Bitcoin Forum

Hello, I am fresh starting on mining and I want to invest about $300 on ASIC mining hardware. I am between the $270 5GH/s ASIC from BFL and 5x (maybe 6 ) erupters at 330MH/s and around $47 each.I called BFL and they said that even though they are now speeding up their production (no more 6 month waits), if I place an order now it can take 2months, maybe more. Assuming the Bitcoin price remains the same, will this investment worth, taking the difficulty increase into account? Or should I go now for the erupters which are ready to ship? (which are less effective, adding up to 2GH/s for 6x)?

Rather buy Bitcoin for $300.

This will give you 2.31BTC at the moment, more than your little Jalapeno or USB Block Eruptor will ever mine.

BFL has been making delivery promises for over a year.  I wouldn't trust any timeline they give.  Maybe if you double it and add three months it might be correct.   

Invest is really the wrong word.
An investment is something you calculate should give you a positive return on your money.
Buying USB Block Erupters is exactly the opposite of that.
Each BE will produce on average $0.30 per day mining Bitcoin.
Assuming your electricity is free, and Bitcoin difficulty were to never rise again, at $47 each, they would take about 5 month to pay back what they cost you.
In reality, difficulty will continue to rise ever two weeks (or less), and mean that they will most likely never provide a positive return.
And as far as buying pre-ordering from BFL, I would have a serious read of the various threads detailing their past performance, and see if you really believe they will deliver something to you in 2 months.

ROI is pretty much non-existent for the erupters. The BFL isn't much better. You'll lose out either way, assuming the BFL wno't get to your doorstep for two months, what with the exploding difficulty and all.

This mining calculator will give you an idea how valuable time is given the rising difficulty of Bitcoin mining: http://mining.thegenesisblock.com

 ;D

Don't waste $ on little mining hardware, it's pretty much dead now. Suggestion by rumbitla is the way to go. Buy btc instead.

Love watching this thread.  People with under 5 posts giving advice.  Lol....gotta love it.

I have 0 posts! May I advice too??? :D
Despite posts count those people are right. You will never see ROI neither with BFL nor Erupters. Better to speculate with BTC value.
In asic-gambling word it is crucial to have it on time. BFL prooved to not deliver on time (over a year delay lol)
And erupters are just overpriced.

Sorry to burst your bubble but you wasted your money at BFL. My advice will be to force a refund with Paypay. If you used them, you have 45 days from your payment date to do so. And if you used your credit card through paypal you may have 60-90 days from your credit card provider to do so. If you are just starting small buying bitcoins will be the best ways to go. All current mining hardware below $3000, unless you have them in hand, will not make back the money they cost because of the current difficulty increases. 

Never said the advice new people were giving was bad.  It is just funny seeing new forum members trying to help out their fellow bitcointalk friends!

Singlebyte,

Funny, right? :) I'd say post count doesn't always show if a member is new or not. In our case, you were registered back in Apr '13, and I was here since July '11. Just sayin  ;)

EDIT

Don't want to debate "5 post" Highcommander.  Don't want to hijack thread and get off topic.

So, I've been a long time bitcoiner, but don't post at all. I've actually received my Jalepeno and the advice I can give is to not buy from BFL right now. A fellow friend of mine purchased his Erupters less than a month ago and has already received them. In terms of ROI, you need to do your cost calculation on whether it is worth it according to your power costs, initial investment and whether your erupters can turn over a profit at the current difficulty levels.

Long time lurker, first time poster as well.

BFL was ahead of the curve for about 5 months. With the impending difficulty and the network reaching 2 PH/s by the end of the year, unless you receive your Jalepeno today you will NOT break even unless you mine altcoins, and even then, you're going to be mining for a long while to turn a profit.

Honestly, I think BFL is riding out the ignorance of newbies to continue buying any of their products because if you order any of them today you will NEVER break even.

Want to make money? BUY BITCOINS WHEN THEY ARE LOW AND THEN SELL THEM WHEN THEY ARE HIGH.

Buying BTC will be more profitable lol.  You can try mining Altcoins though, I know there are some good ones.

This. Here are a lot of lurkers.

Its good to see some of you long term lurkers finally coming out of your shell and starting to post!  Your contributions to the forum are appreciated.

I got both. I ordered a Jalapeño back in March, and BFL is currently shipping half way into February.  I might actually see it by the end of September.  While waiting, I decided to buy a Block Erupter off eBay.  That little sucker has been mining on and off for a couple weeks on various machines, finally in an Asus eee PC netbook.  It's earned a little over $3 USD.

Do I care about my ROI?  Not really.  Do I regret spending money on small ASICs? Nope.  I started mining with the GPU on my iMac, then the GPU on a high-end gaming rig.  I've joined various pools, and collected some Namecoin along the way.  I've learned a ton about Bitcoin in the past three months and I will continue to mine indefinitely because it's interesting.  An who knows, with its deflationary trajectory the tiny amount of BTC I'm mining could actually be worth something someday.

It may be beneficial to buy bitcoins low and sell when their higher. The wait time for BFL products is ridiculous considering how often the difficulty increases. Also the Erupters aren't enough hashing power to make any real dent in bitcoin mining.

If you got $14k laying around check out cointerra. Supposedly they are coming out with a new ASIC machine shipping out in December.

2 tera hashes per second

http://cointerra.com/ (http://cointerra.com/)
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/08/chip-veterans-form-new-startup-will-sell-high-end-bitcoin-miner-for-16000/ (http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/08/chip-veterans-form-new-startup-will-sell-high-end-bitcoin-miner-for-16000/)

As a serious investment, I think the fact that knowing you'll get your miner in a determined amount of time is much more valuable to you. Sure, a market analysis of the two now will show the BFL as a better deal for hash rate, but by the time you get your miner, things may have changed significantly. Also, the erupters just look so darn cute  :-*

Ive bought a total of 6 asic usbs around 50$ each. Im using mine to mine zetacoin in hope that it will become worth something one day

zetacoin diff is pretty low, so asic usbs can actually collect a decent amount of coins, if you were going to mine only BTC, i would wait for the BFL cause 2gh mining btc is nothing.

Here's my advice:

If you can't determine which option is better, then you shouldn't be mining to make a profit.

If you are mining for fun, then I recommend that you get the USB miners because you can start having fun sooner.

You should buy jalapenho.

I don't recommend both of them, too late for mining with 5GH or 300MH.