Is Gpu mining still an option? My friend asked me to do a research for him on bitcoin mining, I don't know a lot so I'm asking. He's consider buying either NVIDIA gtx titan or NVIDIA gtc 980. Decent motherboard and internet speed. I stumbled upon a question on this site which says that Gpu and Cpu mining is over, it's all about ASIC now, but we can't afford ASIC.


All in USA, we're living in Lebanon
Overly expensive and we didn't count shipping costs


Now I want you to consider


Internet is free
Electricity is free
Other than buying the hardware, we have no expenses at all


My question now is the following:


In best case scenario, using NVIDIA gtx titan or NVIDIA gtc 980, how
much bitcoin can we expect to mine? (unless it's really dead)
Is it wise to buy NVIDIA gtx titan or NVIDIA gtc 980 to mine bitcoins if you don't pay taxes? Would it pay off?
Thanks for asking this question. I see a lot of people all the time who assume GPU mining is profitable.

Try googling "bitcoin mining calculator" and see.

Presently (in 2015) the calculator will tell you that you would be able to mine one bitcoin in about 1000 to 10 000 years. But you have to consider that there are reward halvings every four years, which those calculators don't take into account. A more realistic scenario then is that it would take over a million years to mine one bitcoin.

Of course you don't have to mine a whole bitcoin. If you are lucky you could perhaps mine 0.01 BTC in 10 000 years. That's worth a little over three US dollars at the time I write this.

There are still a few people mining on GPU or even CPU. Some of them may have free electricity. But what they fail to understand is how extremely slow this is. Most ditch GPU/CPU mining when they see that you'd be lucky to earn three dollars in 10 000 years. But there are still some (in my mining pool) who refuse to give up.

TL;DR: no, GPU mining is not viable.