Welcome to 2019! 2018 was a year to remember for Cryptos as a whole, with the market cap hitting a high in January of around $828 billion, and dropping as low as $103 billion before Christmas – a drop of almost 90%!

As we start off 2019, the overall market cap has already risen 25% from the low to right around $125 billion. With 2018 as the background, what will the cryptocurrency mining industry look like for 2019? Will it be worthwhile to gpu mine in 2019? Read along and find out!

Mining GPU prices in 2019

The cryptocurrency market didn’t have a lot of people involved (a tiny percentage of population), but from a monetary standpoint, it had far reaching effects.

Take, for example, NVidia – one of the 2 top GPU mining companies that benefited from the absolute boom in GPU demand during 2017. When the market crashed during 2018, NVidia went from being the top performer on the S&P 500 to dropping more than 50% of its value.

At the same time, AMD, the other mining GPU manufacturer, saw similar losses in it’s stock price, dropping almost 50% of its value.

What does NVidia and AMD stock price to do with the future of GPU mining in 2019?

Not a whole lot, actually, except that the reason that stock prices dropped so much is because the expected ‘boom’ in profits from the mining GPU space didn’t happen.

When cryptocurrency prices started dropping in early 2018, the demand for the best mining GPUs started tapering off to a point where people were shutting off their GPU mining rigs because electricity cost more than they could make from mining a coin. Even startup mining companies that had invested millions were shutting their doors as profits disapeared. Chinese mining firms (supposedly) even started selling their dated mining ASICs by the kilogram to try and offset some of their losses.

As more and more people piled on the ‘GPU mining is dead’ train, the demand for the video cards dropped, and slowly but surely, so did the prices. At the peak of GPU mining in late 2017 and early 2018, an AMD Radeon RX580 was selling for $550, and was now listed for $180.

Is GPU mining dead for 2019?

Depends. Profitable mining may be dead – unless you have very cheap electricity, but mining itself is not dead. Look at the graphs. Even as the prices of cryptos crashed throughout 2018, overall mining hashrates in some of the top blockchains did not drop as significantly.

Take a look at this Ethereum Network Hashrate chart – the peak price was in early January 2018, but the hashrate continued to grow until September 2018. Then, discussions about PoS (proof of stake) and Constantinople updates and Ethereum ASICs seemed to scare some people out of the space.

The hashrate doesn’t seem to correlate much with the price chart, which suggests that even though profitability drops, miners are happy to leave their rigs on.

Why would they do that? It could be that they understand the importance of decentralized mining, and want to contribute to the blockchain space – but it’s likely a little more selfish. If you go to the trouble to set up a specific GPU mining rig, chances are you have a bullish long-term outlook for the cryptocurrency space and you are expecting prices to rise again in the near-to-mid-term future.

Will blockchain and cryptocurrency prices rise in 2019?

Who are you asking, and who will you believe?

If you ask someone who doesn’t own any Bitcoin, like your neighbor, friend, or family member, chances are they will claim the BTC bubble has popped and the fun is done.

The BTC bubble has popped and the fun is done.

Someone unfamiliar and uncomfortable with cryptos

If you ask some of the large banks, like JP Morgan, or the press, like the New York Times, you will hear CEOs and important people saying all sorts of things that aren’t very nice.

[Bitcoin is] Probably Rat Poison Squared

Warren Buffet

Bitcoin is a ‘fraud’ that will eventually blow up

Jaime Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan

Bitcoin is basically a Ponzi Scheme

Paul Krugman, New York Times Columnist

For fun, check out this ‘Bitcoin is Dead’ infographic that explains the hundreds of times over the past 10 years that someone has claimed Bitcoin is Dead, simply to have it come back to even higher highs. Source: 99 Bitcoins

On the contrary, if you look at people who are involved in the crypto world, deeply connected, and well informed, you’ll see a different story emerge.

Teeka Tiwari predicts $40,000 Bitcoin

Teeka has been a little controversial, with some speculating Palm Beach is a pump and dump strategy, but it’s hard to deny the information and reasoning he presents for a resurgence in the price of cryptocurrencies in 2019.

In a newsletter article (source:Legacy Research Group), Teeka explains why his prediction of $40,000 Bitcoin by the end of 2018 wasn’t reached, and what he thinks will happen in 2019. To sum things up:

• “When I said bitcoin’s going to $40,000, I based that on my research of multiple ETFs…and companies like Intercontinental Exchange – which owns the New York Stock Exchange – launching a crypto exchange called Bakkt.”
• “…major institutions like Fidelity Investments and TD Ameritrade coming into this space”
• “Back in December 2017, I saiw major endowmnets would start coming into the space in 2018 […] on October 1, Yale University’s endowment started buying crypto. And other major endowments followed.”
• “Wall Street will embrace bitcoin and crypto as an alternative asset class. That’s not a theory anymore… it’s actually happening exactly as my research suggested it would.”
• “My best thinking is that cryptos are here to stay”
• “I will tell you what I got 100% wrong on that call – and it wasn’t the price; we’ll see $40,000 bitcoin”

What you believe determines how profitable GPU mining in 2019 can be!

No, that isn’t meant as some sort of hooey-fluff-talk-about-how-you-can-change-your-destiny based on what you think nonsense. I simply mean that you need to determine what your long-term outlook for the blockchain space is, and then use that as the lens with which you look at mining with GPUs.

For example, if you think the bubble has popped, and crypto prices will continue to decrease over the next 2 years, then why are you even here reading this?! 🙂

However, if you are confident the adoption of cryptocurrencies as a whole will increase with TD Ameritrade, Bakkt, and all of those other institutions bringing it easily available to their millions of users, then all of a sudden the idea of continuing to mine, or growing your mining operation, makes much more sense.

Most Profitable, Best Mining GPU 2019

The most profitable GPU for mining is no always the fastest mining GPU available on the market. There are many factors to consider:

• Mining hashrate and the efficiency of the GPU matter, especially if you have higher than average electricity costs
• GPU cost is a huge factor, which can be offset based on the hashrates, or even the efficiency of the mining GPU you are considering

If your power cost is free (which will not last if you are running a big mining operation, just search REDDIT), then you don’t need to worry about mining efficiency. For you, the best mining GPU is the one with the best hashrate to dollar ratio and that means you’ll be looking at the top of the line mining GPUs like a GTX 1080 Ti or the newer RTX 2080. You can easily see hashes per dollar on our mining GPU charts here.

Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080ti

The Aorus can hash as many as 800 sol/s on the equihash algorithm, it's a beast. It's not as impressive on ethash, so you'll want to look for a coin like Zencash or Bitcoin Gold for best profitability on this mining GPU

$264.00
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Check out all the available 1080 TI mining GPUs here

Last year in 2018, the GTX 1060 3GB cards snuck into the category of being the best hash per dollar as well, but the DAG file sizes are all getting close to the 3 GB limit on the major coins so that means the 3GB cards are no longer a good option.

Asus 1050 Ti Phoenix

The 1050 Ti is actually one of the cheapest mining GPUs per hash especially during the great GPU shortage of 2018. However, in the bearish crypto market of 2019, the other GPU prices have come down enough so the 1050 Ti is no longer the best option - there are other more efficient mining GPUs at around the same cost per hash.

$95.95
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Here is a list of all of the GTX 1050 Ti mining gpus that are currently in stock

EVGA GTX 1060 SSC 6GB

I love the 1060 6GB, but mostly because it was my first entry into the GPU mining space. This EVGA SSC card is a solid hasher, and stable. My rig has been running for almost 2 years with no problems (except for that one time but it was Windows Updates at fault).

$299.99
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Sometimes the EVGA SSC goes on sale, and it ends up being about 15% less per hash than even a less-efficient, older card like the 1050 Ti! Check GTX 1060 6GB mining gpu prices here

Most Efficient Mining GPU 2019

If you’re like the rest of us, and you don’t live next to a private hydro-dam, electricity costs are a large part of the expenses of a mining operation. A major factor in deciding what Mining GPU to purchase needs to contain some factoring in overall mining efficiency of the GPU.

Last year, the crowning efficiency king of mining GPUs was the GTX 1070 Ti – it could hash at speeds up to 4.7 sols per watt! Check out this cool chart from Mining Charts that graphs overall cost and power usage to determine which is GPU is the best buy for you specifically based on your power costs.

At the start of 2019, the best priced 1070 Ti is the EVGA GTX1070Ti SC Gaming GPU, and even though it hashes slower and slightly less efficiently than the RTX 2080, it’s a better buy. The RTX 2080 costs almost twice as much per hashrate and would take 2 or more years to make back the difference!

EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC

With almost the same hashrate power efficiency as the just released RTX 2080, the 1070 Ti costs so much less that it doesn't make sense to pay for the bigger card - unless of course, you only have 1 GPU slot and you want to get the most mining power out of it - but for the $600 or so extra it costs, you could buy 2-1070Tis and most of the parts for a new GPU mining rig too!

$199.99
View on Amazon

Events that will affect profitability GPU Mining 2019

New GPUs being announced and released

NVidia has already started releasing their next generation GPUs – the RTX series. For NVidia GPU RTX mining speeds, click here.

The competition, AMD, is slightly behind on their release, but they recently annoucned that their new GPU is the first ever 7nm graphics card in the world available to customers. Nobody really knows what that will mean for mining hashrates of the new AMD cards, but there are speculations.

Overall Crypto Prices Rising, Increasing interest in Mining GPUs in 2019

It’s the age-old question of GPU miners everywhere – is it cheaper to just buy the blockchain project I’m interested in, or should I buy the mining hardware and mine it myself?

There is one big advantage to mining a coin – it’s completely anonymous. I’m not advocating that you lie on your taxes to cheat ‘the man’, but that mining has the benefit of going straight to your wallet address, with no one else knowing it (unless you’re dumb and post how rich you are on social media).

From a purely cost perspective, it’s likely cheaper to buy the coins now (as we are still in a deep pullback in early 2019) than mining them. I’m currently mining approximately .0057 ethereum per day worth less than $0.80 at current Ethereum prices on my GTX 1060 mining rig, and using about 8.4 kWh per day of electricity (about $0.84 at my electrical costs). Overall, it’s pretty much a wash, but I keep doing it because I’m speculating that Ethereum will go up in the future and pay this off.

If you were to buy the coin outright, you have nothing to show for it (no mining GPUs to sell) if the blockchain industry goes to $0. And if you buy the coin right now, you’re speculating that the price will increase a lot.

If you buy mining equipment now, just like the cryptocurrencies are, the mining GPUs are currently at a discount from where they were back in 2017 and early 2018. If you buy GPUs for mining in 2019 and you set up a mining rig, you’re speculating that the price of the cryptos will rise enough to pay off your electricity and make you some free money – and you may even make it big if you mine and hold and the coin increases exponentially in the next year or two.

And that’s what this is, it’s speculation. Right now, whether you buy the best GPUs for mining, or whether you buy the coin outright, you are speculating* that the blockchain industry will increase in the near future.

*speculating – this is of course subjective. I think it’s a wise bet, not a speculation, that cryptocurrency prices will increase in 2019 by leaps and bounds. I simply want to drill home the fact that you shouldn’t take out loans, or put money into this that you need to buy food for your family. Only put what you can afford to lose into this please!!!

Ethereum moving to Proof-of-Stake (PoS)

This is coming soon, as early as January 2019. Ethereum is looking at moving to a partial proof-of-work and proof-of-stake system where miners are rewarded less and blocktimes are increased. This will affect GPU miners, and I haven’t yet figured out what I will do when the switch happens – I’ll likely look at mining ZenCash or some equihash coin that I believe has a solid future.

How will it affect GPU mining? No one knows for sure, but the changeover is supposed to render the Ethereum ASICs (more specifically FGPAs) useless, so even though the block rewards are less, their may be less overall network hash power. The shift will also cause some of the Ethereum hashpowers over to other coins, also decreasing the profitability of those coins. Long term, I don’t think this will have a big effect on GPU mining in 2019. Everyone has known this was coming for quite a while, and there are a bunch of other minable coins out there.