Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I never mined before because my computer is not the best actually but i am interested in buying a low price USB Miner that is worth the purchase.
I dont expect to win 0.5 BTC in a month, but i have a few questions that i would like to get a answer to.

Recomend any "worth the purchase" USB Miner?

Can i mine Alt coins with a USB Miner or only BTC?

Does it pay back the Eletricity costs?

If the 1º and 2º question answers are No what USB Miner you recommend?

Thank You!  :D

Just reached the point where my GPU was just not returning enough to make it worth the time and heat and energy, so I got an ASICMiner Block Erupter: http://www.amazon.com/ASICMiner-Block-Erupter-USB-Sapphire/dp/B00CUJT7TO

Gets about 300MH/s about 0.0003 BTC/day at current difficulty. I think that comes to about 1 0.1BTC/year. They say it only uses 2.5W, one of the reviews says that comes to about $4.40/yr in electricity.

(edit: corrected my bad math)

That's not about 1BTC/year. It's about 0.01 BTC/year

I think you are better to get something more powerful unless this is a small hobby for you

Oops. I suck at math and am banging my head on my desk now.

Well you made a mistake yes but that is not the problem.
365*0.0003 = 0.1 and not 1BTC
Still you are not going to make 0.1 BTC/year because the difficulty doesn't stay the same.

If you take in account that incease you ll end up with something around 0.01 BTC/year as i said before.
And that is actually 0.01 BTC per lifetime of your usb.  :-\

simply not profitable anymore. realistically won't even cover the costs with the increasing difficulty.
here 2 sites that help you calculate how much you can expect to make
http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator
http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/
in other words. ...nothing.

but can i make profit mining alt coins?

https://www.gldtalk.org/devteam/butt.png


It's possible but I think the best strategy is to mine an altcoin you also support. Think of it as an investment.

The chances of you succeeding with that strategy are much higher than locking yourself into bitcoin with a USB device. Stick with something flexible enough to mine anything like a 7950 GPU or two. Then bookmark these two sites to track the pulse of the digital currency economy: coinchoose.com and coinmarketcap.com

The fact that you are posting here means you are on the right track! Good luck and well wishes!  8)

So... can you guys tell me what is the best alt coin to mine with a USB Miner?

So how many different methods of mining is there?

I would say don't bother mining bitcoin, but if you want to mine just for fun, mine peercoin.

Is it profitable to mine Peercoin?

I don't know if USB miner is worth it anymore. Have any of you tried cloud mining?

No, please explain, im new around here :3

There are several USB miners now: Block Erupter (336 MH/s) and Red/Blue/Nano-Fury (2 - 2.5 GH/s). They are profitable if you don't pay too much for them.

Cloud mining is a money loser at the current prices.

This can help you decide which coin to mine: http://wheretomine.com/

I don't know if it's profitable or not. But to give you an idea, I have three of them running in a pool now and get a little less than about .5 PPC per day. Today they are worth $1.20.

Red/Blue/Nano-Fury (2 - 2.5 GH/s)

 this one is good, better than bfl 5gb version,  I am looking for this set or buy a contract.

contact is more profitable, usb version is safer.

I agree with previous posts that mining bitcoins is tricky. Even if you are ready to put down some serious cash, it is a toss up how soon your miner will be obsolete.

I would choose one of the alternate CPU or GPU mined cryptos and go after those. Some of the nicer GPUs hold their value pretty well (50%) after a couple years of mining.

Ok guys, choose the crypto is the easy part, but i need some help.

I really want to buy a USB Miner, but for me is just go to ebay, purchase one, stick it in the Desktop USB Drive and start mining.


But i think it is not this way, so i ask you guys for help please, i will even pay a bounty [dont be greedy  >:(] if you really help me !  ;)

Bump :3

go for used usb asics as they work good and will eb cheaper. also cheak ebay esp other coutnries than just .com and co.uk ie here is cheap: http://www.ebay.pl/itm/111221625264?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

I 'm not sure if this is obvious to everyone here but you can only mine sha-256 alt coins with usb miners.

I wasn't planning on getting into mining. I started with one Erupter, then ordered 5 more. Currently, they're mining in a D-Link hub attached to my OS X laptop. I don't think you'll realistically turn a profit. I bought bitcoin on Coinbase when it was $200, and sold three today at $750 a piece. If you're looking to profit, buy a coin with fiat. As bitcoin becomes more "mainstreamed" it'll level out. It's a currency, not a stock or other investment.

Just do what some of the posters above recommended.  Google the mining calculators, they will give you a very good start.  I'm also a newbie, you must account for the bump ups in difficulty.  As it is right now, the ROI (return on investment) will be a long time.

If you just gotta have one of the USB ones, buy it, but don't expect to make money with it.   ;)

What do you mean?

SHA256 is the algo bitcoin and a few altcoins use.. its what the ASIC calculates essentially. I have a USB Block erupter if you are interested in buying a miner

I mean that you can't mine Litecoins for example, with those usb because they use a different hashing algorithm (scypt)

You need something like this to mine Bitcoins 40Gh/s for $622/€461...

http://technobit.eu/index.php?id_product=52&controller=product&id_lang=1

It will mine about 1BTC per month currently meaning it should pay for itself within about a month then the rest is profit.

It uses about 50w of electricity so should stay above the cost of energy for quite some time.

Even if this costs only 9.70 USD and uses only 2.5W power it's still not profitable. You can calculate this here: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

How much?

and guys, what coins can i mine with USB Miner?

PPC and TRC comes to my mind for example. Just google sha 256 alt coins.

You guys have any used cheap USB Miner?