Before we start, if you’re new to Bitcoin mining quickly take a cup of coffee because this post is over 1k words.

The short answer would be “It depends on how much you’re willing to spend”. Each person asking himself this will get a slightly different answer since Bitcoin Mining profitability depends on many different factors. In order to find out Bitcoin mining profitability for different factors “mining profitability calculators” were invented.

These calculators take into account the different parameters such as electricity cost, the cost of your hardware and other variables and give you an estimate of your projected profit. Before I give you a short example of how this is calculated let’s make sure you are familiar with the different variables:

Hash Rate

A Hash is a mathematical problem the miner’s computer needs to solve. The Hash Rate is the rate at which these problems are being solved. The more miners that join the Bitcoin network, the higher the network Hash Rate is.The Hash Rate can also refer to your miner’s performance. Today Bitcoin miners (those super powerful computers talked about in the video) come with different Hash Rates. Miners’ performance is measured in MH/s (Mega hash per second), GH/s (Giga hash zper second), TH/s (Terra hash per second) and even PH/s (Peta hash per second).

Bitcoin Per Block

Each time a mathematical problem is solved, a constant amount of Bitcoins are created. The number of Bitcoins generated per block starts at 50 and is halved every 210,000 blocks (about four years). The current number of Bitcoins awarded per block is 25. However, soon enough the block halving will occur and the reward will be downgraded to only 12.5 Bitcoins.

Electricity Rate

Operating a Bitcoin miner consumes a lot of electricity. You’ll need to find out your electricity rate in order to calculate profitability. This can usually be found on your monthly electricity bill.

Power consumption

Each miner consumes a different amount of energy. Make sure to find out the exact power consumption of your miner before calculating profitability. This can be found easily with a quick search on the Internet or through this list. Power consumption is measured is Watts.

Pool fees

In order to mine, you’ll need to join a mining pool. A mining pool is a group of miners that join together in order to mine more effectively. The platform that brings them together is called a mining pool and it deducts some sort of a fee in order to maintain its operations. Once the pool manages to mine Bitcoins the profits are divided between the pool members depending on how much work each miner has done (i.e. their miner’s hash rate).

Time Frame

When calculating if Bitcoin mining is profitable you’ll have to define a time frame to relate to. Since the more time you mine, the more Bitcoins you’ll earn.

Profitability decline per year

This is probably the most important and elusive variable of them all. The idea is that since no one can actually predict the rate of miners joining the network no one can also predict how difficult it will be to mine in 6 weeks, 6 months or 6 years from now. This is one of the two reasons  no one will ever be able to answer you once and for all “is Bitcoin mining profitable ?”. The second reason is the conversion rate. In the case below, you can insert an annual profitability decline factor that will help you estimate the growing difficulty.

Conversion rate

Since no one knows what the BTC/USD exchange rate will be in the future it’s hard to predict if Bitcoin mining will be profitable. If you’re into mining in order to accumulate Bitcoins only then this doesn’t need to bother you. But if you are planning to convert these Bitcoins in the future to any other currency this factor will have a major impact of course. 

Let’s we Calculate

In order to calculate all of these parameters and get an answer to our question, we will use a mining profitability calculator.  here’s a simple mining calculator from coinwarz.com : 

 (Bitcoin Mining Calculator Coinwarz.com) 

• Hash Rate : 14TH/s using Antminer s9 (Batch 23) Variation of ±5% is expected.
• Power Watts: 1372W+10% = 1509.20W and with Bitmain’s APW3 PSU 93% efficiency (wasted 7% efficiency).
• Power Cost & Pool Fees : Let’s imagine if no Power Cost & Pool Fees but isn’t possible.
• Bitcoin Difficulty (Big Mistake for Miner) : 281.800.917.193 at 23 November 2016 and will be 296,541,856,577 (+5.23%) after 1326 block, About 9.4 days.
• Block Reward: 12.5 and will be half after 1318 days, About 3.61 years.
• Bitcoin to USD : 742.23 at 23 November 2013 (hopefully will 1k or 2k in 2017)
• Hardware Costs : 1820 USD
  • Antminer S9 (Batch 23) = 1700 USD
  • PSU APW3 1600W = 120 USD

 Now, How about the result ? 

 (This data was taken from coinwarz.com using the following stats: 0% mining pool fees and power cost, 12.5 Bitcoins as a block reward, 14 TH/s hash rate, 1509.20W power consumption.)

 MONTHLY : $278.17 X 12 = $3338.04 IN 1 YEAR, SOUND GREAT,HUH? 

 now, what is going on if I try to fill Power Cost & Pool Fees, because of no one free launch in this planet except Satoshi Nakamoto? so, let’s see : 

 (Bitcoin Mining Calculator from Coinwarz.com) 

 (Result Mining Calculator From Coinwarz.com) 

 MONTHLY : $116.65, SO YOU NEED 15.6 MONTH TO REACH $1820 

Remember : this is only estimated not a real calculate. because the difficulty always increasing! 

 (Charts Difficulty from Blockchain.info) 

So is Bitcoin Mining Still Profitable in 2017?

The short answer, for most of the world, is no. Unless you have an edge like free electricity or free equipment that is still viable, you’re better off just buying bitcoin and holding it.

Try Mining Altcoins as an alternative to Bitcoin

One more option you can consider is mining Altcoins instead of Bitcoins. Today there are hundreds of Altcoins available on the market and some of them are still real easy to mine. The problem is that because there are so many Altcoins it’s hard to tell which ones are worth investing your time in. Some good examples for Altcoins are Litecoin(LTC), Ethereum(ETC), and Monero(XMR).

In order to understand which Altcoins are profitable, you can find website indexes such as CoinMarketCap that give you a complete Altcoin breakdown. On CoinMarketCap you can see the difficulty for each Altcoin, where can you exchange them and what are the chances to profit Bitcoins by mining each specific Altcoin.

but, at this time I really recommended using altcoin from Monero(XMR), because Monero have Highest Reward on the Mining Pool. 

Source : HAIBITCOIN.com