the Block is valid, and out go another set of transactions into the Block Chain.


The Bitcoin network self-manages such that on average, a new Block is found every 10 minutes – across the entire network. This means that the system will increase the difficulty of the Block requirement if it sees Blocks coming in at a faster rate. So, as hashing power increases or decreases across the network, so does Difficulty. You will often see miners announcing the next difficulty with excitement (or dread). In fact the Difficulty is already such that that you could mine on your own for months or even years before ever making a Block of your own!


To mine Bitcoin, you really don’t need to be too concerned with the Blockchain, or Nonces. You’ll want to know your hashrate, i.e. the processing power you have, and unless you have a very large mining operation, you’ll mine for a Pool of some kind. This is a good time to talk about Shares and Pooled Mining.


The realization of the difficulty to solo-mine blocks has quickly brought a novel approach to mining: Mining Pools. In order to keep lower performance miners interested, a collective approach was created. Instead of mining for years to get a 50 BTC reward, these Pools provide a concept of a Share – a hash which is easier to create than the real difficulty, but still provides proof that you have done valid work towards finding the next Block for the Pool.


There are several popular types of Mining Pools, oriented around the miner submitting shares. The more shares you can calculate and submit, the more fractional ownership you achieve in the next found Block reward. Mining Pools provide websites with stats and account management to make it easy to connect and monitor your hashing power and most importantly your BTC generation. Stale shares happen when a block has been found in the pool, but your miners were still working on the old work. You will sometimes see a stale share just after the mining software determines that a block has been found. Stale shares should not persist – if you are seeing a large amount of stales, you may have a configuration issue in your mining software.


Dupe shares are another bad share type. These are fairly rare, but do happen: computing a dupe share literally means someone else out there on your pool computed the exact same share value as you did for the current round. Many pools have a stat called ‘Other’, that represents all other types of bad shares. These numbers should be low – around 1%-2% total. If you are seeing a high number of rejected shares, you may have a problem with your hardware creating bad data. Most mining software catches these and do not submit them to pools. NOTE: there is one exception to the 1%-2% rule – if you are mining with P2Pool, you will see a higher percentage of stale shares – usually closer to 10%. This is because of the different way that P2Pool achieves its block-finding. P2Pool runs in a mode that reduces difficulty significantly within the network. Difficulty is maintained such that blocks are found (within the pool only) every 10 seconds. Every time a block is found, the work definition changes, and you get some stales. Despite the higher stale rate, miners may make the same or even slightly more BTC as a result of transaction fees paid to the miners and donations that support the P2Pool concept.


That’s it! You’re created money for nothing – right? Well, not exactly. Its very important to consider the power and cooling requirements involved in mining, if your goal is understand your profitability. We’ll talk more on the ROI calculation of Bitcoin mining later in this eBook.
Ok, you’ve experimented with running a CPU miner for a couple days, or you used GUIMiner to discover your current GPU and did some mining with that. What does it take to really get mining? You’ll need a Mining Rig. A Rig is simply a stripped down minimalist setup providing support for running only necessary mining hardware – usually a collection of graphics cards (GPU’s) or Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA’s). We won’t go heavily into detail on the innumerable hardware options available, as there are great resources available online.
A GPU Mining Rig will involve a substantial power supply, a minimalist motherboard (CPU capability and RAM are less of a requirement here), high end graphics cards, open air cases and significant cooling capability. GPU rigs make a lot of heat and take a lot of power. If your goal is to generate bitcoin at a profit, you’ll need to understand your power costs. For those of us without free electricity available, GPU mining is quickly becoming at least an almost even exchange of our home currency for BTC. Some may look at this as simply a cheaper way to buy BTC – it depends on your point of view, how much work goes into managing the GPUs, and what you intend to do with the BTC you earn. Once your GPUs are operating at a loss, you are essentially paying more for BTC through your power bill than you can buy it on the open market.


An FPGA Mining Rig is much less labor intensive, but currently more expensive. The technology is still fairly new, so reliability can be in question. The Field Programmable chip allows a custom hashing program to be loaded onto a highly performant chip, giving much higher capacity per watt as compared to a GPU. FPGA’s are also much smaller and produce much less noise (or none at all) as well as less heat. The FPGA Rig involves a power supply, though much less capacity is required. A single 750W CPU power supply can be used to power dozens of individual FPGA chips. No motherboard is required, however FPGA arrays have to be connected to a controller computer, usually via USB (yes the Raspberry Pi works). The controller computer manages loading the FPGA bitstreams, and runs the mining software, doling out work assignments to each of the FPGAs as they return shares. As the FPGAs return shares, the controller sends them on to the pool. Highly optimized hashing programs, called bitstreams, have been created to generate up to 245 million hashes per second (MH/s) from a single 1” x 1” FPGA.


As of this writing there are several efforts underway to bring ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) technology to Bitcoin mining. ASICs are purpose-built, permanently programmed chips with the application printed into the chip at the time of manufacture. This approach produces hashing capacity many times greater than that of FPGA’s and GPU’s. However, the design and manufacture of ASIC is a very expensive and time consuming process – the cost of an ASIC design can run into the millions of dollars. In addition, if there is a fundamental change to the Bitcoin protocol, say for example a change to the hashing algorithm used, these ASICs could be rendered worthless. At the time of this writing, there is only a single manufacturer promising availability of ASIC mining technology to the retail market. Since the capacity brought by ASIC is so great, some say that the massive addition of hashing capacity to the network will cause difficulty to skyrocket, thus putting many GPU miners out of business. Again, this all depends on what you pay for power, and what your approach to mining and Bitcoin is.


Here are some current performance statistics and price points to help you get a sense of the current Bitcoin market at time of this writing:


CPU Mining: Dual Core 2.4 GHz Intel CPU produced about 5-7 Mhash/s
GPU Mining: Older Nvidia GTX 6600 produced 32 Mhash/s
GPU Mining: Newer ATI Radeon 5970 ($800) produced 700 Mhash/s
Single FPGA chip ($275) produced 210 – 240 Mhash/s
Quad FPGA array ($1100) produced 840 – 960 Mhash/s
BitForce Jalapeno 3.5 GH/s - $149 (ASIC, release date TBD)
BitForce Single ‘SC’ 40 GH/s - $1,299 (ASIC, release date TBD)
BitForce Mini Rig ‘SC’ 1,000 GH/s - $29,899 (ASIC, release date TBD)
Chapter 3 Title – Facing failure

 

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Bitcoin mining is still very cutting edge – you will face some technical challenges! Don’t be daunted, and try to be patient. Unless you are conservative from the start, you will probably find that your equipment needs fine tuning to run at its highest productivity. There are some common scenarios to watch out for:


My mining rig sucks. It keeps crashing! It can be hard to put together a stable rig, especially if you bought used equipment – remember there are a lot of GPU miners dumping their gear and preparing to mine with FPGA or ASIC technology! Emerging FPGA boards are exciting to try, but have encountered issues with compatibility, software and assembly quality. There are numerous other potential pitfalls with your rig – you may have issues with your motherboard or power supply; even bad RAM can cause your system to crash. If you are attempting to maximize your rig by running custom drivers or especially if you are overclocking you should spend some time absorbing information from the Bitcoin forum. There is a wealth of knowledge about Bitcoin mining that will help you set up your cards correctly and troubleshoot problems. The members on the forum are also very helpful, provided you have done your homework already, searching the forums for yourself first. You’ll find a great list of resources at the end of this eBook, including links to the Bitcoin forum on certain key topics.


I’m not getting the hashing output that I should! Theoretical hashing output versus the numbers you see at your pool will vary – sometimes drastically. A number of factors will contribute to this. First, the hashing software you use will likely be estimating the hashrate based on the number of hashes computed over the last few minutes. It may include stale shares or other rejected share types. Another common issue is that hashrate may be reported as simply the sum of clock rate on your processor (GPU, FPGA). For example, if you have 3 FPGA cards clocked at 210 MH/s, your mining software may report to you that you are hashing at 630 MH/s, while the rate actually seen at the pool is considerably less! There’s not much you can do about this – just pay attention to the actual hashrate over time as measured by the pool, especially if you are experimenting with settings.
I fried a card and wasted a bunch of money! Well, if this has happened, you have my condolences. Experimenting with electronics in configurations they were not originally intended for is risky business. Hopefully you have a warranty you can rely on. This is a great reminder to go read everything you can on the forums about your particular application, and be conservative to begin with – you can max out your hashrate later, once you’ve become a pro Bitcoin miner.


I got ripped off! Sadly this has been posted way too many times on the Bitcoin forum. I can only assume there’s a large number of people who haven’t bothered to share it. There are some common ways to get ripped off in Bitcoin, here are some basics:


Encrypt your wallet – your electronic “wallet” stores your Bitcoin. If you don’t secure your wallet, anybody gaining access to your computer can open your wallet and transfer your coins to any address. Once its done, its done. There are numerous horror stories describing how a victim watched while multiple transactions took place against their wallet without their consent! The Bitcoin wiki has a page dedicated to securing your wallet.


Another option to avoid getting your BTC taken from you is to use a 3rd party to store your coin. For example, open an account with MtGox. Whether you trade or not, you can send coins to your MtGox account. This approach goes on the assumption that since MtGox has made storing and trading Bitcoin their business, they surely will have implemented more security measures than you or I have. On the other hand, they are a big target for hackers, and they’ve been hacked before!


Scams and fraud are another common problem in Bitcoin. Use the forums and try asking others before you respond to an offer. Use a reputable website to get your BTC safely. Use common sense and the old rule of thumb – “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!”.


I ordered fancy mining hardware, and now I’ve been waiting for months! This problem is all too common in the mining industry. There is so much interest in new faster hardware, companies can make broad claims, show some prototype pictures and lock up a serious amount of presale cash. Do your own due diligence before ordering. Try to split your orders between multiple vendors – you don’t want all your eggs in one basket! Even if you do get your hardware quickly, what if it has problems? Your money is tied up the moment you make that order – the industry has already seen production delays and sales promises stretch into the months while the manufacturer sorts out problems.


The value of Bitcoin took a dive! If you are just getting into mining, then you are one of the lucky ones. BTC has already seen an accelerated rise to over 30BTC/USD, but has fallen back to around $6.75/BTC. Its anyone’s guess as to where BTC is headed now, but in general if the value goes down, just keep right on mining – those BTC could be worth a ton as BTC rises.


I can’t stress enough that Bitcoin mining is not for the faint of heart, and you will encounter pitfalls. We’ve discussed some overall themes on how to overcome them.

 

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Do your homework – read bitcoin forum
Find a safer place to store your coins
Store your wallet offline
Avoid used graphics cards unless you are savvy enough to troubleshoot and repair them.
Chapter 4 The glorious wonder!
Your mining rigs are hashing away, stable as a stone 24×7 for weeks – you have built a money making machine. You really have done it, so congratulations! Don’t get complacent – remember how you used to watch your stats so closely, refreshing every few minutes? Its important to keep vigilant watch over your gear – a spike in temps can indicate a failing cooling fan. A slow subtle decline in hashrate can go unnoticed for days, potentially producing hashes at a financial loss. Power outages, storms and outright neglect can seriously impact your Bitcoin producing capacity.


In any case, you are creating a base of ownership in Bitcoin without spending a ton of time, or taking the easy route and just buying them at market rates. Manage your business seriously, and it will pay dividends day after day – while you sleep and while you play. You can easily keep tabs on your miners even while you work your day job, using remote desktop programs, and by logging into your pool’s stats page.


What do you want to do with your earned coins? Should you hoard your coins or reinvest them? Once you have some serious hashing power, you can even issue a bond of your own, raising funds for additional hardware, or some other business strategy. You can even rent out your hashing power to the highest bidder. This decision depends a lot on your business goals and philosophy. You’ll want to at least have a plan for making back your initial hardware investment. At that point, you own the hardware outright, and any coin you make will be pure profit, minus power and management costs. Maybe you built a huge rig and want to expand as soon as possible. Maybe you bought a couple nice GPUs to play Diablo3 with, and want to pay for them with their own hashing power.


One way to look at the question of keeping your coins is this: let’s say you mined 10 coins during the last 2 weeks. BTC was at $6.50 USD/BTC. These coins would have been worth $65 if you had sold them immediately for US dollars. In the following two weeks you are pleasantly surprised to see BTC rise to $8.50 USD/BTC. Now, the old BTC is worth $85 as well as each coin you are currently mining, which takes you 30% closer to your goal, whether that is recovering your US dollar costs on the hardware, or saving up a certain amount of value before converting it to cash. The opposite of course, is true – you could be mining for months, and then see the value of all that coin drop by half. You have to be able to ride out the volatility, and know when your operating at a loss.


Remember that as prices go higher, more miners are attracted to the business, and the more hashing power the network sees, the higher difficulty will rise. As difficulty rises, the amount of BTC you will mine for the same hashing power will start to decline. As long as the value of BTC rises appropriately, your mining Return On Investment will stay in check. Always keep your ROI formula handy so you’ll always know if you are operating at a profit. Many GPU miners have a cutoff point below which it makes sense for them to simply shut down their rigs and wait.


What goes into making your ROI analysis? Well there are a lot of factors, most are fairly specific to you. The primary variables you want to be concerned with are:


Cost to acquire the hardware (including CPU, RAM, motherboard, PSU, etc.)
Value of that hardware down the road if you want to get out of mining
Cost of your power
Nominal hash rate (be realistic that you won’t have 100% uptime with major overclocking)


Cost of cooling (if needed)
Cost of infrastructure (network, place for it to run, etc.)
What kind of pool you’ll use (DGM, PPS, proportional, etc.)
Value of your time (often hugely underestimated – but time is more valuable than money)
These costs are balanced against the rate of BTC at any particular time. Simple ROI calculators can be found online, but they are forced to do their entire calculation at a single difficulty and BTC price. Your actual results will depend on your results over time, and too many unpredictable factors, such as the cost of BTC. The best you can do sometimes is just hang on for the ride!
Conclusion
In this eBook we’ve considered the question of whether you should get involved in mining Bitcoin. We sincerely hope you learned the basics of what Bitcoin is, how it is produced and what you can do with it. There are many ways to be a part of this movement and many levels at which you can involve yourself. Whether you see it as an interesting hobby, a science fiction adventure, or a potentially serious business, we hope this guide helped you figure it out.
The primary message we intend to get across is this: if you are interested in mining, do some experimentation and lots of study. Spend time on forums to learn and to introduce yourself to the community – there are many there who are very helpful and will answer your questions or point you in a direction to get the answers for yourself, which is always the best way to learn.
Stick with it – keep your miners running 24×7. Make a plan to pay off your initial investment and get closer to a pure profit. Know your mining operation’s ROI calculation and be prepared to shut down if you become unprofitable. Have some contingency plans in place if you should be forced to liquidate your hardware.
There are a lot of considerations if you want to approach Bitcoin as a profitable activity, or an opportunity to just have a lot of fun with it as a hobby. Whichever you decide, i hope your Bitcoin mining is fun and profitable and wish you the best of luck!
Resources
Bitcoin – the site:

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The Bitcoin Forum:

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Bitcoin Wiki:

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Mt. Gox (currently the largest BTC exchange)

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Stats, Charts & Analysis

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ROI Calculator (simple)

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