Bitcoin Forum

I have an urge to buy the harsh fast 3500 dollar miner @ 400GHz.. They claim to start shipping November. .

do I or don't I?

where else can I spend that money with a good return?

do I really just buy some coins and sit on it?

I'd invest in Litecoins why? Widely seen as the sister currency to Bitcoin (Gold->Silver). At under $3 per, its bound to go higher? But, how much higher is the real question.

So definitely a no to hardware?

Not an expert on hashing/hardware, so can't offer advice, sorry :(

Considering that most of the mining devices didn't ship in time to make a profit I would suggest you just buy bitcoins and hold them. (Look at BFL for example)

The difficulty is rising pretty harshly as we speak and you can try and calculate your potential monetary results with this calculator:

http://btcinvest.net/bitcoin-mining-profit-calculator.php

Regardless which option you choose welcome to the community and have fun with your BTC / your mining hardware!

edit: typo

I don't think a Litecoin investment is any less speculative than a latest-gen mining hardware one.  Litecoin is NOT "bound to go higher" and the analogies about gold and silver totally fall apart when you acknowledge Bitcoin's divisibility invalidates the argument.  Litecoin might go higher if it gets more exposure on exchanges or more utility (acceptance) but it's continued appreciation of value is not at all assured.  

Mining hardware is risky, no way around that.  The biggest question isn't how fast or how cheap your equiptment will be, but when you get your hardware relative to everyone else who has ordered hardware.  

This is like if every time someone anyone in the world bought a computer that was faster than yours, your computer actually got a little slower.

@mindtomatter, I do agree to a certain degree. The problem is, the critical mass won't care about how divisible a Bitcoin in theory is IMO. Some get scared and run when decimals are used in numbers. Whole numbers are much easier to work with on a broad scale. I may be wrong though, no one really knows for sure. Its how its being pushed forward today.

at the moment 100Ghash earns you 1BTC a day....so thats 4BTC a day

so if the equipment arrived today you'd be earning about $500 a day, in which case you'd get back your investment in a week.

now here are the buts.....

*the difficulty in november will me MULTIPLE TIMES higher meaning you wont be earning the same income as now
*the risk that 'if it sounds too good to be true' ... it probably is
   *with that, what promises or guarantee's do you have of a refund. EG do you know their street address and directors name(s).
   *are they even in travelling distance to slap them with a wet fish if they dont forfil promise.
   *even if they are developing units, how certain can you be of the date of delivery. do they even have a working prototype, or is it all still theoretical

I have a feeling this doesn't end well, you are so eager to use your money that chances are you will throw it at something that will not give the money back.
Take your time to make an informed decision.



It's not bound to go higher.
Litecoin is more speculative than Bitcoin.

I agree with everything you said except this bit. The divisibility of Bitcoin doesn't change how many whole bitcoins there are, and that's the key. There are four times more whole litecoins than whole bitcoins, meaning for one thing litecoins are probably in more people's hands. The number of litecoins in the world has already surpassed the number of bitcoins because they come into existence four times faster.

This is why a gold/silver comparison can be apt. If making bitcoins divisible affected their exchange value then whole bitcoins wouldn't ever have a relatively stable price as they do now. Similarly to bitcoins one can divide USD and Euros almost infinitely too (e.g. see BTC-e). This doesn't change the inflation rate of those currencies.

I do congratulate you however on coming around (http://letstalkbitcoin.com/the-opportunity-of-alt-coins/#.UjT7v5KsiSo) on the potential for select alt-coins, though, after arguing with me about it prior ;)

this really comes down to what you wanna get out of bitcoins. if you are in it for purely profit/speculation, then it would be more profitable to buy the bitcoins imo.  Of course im of the belief that bitcoins will continue to rise in value over the next few years. But, if you are just getting into bitcoins and love the concept and all that good stuff, go ahead and buy the miner. Mining bitcoins is fun! and at least in my experience with asics (block eruptors) asic mining is really really easy compared to gpu mining.  Its really satisfying to check your pool and getting excited when the difficulty dips (not that that has happened lately, but when it does its exciting!) also, if you believe that btc will get more valuable over time and you feel you will still be mining in say 2 years from now, then in the big picture you will make money.  Also litecoins are cool and wouldn't be a bad idea to buy a small amount for speculation.  im not familiar with the company you are talking about, before you lay down any money i'd recommend vetting them a bit, search this forum for threads about them. Im still waiting on my bfl jalapeno, and by the time i get it it will be very little hashing power. thank god i didn't trust bfl and spent the bulk of my mining investment money on gpu's which have more than paid for themselves.  Even asic mining is work though, you will have to watch them a good bit for things like your software crashing, internet dropping, and occasionally restarting them. its not too bad really, and a cakewalk compared to the tempermental bitches known as radeon gpus.

And do you really think the hardware producers just hand you over a devide that spits out $500/ day for a few thousand? No, they will keep it until it only makes a small profit / small loss or just ship when the mining hardware is virtually useless.

I dont ever hear someone say that they made a big profit investing into asic mining hardware. I only hear complaints about companys not shipping (in time). The only people that really turned a good profit mining were the early adopters using gpu / fpga hardware I think.

If you are not sure what to do with your money you might just want to keep it until a better investment opportunity comes by?

Do it!

what the worst that could happen

bitcoin goes to 0 and difficulty keeps increasing at an alarming rate  :D   ... phhh who cares! we're making money!

If you want any of this taking off, you'll need to take part in the mining effort.
Don't expect becoming filthy rich in doing so. It might even cost you personnaly. But you help making the network more resilient, and thus help the crypto currencies being safe.
If you let the rich people get richer while owning all the mining power, you just got back to square 1.

TL;DR
Contribute to mining. Just a little.

 100Gh gets you .44 btc per day, and for about the next 10 days  ( 2 days ago it was .58 day, you should find a different calc).

my spreadsheet is estimating that by mid november, the diff will be approx 250M. at which time 400Gh will earn about .7btc per day.

400G delivered by mid Nov might make you about 30btc....then you also have to consider elec...  500Gh of 65nm chips costs me about 7 dollars day.

i would buy 1/3 bitcoins (gold) and 2/3 litecoins (silver) and no miner, if you are not a professional hardware geek.

maybe you dont get the miner in november 2014...

Step 1: Convert fiat to Bitcoin
Step 2: Celebrate as your money deflates/no longer inflates

well i have an avalon and at 80Ghash average im earning roughly 0.8BTC.. so doing the maths 100Ghash would get me 1BTC today...im not sure what your doing wrong or what pool your on, but you seem to be missing out on some profit

That's gross. j/k 
Don't see any info about that miner.  Are you just helping them advertise?  Well if not, what I would do is calculate the potential profit and make sure to factor in what you believe the difficulty will continually increase by.

I thought that nasty urge was going to be more cowbell.  :/   

It's hash, not harsh.
It's Ghash, not GHz.
You posted this in the wrong board. It belongs somewhere in the mining section.

If you decide to spend $3.5k to start mining, you will be forcing yourself to learn the above, and much, much more. It's a steep learning curve. If you are not ready for it, do not start mining.

As for the alternatives, your best bet is to buy coins, and then spend a predetermined fraction with businesses that do accept them. Helping bootstrap Bitcoin economy will make the remaining coins much more viable and valuable. Besides spending them, consider earning them instead of buying.

Just exchange USD for BTC! It's your best option and also purchase a miner that can mine LTC then just trade them for BTC.
LTC isn't going anywhere for the time being.

This is what I've done.

I'm not going to buy mining gear as it seems every supplier cant gurantee any dates for delivery.  By the time I get it, It might not be worth anything as the hash complexity is increasing FAST.

I've gone to BTCT.co and bought 4.0BTC worth of shares on Labcoin.  Yes, its a risk but I've read allot and I've taken a gamble.  If they deliver this week, I'll make money and shall sit on it for a few months.

I need something solid that will bring in BTC on a regular basis.  Anyone on anything that's working?

Buy a ski mask, a tent, a shovel and a bus ticket, then locate BFL office somewhere in Florida and go there. Pitch a tent in front of the office, start digging with shovel across to the BFL wareohouse next to their office, breakthrough the floor, start moving boxes of stuff back to the tent. Ski mask and the bus ticket? Leave it your imagination.

Fuck shares! That's the riskiest shit you can do thus far. I would simply get bitcoins off LocalBitcoins or off someone here on the forum. That way you can possibly strike a deal and build relationships with those in the
community. You can also make "fee rebates" by lending your already acquired bitcoins. Visit the CoinLenders link in my sig and just review the site. You can purchase CDs and collect your earnings once the CD has matured.
You can then purchase another CD and repeat the process. Your earnings will be minimal and at a gradual pace but it's a safer way to earn BTC. That's just what I'm doing at the moment. You can try to earn way more
through riskier practices but keep in mind that you're more likely to lose out on a lot if you're to ever be scammed.

You can also advertise company's sigs for BTC. You get paid monthly by TradeFortress for advertising any of his online services.
The same goes for a few advertising a few other gambling websites not owned by TradeFortress.

And dont forget to leave a quarter for Josh behind  ;D

Ahahaha

Love it.

You really thinks shares is a big risk dude?
I don't mind a risk.  I've bought 10BTC to sit on and yes, I'm investigating what you suggested.

PS:
"Visit the CoinLenders link in my sig"  Its not in your sig?

Definitely don't buy Litecoin!

Litecoin is a fad and will disappear soon. And MTGox will NEVER start trading it (I've been saying this for 6 months and I've been right so far).

Litecoin offers nothing that bitcoin doesn't already offer and unlike bitcoin it is accepted NOWHERE.

Until an alt currency comes around that actually has a significant advantage (or ANY advantage for that matter) over bitcoin, I'd say don't bother with any of them.

Honestly I think I do because not only does that require you trusting a total stranger(s) but it also requires you giving up money whether BTC or fiat and holding nothing else of value other than someones word that you'll receive payout.
Haha my bad about the link in my sig. I forgot I had switched it. Well either way just web search it and it should pop up.

Which magical over-unity pool are you using? I'm at 75 ghash and getting closer to 0.33 BTC per day (BTCGuild / Slush combo).

If you DO end up ordering the HashFast, PLEASE also order a couple of Block Erupters as well (don't pay more than BTC 0.21 each) and get used to setting up miners, joining pools etc. so you don't have to learn the first time when you get the HashFast machine. Plug a space heater into the outlet where you plan to use the Hashfast miner and make sure it doesn't trip your breaker etc. Have an air filter near by. (You are really supposed to run a Hashfast in a lab).

Also practice with multiple pools and have your scripts ready to rapidly move from one pool to the other if something goes wrong with your preferred pool. Get to know the difference between PPLNS and PPS.

Over all, you need to have that machine up and running within 30 minutes of it arriving.

Well, you must be in an extremely lucky pool. Hash rate is close to 1000 THash/s; at 3600 BTC per day, a 100 GHash/s miner would get about 0.4 BTC per day. (And, indeed, that's close to my Avalon's current rate - 1 BTC per day hasn't been the case since last month).

Gonna have to ask for some proof via your pool.