Mining was designed to be a marginal undertaking, and for ROI to return is simply a matter of network power tapering off and/or a rise of BTC market value.
There is no "solution" other than the mining business evening itself out, which I think it will in time as ASICs reach a saturation point and hopefully a fresh BTC rally when the next big bank goes down in flames like Cyprus did.
The little Erupters and smaller miners are perfect for those not wanting to be a power player in the mining world, but more just still want to participate and help the network, making a sliver of BTC on the side (and who knows, even a small amount could be worth a lot some day). I figure by plugging in an USB Erupter to your computer it is at least paying for your computer's power needs. Prices on them are finally falling to where they really should be, so the ROI isn't quite as bad.
If you want to mine as a real business, be prepared to drop $1000s on the gear. That is the reality now and is not going away. It IS profitable, but you also have to know what you are doing.
Sorry OP but you don't seem to have a clue about mining or the business of mining.
Topic: Erupters and Small-time Miners....Why? (Read 1248 times)
I just hope wealth can be distributed, not hoarded.
Oh you're a real kneeslapper! 
Special note to address the rapidly-evolving Mining Hardware Manufacturing Oligopoly.
I know absolutely nothing about the BFL delays from their side. (...And the next comment is technically unrelated to any evaluation of their past performance....) ...But I do know that 'the government' is now strong-arming them. Even a delay from clerical siphoning of budgetary resources can seriously damage a company's ability to deliver.
Maybe even someone from BFL will read this thread? I don't intend to offend anyone. I just want a better world. That's the message. Now build it!
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I came back to post this last message to say that, attacking manufacturing or even commandeering/buyout/directing it is another way the cryptoworld is compromised by the vile, stinky, feces-faced government of overlords and such.
My point: Maybe a call to rapidly share ASIC manufacturing technology and/ or otherwise gather your engineering buddies to form new mining hardware companies is the most dire message at this time. Bitcoin's survival might depend on it.
I know absolutely nothing about the BFL delays from their side. (...And the next comment is technically unrelated to any evaluation of their past performance....) ...But I do know that 'the government' is now strong-arming them. Even a delay from clerical siphoning of budgetary resources can seriously damage a company's ability to deliver.
Maybe even someone from BFL will read this thread? I don't intend to offend anyone. I just want a better world. That's the message. Now build it!
-
I came back to post this last message to say that, attacking manufacturing or even commandeering/buyout/directing it is another way the cryptoworld is compromised by the vile, stinky, feces-faced government of overlords and such.
My point: Maybe a call to rapidly share ASIC manufacturing technology and/ or otherwise gather your engineering buddies to form new mining hardware companies is the most dire message at this time. Bitcoin's survival might depend on it.
P.S. I assume the USB design of Erupters is something that will be expanded upon. I assume that even more powerful USB devices will be manufactured. I just hope wealth can be distributed, not hoarded.
Where Would You Like to Go?
Whether it was in the plan all along, or these are newcomers, the PTB are into BTC, working both ends. …Working to accumulate and control, originate and exploit, or the typical bankster culling and criminalization, then writing misleading Corporate News articles of their exploits for the remaining ignorant masses. (Assuring late adopter population, I’m sure.)
I’m writing about mining, today. It isn’t profitable. What can be done to correct this? Lower the cost of entering the market, i.e. ASIC hardware. (I’m no expert on mining at all, but I’m assuming only ASICS can keep up with demands at this point?) Clearly, there are typical microeconomics to apply here, which preclude ‘give away’. Either new competition will need to enter the mining hardware manufacturing market, or existing sources can continue to innovate, lowering costs.
Still, another option is that higher BTC prices per fiat will act as a ‘savior’ in this situation. It does appear that 1.) BTC prices might be trending higher, again. (This could be explosive in the next, say, 3 months, IMHO, BTW.) 2.) The $USD finally appears to be weeks to months from a once-in-a-century fall of the predominant world currency. …Niice.
-
Mining isn’t profitable. Sure some, (really plenty of-) niches can be eked out for individuals to continue to find profit or relative profit in the current economics of the cryptoworld, whether involved in the promotion of BTC or investor services or exchanges or sales of real goods and traditional services or trading or contract-writing, (or scamming, etc. (not promoting it, just stating a fact.))
Problem is, in my own experience getting started with the new Erupters, due to increased difficulty and the expanding supply of miners and total hashing power, a small market entrant, even an efficient one, doesn’t really get back the BTC spent on hardware/power/costs.
Folks, we are centralizing power, currently, into larger mining hands, and especially the few manufacturers, into an oligopoly, at the cost of the majority of small hands losing net BTC ownership. Perhaps by early next year, a small-time miner, (call it under 10Ghps,) will see a profit in $USD terms, but may never recover in BTC terms, (maybe without constant reinvestment, which is quite risky.)
Compounding the issue for the small hands are production delays and concerns about large investors sweeping in and leaving them in the dust.
-
Building a Better World?
What I’ve described seems very normal in the contemporary world of cutthroat capitalist, free-market economics, but we don’t even have the older ostentatious protections from scammers! I just came across a slick website today for a non-existent 5Ghps unit! I would feel sorry for a fool who couldn’t research adequately to spot the scam for what it was!!! That’s not a ‘better world’. That’s the same ol’ $h1t, just looking different.
Let’s look at this apparent flash-in-the-pan ASIC Erupter phenomenon. It’s really great for BTC! It is! This is the spore method of network propagation and survivability! This gets processing into many hands, increasing nodes, but why? Where are the economic incentives for the little guys? We’re dumping already! Hardware prices plummeting, with yet another half-generation of BTC market participants getting burned, some to collapse, while the rising oligopoly withholds shipments! Ha, ha, very funny. You win. That’s not a ‘better world’.
-
I’m not saying that I have all the answers, but I do have a few ideas, so please expand on them if any work for you. I encourage you all to continue brainstorming for creative solutions as well.
1.) Some components of the cryptoworld, such as, but not limited to, currency exchange and trading sites, purveyors of real goods and services, etc. can offer discounts to miners. (I’m not even sure how miners would validate their claim of hashrates, but I’m confident the solutions are there in this case.) The purpose is to promote as many individual ‘nodes’ in the mining network as possible in the spirit of ‘anti-fragile’, but especially to offer incentive for people to run even just one ASIC miner or even an ol’ GPU. :-)
2.) Encourage additional mining pools, (a few). It seems there would be an advantage to having more pools and drawing participants from the larger pools. Right now, it seems this part of the BTC infrastructure is vulnerable to jealous-god government attack, otherwise. (I may be way off, since I don’t know the details.)
3.) Oligopoly or other large hands can start-up a fund to encourage the new, smaller miners by offering special incentives. Maybe buy up a failed scamcoin (SC) or something to distribute, and then whenever any entity experiencing something I philosophically call [bounty], which is an abundance that can only be dumped on a market harming the same supplier’s bottom line, for any good or possibly service, they can offer it just for the (SC) redemption. Just an idea, you know? Maybe someone printed too many BTC t-shirts, and prices are falling. SHARE THEM. Encourage the little miners. That’s a better world.
4.) Get your engineering buddies together and figure out how to manufacture ASICS. There’s plenty of money in that! We need new suppliers – the one’s we have are….(I won’t spell it out.)
5.) There has got to be a way to squeeze more hashpower out of existing hardware! (I have seen one advertisement of a service to do just this.)
6.) [Add your ideas, too! Find solutions.]
Ultimately, the purpose of BTC can be an opportunity to distribute liquidity MOST BROADLY to the masses, so they may finally have access to the resources which have been present and plentiful all along, with the barriers finally removed for us to live out dreams, creativity, expansion, evolution.
I understand even now the majority of stakeholders don’t want this. If nothing else, then, if you do agree with my principles, by reading this, you can add to your clarity in perception of the unfolding progress of the cryptoworld. You are aware.
Start small. We don’t need more, more, more, we don’t need scamming, especially with false hope from the mining hardware oligopoly; and we certainly don’t need the Valkyries of the PTB marching into the BTC field. We need to cooperate now. Please help to make a real, better world.
Thank you.
Whether it was in the plan all along, or these are newcomers, the PTB are into BTC, working both ends. …Working to accumulate and control, originate and exploit, or the typical bankster culling and criminalization, then writing misleading Corporate News articles of their exploits for the remaining ignorant masses. (Assuring late adopter population, I’m sure.)
I’m writing about mining, today. It isn’t profitable. What can be done to correct this? Lower the cost of entering the market, i.e. ASIC hardware. (I’m no expert on mining at all, but I’m assuming only ASICS can keep up with demands at this point?) Clearly, there are typical microeconomics to apply here, which preclude ‘give away’. Either new competition will need to enter the mining hardware manufacturing market, or existing sources can continue to innovate, lowering costs.
Still, another option is that higher BTC prices per fiat will act as a ‘savior’ in this situation. It does appear that 1.) BTC prices might be trending higher, again. (This could be explosive in the next, say, 3 months, IMHO, BTW.) 2.) The $USD finally appears to be weeks to months from a once-in-a-century fall of the predominant world currency. …Niice.
-
Mining isn’t profitable. Sure some, (really plenty of-) niches can be eked out for individuals to continue to find profit or relative profit in the current economics of the cryptoworld, whether involved in the promotion of BTC or investor services or exchanges or sales of real goods and traditional services or trading or contract-writing, (or scamming, etc. (not promoting it, just stating a fact.))
Problem is, in my own experience getting started with the new Erupters, due to increased difficulty and the expanding supply of miners and total hashing power, a small market entrant, even an efficient one, doesn’t really get back the BTC spent on hardware/power/costs.
Folks, we are centralizing power, currently, into larger mining hands, and especially the few manufacturers, into an oligopoly, at the cost of the majority of small hands losing net BTC ownership. Perhaps by early next year, a small-time miner, (call it under 10Ghps,) will see a profit in $USD terms, but may never recover in BTC terms, (maybe without constant reinvestment, which is quite risky.)
Compounding the issue for the small hands are production delays and concerns about large investors sweeping in and leaving them in the dust.
-
Building a Better World?
What I’ve described seems very normal in the contemporary world of cutthroat capitalist, free-market economics, but we don’t even have the older ostentatious protections from scammers! I just came across a slick website today for a non-existent 5Ghps unit! I would feel sorry for a fool who couldn’t research adequately to spot the scam for what it was!!! That’s not a ‘better world’. That’s the same ol’ $h1t, just looking different.
Let’s look at this apparent flash-in-the-pan ASIC Erupter phenomenon. It’s really great for BTC! It is! This is the spore method of network propagation and survivability! This gets processing into many hands, increasing nodes, but why? Where are the economic incentives for the little guys? We’re dumping already! Hardware prices plummeting, with yet another half-generation of BTC market participants getting burned, some to collapse, while the rising oligopoly withholds shipments! Ha, ha, very funny. You win. That’s not a ‘better world’.
-
I’m not saying that I have all the answers, but I do have a few ideas, so please expand on them if any work for you. I encourage you all to continue brainstorming for creative solutions as well.
1.) Some components of the cryptoworld, such as, but not limited to, currency exchange and trading sites, purveyors of real goods and services, etc. can offer discounts to miners. (I’m not even sure how miners would validate their claim of hashrates, but I’m confident the solutions are there in this case.) The purpose is to promote as many individual ‘nodes’ in the mining network as possible in the spirit of ‘anti-fragile’, but especially to offer incentive for people to run even just one ASIC miner or even an ol’ GPU. :-)
2.) Encourage additional mining pools, (a few). It seems there would be an advantage to having more pools and drawing participants from the larger pools. Right now, it seems this part of the BTC infrastructure is vulnerable to jealous-god government attack, otherwise. (I may be way off, since I don’t know the details.)
3.) Oligopoly or other large hands can start-up a fund to encourage the new, smaller miners by offering special incentives. Maybe buy up a failed scamcoin (SC) or something to distribute, and then whenever any entity experiencing something I philosophically call [bounty], which is an abundance that can only be dumped on a market harming the same supplier’s bottom line, for any good or possibly service, they can offer it just for the (SC) redemption. Just an idea, you know? Maybe someone printed too many BTC t-shirts, and prices are falling. SHARE THEM. Encourage the little miners. That’s a better world.
4.) Get your engineering buddies together and figure out how to manufacture ASICS. There’s plenty of money in that! We need new suppliers – the one’s we have are….(I won’t spell it out.)
5.) There has got to be a way to squeeze more hashpower out of existing hardware! (I have seen one advertisement of a service to do just this.)
6.) [Add your ideas, too! Find solutions.]
Ultimately, the purpose of BTC can be an opportunity to distribute liquidity MOST BROADLY to the masses, so they may finally have access to the resources which have been present and plentiful all along, with the barriers finally removed for us to live out dreams, creativity, expansion, evolution.
I understand even now the majority of stakeholders don’t want this. If nothing else, then, if you do agree with my principles, by reading this, you can add to your clarity in perception of the unfolding progress of the cryptoworld. You are aware.
Start small. We don’t need more, more, more, we don’t need scamming, especially with false hope from the mining hardware oligopoly; and we certainly don’t need the Valkyries of the PTB marching into the BTC field. We need to cooperate now. Please help to make a real, better world.
Thank you.
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