Topic: If USB Block Erupters are not worth the trouble, what is? (Read 7719 times)

BTC mining is not worth it anymore but if u have cheap power mining coins like LTC with GPUs would stile be profitable and u do not have a risk as large as asics as you can sell the GPUs to a gamer later but asics are worthless when diff goes up too much.

You got that right.  Everything I'm pricing, everyone wants waaaaay too much money and too much time needed for ROI without diff increase to be accounted for.  I guess folks are banking on BTC hitting 200 bucks again and hoping it will ROI in time. 

The simple problem is that the network difficulty is rising fast enough to make long term mining, with current hardware, impossible.

I will also point out that by "long term" I mean 1 year. Yes the term "long term" has changed for Bitcoin in the past 6 months.

Just ignoring what is supposed to come online in the next 60 days, the last 10 difficulty changes have an average of over 20%, the last 4 an average of over 30%

If KnC succeeds and delivers 1PH - 5PH (no one seems to know what their order book adds up to) then that will represent a 100% to 500% increase in the next couple of month, so should easily continue the 30% diff changes and possibly have a very high one somewhere in the middle if they ship a lot of hardware in a 1 week period - since it would seem that shipping a lot of their hardware might simply be putting it into their own datacentre and switching it on.

Almost all ASIC hardware you can see today is priced such that you will lose BTC or only get very little BTC return above what you paid in BTC.
However, most of that pricing is also assuming little or no network increase, which is blatantly, obviously incorrect
The possible large network increases (like KnC) will ensure that beyond any doubt you will not get back your BTC outlay, if they do occur.

So indeed it would appear that buying BTC is the least risk option at the moment - or more correctly, almost certain to lose you less BTC - since almost no mining equipment will gain you BTC above the BTC you pay for it, and all mining equipment will delay that return for many months and cost you some amount of money to run it for many months.

Yeah I  would like to turn 10 BTC in to 1000 BTC by running a martingale bot on satoshidice, but simple math tells me thats about as likely to work out as making profit from preordering asics.

Here is something to consider; assume a constant BTC market cap (yes I know thats the wrong word), so no inflow of fresh fiat. All these asic companies have already earned their NRE back, probably many times over in presales and most of them will be laughing all the way to the bank, regardless what happens next. And we are not talking small change either, combined investment is in the tens of millions of dollars, combined profits for  those vendors will at least be on the same order. So where does all that profit come from? Who generates it? Its not from freshly minted coins, without 28nm asics, all those bitcoins were going to mined just as well.

Miners have spent millions of dollars in the hope of making a future profit, but the only other relevant party has already locked in its profits.  It cant be that everyone wins, not in a zero sum game. So who do you think will lose?

Now you might say existing miners, who will not see their expected ROI, like all those BFL customers. The only problem is that today's BFL miner is tomorrows KNC/Hashfast/cointerra/whatever miner, as the same story will repeat itself over and over as prices per GH will keep plummeting and difficulty keeps skyrocketing, both as a result and a cause of the price drops.

All thats left,  is counting on inflow of extra fiat. Ie, BTC exchange rate rising. IF that is were you are betting on, well the conclusion what you should do is rather obvious.

If you guys want to make ROI with your block erupters, talk to this guy here... https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/solarwind-this-thread-has-moved-bitshare-giveaway-closed-293098 and we'll be more than happy to help you out.

As long as you accept you're irrational, go for it.

If you spend 100 btc to buy a device that returns 80 btc, eventually you run out of btc.

I'm sick of people saying to just buy and hold. I don't want to buy and hold. I want to mine. I'm not gonna buy any miners with USD. I want to take the BTC I'm earning, and buy more hardware to earn even more BTC. Power efficiency is very important, as I want to be running these things for years. And all everyone can say is "BUY BUY BUY!" Gets old after a while.

Better buy a shitton of BTC (no alts) and wait it out for a year.

Let's say you buy 10 BTC which could be worth 100 $ right now (easy numbers...) and in half a year those are worth 200 $, than you just made 1000$ profit, much easyer than sitting peanuts waiting for your BLF shit to never arrive...

It doesn't make sense. Asicminer products are obsolete and overpriced.


Buy BTC and wait.  Check your options in 12 months and buy an ASIC only if it makes sense. If you cannot secure your order with a reputable company (which doesn't exists yet) within batch 1 you are missed the bandwagon.

It's foolish to start mining now or in the next 12 months. You are already missed the 28nm technology as there are a lot of pre-orders before you.




Renewable energy source cost money, which will fuck your ROI. Also, there is no renewable energy source available which can support your 24/7 mining operation. Not to mention the fact that all of the current technologies require maintenance which can cause downtime and additional expenses.



No, by the time you get your order you will be happy to mine back your investment. It was and is a lot better to buy BTC from an investing perspective.

Perhaps renewable energy source is the answer. 

 Sooo by that calculation , if I buy 10 of knc miners 5100$ deals, thats 51000$ and I can make 200000$ by the end of the summer?

However, there is a simpler way to see this.

A lot of hardware you can buy indeed WILL return less BTC than it costs to get it ... these USBs are a perfect example of that.

So it doesn't take a calculator to see that whatever happens to the BTC price, you will gain more (or lose less) by NOT buying that hardware and instead just buying BTC.

yeah it certainly seems tough to decide what to do, a classic example i guess is cointerra selling two exact same machines, one December at $14k or have it in January for $6k. Right now i wouldn't buy a 400gh/s bitfury 55nm , i think i'd wait for a 2 th/s January cointerra 28nm machine, but then again who the hell knows what will be happening in January lol.

It's like trying to chase something that you'll never catch, it always seems a step or two ahead of you, trying to play the pre order game certainly is tough when difficulty goes up 30% so often and you have to look at a month or two of wait time.

If i was to buy 32 th/s in January will it be anywhere near as good as it would be now? i hate to think what the difficulty will be in January 

Thanks for your reply.

I only just started learning about bitcoin this past Friday. I'm enjoying the learning curve though!

What I gather is there's an arms-race for speed of hashing, cost of hashing, return of investment, risk of sinking money into an often unproven technology, and the increasing difficulty of solving a block. fun to watch!

I'm sure it does get progressively more expensive the smaller you go.  With some big names getting into the game now, (that one guy from Samsung is now in it from what I'm reading), I think the seed capital is there for whatever needs to be done!  I do believe you've a similar mind to me, wait and see what shakes out - it may be just as you have predicted, things may slow down.  I have a funny feeling though, that when they DO slow down, there wont be much margin in it for us at that point!  To me, it seems the gpu mining days (the "wild west" days) are over.  We like to believe we can still play the game, buying some of the smaller asics coming out, however it is now big industry and big business.  You need a good chunk of capital up front, sight unseen, to be successful and that is at a very high risk ratio!

We are slowly getting to the point where bitcoin is "mature", and more traditional methods must be employed to make gains.  Buying/selling goods.  Day trading exchanges and other cryptocurrencies.  Things like that.

Mining bitcoin is essentially over, at least for me.  My two "asic" chips (block erupters) will be working and I'll probably just leave them alone and run until they die. 

I would agree with that assessment!  I think a lot of others are of similar mind when it comes to mining vs just buying coin and holding.  Use caution as always - you never know what the future may bring!

There are also many other ways to dabble in this stuff.  You could buy/sell stuff on bitmit and other sites.  You could even "day-trade" other crypto-currencies - making money off the "spread" between exchanges, or even intra-exchange on sites like mcxnow and such.  

Then again, I'm not giving out any legal/monetary advice here - do what you will!  I'm in it to play, and if I make some coin that's great, if not, I have my day job!  

Have fun!

As i understood it the cost of making the better chips gets more and more expensive, so we should reach a point where we slow right down in new designs coming out as no one will be stupid enough to pay what is needed to go the next step. I had the feeling that 28nm would be that current end point, but i don't know enough about it, i thought i saw someone post here that the next chip up from 28nm would be insanely expensive, so that gave me the idea that we might reach the point where stocking and shipping catches up to chip design and we end up with 28nm machines off the shelf.

I've been lurking and watching this for a while and here is typically what happens;

1.  Pre-order for NEWSUPERMINER-X begins and some jump on right away.  Others wait to see if they ship etc.
2.  The early pre-order folks get their units (after delays - there are ALWAYS delays) and do make some profit.  The rest wait not so patiently and get frustrated with margins dropping daily due to difficulty increases.
3.  Before the pre-orders are even finished shipping and stock is built up for general orders - go back to step 1 with NEWSUPERMINER-Y.

So, there really is no good way to get in the game with "off-the-shelf" and "shipping" hardware, if you want to mine with the new stuff you almost ALWAYS have to go to step 2, which, in my mind, is extremely risky.  Now as you mentioned it may be best to wait for the 28nm stuff and have bitcoin mining hardware "catch-up" with where the chip industry is at this point with the smallest fab size possible, but again who knows what will be out there at that point - 15nm, smaller...

Seriously consider putting in your info into the calculator at http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ and adjust the "initial mining date" for when you think you will get hardware in hand.  Watch the magic as all hope of ROI vanishes before your eyes.  Again, if you're the first kid on the block with the latest tech - you make money, if not, you don't.

As always your mileage may vary, I just hope you're careful with your money and expectations here.

I'm curious, is there any calculator comparing the cost/benefit of just buying bitcoins vs mining equipment? the bitcoin has appreciated greatly in just the last year, would it be better to just buy into bitcoins and let them appreciate, maybe spend a few as needed?

we've raced along from the 130nm or 110nm asic up to the 28nm and is it the case that 28nm could be the standard for a while and we settle down a bit because of the cost involved making better than 28nm chips? Are we slowly reaching the point where we will be able to buy 28nm machines off the shelf knowing they'll actually be good for a while, without next generation chips coming out every couple of months?

What puts me off buying is that even with Bitfury's 55nm machines i know the 28nms will be out soon so there seems no point pre-ordering 55nm when you know a better chip is already about to come out, which has been the case for a while now since coming down from the 100+ chips. By December/January will we finally have a more settled industry where we can buy off the shelf and not worry about new generations coming out every month or two?

I'd like to be able to put all my coins into mining, the January pre orders with cointerra seem tempting with 2th/s for $6k, but again i feel like i should wait my time until we can buy "off the shelf" and know exactly what stats we're looking at