Bitcoin Forum

Hi everybody,
Well I have been immersed in the world of bitcoins for years now, I never got into the mining side of it. All I have is a general understanding of how it works.
Anyways, I'm moving into a new place soon (free electricity!) so I was wondering about setting up a rig. I don't want to spend a ton ($100 or less). I don't need it to do a ton, either-I'm just looking at it as whatever it produces are bitcoins I wouldn't have had otherwise. Which brings me to my next question-is it smarter to mine litecoins?
I have a MacBook Pro for personal use and DO NOT want to use it at all for mining. Is there anyway I could mine using a Rasberry Pi?
I appreciate any help/advice. Excited to get into this.

If you are on a small budget like you I would recommend alt coins because their difficulty is much lower but be careful of all the dozens of new coins coming out. I personally would recommend Litecoin as it is somewhat stable and pretty profitable. I mine it and I pay 14c Kw/H.

Is it possible to set up a rig w/a Rasberry Pi?

You know that might be crazy enough to try actually. You could get a "Block Erupter"(Just google it haha) and plug it in the Pi if it has the USB port. But, a decent card to get you started in altcoin mining(alternative cryptocurrencies) would be a 5830 or even a 5850 if you can find it @ $100.

Take a look here, lots of useful info ... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137934.0
And here too https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=220905.0

But don't bother cpu mining, 200kHash/sec (yes kilo-hash) max (even with overclocking). Just mining dust (probably won't even reach the minimum pool payout threshold over its entire life).

Raspberry pi? Well, you could go for the Usb ASIC miners, which are expensive to begin with, and it is a risk, because there will be so many people getting into it.
But, it doesn't take to much power (which doesn't matter to you I suppose) and you can use it on any hardware you like and it will preform at the same rate.

Maybe you should look into that, the budget is a little over $100 though, I believe some are selling for around $200-$300.

The Block Eruptor is currently 2.0BTC, but it will never return that investment over its lifetime. Possibly one on the Klondike group buys would be profitable (look in the Mining/Custom Hardware threads) , but you'' be a latecomer so even that is dubious now.

IMO stay out of mining and just go to work and buy Bitcoins, you'll make more.

I made about 5 Bitcoins from mining my laptop for 2 days in 2010... If only I could go back in time.

You could have a lot more fun than mining BTC if you had a time machine. But there are some risks ... Primer ... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/