Topic: USB 300MH/S ASICMiner Value Question - page 2. (Read 8278 times)

If your miner makes less than a dollar a day and you computer uses more than a dollar a day in electricity what then.

Smart people count the power cost of the PC to run their mining.

the 5 MH/s figure i just pulled out of thin air to illustrate even if ur over optimistic, this is still a shitty deal.

Using the usb code isn't difficult ... but don't expect 5Mhz
At 50Mhz you will drain more than the 500mA of an usb port.

Loop are rolled : 6 hashers, so do your math :

At 50Mhz : 6 / 128 * 50 = 2.34MH/s

128 parce 64 round de sha * 2

Has anyone actually tried that code on the http://www.em.avnet.com/en-us/design/drc/Pages/Xilinx-Spartan-6-FPGA-LX9-MicroBoard.aspx ? It would be interesting to know if it works. But DON'T go buying one for mining. Pathetic 5 MHash/second is mining dust. Just worthless.

[Edit] (Answering myself) No it won't work as it uses RS232 port comms. Someone would have to add the xilinx usb code from fpgaminer's github.

Yep, they'll never be profitable, but once the price comes down, they'll be perfect for educational and advertising purposes to promote bitcoin.

The code is already written : https://github.com/kramble/DE0-Nano-BitCoin-Miner/tree/master/Xilinx_LX9_hashers_6

Block Erupter doesn't even come close to breakeven with free electricity, free hosting computer, free internet and all the rest. Just don't even consider one at 2..0 BTC. But ASCIMINER will continue to sell them for as long as there are gullible punters that can't do the math on the ROI. Only when the sales dry up will they drop the price (it can't be costing them much more than $25 to produce).

So you are including the cost of having a computer running? Everyone mining has to leave the computer running. Why factor that into the cost if the point is to compare the value of mining options?

The reason I ask is that, from what I've seen using calculators that factor in rising difficulty, these things don't break even whether you factor in the cost of a PC to power them or not.

You need only one computer to run one or several Block Erupters, think about it.

My math-fu may be failing me, but why would 1 Block Erupter not break even, but multiple would? The cost, hashrate, and power consumption all rise linearly as you add more USB sticks, no?

I don't think a single unit will ever break even, multiple should. The single unit will barely make $1/day, it won't talk many doublings of difficulty to drop that revenue down so it won't cover the electricity cost of the computer it's plugged into, which all of a sudden has to stay on 24 x 7 for the miner.

if it can be mined merged with bitcoin, then most probably yes.
I was more talking about "future" applications of proof of work, based on sha256, that if the miners will be well distributed, no problem using p-o-w more frequently

Can it be used for other coins such as PPCoin at the moment?

It's true it would take awhile to break even, that's why they will come down in price (well they should) otherwise no one will buy them after the difficulty rises, this needs to be known a lot more before people start buying loads.
They can be profitable, of course. I'm thinking of buying one right now just to test it and just to say I had it.

I think mining with this hw at this purchase price is more a statement then a business plan.
the price is ~2yrs hackerspace membership and that's ok for a pet project that might bring in some reward (not 100% loss of initial costs)
but it will not be profitable (not mine the btc back)

it will be useful though for all other kinds of crypto works in the future. and thus "priceless"
like the raspberry pi helped to spread cheap computers this will bring mining to 'every household'

With the current diff increase, these things mine about 0.01BTC per day, so it would pay for itself in only 260days assuming the difficulty doesn't go up in that time! In reality it will probably take years to generate 2.6BTC

Haha... yeah, my "suggestion" is that they give them to me for virtually nothing... lol

I'm seeing Buy It Now prices on eBay that were the starting bid only a week ago, and starting bids in the $320-$350 range, if the price continues to come down the economics certainly change.

ASICminer is one of the few who delivered something that actually is in stock (not a Pr-order) and works right away out of the box, but I think that these ASICs in general are way over priced, regardless how much money you will make the first month (on This deff.factor, and BTC price), because when I invest my money I look at the long-term aspect.

A blockErupter @ 13 GH/s for 60+ BTC is really over priced this is ~ 7500 $ , my suggestion is a max of 20 BTC .
The USB miner @ 300MH/s for 2.5 BTC as well is really over priced ~ 315 $, my suggestion is a max of 0.8 BTC  .



The reason why I stopped caring about ASICs and mining BTC in general is for this exact reason, as a small miner and a father of 4 kids, there is no way that I can afford to buy these ASICs, I know that these chips are the future for BTC mining and it is really a good thing for the network security, but the fact that there is a VIP club or let me put it in other words, a club of people with a bag of money investing in these ASICs, which means that few people controlling a big part of the network, just because these prices doesn't allow all of us to participate and get the chance to be a part of it.

these company’s are making a huge profit out of you guys. the first batch of blockErupter went for around 19xx BTC this is more than 240,000 $ for 50 block , come on people open your eyes.

If just BFL had a real working chips and did deliver on time, then it would make sense to order some ASICs at the prices they are offering .

I agree which is why I sold mine for $550 on eBay local pickup only . then mutually canceled the transaction after I met the buyer in person! hah! He paid cash.