Bitcoin Forum

I'm in a unique situation at the moment where I get free electricity since I live with my parents.

The cheapest USB miners I've seen go for about $20, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less. I've noticed that there are two types - one type that runs at 330MHash/s and another type that runs at about 2.2GHash/s. I had the opportunity to snap up 6 of the latter types for $50 once but didn't take it. Now I definitely regret not buying those while I had the chance.

So anyway, at these prices and with free electricity, do you think it is worth attempting to mine Bitcoin and SHA-256 altcoins?

Or does electricity not really come into play since USB miners use so little anyway?

I would hardly call someone else paying "free", let alone your parents paying it.

If you try mining BTC with this you are not going to mine anything. Complete waste of energy in my opinion.
BR

That kind of thinking, is going to get your parents in more debt, and you without a roof over your head. ???

Now as your questions are answered, can u plz tell us, why u have taken such a great forum name ? :P

Thank you for threads like these, as they really put a smile to my face.
On-topic: Personally, I'd like a 1st gen USB miner as well. It's quite a nice novelty item and it would make a nice keychain. Something that shows my Bitcoin support.

Those 330mh/s USB contributed for a bried period of time on the blockchain, time to contribute to my keychain :D.

You will most likely not break even.

Even with 0 electricity costs , the price of the BTC < the price of the USB miner.
It will not be worth it even with free electricity.

If you want to invest in Bitcoin , buy it directly.

On the other hand , these miners are fun as memorabilia :)

LOL, free = my parents pay for it.  ::)  But in general, if you get free electricity, yes, it's worth it (as long as you aren't frying your hardware). But it still will take a long, long time to see any returns.

There will come a time when OP will find that statement funny as well. That time is not today I'm afraid :).

At today's BTC prices and difficulty, you will make around $0.28/month. Wow!

Electricity is not a major factor in ASIC mining (yet). If you get "free" electricity, you are better of mining scrypt coins with your GPU, or CPU-only coins.

Another vote for spending the money you would spend on buying miners and just buy BTC directly.

Maybe even buy some for your parents and set them up with a wallet! :)

How is your parents paying for something free electricity...

Your not set within reality, your just adding to their bills. You really want huge electric bill for your parents because of getting maybe 0.001 bitcoin produced?

You need a better plan.

Unless where you live you do get free electricity thats a different story. Nice name by the way lol.

Agreed. The best returns for casual miners IMO can be found mining low difficulty coins that have not been listed on exchanges yet. It's hit or miss, but the return on speculation can be quite large.

If you really want to invest in mining hardware you should think about building a GPU rig but I recommend investing the cash to directly buy bitcoins.

A USB miner would be a cheap way to go about learning how to set up a basic miner, understand share submission, stratum protocol, etc.  It won't be making any money, it would be more like a BTC tutorial you have to pay for.

Haha, poor parents. :3

With 0 electricity fee, 10% difficulty increment every 2016 blocks, 0% pool fee and 13.2 GH/s (6*2.2), you would get about 0.08 btc after 2 years.
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

For comparison, you can buy 0.08 btc with 52 USD (at current bitstamp price) now.

His parents probably couldn't notice it, if OP is just going to play with a few USB miners. ;)

if you live in the new york projects usually the utility bill is covered, I had a freind who had electrical free utilities

you cant realy make any profit from usb miners, better and safer option is to simply invest into btc/some other crypto.
its just a matter of time when more ppl is gona realise that they are just loosing money buying unprofitable mining eq. that will never ROI.

cheers

The more they spend on power,
the less pocket money they can give you.

Well that doesn't really make much sense at all.

Lol, i would also love to buy some usb miners just for the sake of decoration, and watching them blink on my table :D . I know they cant mine anything but they look nice. My problem is fining them cheep and free shipping othervise not worth it.

Ask in the marketplace.  Put in your rough location and ask if somebody nearby has some for sale.

Seems like all constructive stuff has already been said, so all I can really say in this thread is LOL.
OP, are you by any chance a teenager?

Being a teenager does not mean anything in any way. Being naive is another thing, which means to not think and consider things properly.

I found 5 usb miners 333mhs each, for 60$ :) . Is it worth it ? Even if i have free electricity and diff doesn't incrise next 4 years they will hardly roi :D lol. 

Nope, you can get a 32-37GH/s Rockminer R-Box for the same price. Not worth it at all.

But this got a free shipping . Can u get me a link for that rock miner ?
Btw i just got an idea. I can make that usb miners to mine CTM and exchange to btc, that way they will mine about 12$ per month. Could be worth it ?

Go to the group buy section of this forum. There are virtually no CTM exchanges, and I would still ROI quicker by buying a Rockminer.

I don't tend to judge by age. But it would certainly make more sense if OP is a teenager, than being 30yo or more and counting on his parents' 'free electricity'. That would be sad :).
But either way, you can always change things in your life for the better.

It's not free electricity if your parents pay for it. I wouldn't bother with mining. Never gonna be worth it. Try an alt if you have to.

Found this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/R-BOX-32-37GH-S-4-AM-Gen3-TSMC-40nm-BTC-Miner-includes-USB-Cable-Power-line-/291164065260?pt=US_Virtual_Currency&hash=item43cabb0dec free shipping worldwide, looks like it will ROI in about 4 months witch is not bad at all.

Another ripoff, as I said, they cost $60-$70. All miners on ebay are a ripoff, you're really stupid if you buy miners from ebay.

I found couple of them for 60-70$ but they dont have free shipping so when i account that in im better off buying 100$ one from ebay :) .

They WILL notice the huge increase in the electricity bill, you know?
Be wise: tell them to invest in bitcoin :)

Not rly if he buys only couple of that crappy usb miners :) .

But then is it worth it?
Get an ad-sig and you can earn the same.

You can't really use much electricity with a USB miner so why not you can learn something from it as well and earn a few satoshis
If you want to pay them back join a sig campaign when your here longer
A rockxie miner or is pretty cheap for the price / gh and should be energy useful for a while yet
http://shop.rockminer.com/goods.php?id=33

Yeah sig earnings here are great.

Rockminer are rly good manufacturer and cheep, i would suggest r-box from them, im waiting to get paid for my sig and i will order 1 rockminer r-box just to get a bit into this mining game and learn about it.

Wait am i getting this right ? Rockminer sends goods with free shipping ? why the fuck i looked at ebay :D . And i can pay in btc this is great.

I don't think it would make a profit even with free electricity but not sure, The prices of these USB miners are too high IMO.

Yeah with free electricity they will ROI in about 5-7 years MAYBE ! :D
Rly not worth it , unless u get usb miners for free.

I think atm best cheep option is that Rockminer R-BOX .

If you have a member account, the sig payment should be much better than mining revenue from a few USB miners. :)

But in sig u need to invest ur time. And knowledge u cant just spam threads. While in mining u earn while u sleep :) .

True, but you (or your parents) need to pay for the ASICs and pay the electricity bill. ;)

True ... Tbh i also think sig posting is better than small time mining.
Now for the final point. NO u should not buy USB miners unless u want them for decoration :D .
If u want to get into game of mining cheaply buy R-BOX, it's the best cheep miner on the market and its free shipping ...
Also doesnt use to much only 40-50W .

Signatures are passive too, you just need to find a person who pays you.

Does a USB miner help to support the network, regardless of the money you may or may not earn from it?

Would hundreds of us using these be helping out transaction speeds and keeping the network distributed, or is it a drop in the ocean compared to serious mining rigs?

Well everybit helps. But its more like drop in the ocean :) .

I have a couple red fury usbs I can let go for like $25 if your interested send me a PM.

I was one in the same position but realised that it is not worth it and to save money for something better in the future which you could get immediately.
330mh/s or 2.2gh/s will not get you anything in return unless you wait a VERY long time of constant mining.

Save up the money you was gonna spend and make a x11 rig. I would say you'll get a better return with GPU's with it IMO.

Also, haha at your username. Its original

This is a waste of time, money and electricity. I wouldn't describe the electricity as free as it costs your parents money to pay for it. If you were rocking up with this post in say 2010/2011 then go for it, but there is literally no point now, those miners are fodder.

USB miner's are for the most part low profit, do your own math.

It's not truly free power in your case... your parents will see the bills.  Depending on budget you look into bigger miner's and run ROI.  Might ask parents about it before running a 1k watt BTC miner.  It will cost more but A2's on scrypt have very low watts used compared to most other miners out.  Also there is a SilverFish miner you will be able to get soon that looks very promising with a little more electricity used.

you will make nothing...
honestly you would make more busking in the street or asking people for $1
not being mean.. just being honest. maybe if you had several 1000 that would be a different story.

Well hanging out in the AM thread if you have some skill you should make a miner instead of buying one.
Get some Gen 3 AM Chips and have a low energy cost with a custom build and your set.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=641957.msg7227862#msg7227862

That's not free electricity. Either way, you're not going to reach an ROI at any time, really. Better spend your money elsewhere.

if you have a free electricity then i wouldnt you buy something like s1 unit? this is much profitable to you but somehow could be a very big problem to your parents another option is you can give atleast 1/4 part of your money to your parents for running your equipment to your home

In that case, electricity wouldn't be free either, since he is directly paying his parents in response to his use of energy in the house. There's just no way.

If your electricity is free and maximizing your profit potential isn't your goal, the bitcoin network will welcome your support.

Hard to even ROI, consider buying other ASICs.

im trying to say that give atleast 1/4 of the electricity bill to his parent to help them atleast he will not feel guilty by the end of the day

Even excluding the electricity cost, it would take a very long time (or possibly never) to break even with the USB miner.
So IMO, you should buy the miner.

If the whole story was in 2010 or 2011, then OP would get scammed as there was no USB ASIC at that time lol.
Of course, I know what you meant. :P

or else find someone who want to co locate their mining rigs to your home  :D but you can only do that if you have a literally "free electricity"

Haha, I don't think his parents would enjoy having weird nerdy strangers in their house.
And that would definitely result in a huge electricity bill.

LOL, why u assume everybody in bitcoin / mining is "weird and nerdy" :D ?

im greatful cause my mama is believing on crypto currencies future :D we have 3 s1 unit in my house and its from uk that im currently hosting at the moment we have a free electricity so its gonna be ok for them only my dad is the one who think its illegal lol

Kinda it is. U dont pay tax for ur profit :D . LOL . Fuck taxes and legal stuff banks and everything :) .
I wonder where are all those usb miners that nobody use anymore . And why price of them is so high when nobody smart enough would buy one?

yeah i agree goverment here is not fair to their people a lot of stealing has been done for the past 10 years and the people are here are already full of it
those USB miner are on ebay i guess :D but i assume that nobody wants it because of their low GHS but some of them are profitable if you dont pay electricity and when you buy it locally so you dont need to pay for the tax and stuff

That's some awesome parenting right there!
Show to your dad the interview with the ebay guy, that way he'll see famous "respectable" businesses want in :)

he is just thinking that way cause he is not familiar with btc and stuff but he just let me do the mining and see that i recieve a payout from the owner of the rigs then he doesn't care any more well maybe as long as there is no cops knocking at my door then he will think its legal or else he will be freaked out as he have an MJ sitting on the fridge :D

I am not an expert in mining, but I believe the electricity cost is a bigger factor in altcoin mining (like scrypt-n or scrypt-jane) than in bitcoin mining.