Antminer S9 SHA-256 Hash Miner...

One of the most heard terms in the investment world is "Dollar-Cost Averaging," which, in my understanding, means to invest a set amount of money every day on a budget no matter what the particular "market" you are investing is currently doing. Whether it is "up" or "down," you invest that amount no matter what. Apparently, this is the most effective way to invest over time.

Enter The Miners!

One way to "earn" a daily amount of crypto-currency is to set up a "mining rig," or an "Application Specific Integrated Circuit" or ASIC miner. The term "mining rig" normally refers to a GPU, or Graphics card-based, mining setup. These are normally used to mine on the Etherium blockchain. ASIC miners, on the other hand, can be used for many different "Hashes," or blockchains. The one in the above photograph is an Antminer SHA-256 miner, which means all it does is "mine" or mathematically "hash out" the SHA-256 mining protocol. That is it, no games, no word processor, just mining...

Is It Worth It?

Something I am often asked is "Well how much does it cost?" and my answer is always the same, "I have to pay for my electric anyway..." What I mean by this is that, to me, BTC and crypto will in time prove to have been worth whatever I paid initially to invest in it. The miner itself, brand new two years ago, was around $375. As I said, I have to have electricity. I run fans and air conditioners and freezers and everything else, so why would I worry about the amount it costs me to run my miner? I have honestly never even done the math.

Figure It Out...

So is mining for you? There is a number of charts readily available on the internet to figure out hash rates, electricity rates, and profitability of different mining "rigs," and ASICS. The price runs anywhere from what I paid, which you have a waitlist of about five months for currently, upward of tens-of-thousands of dollars. GPU "rigs" again, can be cheaper, but again, GPUs are almost impossible to find now.

Supply and Demand...

So should you get into mining? The fact that it is very hard and expensive to do now due to lack of equipment and GPUs would tell me that yes, you should.