Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I was thinking on getting a couple of block erupter to mine any other uprising coin with SHA256 encryption. Is this a good idea? If so, can someone point me to a website where I can get them cheap. I've read in a couple of places that they used to be cheaper but now everyone is ripping newbies like me off.

can you plug these in random computers and they mine away?

Not sure, what I've seen is that they place them in USB docks with fans. Maybe it has to be a specific one.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B00CUJT7TO/ref=cm_cr_dp_cust_img_see_all_img0

If you can find them for a decent price, it's not a bad idea to get your feet wet in Bitcoin mining for cheaper than most of the other hardware available. But as you said, seems like all the sellers are selling them at ridiculous prices. I have heard of some hubs failing when loading them up with the erupters. I use "D-Link DUB-H7" hubs, they are 7 port hubs and I haven't had a single problem using them for 3+ months now. 

http://www.bitcoinminerz.com/  
check that one
itshould be not have www.
just try :    bitcoinminerz.com    my friend said that is a nice website 

I would purchase this but you have to be careful of overheating

Yepp.

try to get those big ass erupters and ur fine - http://www.ebay.pl/itm/111228277769?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
5ghs per eurpter ;)

are you currently mining with it? how much profit?

Yeah, I'm currently mining with 10 of them @ 3.33~ gh/s. My 24 hour earnings are 0.00209187 on BTCGuild.

Not worth mining really :-\

are you mining with one of this?

It seems like a lot of people are saying that it is not worth mining BTC atm because it is hard to keep up with the difficulties and the price is so damn high .....

true dat!

unless you can get mining asics for very cheap with cheap power you might never get a return on investment (ROI). Try farming different coins and hoping they take off. If enough people farm alt coins they will gain value.

Try Beta coin (BET)  8)

I'm using a 333 Mhs USB Block Erupter, got it on eBay, prices range from $50 USD to $65 USD excluding shipping. For me I bought it as an experiment to see how legit these USB sticks (and sellers) were and indeed they are working and the product was shipped and arrived in good condition.

With the difficulty increases it's hard to reach a ROI within a year, or even at all. A good calculator can be found here: http://btcinvest.net/en/bitcoin-mining-profit-calculator.php

Less fun, but more profitable in the long run (Assuming the exchange rate goes up) is buying BTC and holding on to them, another strategy is mining ASIC based alt-coins and converting them to BTC at an exchange that supports the alt-coin. A good example is http://coinex.pw or http://cryptsy.com/, you can find the relative profitability on either http://coinchoose.com/ or http://coinwarz.com/

Hope this helps!

Guys, do not buy USB block erupters unless you can get them for $10 or so.

The difficulty is too high so mining with them is worthless.

If price continues to rise, you might get your money back, but you would've gotten much more money by buying btc and keeping it for later.

Think about it, if it's profitable to mine at the prices of the mining devices, why would people sell them?

These sellers sell these products to get more money than they will every get from mining off of them.

Yes

However, you have to download mining programs and drivers for the devices before mining with them on any computer.

So it's not as easy as just plugging it into some random computer and immediately starting to mine.

I am mining with a couple of USB Block Erupters now. If you want estimates:
1x USB Block Erupters (@333MmH/s) will give you about 0.00025btc a day

So, IF DIFFICULTY REMAINS THE SAME you will get 0.0075btc/month and about 0.09btc/year
But difficulty is rising exponentially, so you will be lucky to get 0.045btc this time next year

My advise is buy them as a toy to play around, but do not expect it to ROI
If I have to put a price on one, I would price them below 0.01btc

IMHO it's not worth it anymore to mine btc with small miners, even with the current gigantic price jumps of btc's. You would only make ROI and a very small profit in a best case scenario.
On the other hand some alt currencies might be profitable specially low Hashes ones. And if they are listed on cryptsy/bter it might worth it.

Are you using raspberry pi also? If so, how does this thing work?