Bitcoin Forum

I have been searching the net and could not find any useful information on which scrypt miner to choose. Would like to hear from members which one is better for starting? What are the differences in scrypt, scrypt-n x11, x13 and so on?

p.s. sorry for stupid questions i'm just starting...

Are you planning to start mining with your PC ?  If the answer is yes, then don't, it's not profitable and pretty much a waste of time.

scrypt, scrypt-n x11, x13 .. (there are about 20) are mining algorithms while every one is different and suits a different coin, each has a different "miner" and uses different setups.

If you are serious on start mining should either get a hardware mining (ASIC) scrypt(buy it second hand since it's much cheaper) or SHA256(for bitcoin) or a cloud mining contract for bitcoin mining.

If you have any other questions don't hesitate to ask  ;)

I was thinking about asic mining and i'm limited to $10k. I looked through lots of new and used asics, searched even on the ebay. I don't understand anything in these boxes. I understand that hashing speed and power usage are main specs but there are a lot of additional specs. Which one should I choose?

Well, you can either go Litecoin (or any other useless scrypt based altcoin) mining or you can mine Bitcoin or any other SHA256 (or other sha256 based coins if you have the hardware).
The altcoin theme is slowly disappearing.. so I would go for bitcoin mining (unless you find yourself a nice cheap scrypt asic with good ROI of about 2-3 months).

In Bitcoin you can either mine with your own hardware or buy a cloud mining contract. If you buy an asic so you should check the Power Efficiency ( W/GH/s ) examples  (http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/collections/products) , you should also know how much electricity your are about to spend and to have a "special" place to store the miner at..

You should only buy a reputable miner like spondoolies or bitmain , remember that second hand miners can be much cheaper..

You have many online calculators for mining profitability like this one - https://tradeblock.com/mining , so you can see what to expect in average, you can also compare cloud mining with "self" mining profits..

Unlike cloud mining,  if you buy an asic you can always sell it. If you buy a contract its a little harder to sell, but, if you are uncertain what to get or how much mining power to buy you can add cloud mining power periodically like once per week or 2 just to be safe and not to put all your money in one order or one place.. that way, if the bitcoin price is going down you'll have the chance of buying cheap bitcoin instead of putting that money in mining (get the idea?).

Basically, what i'm saying is, don't put your money in one basket.

(I have ordered a scrypt miner from KNC for 10K and now i'm in a lawsuit with them because they did not deliver on time and it practically was a product in it's alpha state).


*If you don't have many bitcoins, my advise would be: buy some every week or so or after dumps like today, if you believe the price will go up and doesn't crash to 100$ then cloud mining with a lifetime contract is a nice option to put a portion of the fund there, and meanwhile you can look for a cheap asic to buy (after you figure out the hardware you want).

I have read about many scams in cloud mining area and don't trust them. Anyway after cloud mining I won't have anything. If I get a unit in hands at least I will have some thing to sell, here you were right. I have found on ebay few sellers who offers knc titan cubes for about 1700-2200 usd in working order. I don't want to mess with coins, paypal is much more secure to deal with.

2200$ will not be profitable.. thats about 10 months ROI. here is the calc - https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc?hashrate=300&speedunit=MH%2Fs&difficulty=40765.6114507&power=1500&energycost=0.18&currency=USD

Don't bother buying any miner with 6+ months ROI.. (I wouldn't buy even a 4 months ROI).