Bitcoin Forum

Im thinking about getting the $250 ASIC from BFL. What do you think the average daily payout will be if i pool with slush?

Also does anyone know the power consumption of BFL's ASICs? I know Avalon's is 600W

thank you

Also with the recent switch to GH/s, has the mining of bitcoin stabilized or is it still getting harder and harder (like exponential, due to the recent switch to ASICs)?

If you could get one RIGHT NOW they'd pay for themselves in about 9-10 days... unfortunately there still isn't any real conformation that they are shipping in any kind of significant quantity... could be over a year before you get one you order... :/


by then it's not unlikely people will be pushing 500+ghash on their own with DIY asic chips.

It is still getting harder and harder:

http://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate

They use around 40w from what I've heard. If you get get your hands on one right now then you would get 1/3 of a btc a day but every 2 weeks you wait, it gets harder and harder and if you order one now it would take much longer to get your money back by the time you received it.

You'd need to put in a considerable investment. Developing ASIC chips is not cheap. You'd need several million spare for development and more. I doubt BFL will let any old tom dick or harry use their IP. I'm sure there are many more companies like BFL will appear over time. It's a good thing for BitCoin companies are sinking this much in R&D. Difficulty continues to increase...

Bitshire was talking about the Avalon chips, sold since 3 weeks in batches of 10k for 750 Btc. 
A group buy of those is probably your best bet right now.

oh...well that makes me sad about BFL's shipping times. and avalons are too expensive

what are your recommendations for joining bitcoin mining as a beginner?
im looking for something cheap and effective miner that can net me atleast $25/day (.2 BTC right now). So should i build a GPU miner, buy an ASIC off ebay, or maybe an FPGA?

I was like this when I first heard about BFL, and I was pretty excited and close to buying from them. Then I read a bit about them. Oh well.

Nothing cheap is going to get you .2 btc per day. You would need about 4 GH/s for that right now.  I am betting on Avalon chips. If i get them in August at about 2.5 btc per 5.6 Gh unit I am a happy camper. 
Don't buy GPUs just for mining right now, you will never see your money back.

Best advice is read up on it before investing and never invest more than you can afford to lose.

Who knows.  By the time you get your BFL (probably December, if that) the difficulty will be SO HIGH that you cannot figure it out.

The price on the Jalapeno is very enticing but you have to realize they haven't fulfilled any significant quantity of orders yet, and there are people that ordered a YEAR AGO that are still waiting, dealing with a seemingly constant flow of new excuses. I would stay away, especially since they apparently revised their terms of sale to stop people from asking for refunds recently. I almost fell for it too. If they started shipping tomorrow I might change my tune but it's not likely.

There is someone whose already developed a board for Avalon's Asics which they are releasing in batches of 10,000. You would need 10,000 to build yourself a 1.5 th/s rig... and I calculated once, the cost of that rig would be like $200,000 using the guy whose already built the board for help. At the current difficulty, that's like 60 btc/day or $6000 a day which means it would pay itself off rather quicky if you could have it now. .2 BTC a day (which I've heard is 4gh/s from another post on this topic) requires 8 GPU which you would put on 2 motherboards or around a $4000 investment + 2kw/h of power~

FPGA's you can buy though there less effective. Try and get Asics already out there. I saw a USB one which did 300mh/s and is available now. (on this forum in a thread somewhere)... you would need 13 so 26btc.

yeah ill stay away from BFL. i might end up buying a bitcoin and holding it for a few months, considering in january a bitcoin was $15, lol.

and theres no way im spending $8,000 on an avalon

how exactly does one use an FPGA? I saw the ultra low cost DIY fpga post (by rph), but theres no explanation. I would be fine with doing my own DIY fpga if it keeps costs down, but i cant find any tutorials/examples w/ a place to buy parts.

If you order from BFL don't expect to be mining soon, people are still waiting for orders that were placed over a year ago. :)

anyone with a link to a DIY asic?

I'm still researching building my own miner with avalon chips, it seems doable, there's a guy working on an open source board design.
I expect my gpu (amd 7970) to be unprofitable by december or so.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190731.0 <-- still under development but getting there.

If you are really desperate for an ASIC Miner you can get one of Butteryfly Labs ASICS on Ebay for $500 or so it consumes 50 watts and can pay for itself in 25 days or so.

I agree

Your prob only gonna get a few $ a week with that setup.