Topic: Block Erupter USB owners won't make ROI??? - page 3. (Read 10205 times)

I'll agree that we can't agree whether it'll take 10-12 months or more for full ROI.  THat's an unknown.  But I disagree with the fact that you don't think it's cool.  I think they're pretty freakin' sweet just for the novelty factor.

And you could do that, but my ASIC miners are engraved--it looks way cooler than a sticker.  And I'll admit that if they didn't have the engraved bitcoin logo, i might not have paid as much for them as they would have been of less decorative value.  But you can (and people are) selling usb drives with the bitcoin logo on them for about 40-50 USD so maybe more like 0.5 BTC?

They didn't wax about comic books in 1940 either.

I don't wax nostalgic about the 80286.

The fact that they produced a product and sold it for bitcoin is bullish for bitcoin.  It supports the economy.  They will be nostalgic.  30 some years from now, we'll be sitting around in our rocking chairs talking about those little USB sticks.  Kinda like how they sit around now talking about Honus Wagner baseball cards and comic books.  So don't be so quick to dismiss these little suckers.  Run 'em 24/7, but keep 'em cool, cuz they are cool.

No. I am afraid we cannot agree to that. It is not cool.

In other news, I should make a USB drive with a bitcoin sticker on it and sell it for 1 BTC.

Well it depends on what you mean by financially better off.  I value these sticks at somewhere between $50-$100 and I paid $250 for them so that means I need to make back $150-200 a piece.  Depending on how difficulty goes, yes, it does change, but the calculation is very simple since there is a fixed width to each sum.  Graphically, the width (delta x if you will) is 14 days.  So find how much you would make per day on average at the current difficult, multiply by 14, and repeat with a new difficulty.  If you can find what the difficulty is increasing by and calculate what that does to your revenue, than you can use that ratio as the common ratio.  I would guess for a simple calculation, you can use the last 5-10 difficulty increases to extrapolate.  I don't know what the common ratio would be, but since difficulty is not doubling, I doubt the guy above me who used the common ratio of 1/2 was anywhere near right (I know it was just an example, but with a higher common ratio, the sum of the series would probably not converge absolutely)

Can we all agree that it will take 10-12 months for ROI per USB?  Regardless, it's pretty freekin cool!

Agreed!  But it also depends on what the geometric series is and at what rate it changes.  While there is an upper bound as to how much can be made at a given instant, what we really want is the area under the curve because not only am I making money at this instant, but I've also made money in the past that needs to be added.  Even if it is a geometric series, if the t for each n is one year, then I easily make a profit.  It just depends on what that series is (how fast the decay actually is) and how long it stays at each stage.
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Area under the curve (integral) is relevant to continues quantities. Income (cash flows) are discrete sums.

Have a look at the current rate of increase of the difficulty, and tell me what do you expect as the average rate of increase of the difficulty. 1% a day? 2% a day? If you tell me that, I will be able to tell you how much money you can get from your investment.

The fact that you made already some money does not alter the fact that on the USB stick you will not make ROI. We are talking about ROI of the USB stick, not your business model in general.

For example, you can sell ice-cream and mine bitcoins, and make money on the former, while lose money on the later, and still have a profitable business. But the fact remains that you do not make ROI with the USB sticks, and you would be better off financially if you did not purchase the USB erupters, and did not mine.

Agreed!  But it also depends on what the geometric series is and at what rate it changes.  While there is an upper bound as to how much can be made at a given instant, what we really want is the area under the curve because not only am I making money at this instant, but I've also made money in the past that needs to be added.  Even if it is a geometric series, if the t for each n is one year, then I easily make a profit.  It just depends on what that series is (how fast the decay actually is) and how long it stays at each stage.

I did pay cash for them.  And I can't imagine the electricity costs that much.  Plus, the people who buy 2 BTC right now don't have the two BTC as decorations on their desks to show for it

Exactly.. Was going to post something similar, but your explanation is spot in.  The limit or final value approaches a number because you have diminishing returns on an exponential basis..  0.01 + 0.001 + 0.0001 + 0.00001 to give you an extreme example.  Once you get far out on the series, the incremental income, although non-zero, approaches zero at some point, and when it does, you make no more ROI, to any significant digit.

Your calculation is wrong, because the difficulty keeps increasing very rapidly. It is a convergent geometric series, whose sum can easily be calculated, and it provides an upper bound for how much revenue you can get out of a miner even if you use it for infinitely long time.

Remember:

1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + .... = 2 (and not infinite!)

FTW

Mine PPcoin with them

Edit: ^ dough!!

cool thanks

You can mine all SHA-256 Coins, so Freicoins, PPCoin, Bytecoin, Terracoin, ...

You will never make back 2 BTC of investment with the crap stick, unless there is another big mining operation meltdown causing the network difficulty to have a sharp drop.

You could potentially make back what you spend in cash (if you purchase the 2BTC to buy the stick), if the Bitcoin price will rise above today's value.

In that case, people who bought 2 BTC now will make the same profit as you do, without wasting on their electrical bills.

I got 2 of them, one for my office desk and one that I keep either at home or at my other "mobile" office I set up.

They are cute, colorful, and a nice decoration on my desk.  Will I make, ROI?  Absolutely, unless the price of bitcoin crashes.  Even if the difficulty goes up, it still makes money, just less.  It will EVENTUALLY make back for itself, but even if it didn't I have a coupld of novelty pieces for decoration that cost less to have each day.  (Paid about $250 USD for them each, so total of $500, In the week I've had them, I've made about $15 USD.  Break even point right now is 8 months but with block difficulty increasing is probably closer to a year.  But even so, if I only made 10 USD a week, the decorations would have only cost me $150 a piece by Christmastime which is more than reasonable for a decoration on my desk that shows what I support (the Physicians that work with me have decorations that are worth a TON more).

+1

Are there any other use for the ASICminer USB beside mining Bitcoins? (ex:litecoins)