Maybe if the money you were investing was obtained from illegal business activities.  Chalk up the not making ROI to the cost of the money laundering operation.

I'm sure most of us have had times when we have accidentally dialed a phone number because the phone's touch screen wasn't locked and rubbed up against something to activate it to dial.   What's to say the same thing couldn't happen with a bitcoin wallet, accidentally launching a transaction?  If that were the case, the recepient could be someone saved in your bitcoin address book, possibly the last person you sent a payment to.  If it is that easy to send a payment with your android wallet (without asking you to confirm it), that sounds rather unsafe.

Yes it was in fact the infamous Inputs.io.  It was the first wallet that I tried out, as was lulled into a sense of security by their website that boasted that they had most advanced encryption available for keeping your bitcoin safe.  A couple days later I received an email stating that they had been hacked and there was nothing that could be done to recover the lost bitcoins.  Thankfully I was starting off very small.  I could have just as easily gone all in and had many bitcoins stored there and then really gotten taken to the cleaners.

I think you might have found a different wallet, such as Multibit offers a more user friendly experience.  I have been using Multibit since last September.  Before that I made the mistake of using an online wallet, which got hacked.  I lost everything, which was only 0.01 BTC.  I started off slowly, with amounts worth less than a dollar, so it is less frustrating if something backfires.  It is good to start off slow with small amounts of bitcoin, while you learn the ropes, mastering the steps of how to send and receive payments accurately, backup your wallets and keep an organized list of all your passwords.  Become more confortable and confident as you start to understand what to expect with how the network behaves.

Also worth considering that just barely making ROI is still not worth bragging about, or something to equate to being a good investment, contrary to the misleading salespitch used by sellers of mining hardware or cloudmining contracts that have been making them a handsome profit.  You could have alternatively put the money in a GIC, and rename that GIC "the alternative to bitcoin mining GIC", where the maturity date would coincide roughly with when you would have reached ROI had you instead been mining bitcoins.

Unfortunately, the sales pitch from sellers of mining hardware and cloud mining has emphasized words like investment and profit.  That's how they've been able to make their profit.  Those of us who have tried it out now know otherwise.  The real investment here is that you took the chance to learn about cryptocurrency while it is still in it's infancy.  You are an early adopter, and have the opportunity to make some moves in this early stage that could lead to a payoff at a later date.  We haven't figured out what that groundbreaking move will be, time will tell.

I started off with a 30 GH year contract from a seller on ebay.  Then got into mining with a rig made of USB technobit HEX16A2 miners (also from ebay), starting with a pair of miners early in March 2014.  Over the first month I worked my way up to a total of 6 miners (about 130 GH or slightly more assuming ideal conditions).  I also had some trouble with the software that came with it.  The USB connection was flakey and would periodically drop out, often while I was away from home, leading to lost mining productivity.  I would need to come back often to reset it.  A user on here helped me make the transition to a more stable cgminer version for technobit miners.  Once I got it properly configured, it has run rock solid, with hardly any hiccups.  About 125 GH on average.  I figure that the weekly power costs is about $8, so I will obviously be shutting it off at some point within the next couple months.  At the peak, I was seeing a 0.01 BTC payout per day.  Now it is down to a bit longer than every other day.  Sometime soon it will be down to every third day.

The total cost of the miners was around $970.  Add 13% GST, since I imported them from the States to Canada.  So now up to $1096.  I also ordered special adapters and 4 different computer power supplies.  I blew the first two, which were cheap.  Then I opted for 2 good ones.  Then I bought a new computer so that I could dedicate my old laptop to mining.  So basically completely forget about any fiat for bitcoin and back to fiat return on investment.

I think I am now done with reinvesting in mining.   At first I was excited to be buying and adding mining equipment.  Then I noticed that the ebay seller was dropping the price significantly.  The very last miner I bought was half the price of the first one. Something was up.  I had to do some homework to figure out what was going on with the mining difficulty and the ROI, and make sure to not get carried away.  

After 3 months, as of today I have just reached 0.6 BTC according to my BTC Guild dashboard.  I have reinvested the majority of that into PB mining, with a current contract of 150 GH.  My multibit wallet has received close to $900 worth of bitcoin from a variety of sources since I first downloaded it last September.  Now I think I am done with reinvesting in hashing power.  I am instead trying to spend my weekly earnings on items that I will enjoy, including coffee.  Whatever gourmet treats I can find on amazon with free shipping, such as handmade pasta sauces.  The next bitcoin I will get will come from a fiat exchange.  

For those of us who have been mining during your same time frame, as close as we have been able to get to making ROI, we recognize that doing so has been very much dependent upon starting mining at that particular time (ie. in late 2013).  An opportunity that is vanishingly small, considering the considerable cost of home mining equipment.  Timing was everything.   The window for that opportunity has been rapidly closing over the past few months as the difficulty level has increased.  It is not worth bragging about getting ROI because it can encourage new miners to believe that can do the same.

Kiki,

The translation of whatever is written in French here about cryptos boils down to:  "This information is already readily available in English in forums such as bitcointalk, however there still remains a target audience of French speakers in Québec who are completely out of the loop when it comes to cryptocurrency, and users such as Rhead intend to try to bring them up to speed."  So no need to feel left out, since you already are well educated on this subject.  I have posted his article on the facebook group "Francophonie-Québec", which is a French only group.  

I just opened it for the first time in a couple weeks, and my Québecoin wallet is able to sync.

The core group of bitcoin users is savvy enough to figure out that they can already shop at Amazon using bitcoin purchased gift cards from gyft or egifter.  So the assumption must be that Amazon accepting bitcoin payments directly will encourage the creation of new bitcoin users who are just barely able to figure out how to use bitcoin.  There is going to be a limit to how many of those kind of users you can attract with that particular carrot stick, because of the technological hurdle, and their lack of confidence or understanding of that new payment option.

The dream of making profit through mining is understandably appealling because it would require so little effort, beyond buying the mining equipment.  You simply collect bitcoin earnings without needing to lift a finger or stick your neck out.  But the opportunity to accomplish that is ever dwindling, maybe had your started much earlier?  The most dependable way to make profit is still to communicate and advertise what kind of work you are able to do, and then set out to provide that service or product which people will pay you for in bitcoins.

I would be limited to buying about 40 pounds or less because I would be driving back home through customs.  I would be interested in starting with some kind of small sampler, about $40 range.  I would need an invoice in case customs asks for it, and tracking on the package so that I could know when it arrives.  I am a Canadian who lives a few minutes from the border (upstate New York), and I am always looking for gourmet food products that I can buy with bitcoin. 

I'll lend you 0.01 BTC if you wish.  Although it looks as though  hilariousandco has you covered already.

A more realistic goal is to aim for making back about half of your investment, or slightly better, and chalking up the loss to being part of the learning experience.

Hello HerkulesBee,

I recommend that you avoid cloudhashing.com.   That pricing of $300 for 30 GH is what I paid for my first 30 GH of cloud hashing back in the fall of 2013.  Meanwhile, over that same period of time, what 30 GH will earn over a period of one week has decreased by a factor of 30.  You would only earn about $5,74 for one week with that package.   In other words you would never break even.  So clearly that merchant is only out to make a buck off of newbies.  You could buy the same hash power at pbmining.com for about $75.  An honest seller will also reduce their prices over time (quite regularly actually) as the level of difficulty increases.  

You could buy the Antminer S1, which would cost almost half of pbmining per GH...but you would be paying for electricity and having to manage the equipment.


https://pbmining.com/contractbuy.html?

https://bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020140107162747992Ce5uBuxW06D6


As far as scrypt mining is concerned.  There is a seller on here who is offering shares on the upcoming KNC Titan.  He started at $49 per MH/S, and has just recently lowered his price, although the website doesn't reflect the price change yet.  The drawback is that KNC Titan has not shipped yet, so you would be waiting maybe a couple months, during which time the rate of return will continue to decrease.

http://www.coiningsolutions.com/product-category/hosted-miners/

My first experience with cloud mining last October is what got me interested in mining.  A 1 week mining contract of 1 GH, which back then was able to generate roughly 1 payout of 0.01 BTC, or about $5.70 by today's price.  If I could have the hash power that I have today (310 GH) and use it back in October 2013, I would have made 3 bitcoins ($1700) in a week.  Whereas today it only earns about $60 per week (and less and less as time goes on).

I purchased six 24 GH Technobit HEX16A2 miners from ebay over a period of month.  Within that time the seller brought down the price by at least half, so the first two miners I bought cost me twice as much as the last two I bought.   I've earned a little over half a bitcoin with the Technobit miners, so I'm not even close breaking even, considering that the first two miners cost over $400.  They will soon reach the point of no longer generating enough to justify the electricity costs, and become paperweights.  I've reinvested most of it into PB Mining in order to double my hash rate through cloud mining.  A never ending battle to be sure.  The only clear winners are the people who sell the equipment.  What we tend to get is a fraction of what we were hoping for, and it is difficult to see the big picture when you are new to mining.

I first tried cloud mining through a 1 week contract of 1 GH through a seller on ebay as a way to introduce myself to bitcoin towards the end of October 2013.  The seller stated that they would run it an extra day if necessary in order to reach the payout threshold of 0.01 BTC.   So at the current bitcoin value, that 1 GH generated $5.74.  It was specifically that level of payout that got many of us interested in mining in the first place.  What you need to picture, however, is just how much value that mining power has lost over time.  Fast forward to today, I have around 310 GH that is a combination of cloud mining and hardware.  If I could have had that running at the end of October 2013, that would have generated around 3 bitcoins per week ($1700).  However at the current level of difficulty it only generates around $60 per week, minus about $8 in electricity costs.  Things have changed drastically in a short time, and they will continue to do so in the future.
Imagine how much less valuable your mining shares will be in the very near future.  This is unfortunately a relatively poor investment from the standpoint of trying to make a profit, but can be interesting in terms of learning more about how to use cryptos.  So the key would be to invest a relatively small amount and assume that you lose about half of it.  You will make back even less if you invest in bitcoin mining hardware.  Consider that there are plenty of mining sellers out there who are able to take advantage of newbies who are not yet able to see the big picture.  These sellers are the ones who stand to make a profit.

I think that one of the main ideals of this coin was to promote understanding and use of cryptocurrency by the people of Quebec.  A major challenge considering that Quebec patriotism doesn't correlate with the relatively advanced computer literacy required to get involved with this.
You would be able to achieve that ideal completely without Quebecoin simply by first promoting understanding and use of the most popular cryptocurrency options, obviously starting with bitcoin.  

In that case you would use the 4 pin molex connector from the ATX power supply, or the SATA connector through the following adapter:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003WSUZH0/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The other options for troubleshooting this could include:

 - Try this on a different computer.  I had to eventually give up on trying to get this to work on one of my computers.
 - Try adding a USB hub between the computer and the miner.  Use a different USB cable to make sure you have a good one.  Also, certain computers don't play nice with the miner's USB connection.
 - Try using a different ATX power supply.
 - If all else fails, you could still use the original Hexminer software.  I ran it for a couple months with my miners, before I was able to figure out how to get cgminer for windows to work.  It is less stable and crashes more easily, but still works ok.

You haven't specified which configuration your power connector is on the miner.  The older boards were all 4 pin molex, and the more recent ones replaced that with 2 screw (R2) terminals to accept 2 wires that are 16-18 AWG.   The 4 pin molex type board can be supplied with either the 4 pin molex connector or the SATA with a SATA to 4 pin molex adapter.  I had to buy a couple of those because I ran out of the 4 pin molex power connectors.

With the 2 screw in connector, there are several options: Molex, Sata, PCI-E, and CPU lines.  So long as you don't try to use the motherboard connector.