Sia is a new approach to cloud storage platforms. Instead of all datacenters being owned and operated by a single company, Sia opens the floodgates and allows anyone to make money by renting out their hard drive. Data integrity is protected using redundancy and cryptography.
Sia uses a cryptocurrency, Siacoin, to enable decentralized payments via file contracts. All payments on the network happen in Siacoin, which is a critical component of our cryptographic SLAs. Siacoin allows us to do things that would not be possible with Bitcoin or traditional online payments. See: 8 Things Every Crypto Investor Should Know About SIACOIN
I hold a couple of thousands of Siacoins (3,374), which I've gained via my swing trade activities. The current price (Middle December) is about $0.01 per Siacoin. I keep buying and holding a bunch of crypto coins, and I should note that 2017 has been a crazy in terms of returns. Currently, my Crypto portfolio has gained a total value of 268.47%, which is the highest return I've ever seen (compared to stocks or peer to peer lending, for example, where I can get about 10% annually)
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Remember your capital is at risk, never invest capital you cannot afford to lose!
Now it was at the start of December when I decided to build my first GPU mining rig, I decided to go with a 12 GPU rig and ordered goodies from Amazon, while still waiting for items to arrive I purchased a cheap Radeon graphics card (Top 14 Best Selling GPU Cards 2018) and put it in one of the spare office computers. I made some calculations and find that mining probably could be profitable in 2018, see: To Mine or Buy Ethereum/Zcash/Monero in 2018
Now once I successfully installed this card on PC I decided to mine with Simple Mining OS.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I could dual-mine two coins without affecting total performance for ethereum mining. I chose to dual-mine and ethereum and siacoin.
Mining Ethereum and Siacoin with Simple Mining OS
I got following hashrates from this Radeon RX 560 graphics card:
- ETH - 10.7 MH/s
- SC - 85.64 MH/s
Now using online calculator I got following return per month (results are after 1% pool fee, and $5.8 electricity fee)
- ETH - $33.58
- SC - $0.84
Without doubts, mining ethereum seems logical, but hey in terms of mined coins the return is completely different:
- ETH - 0.0493084
- SC - 80.95
Imagine if Siacoin would go up in value from $0.01 to $0.5, for example (I'm not saying it will happen, but it could happen), 80 siacoins would be worth $40.
Well, sure it doesn't sound realistic (yet), but in 2017 we have already seen even greater breakouts, ripple for example (see: Why I Rushed to Buy Ripple (XRP) Cryptocurrency at $0.19) .
With Siacoin ranked 42 and Ripple #3, it's probably not right to draw parallels, but any gains, even a $0.01 would mean a 100% profit.
Now, returning to the topic - is it profitable to mine siacoin? Probably not if you are looking for a short time gains and not advisable solo mining just siacoin. Dual Mining together with Ethereum, for example, and keeping coins for the long term, such free coins could turn into something valuable, probably even in 2018. Or they might go dust.
Remember your capital is at risk, never invest capital you cannot afford to lose!