Oh dear

Everything without a price is out of stock. Even my local vendors are being pilfered

Why would you need any of those graphics cards anyways? overpriced garbage that serves no purpose.

>he doesn't know

I don't even understand it. Bitcoin miners have moved on to custom FPGAs/ASICs. Who are the sad fucking retards that keep buying out worthless GPUs to compete with the Chinese?

Ethereum

yeah i thought it was pointless to try to do mining with a GPU at this point unless you have thousands of computers going.

Nah at the moment because of a surge in Ethereum/USD exchange rate, basically any video card you buy will be paid off within a month or two of mining.

Not anymore. Difficulty literally doubled in the last week.

Ethereum mining has done it. ASICs don't really work for Ether, and it's really profitable right now. Also other altcoins as well.

still seems unlikely that you will see a return after buying thousands of $ in cards though

if you're just one person and not a warehouse full of chinks, that is

Ether (not fucking Ethereum, that's the network) mining is ASIC-resistant

Basically no one mines Bitcoin at home and it's pissing me off to no end how financial news still gets it wrong. Goes to show how little research they do.

fuck off to

An RX 480 makes you about $90 a month with ether mining. If you could buy them at the original price of about $200, then they'd pay for themselves in ~2 months and after that make $90 a month pure profit.
Now if instead you pay $400 at the current price, then you'd just have to wait 2 more month until they pay for themselves.
If you buy 20 cards, they will STILL pay for themselves in a 3 months or so and then after that chunk out 20 x $90 per month.
It's entirely profitable and explains why the price is so high now.

and what about any uptick in power use that would affect a utility bill? substantial?

You mean energy prices? That depends on where you live, but they're usually much lower than $90 for the card.
It average it would cost like $10 per month per card.
So instead of $90 you'd get $80. No biggie

interesting. i have some extra cash and an unused tower or two lying around. maybe if the prices come down i'll fuck with it. seems like better option than coin trading, which seems like hell.

well the prices won't come down until it becomes less profitable. Otherwise they would just buy more. The mining difficulty keeps increasing forever, but so does the price I guess. When you decide to do it, you should definitely do your own research at the current prices and profitability.
I like coin trading more, there's a simple trick on how to make guaranteed profit, unless you're really unlucky:
Buy when the price is low and sell when it's high. Now the trick is to absolutely never sell for a loss. Just keep the coins if the price goes lower than what you bought for. It will EVENTUALLY go back up. If you fucked up a lot, it might take a week, maybe even months. But the chance that it will NEVER reach a profitable price ever again is pretty low.
Most people panic-sell when the price goes too low and lose money that way, especially the beginners. But their loss is your profit.

thanks user, good shit to know. very sane rundown of bagholding as well, which is impossible in /biz/

Lol. Difficulty is going up exponentially. If it stayed the same when I ordered my parts, Id have about $600 in eth right now. Instead of $222. Thats 2.5 weeks with 4+ gpus. There was some downtime, maybe missed a day or two all together. Unless prices go up with difficulty, your looking at 4-6 months roi if you payed msrp for everything.

looks like you will hit $600 in less than 2 months though