Bitcoin Forum

I have setup a GPU mining rig and getting okay returns from it.

I want to move on to USB stick miner. (As of the reviews I heard I know I shouldn't buy them reasons still not clear to me) but I still want to give it a try.

I have already ordered "USB Stick Miner GekkoScience Compac 8-16 GH/s " but as I live in India it will take like 30 days to arrive. Meanwhile I want to try something else also.

So Please suggest people what should I buy and which is available in India as most of them are not or out of Stock.

Anyone willing to sell is also acceptable.

Thanks Buddies :)

P.S. - Should I buy "BITMAIN ANTMINER U2 2Gh/s USB Bitcoin ASIC Miner" ?

Any other suggestions also accepted.

No, you wont get any even 'okay' returns with any sort of USB ASIC miner as of today.

A 2 Gh/s usb stick will make you approximately 50 dollarcents a year, at current difficulty, price and block reward. This does not include the power cost, nor the hardware cost of such a stick.

In all likelyhood, the difficulty will rise, the blocks will halve in less than 4 years and the price will fluctuate.
Most pools don't even allow you to withdraw such small ammounts. You'll literally have to mine for several years to reach the minimum withdrawal amount.

Bitmain's latest product, the S9 hashes at 14Th/s. You'll need about 7000 U2's to have the equivalent hashpower of a single S9...

IMHO, those sticks are good for learning the basics. I have a couple of them i bought a while ago when i got into bitcoin just to teach myself the ropes. After that, you can use them to mine new sha256 altcoins the minute they're announced (before the other guys start mining them), hold on to your altcoins, and then hope their price will skyrocket. Other than that, those sticks have no use.

You could always mine on p2pool and if you get lucky to find a share or two before a payout, you might make a few satoshi. :P

 Unless you have free electricity, you will never make enough from ANY stick-type miner to pay for it's cost.

 On the plus side, the Gekko gets the CLOSEST to doing so.

 Your best bet with it is probably to treat it as a "lottery" device and solo mine with it.
 Alternatively, use it to learn how to set up stuff for a miner with the plan to eventually get at least one Bitcoin miner with a SIGNIFICANT hashrate at some point in the future.

Man, I bought one U2 in 2013 when it arrived in the market. That time it was little profitable so I picked 10 and plugged in a USB hub with a 12V 1A cooler. But now, it wouldn't earn a cent. Think a lot about mining... If are unable to join BTC mining, you better mine altcoins. Think about it.

If you're still on the USB topic, don't buy one. 2GH/s or up to 16GH/s from the Gekko compact isn't going to get you anywhere anytime soon.

I recommend Ether mining; the RX 470 is going to be your best bet; it's slightly cheaper than the RX 480 and hashes nearly the same. 480's are still in very high demand, and they're actively being price gouged. Once things settle down, it should be a nice card to mine with.

With the price rise, XMR may be a good option, although Ethereum may be a better long-term solution, as it appears to be more stable than other altcoins. It's all your choice, though; I recommend doing research. It will pay off.

Please stick to the original poster's question. Do not use this thread as an opportunity to discuss other unrelated altcoin mining.

Wow we gettin pissy over altcoins??

Y U mad bro??  ::)

Oh Mikestang must have flexed his muscle  :D

On topic....DO NOT BUY ANY BITCOIN MINING HARDWARE...I cannot say what hardware & coins to mine because of censorship here so PM me & I'll share my thoughts  ;)

Only compac sticks have value if you have free or cheap power.

I  have 11 compac sticks on my only linux build. They are fun to look at. I point them to kano.is and sometimes at ck pool. They lose money.   On the same linux pc I run a node for btc. It also loses money.



Unfortunately mining BTC for profit is really hard to do.

If you are set on a USB sticks  the only worth while one  is a compac stick.  Did I mention I have 11 of them?

If I were to sell you one for 30 usd shipping is  33 usd or 63 usd.
if I were to sell you two for 60 usd shipping is 33 usd or  93 usd total
if I were to sell you three for 90 usd shipping is 33 usd or 123 usd total

if I were to sell you four for 100 usd shipping is 33 usd or 133 usd total

They fit in a usps priority mail flat rate box.

If you want to know more about compac sticks or any other mining send me a pm. I will answer your question in detail.

I still roll 5x Bitmain U1 miners on a Raspberry Pi. It is only useful for the entertainment of watching the blinking lights. I point them at p2pool along with 4x S3 miners and they make a decent little payout every time we find a block.

That compact stick is 100% the only way to go for USB mining.

At current diff and block reward, running a miner 24/7 completely overclocked and stable for a full year running in a 0 fee pool will result in earnings of ~0.01 (http://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/bitcoin-mining-calculator/?h=23&p=2600.00&pc=0.0&pf=0.00&d=225832872179.46000000&r=12.50000000&er=626.30520000&hc=0.00). This is at current conditions, not paying for any electricity in a 0 fee pool... The actual earnings are probably a lot lower, since allmost nobody has free electricity, the diff will change in the future, the blocks will halve in less than 4 years,...
This is about 10% of the price i payed for mine... So personally, i don't even think mining a compac is worth it

I think you might be missing the point. In today's market, the intent of mining with compacs is usually for educational purposes and/or fun. Anyone expecting to make a legitimate profit on compacs is either hoping to win the lottery solo mining or simply misinformed.

Anyway, spazzdla is correct. If your intent is to USB mine for whatever reason, Sidehack's GekkoScience Compac is the way to go.

In my first post i clearly indicated that the only two things those sticks are good for are instamining and learning ;). I answered to spazzdla's post because i felt it kinda looked like he said it was a good thing to mine with a compac, while it can only be seen as an educational tool (in my personal opinion). Maybe i used the wrong wording in my post.

That being said: if you want to learn how to mine, i don't think there's a difference between an old U2 or a compac. Neither of them will give you enough satoshi's to make a withdrawal from a pool, neither of them will have a significant chance of hitting a block, and both of them will have enough hashpower to join a pool and see some shares rolling in (altough you won't make enough to actually withdraw your profits).

Just my personal opinion tough.

Well  a compac stick  has a decent shot at a PPC block via solo mining.  I know I hit a few with them.

They also look pretty.

They run silent when clocked to 150mhz

Will you turn a profit  most likely no.  I don't feel like the math it is early but  in my head quickly the chance of hitting 2 PPC blocks in a year  with 1 stick is 10% .

Can they turn a profit  yes if you Hit a PPC block  2 times  and you are running the stick on a work PC.  ie no power cost.

So a 10% to make a profit  with free power is close.

Now if you have free power  they are much better then playing the 4 digit lottery offered in the usa.

a 4 digit number in the usa gives you  5000 to 1  and costs 50 cents in some states.

your cost would be  182-183 usd per year  and you should hit it once every 27 years  for a loss of 5000.

your cost with a compac is 25-35 dollars

if you run it at 8gb on a free power setup  you have a 1,442,256 shot in 1 day  or  once every 3951 years  you hit a block.  collecting  600 x 12.5 = 7500 bucks

you cost would be 25-35 dollars  but 3951 years with normal luck is  a long time. ;D


100 sticks would be  2500-3500 usd if you could scatter them about all at free power  you would hit a block in 39.51 years  and collect 7500 for the 2500-3500 cash you paid for the sticks.   this is actually not realistic because I froze diff at current levels

Is it really worth the amount? I heard that most USB miners get burnt in 3 to 6 months and you will not be even able to recover the  money you spent to buy it. Not a fan of buying any miners. But if you're doing it just for fun, go ahead.

Not sure what you mean by "get burnt" - if you mean the thing overheats and fails, if you can do that to a Compac it's your own fault and if it's not your own fault I'll fix it for free as long as I still have parts around.

my sidehack compact sticks run fine after a year.

I owned almost every stick ever made.  my death rate on 1000+ sticks  was  under 10 sticks.

most sticks are burnt up by miners that simply don't know what they are doing.

read my now closed thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1613901.0


https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F3j32TZb.jpg&t=568&c=k4gQOIfWnu9i0A

I have been using my 5x AntMiner U1 sticks for going on 2 and 1/2 years without issues.

Those things ran quite well, I bought those as one of my first miners besides my old Block Erupter. Pretty sure they ran the same chip the Block Erupter ran, with Icarus as well. Only issue was that they got exceptionally hot. Were actually fun miners to use, it's sad that they've been gone. Last few sold in early 2016 iirc. Most of mine only ran to 300mh/s, the ones they had were probably scrapped from the old block erupter units, then soldered onto boards or something of the like.