Topic: A few questions before I buy a Bitcoin ASIC device (Read 1791 times)

agree. Or just if its just going to be for the fun of mining and speculation that bitcoin will eventually go
way up and that will be where your profit comes from.

Anyone trying to mine and sell the bitcoin before their machine becomes a useless doorstop is tough.

The idea of mining is very popular with newbies, it is like getting something for nothing.
In reality mining is normally a money losing, or at best a break even venture, unless you have free electricity and get lucky with the difficulty increases.

If you need the questions answered, I would recommend not mining bitcoin.  Try mining on an CPU alt like Primecoin, see how much you get and how much fun it is!  You will be happy you saved your money on ASICs.

Just a comment: many friends out there are using "free" electricity for mining.... please make sure the one who pay for the bill agrees with the spending, or else it is really not very nice...

USB ASIC at these speed are only for hobby. They will not recover the cost of running the setup. You may consider joining a mining pool in order to get some small shares of the earning...

You assume correctly.  Those numbers represent how many times a second the device executes the hashing looking for a valid block solution.  You can easily calculate the daily (or hourly, weekly, whatever timeframe) expected earnings for a device given its speed and the current network difficulty.  The equation (simplified) is as follows:

So, if you wanted to know how much an Antminer S5 (1.155TH/s) would expect to make in a day if it were mining right now:


Those are the proper terms.  A USB stick relies upon a host computer to execute the mining software and a powered USB port.  Therefore if the computer providing the power to the port, or running the mining software is stopped, so too is your mining.

There are other miners out there (I mentioned the S5 above) that are self contained.  You plug in a PSU and a network cable, then use a web browser to configure it.  You can then turn off your computer.


Minimal bandwidth required.  You're sending and receiving small bits of data from a mining pool.  Unless you're running your own pool or a full bitcoin node whatever you have currently should be more than sufficient.


If the mining software can't connect to the pool, then your mining hardware would be sitting idle.  You don't need to reconfigure.  One thing I want to point out here (and it's bold because it's important): there is no such thing as progress.  You aren't executing a progressive series of calculations the cumulative effect of which produce a block solution.  A share either solves a block, or it does not.


Well, what's your definition of cheap?  $50?  $500?  $5000?

USB devices are exceedingly unlikely to ever turn a profit.  If it's just a "for fun" thing, or perhaps a lottery ticket you point at a "solo pool" then have at it.

How cheap is cheap?   Spend about $40 and get a Antminer u3 while you are wanting to learn. (check amazon and ebay)  There is no power supply required and you can message me if you want when you get it and I will be more than happy to help you set it up.  If you want to go a little bigger and spend a couple hundred dollars Then pick up an s5 and power supply.  Its going to be almost 25x faster than the u3 but will use about 600 watts of power and be a lot louder.

ps- I have Antminer s7's now but still run my s3's I started with.  Just keep them going.   

2) In order to mine coins you have to launch specific software and keep it running.

3) Bandwidth is not a concern right now, it should take about 3-5 KB/s.

4) Mining software will be checking if your connection is up to continue mining automatically

5) So you want any device just to try what mining looks like? I would suggest you two things:

- In case of mining for fun -> USB Block Eruptor
- In case of making any profit -> Antminer S7

Every other option would be the waste of time and electricity, as it would be too expensive for a demonstration purpose and too inefficient to make any ROI.

1) These numbers mean that the mining rig how much hash can solve, here is to check earnings for bitcoin calculator: https://alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator

Hi there,
I have been looking around, and found a few different devices which all have different numbers (e.g. 336MH/s or 2GH/s - just the first 2 I saw) on Amazon. And I have a few questions, which I hope you guys will be able to help me with.

1) What do these numbers mean?
- I assume it is the speed. But is there any way to use these numbers to approximate how many Bitcoins per day/week/month you would average. E.g. a 100MH/s would be 0.000001BTC or something?

2) If I got a USB stick ASIC device (I'm sorry, I don't know the proper term for these), does it run as long as the PC is powered? I.e. if the PC is in sleep mode, or running.

3) What would be an estimated bandwidth usage for one of these? It's not an issue, but I would like to know whether upgrading to a slightly better internet package would be a smart move to account for more bandwidth usage.

4) Do they need 24/7 internet access? I.e. if your internet drops for an hour, would it resume as normal, or would it need to be reconfigured/start from scratch losing an progress it had made.

5) If you were to recommend a cheap starting device, just to see how it works and if it is something that would work for me, what would you recommend? (Not really necessary, as hopefully the previous 4 questions should help me choose, but just in case there is a specific model which is better)

Thanks,
Jordan