I'm a newbie to mining and was rather disappointed to find out my PC would cost more in electricity to run than my hardware could mine. So I set out to see what I could buy to make money mining this rather strange currency.
I found a company taking pre-orders for devices costing $1,300 that will perform 60 GH/s. If my math is right, the device would pay itself off in just a week or so of mining. Have I completely miscalculated the payoff or is this pixie dust machine the cash cow of the century? I did see a topic on the CEO of that company having a criminal past so no need to get into that here. But I'm curious if anyone here has gear that actually has produced real money for them in more than just a token novelty amount?
This entire BTC thing is not very user friendly. I have better than average PC skills and it took me a while to get one of my PCs to mine. But it is so slow I don't know if I'm actually getting any payoff yet. I wonder if it is intentional that it is not a user friendly thing so only the more geeky people participate in mining and using BTC currency? It would seem like if the BTC community wanted this to spread and become a thriving alternate currency there would be a number of GUI apps so that Mac and PC users could easily start mining even with minimal PC skills.
Still trying to decide if I should buy a graphics card that allows me to theoretically make money, wait until the new generation of mining processors come out allegedly near the end of this year, or just watch from the sidelines a while longer. Any real world stories of making money without investing a large sum of cash would be appreciated. This all sounds intriguing but I'm a bit skeptical on the entire alternate currency thing. I hope it thrives as we sure need something that is not manipulated by dishonest politicians.