Topic: Mining and ASIC devices (Read 513 times)

Hmm, got that.

So basically I'm pretty much in the ballpark with my conclusions, thanks for the reply

ok now we need to learn not to ask to many questions in 1 post simply because when iv read the post i cant remember the questions. my memory makes a gold fish look like einstien

truth be told all this block erupters wont break even is bull s**t as no one knows the life span of them. they will get less and less profitable but bitcoin is getting more and more expensive

the reason theres very little 2nd hand ASIC hardware out there is because it still pulls in a big profit most companies are still in 1st gen hardware and untill 2nd gen comes out i dont think your going to see much 2nd hand asic hardware around and even less chance with bitcoin going up and up

bitcoin is the daddy of digital currency. alt coins are for the most part clones or improved versions using different algorithms faster and so on. bitcoin took 3 years before getting any real moment. alot of alt coins are attempts to get rich. some have good ideas but not enough support others are pre mined where the developers hope to get the coin on an exchange and quickly cash in.

i think bitcoin dose so well because its long established
its popular
its the daddy of digital coins

Since I'm basically in the same position (started a few days ago in Slush Pool), I'd like to chime in...
Right now I'm doing close to 1GH/sec with 4 GPUs, which I know are terribly inefficient compared to ASICs (but they do keep the room warm I must say ).

Since my only goals are to mine a single BitCoin to at least have participated in the whole thing and learned about it (like a fun project), continued use of these GPUs is out of the question (the electrical power bill would kill me long before I mined 1BC).

I've set my eyes onto some of those Block Erupter (330MH/s) devices, which aren't the fastest but still much better than any GPU in terms of efficiency. And in a group, I could let them run without paying excessively for the electrical comsumption.
With 10 of these, I assume it should be possible to reach 1BC over the next several months (since they don't consume much power, their low/shrinking effectiveness compared to the "big boxes" isn't of much concern to me).

Which brings me to the next question :
Since I got interested into the bigger ASIC builds and looked around the web, I quickly found out they are basically nowhere to be purchased (Germany), even EBay only has a few (older versions, most of which still carry a hefty price tag).
If I stick to mining, is there any reliable and available supplier of reasonably/low cost ASIC designs in Europe (ready to ship, not those preorder & pray deals) ?

Right now it looks like I would be best off to settle with a few USB miners, as even if I had the cash I'd have troubles getting my hands on even used equipment (which surprised me, I assumed 'outdated' mining equipment would be on sale rather frequently, at least here in Germany that's absolutely not the case - on EBay or Amazon Germany I'd have to pay upto 50$ just for a 2nd hand 330MH/s Block Eruptor *scratches head* )

And allow a final question which so far I can't answer myself :
Until recently, I was under the impression that BitCoins were the only "real thing", the one, single digital crypto-currency.
But just from browsing the forums, I stumbled over a whole series of other "coins" apparently similar to BitCoin which can also be traded over various exchanges. Some even seem to be suitable for CPU mining, that some claim to do (as they're too slow for reasonable BitCoin mining even in pools).

In short, what's the future and the general meaning of BitCoin, if there are "alternative alternatives" popping up left & right? Those seem like a parallel Universe to me, a few years ago we had BitCoin (which got all the media attention), now I read stuff about LiteCoin, PeerCoin, NameCoin and some others I can't recall.
That's something that (so far) doesn't make much sense to me (plain : why the need for parallel ones that to the untrained eye on 1st sight look like "BitCoin lookalikes" ? )

- edit -

Forgot a final question about those USB ASICs :
Is it in theory (gotta be careful) possible that those could contain a Trojan (like any other 2nd hand USB device could hold) that compromises the Host System? Or is their Firmware hard-wired and can't be modified?
Wouldn't want to stick some 2nd hand USB devices into a System to crunch BitCoins just to find out that System got corrupted.

Well I can't buy the device with Bitcoins because I don't have any. Figured mining was a good way into getting a few, I might do a direct cash transfer around here though for some Bitcoins.

10ghs is about the minimum these days and butterfly labs caused alot of anger from poor customer services to over a year worth of delays. there hardware isnt to bad but no where near as good as promised. and anyone whos not got there hardware now will struggle to make any profit due to the competition being ahead of the curve

i would recomend a ASICminer blade for around 0.8btc they should make a return but it will take a while

Why are most people avoiding Butterfly labs ?

Also, what is the minimum ASIC unit I would need to even make the slightest profit, even in many fractions of a Bitcoin ?

most people are avoiding butterfly labs but id recommend if you just starting to get a ASICminer usb block erupter or a Red fury (diffrent make and chip of the block erupters) you wont make profit but there great for learning and playing with

Hello,

I am new to Bitcoins and mining but think I have a good grasp on how it works. I wanted to get into mining with little investment to start, and think I am on the right track. I downloaded BFG Miner, have signed up to be with EMC and pretty sure all I need now is an ASIC.

Now as I understand ASIC is a specific device for processing ? In this case, I'm looking for a Bitcoin specific ASIC device like what Butterfly labs sells ?

I have a laptop, so I could just get a USB ASIC Bitcoin device, plug in the proper URL for EMC into BFG Miner and start mining ? Any other steps I would be missing ?

Thanks.