Bitcoin Forum

Given that there are some of us who would like to enter the Bitcoin mining game, and that we have only a modest bankroll, what equipment should we have?

Low cost and low power consumption make the USB block erupters an easy entry.  There are hundreds of threads telling us newbies that it is a waste of time and money to try mining with them.  I’ll take your word for that, but I still want to do the mining.

It appears that the asic powered equipment is the hot wave right now.  I found a nifty chart (somewhere) which showed the currently known list of asic miners.  They range from the USB BE’s at ~$30 US (334 MHs @ 2.5 W, available now) to the Virtual Mining Platinum 6 at ~$353,800 US (24,576 GHs @ 20,800 W) available in December (perhaps).  That’s quite a range.

Is Bitcoin mining only going to be a rich man’s game?

/Frank

Since AsicMiner is the only real company shipping consistently and useful products (in my opinion), I'd suggest wait for the new HW to be announced. The USB miners are now dropped to .10 BTC (if you buy in bulk, or ~.12-.15 on the group buy threads). The blades are also dropped ... the newer devices should be faster/cheaper. You might not make a ton of ROI, but atleast be enough to enter the mining game.

Or the other option is to wait for these TH devices or miners from BFL :-) And see the difficulty climbing, your paid BTC/USD not getting any returns.

Not a chance, they will once again sell for more than they ever return. The asicminer products are carefully marketed at the highest price point possible that looks only to the uninformed to bring a return, when in fact, they never will.

The bitcoin mining landscape is now one of a choice somewhere along the spectrum:

Highest risk + Highest potential gain<---> Lowest risk + Guaranteed loss

Where risk = risk of not getting product at all, getting it much later than advertised etc.

Only you can decide where on that spectrum you wish, if at all, to jump in.

I've already jumped in.  My mini rig will be delivered tomorrow or the next day.  I'll have 6 BE's ready to hash by Friday morning.  I consider that this route provides the least exposure and will let me assess if I want to take another, and larger, step.

My best results with any hobby, or business venture, is to start small and only expand if it appears worthwhile.  'Worth' is relative, of course.  My goal with this thread was to pick your collective minds.

/Frank

Something you preordered a year or two ago and has just shown up.

There is nothing profitable to buy right now that will be delivered soon.  Your only option is the high risk of a preorder of some device from an unknown company with no demonstrated product (pick one of several).

The Bitfury-based USB miners look like they'll be the next "big thing" - 2.5GH/s+ on a USB stick.  I know I'll be replacing my Erupters with a rack of them.

They don't run on anything but RPi for now.

Dont be hating on thr Rpi!  :o

Not hating on it, just saying it's not like the erupters which can effectively be used on anything with USB.

i got my erupters connected to my pi and its running just fine.  :) i guess i am confused as to what you are saying.??

Well it all boils down to who got in first and who sells the shovel. That is worth the trouble.  Buy and Sell miners it keeps the coin flowing in.  ;D

You will never get back your roi unless you bought them super cheap

You can also plug them into your PC.  You will not be able to plug Bitfury-based USB miners into your PC.

I don't understand why you NEED a Pi for the BitFurys?  That doesn't really make any sense.  Yes, the BitFury Blades, but the USB ones?  I call BS.

There are no drivers for standard computers as i know. CGminer is not able to use them nor any other miner atm.
Bitfury uses their own program called chainminer (?) for mining with them

roi roi ROI roi thats all ya talk about... its a hobby not a freaking business.

and besides if you must know i have made roi already about daily to every other day.. paid cash for it. not bitcoin.

Good for you. Proselytising?

I've never seen "mini rig" and "lease exposure" in the same sentence.  How much money do you have where tens of thousands of dollars is considered minimal risk?  Lol.  Did you mean Jalapeño?

Yes, and chainminer is currently only on the RPi.
One day that may change, but not yet.

So they can work on normal computers, and don't need a RPi?  They just need some drivers written.  Glad we sorted that one out then.  ::)

EFA.   ::)

Another boost in sales for the rPi!

Yes, but at the moment "you NEED a Pi for the BitFurys", so it's not BS.

Why no just buy the Bitcoins instead of messing about mining them?

Technically, at the moment you don't need anything at all, because they're not for sale...

You do know I'm not talking about the blades?  You do know I am talking about the Block Erupter style BitFury USB sticks?  ???

... and yet ... still the only drivers for both of them are on the RPi ... and yes they do exist.

Someone does have one ............

Oh man?  You said "You need a RPi to run the BitFury USB stick".   To me that's final.  As in, it'll NEVER work on PC.  Well, yes, it will work on a PC once drivers are written.

You write as if it's final.  It's not.  It's just a matter of time.

I think the "hobby" boat sailed away about a year ago.  Its now a monsterous runaway freight train fueled by greed and millions of dollars.
If i wanted to mine and lose money for "hobby" purposes, I would just CPU/GPU mine.

LOL.  Sorry 'mini rig' was my term (used out of ignorance) to describe six USB Block Erupters plugged into a D Link.  Total cost, including shipping and taxes, $216.00 US*.  To me that is 'least exposure' for a rig that will be fun.

I don't believe that I could take up the game of golf, or most other hobbies, for that small of an investment.

* Hey don't laugh.  US$ are backed by China.  No worries!

/Frank

Getting back to the statement by ckolivas :  “Highest risk + Highest potential gain<---> Lowest risk + Guaranteed loss”

I used the calculator at http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ to see what the various hardware would produce.  I was surprised to note that even the fastest, and most expensive, unit advertised (the Virtual Mining Platinum Unit, 6 module + 6 cases) at 24,576 GHs will only be running at a profit for 8 months.  After that, the electricity costs take all of the efforts.  Note:  I don’t have a clue how accurate the calculator is, YMMV.  If the calculator is close to accurate, the days of mining for a profit are almost over. 

I keep reading about all of the PHs coming onboard and have to wonder how long it will be before I see used 500 GHs units for sale cheap.

/Frank   

Here is the thing about Bitcoin mining.  You will more than likely mine at a loss.  The secret is if you believe in Bitcoin's future, that the coins you earn today will be worth double, triple, or more.  What you mine at a loss today may make you rich in the future.  As many people have said before, however, that if you believe that, it's better to buy Bitcoins straight up than mine for them.  Many factors at play.  Very high risk gamble.  If it was that easy, everyone would do it.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner! Based on the current rate of difficulty increase and cost of mining hardware, most folks will do better simply buying Bitcoin directly and holding it.

Mining is a fun hobby, but it's hard to find an ASIC hardware purchase right now that will ever ROI.

A matter of time.... unless you write one :P

Oooh that must have felt good.

So ... below is my first post I did here in this thread ... and is included in EVERY post I have posted in this thread ...




EFA

Want a RedFury https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292433.0 to write the firmware / drivers?

PM me.

This has been one confusing thread to read due to lack of clear concise terminology. Can we not call USB sticks using Bitfury chips anything Bitfury. Bitfury doesn't make or sell them. Can we only call ASICminer Block Erupters by any of those words? Can we only call ASICminer Blades, Blades? Can we only call the Starter Kits and Cards that Bitfury makes Bitfury.

I think you get my drift. I'm not certain that the people arguing in this thread are talking about the same hardware. ???

Some of in this thread have a grasp of the English language.  Others seem to use English as a second or third language after C++ and Gibberish.

Where does the global need to mine Bitcoins come into the analysis? By need, I mean the idea that all Bitcoins should be mined so they are in circulation, so to speak. If everyone gives up mining now, does that mean Bitcoin "failed"? Or does it mean the value of Bitcoins goes up because of limited supply?

Just a few of the questions that bother us so...

while (!ROI())
{
    buy_usb_hardware();
    mine();
}

retire_to_tropical_island(); <--- Warning! Unreachable code detected!

I am running 14 Bitfury USB miners on one laptop and another 98 via a motherboard.
Not a RasPi in sight    ;)

250 Gh/s total

cheers,
kev

Buy a 7950 GPU. When everything else fails you can still play a game of Doom.

So wheres a store that actually ships the bitfury miner usb sticks?

250 / (14 + 98) = 2.2 GH/s each

As of now 2.2GH/s will make 0.00982339 BTC a day

Assuming difficulty will rise 20% each diff change (it has risen average way higher than that for the last 10 diff changes)

2.2 GH/s will make about ~ 0.54294555 BTC in 100 days
2.2 GH/s will make about ~ 0.65738121 BTC in 200 days

again they are most likely OVER estimates.

So anyone paying 0.6 BTC or more for them is most likely gonna lose.

Have you done calculations for BFL products?

 Telling someone elses product is bad doesnt make yours good.

 Yes bfl is a horrible and terrible company,

 Yes your product looks good and works good and cool.

 Yes I would buy for hobby or look reasons.

 But HELL NO your product doesnt offer any ROI whatsoever , it is expensive as hell and nothing close to being a financial investment.

 Altough when I buy a painting at a grocery store not expecting a ROI , I expect it to be a decoration , so I think your product is for decoration purposes only

As I tend to wander a bit and find other hobbys every now and then, having a hub full of Erupters just doing their thing (and all paid for from old GPU mining funds) is nothing but fun for me and if after 6 months I come back and see some BTC sitting there, yay!

I left for a while and came back a month ago and realised my BTC from previous endeavors ($35USD at the time of my mining days) had made quite the proxy ROI. But that is debatable.

My friends do comment on the Erupters flashing away and it is a good talking point and if it gets them into the world of BTC then its for the greater good. Purhaps the value will increase again?

No point - they don't have a BTC price and you can't know when they will deliver - as everyone knows.
No one would buy a BFL product now with the problem of not knowing when it will be delivered.

Especially when you consider now that the current difficulty - 112,628,548.66635 - means a network hash rate of (at least) 806.2389 TH/s
Certainly well above what I thought, 5 months ago, what it would be now.

Not the point of my post.

As long as people buying alt coins, it is not bad strategy at all (considering you have cheap electricity)

 There are still people buying gpu farms and mine a lot of alt-coins and turning it back to btc or ltc. I mean ltc is just 2-3 dollars right now , consider if that skyrocketed like bitcoin right now? What would happen than? The asic mining folk will kick themselves for not investing ig scrypt as well :D

alt coin with gpu cost way too much power, i tried and it didn't work out that well

Commonly known as misdirection.

You would know more about that than I would.

So the people selling ASIC hardware are basically trying to screw people on hardware that will never ROI, the people buying ASICs are screwing themselves with machines that cannot predictably pay themselves off, and the community trumpets each new ASIC vendor that comes out even though every game in town is playing with "pre-orders".

Full stop.  

If Coinbase and BitInstant can get venture funding to the tune of several millions, and they just process payments, why doesn't venture funding go into something like a K1/N1/BE that will provide ROI based on projections?  If AM tomorrow released a product guaranteed to ROI people would buy them like hotcakes, so even if the profit point is $5 that is $5 per unit, and that is lowball.  And a few million will cover design, development, fab, testing, assembly, and boxing of a ready-to-ship product.  Then it is price based on BTC/Diff and profit away while the technology remains valid and the market remains full of suckers.

The market is ready for anyone to release *shipping now* hardware and both the manufacturer and the miner can profit, but this industry is full of greedy bastards and this has yet to happen.  It is proven people will buy working, proven hardware, even at a premium.  Charge less of a premium, be the only person selling shipping, ROI-worthy products, and you'll own the market for long enough to make cubic shit-ton of money. 

The R Pi is a pretty 'normal computer."

The Problem is that no machine at any price can promise a return on investment because there is an unlimited number of them and a finite number of bitcoins to be mined.

Reactor,

I agree with you at some point at this market level of value per Bitcoin. If these units make very little BTC, and the value goes up to say $1,000 per BTC, it will pay for itself. But it would be better to by the BTC instead of buying the hardware. No one can see the future.

I see it as a hobby. Not to quit my job for.

That calculator has saved me from spending so much money.  Numbers always comes out in red!  :(

I was going to say bullshit, but thought about my garage full of real gold prospecting equipment.  How much I spent vs that little vial of gold I have.  Yeah, I could find a nugget (btc hitting $1,000) and roi on gold, but we all know and keep fooling ourselves it will pan out.  :)

I preferred my more simple standard pool calculator that I added so you could choose a diff % per change and a number of days and it would work out the BTC return at that number of days assuming that % each diff ...

Unfortunately I only have my local copy available at home coz ... my internet server it was on got ddosed ... and that server had nothing else on it that would promote being ddosed ... so that was weird.

One thing it was helpful with was seeing, by playing with the "Generated BTC after days" value, was that indeed there is a return lifetime on ASIC hardware at the moment ... the return does asymptotically approach zero ... and quite quickly.

Does your calculator factor in the increased difficulty?  I'm curious because the more I read about the horrors of increased difficulty the more confused I get.  If it was only difficulty that we had to worry about, there shouldn't be too much worry.

It seems that the increase in hashing power is the killer here.  I mean if the hashing power remained the same after a difficulty increase then an individual would have the same share of hashing as before the increase.  Hence, forgetting about the luck factor here, the same relative income from mining.  Maybe I just don't get it.

/Frank

It's a mixture of them all.  The higher hashing power, the faster blocks will solved and every 2016 blocks the difficulty increases. 

 Is there a reliable source where we can check the profitability of usb block erupters?

 Or better yet , is there any place we can check the profitability of anything :D a 'trustworthy' place , because wherever I check , usb block erupters looks like a steal for 0.2 but everyone thinks they are not :D

It will take just as long for brand new 500GH units to sell for a similar price (and even cheaper in preorder).
Those 28nm asics cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $25-$35 to produce. They will sell for whatever price miners are willing to pay at a given time, and that price will go down as fast as difficulty will go up.

Im not sure what you define as cheap, but 500GH for a a few hunderd dollar will happen before next summer unless almost all those asic vendors screw up big time. And at that price, it still wont give you a positive RIO.

Here you go: http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/

 If we look at that site , almost everything makes no ROI ?

:)

ASICs are priced according to their utility in mining bitcoin.  As such, it is reasonable to expect them to be priced slightly higher than their lifetime returns.

That is correct, unfortunately.

 :)

thegenesisblock has a great calculator for all of those questions regarding mining and profitability;

Block Erupter sample;

http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/a/ad316a9479

Basically you make back a total of about 13 bucks and then you're at zero...  Very sad...  Mainly because I just got one going yesterday with another coming in tomorrow.  Ahh well...

Good luck!

we've raced along from the 130nm or 110nm asic up to the 28nm and is it the case that 28nm could be the standard for a while and we settle down a bit because of the cost involved making better than 28nm chips? Are we slowly reaching the point where we will be able to buy 28nm machines off the shelf knowing they'll actually be good for a while, without next generation chips coming out every couple of months?

What puts me off buying is that even with Bitfury's 55nm machines i know the 28nms will be out soon so there seems no point pre-ordering 55nm when you know a better chip is already about to come out, which has been the case for a while now since coming down from the 100+ chips. By December/January will we finally have a more settled industry where we can buy off the shelf and not worry about new generations coming out every month or two?

I'd like to be able to put all my coins into mining, the January pre orders with cointerra seem tempting with 2th/s for $6k, but again i feel like i should wait my time until we can buy "off the shelf" and know exactly what stats we're looking at

I'm curious, is there any calculator comparing the cost/benefit of just buying bitcoins vs mining equipment? the bitcoin has appreciated greatly in just the last year, would it be better to just buy into bitcoins and let them appreciate, maybe spend a few as needed?

I've been lurking and watching this for a while and here is typically what happens;

1.  Pre-order for NEWSUPERMINER-X begins and some jump on right away.  Others wait to see if they ship etc.
2.  The early pre-order folks get their units (after delays - there are ALWAYS delays) and do make some profit.  The rest wait not so patiently and get frustrated with margins dropping daily due to difficulty increases.
3.  Before the pre-orders are even finished shipping and stock is built up for general orders - go back to step 1 with NEWSUPERMINER-Y.

So, there really is no good way to get in the game with "off-the-shelf" and "shipping" hardware, if you want to mine with the new stuff you almost ALWAYS have to go to step 2, which, in my mind, is extremely risky.  Now as you mentioned it may be best to wait for the 28nm stuff and have bitcoin mining hardware "catch-up" with where the chip industry is at this point with the smallest fab size possible, but again who knows what will be out there at that point - 15nm, smaller...

Seriously consider putting in your info into the calculator at http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ and adjust the "initial mining date" for when you think you will get hardware in hand.  Watch the magic as all hope of ROI vanishes before your eyes.  Again, if you're the first kid on the block with the latest tech - you make money, if not, you don't.

As always your mileage may vary, I just hope you're careful with your money and expectations here.

As i understood it the cost of making the better chips gets more and more expensive, so we should reach a point where we slow right down in new designs coming out as no one will be stupid enough to pay what is needed to go the next step. I had the feeling that 28nm would be that current end point, but i don't know enough about it, i thought i saw someone post here that the next chip up from 28nm would be insanely expensive, so that gave me the idea that we might reach the point where stocking and shipping catches up to chip design and we end up with 28nm machines off the shelf.

I would agree with that assessment!  I think a lot of others are of similar mind when it comes to mining vs just buying coin and holding.  Use caution as always - you never know what the future may bring!

There are also many other ways to dabble in this stuff.  You could buy/sell stuff on bitmit and other sites.  You could even "day-trade" other crypto-currencies - making money off the "spread" between exchanges, or even intra-exchange on sites like mcxnow and such.  

Then again, I'm not giving out any legal/monetary advice here - do what you will!  I'm in it to play, and if I make some coin that's great, if not, I have my day job!  :)

Have fun!

I'm sure it does get progressively more expensive the smaller you go.  With some big names getting into the game now, (that one guy from Samsung is now in it from what I'm reading), I think the seed capital is there for whatever needs to be done!  I do believe you've a similar mind to me, wait and see what shakes out - it may be just as you have predicted, things may slow down.  I have a funny feeling though, that when they DO slow down, there wont be much margin in it for us at that point!  To me, it seems the gpu mining days (the "wild west" days) are over.  We like to believe we can still play the game, buying some of the smaller asics coming out, however it is now big industry and big business.  You need a good chunk of capital up front, sight unseen, to be successful and that is at a very high risk ratio!

We are slowly getting to the point where bitcoin is "mature", and more traditional methods must be employed to make gains.  Buying/selling goods.  Day trading exchanges and other cryptocurrencies.  Things like that.

Mining bitcoin is essentially over, at least for me.  My two "asic" chips (block erupters) will be working and I'll probably just leave them alone and run until they die. 

Thanks for your reply.

I only just started learning about bitcoin this past Friday. I'm enjoying the learning curve though!

What I gather is there's an arms-race for speed of hashing, cost of hashing, return of investment, risk of sinking money into an often unproven technology, and the increasing difficulty of solving a block. fun to watch!

yeah it certainly seems tough to decide what to do, a classic example i guess is cointerra selling two exact same machines, one December at $14k or have it in January for $6k. Right now i wouldn't buy a 400gh/s bitfury 55nm , i think i'd wait for a 2 th/s January cointerra 28nm machine, but then again who the hell knows what will be happening in January lol.

It's like trying to chase something that you'll never catch, it always seems a step or two ahead of you, trying to play the pre order game certainly is tough when difficulty goes up 30% so often and you have to look at a month or two of wait time.

If i was to buy 32 th/s in January will it be anywhere near as good as it would be now? i hate to think what the difficulty will be in January  :-\

However, there is a simpler way to see this.

A lot of hardware you can buy indeed WILL return less BTC than it costs to get it ... these USBs are a perfect example of that.

So it doesn't take a calculator to see that whatever happens to the BTC price, you will gain more (or lose less) by NOT buying that hardware and instead just buying BTC.

 Sooo by that calculation , if I buy 10 of knc miners 5100$ deals, thats 51000$ and I can make 200000$ by the end of the summer?

Perhaps renewable energy source is the answer.  ::)

It doesn't make sense. Asicminer products are obsolete and overpriced.


Buy BTC and wait.  Check your options in 12 months and buy an ASIC only if it makes sense. If you cannot secure your order with a reputable company (which doesn't exists yet) within batch 1 you are missed the bandwagon.

It's foolish to start mining now or in the next 12 months. You are already missed the 28nm technology as there are a lot of pre-orders before you.




Renewable energy source cost money, which will fuck your ROI. Also, there is no renewable energy source available which can support your 24/7 mining operation. Not to mention the fact that all of the current technologies require maintenance which can cause downtime and additional expenses.



No, by the time you get your order you will be happy to mine back your investment. It was and is a lot better to buy BTC from an investing perspective.

Better buy a shitton of BTC (no alts) and wait it out for a year.

Let's say you buy 10 BTC which could be worth 100 $ right now (easy numbers...) and in half a year those are worth 200 $, than you just made 1000$ profit, much easyer than sitting peanuts waiting for your BLF shit to never arrive...

I'm sick of people saying to just buy and hold. I don't want to buy and hold. I want to mine. I'm not gonna buy any miners with USD. I want to take the BTC I'm earning, and buy more hardware to earn even more BTC. Power efficiency is very important, as I want to be running these things for years. And all everyone can say is "BUY BUY BUY!" Gets old after a while.

As long as you accept you're irrational, go for it.

If you spend 100 btc to buy a device that returns 80 btc, eventually you run out of btc.

If you guys want to make ROI with your block erupters, talk to this guy here... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=293098.0 and we'll be more than happy to help you out.

Yeah I  would like to turn 10 BTC in to 1000 BTC by running a martingale bot on satoshidice, but simple math tells me thats about as likely to work out as making profit from preordering asics.

Here is something to consider; assume a constant BTC market cap (yes I know thats the wrong word), so no inflow of fresh fiat. All these asic companies have already earned their NRE back, probably many times over in presales and most of them will be laughing all the way to the bank, regardless what happens next. And we are not talking small change either, combined investment is in the tens of millions of dollars, combined profits for  those vendors will at least be on the same order. So where does all that profit come from? Who generates it? Its not from freshly minted coins, without 28nm asics, all those bitcoins were going to mined just as well.

Miners have spent millions of dollars in the hope of making a future profit, but the only other relevant party has already locked in its profits.  It cant be that everyone wins, not in a zero sum game. So who do you think will lose?

Now you might say existing miners, who will not see their expected ROI, like all those BFL customers. The only problem is that today's BFL miner is tomorrows KNC/Hashfast/cointerra/whatever miner, as the same story will repeat itself over and over as prices per GH will keep plummeting and difficulty keeps skyrocketing, both as a result and a cause of the price drops.

All thats left,  is counting on inflow of extra fiat. Ie, BTC exchange rate rising. IF that is were you are betting on, well the conclusion what you should do is rather obvious.

The simple problem is that the network difficulty is rising fast enough to make long term mining, with current hardware, impossible.

I will also point out that by "long term" I mean 1 year. Yes the term "long term" has changed for Bitcoin in the past 6 months.

Just ignoring what is supposed to come online in the next 60 days, the last 10 difficulty changes have an average of over 20%, the last 4 an average of over 30%

If KnC succeeds and delivers 1PH - 5PH (no one seems to know what their order book adds up to) then that will represent a 100% to 500% increase in the next couple of month, so should easily continue the 30% diff changes and possibly have a very high one somewhere in the middle if they ship a lot of hardware in a 1 week period - since it would seem that shipping a lot of their hardware might simply be putting it into their own datacentre and switching it on.

Almost all ASIC hardware you can see today is priced such that you will lose BTC or only get very little BTC return above what you paid in BTC.
However, most of that pricing is also assuming little or no network increase, which is blatantly, obviously incorrect :)
The possible large network increases (like KnC) will ensure that beyond any doubt you will not get back your BTC outlay, if they do occur.

So indeed it would appear that buying BTC is the least risk option at the moment - or more correctly, almost certain to lose you less BTC - since almost no mining equipment will gain you BTC above the BTC you pay for it, and all mining equipment will delay that return for many months and cost you some amount of money to run it for many months.

You got that right.  Everything I'm pricing, everyone wants waaaaay too much money and too much time needed for ROI without diff increase to be accounted for.  I guess folks are banking on BTC hitting 200 bucks again and hoping it will ROI in time. 

BTC mining is not worth it anymore :( but if u have cheap power mining coins like LTC with GPUs would stile be profitable and u do not have a risk as large as asics as you can sell the GPUs to a gamer later but asics are worthless when diff goes up too much.