Bitcoin Forum

Hello everyone!

What about our miners? As an user of Block Erupter ASIC Miner I used to mine within 2013 but I stopped in the end of 2014 when it was becoming impossible to mine with only 0.333 Ghash/sec. Plus, the GPU that mines at the same hash rate and a second computer with a smaller GPU that mines 80 Mhash/sec.

Does someone know how could we use them in a better condition than letting them mine with almost no chance to earn a small fragment of BTC?

What about our old miners? Many of them used to be interesting in 2011 and 2012. However, we are seeing how fast the BitCoin Network is growing, how fast is this decentralised network getting higher and higher. Today, there are more professional miners than casual miners because of the fact that Bitcoin mining became a more difficult task unless if we mine into an alternative coin. Anyone have an idea how can we give a second change to these little miners in order to still profit from the device? Anything that could be used with this type of device...

Thank you for your answers in advance!

See this pre-existing thread: Non-Bitcoin Uses for Old ASIC Miners? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=988572)

That said...
Check out: Block Erupter USB Three Days of Mining lottery (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1028498)

I use my negative-profitable Antminer S1 for heating my house in the winter now! It almost makes enough to pay for its electricity bill and make heating free!!! That is honestly the only use for them nowadays. I think it would be cool if you could program them to secure your server network system or something but not sure if its possible.

This is the underlying weak point of ASIC's for any task.  Bleh.  Space heaters and noise boxes.

Older mining equipment can still be used assuming you don't pay for electricity..

Sadly, most people do not have access to said free electricity and thus old mining equipment is obsolete in terms of BTC gained.
That being said if you are one of the lucky ones to have free hydro i would suggest starting threads and seeing if you can get some GH/s.

You may never get the shipping cost back.. But at the very least you'll be making the network more secure with your ancient mining gears.

You use it for heating your house??? what a sad fate :(
If you ever have any idea to sell it? maybe someone would buy it, and you can get your last profit for your negative-profitable.

if your electricity is high, you can send your old miners to some hosting facility where it is cheap and mine from there

but i think those old miners can be recycled in some way? maybe not the chip but the board for sure, and the case too

they could re-use those, to down the price of the new asic generation

Is there some way to use old ASIC miners to do stuff like password cracking or anything useful?

depends.) if you are talking about FPGA or GPU, for sure you can play with it and learn something..but ASIC is designed "only" to do one single "task"..

Did you just ask the same question that was in the original post, was already answered for this thread, and has pointers to previous threads that also covered this?  Rhetorical question - the answer is "yes".  Read up :)

I use them to heat in the winter upstairs and keep the basement dry in the summer (I also keep an Avalon down there because my wood stove rarely allows the furnace to run). I use a block erupter cube in place of a space heater in my breezeway at times. It's like cutting the electrical bill because you get something back in return.

Donate them to bitcoin museum.

Old ASIC's are still useful, they can heat your house AND make you money  :D

unplug them

keep it for when the price goes back to 1k?  ;D

You can probablly still sell the chips on the boards?

That might be worth something, if people are into modding for that specific model. But, this varies of course not a huge market of demand only just possible option.

Or just try to accept a better deal on ebay, and at least get like $20 minimum for it, also depends on the model etc.

There is no point holding onto these old relics.  Should the Bitcoin/fiat price ever spike you can be sure the unethical manufacturers would have no problem deploying their newest miners.  If it's not worth it to mine on the miner now, then it most likely would be better to just buy bitcoin with fiat currently and hold in anticipation.

How about using it to mine a n other SHA256 based coin ? its not just bitcoin thats built around sha256

All SHA256 coins which is worth mining has high difficulty. It's better to give it to a school for experiments or mine an altcoin for fun.

Or keep it for 50+ years to have a museum piece in the future. (as long as bitcoin goed mainstream and You keep it in a good condition that is ofcourse!)

Heating works well, but the noise is quite unwanted ;)

Here in the NC mountains we also prolong miner life by using them as heat in the winter. We also hung clotheslines in the miner room. Not so helpful for old miners necessarily but still fun.

Actually there may be some market for them.  For example I am interested in getting a "useless" miner such as the u3 to mine alt coins just for fun, or maybe play the bitcoin lottery.  However I would not pay some of the prices I see on ebay! 

With any business there is depreciation of equipment and mining is especially vulnerable.  Look at resale as a bonus and not as a loss.

See?  See?  See?  I TOLD YOU these ASICS would be useless in a year or less!  I TOLD YOU not to buy them!

I TOLD YOU

I TOLD YOU

I TOLD YOU

I knew I was right back then, too bad none of you did.  You all wanted to call me a troll and ignore me.  And now I have been proven right. ;D

My old miners I will use for a few days when a new coin pops up and if its worth the time putting them to use on it. Other than that free heating but the cost of energy used £12 odd per day to run units costs more than any coin is generating unless maybe use for a few days gain some alt coins and then look at saving for when go to market and trade them up and sell later on at a good price to balance out the costs and some small profits along with keeping some of them for future use if it takes off.

If it s GPU, you have a nice and a bit expensive heater. If something else, you take a hammer and have fun.

I have find this thread : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321527.0

And this is the interesting post:

- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321527.msg3465327#msg3465327

Old miners are museum pieces now.  Asking when an old miner will become useful again (in terms of profitability) is like asking when a Commodore 64 will be useful again for modern computing.  Time has moved on.

Keep old miners in pristine condition and who knows, maybe if bitcoin takes off the miner could be a valuable relic in the future? 

Mining 'for fun' is nonsense.  Plug in miner, run software, fun! Yay... seriously?

I have always sold my "old" miners to someone with cheaper or "free" electricity.  The only one I worry about eventually is my 1.5 T dragon.  It just weighs so much one day when it is done running for me I have a feeling it will sit somewhere collecting dust.

I hope I'm wrong on that one, but it's just the heaviest miner I ever have gotten.  It's like a dragon 1T with thicker heat sinks and extra blades.

Now that the heating season is over, I've finally disconnected my last 10 BlockEruptors. A few Antminers U1s are still mining, along with KnC Saturn, but the BE era is definitely over.  :'(

put them up for sale in the marketplace

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0

title the thread:

 Do you have free power I have a deal for you.  

In fact I like this idea and I just did it.

I have no gear but I like the idea.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1071322.msg11459347#msg11459347

They seem to me nothing but piece of shit as not just you, but anyone would not be able to mine any coins seeing current miners' entering the markets and eating up everything at the start already...

You will find yourself lucky if you ever get a buyer for your ^old miners^...

If I were you, I'd sell your old hardware on eBay. Users tend to pay more for older hardware on there. Put a right price and make some money back.