Bitcoin Forum

So let me first make clear that while I am inexperienced in Bitcoin, I know and accept that breaking even, nevermind making a profit, isn't achievable with the amount of money I am willing to invest.

What I'm looking to do is spend probably no more than £50 on a miner that will work with my 2015 iMac and make me a few pennies, even if the electricity cost is outweighs this.

Is it possible for me to spend less than £50 on a miner that will do something, albeit not very much.

I find Bitcoin fascinating and my goal is to learn more, but to have fun, hands-on experience while learning.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? All I have so far is a wallet.

Thanks

The problem is not that you will not profit, you will lose money. Why not buy 50 ponds worth and then spend it? Until you use bitcoin it's hard to say that you get it. Mining is not what bitcoin is about, it's fair money. A far more powerful idea.

I think I get what you're looking for and yes, there are ways to not spend much money and learn the basics of what all this mining stuff is about. I would get my hands on a raspberry pi and some of sidehacks gecko usb miners (and a powered usb hub). you'd be teaching yourself how to set up the pi, how to run a mining program like cgminer and the geckos would trickle in satoshi at about the rate of a faucet that you were really attentive to moonbit.co.in can get you about 500 satoshi a day. Alternatively you can get your hands on some cheap scrypt miners or miners for any other altcoin for that matter, and that would give you the illusion of earning much faster, you would pull in much more *whatever*coin at a time, it's just not worth much. You can later trade the altcoin for bitcoin.

I will reply later.

UK power is not cheap.

50 pounds = 81 usd



http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Antminer-s3-/141900353030?


this would lose money and may cost too much for you.

  I do think it can be found for less

Thanks for the replies everybody.

I've had a look around for Antminer S3's and they do seem cost more than I am willing to spend.

I think I'd be more suited towards one of the smaller USB miners, my only concern is that because they're dated, they might not be able to do any mining, or I wouldn't be able to find a mining pool that would let me join because of my small contribution. Is that the case?

I currently own about $1.25 worth of bit coin. If I could get a reasonably inexpensive USB miner, join a pool, and one month later have a total of $1.30 worth of bit coin, I would be happy.

I started mining with Antminer U2 usb sticks on a hub and used Bitminter Client software to run them on. Made pennies in a month but it was fun to do.

https://bitminter.com/

If you go to "Tools" then "Bitminter CLient" and choose what one you want it will download onto your desktop and you have dials for your hashrate and expected earnings for the month.

If you do go with USB sticks realize you will not make ROI unless you do it through selling it.   But also if you do go for sidehacks compac, it's a great miner and is a lot more current then some of the old sticks.

But I think you would be better off sending to a hosting center in most cases then mining in UK.  The vat and high electricity prices kill it for most.  Just no profit left to be had.

I've decided to purchase this. Less than £50 including shipping. Hopefully I've made the right choice.  ::)

https://www.bitshopper.de/shop/sha-256-miner-en/usb-miner-bitcoin-en/gekkoscience-compac/?lang=en#

it's not about cheap investment(well yes maybe on some degree) it's about the roi time, even if you spent only 50 gbp, you need 25+ months to roi with that thing

because it will earn you peanuts every day

Did you actually read the OP?  He isn't expecting to make a profit, he's looking for a cheap way to explore and enjoy mining.

To the OP, if you want to pm me your address I'll post you a couple of U2 sticks I have sitting around doing nothing.  They are slower than the one you are planning to buy but they are also free.

If you are wise enough, I would advice you to go for renting services online, with which you can mine different coins and get good profits instead of those few pennies that you will make waiting longer than expected...

Get a Gekkoscience compac and you can make a few satoshis for fun or even solo mine :)

he don't need to buy anything to enjoy mining, he can fire off his cpu on any altcoin, and learn how mining work, so it's still pointless to buy something like that

I've never understood how losing money can be enjoyable.

 (I don't class "spending money on doing something FUN" as losing money).



 

I can understand some as I am almost addicted to mining.   I just really enjoy it it's like a nice hobby, but I do keep ROI in mind..... as I hate losing money.  So I'm no financial idiot.

Most likely I will always have a miner even if i lose just a little (I'm not talking hundreds as that is no fun).  But I will go down to 1 big miner if it gets to that point.   I will not run a decent sized hobby mining operation if I am losing money.

I realize it sounds crazy... but likely at least 1 miner even in bad conditions.

Prior to bitcoin many thousands of people the world over happily contributed cpu and gpu power for distributed computing projects just for the fun of it. Some of those projects still exist though they're not as popular these days. It's a new phenomenon thanks to bitcoin that people suddenly think their computer hardware should be making money for them.

I agree completely. For some people (like me  ;D) in this world, things involving computers and data crunching and 24/7 psu running is just very fascinating. I can't go inside people's heads, though, so  I assume there are people like me out there.

There is a point thought you most cannot do.  I consider myself a hobby miner.  I see it as a step above home miners.  I have a area just for mining and it is not cheap on electricity. 

If I lose money it add's up and I could lose a lot.  I had to get rid of old generations of gear as I was getting close to losing money on running some.  I did some math and selling and buying BTC and buying more efficient miners made a lot more sense for my operation.   So I still will  be using it for mining most likely.

I will always mine but I think we will find a lot that will not be able to mine as profitable as they once were unless some major things change.  I can't lose a lot of money for a hobby no matter how much I love it.  I can lose some and go smaller, but again it will be smaller. 

If you live in UK, it is better not to mine. That is a sure way to lose money. I think your thread title is very suitable.