Everyone trying to "save" potential future miners thinks that the only reason anyone would ever want to get into this is to make a positive ROI in BTC on their investment into mining equipment. There are a whole slew of other reasons people want to get involved, not the least of which is a return in fiat currency.
The term Return On Investment is abused so badly in this forum. Everything you do gets an ROI, so someone telling you "it will never ROI" has no clue what they are talking about and should be summarily ignored. If I invest $100 and get back $1, my return on investment is -99%. Or, my overall return is negative $99. If I invest in model rocketry, I burn up a few dollars every time I launch a rocket. There is no financial return on investment for the money I spend there, but there is still an ROI that can be calculated. If I spend $60 on a USB Block Erupter, I may earn back a dollar or two on that hobby. In the mean time who is to say I didn't enjoy having it, playing around with pools and other alt currency, maybe mining against CEX.IO for a bit and trading some small amount there. Part of the return on investment is subjective, and not quantifiable. It was enjoyment, same as the model rocketry hobby.
The thing the big miners have forgotten is that at small amounts this is a fun hobby. It all changes when you (over) extend yourself in one way or another to buy a big quantity of mining equipment. It is no longer fun. Instead it is a race against time to make that money back.
My suggestion is this: If you see this as a hobby, invest in anything you can afford to lose and don't worry about making all your money back on it. Enjoy this for what it is. If you already invested your life savings and you saw this as your way to make it big so you don't have to work anymore: Sorry, you are screwed, and people will eventually learn to ignore their FUD about mining.
I fail to understand how plugging in a usb device is considered a hobby.. I agree with everyone on this forum who mine btc to make a profit. Many bitcoin miners have seen a positive ROI even in terms of btc if they were lucky.
Sort of the same as people overclocking their PC's. Technically your wasting money, but for the enthusiasts it well worth the fun. Plugging in the USB miners is the same thing. Pushing numbers to how far you can get with a certain type of setup. They may or may not make money, but in their eyes it's just plain fun.
How is overclocking wasting money? In many cases overclocking saves money and yeilds higher performance. Usb miners are obviously for enthusiasts but that is just about it in my opinion. If you bought just about any other asic around the time of release you either reached ROI or came very close and selling the asic later would just add to the roi.
HOLY FUCK PEOPLE!! There are about 96 billion ways to make money. IF you NEED to make more money, work harder or get a better job. Jesus, how hard is this to comprehend? Jibber jabbing about 'ROI' and bitcoin and 'asics' etc....seriously? All the time you spend here discussing your delusions could have been spent doing 'real' work and making real money. If you think you are are going to get rich with bitcoin you are probably someone who also buys lottery tickets. Sure, someone will get rich, probably not you, fool. Have fun with all this but re-fucking-lax!
Lmao, ugh think you should go back to the xbox forums bud
People mine to make money, anyone who is mining and fails to make money, in turn calling it a hobby is just trying to save face. Because they chose to ignore everyone's advice and bought one anyway thinking they know better.
The people buying them on ebay are NOT in it for the hobby, they are moron's who don't understand how the difficulty work and are looking for a quick buck.
As for overclocking. how is getting more performance, for video editing, photoshopping, video gaming, for the same price as less power, A waste of money?
