I've got 4 of these puppies, and I'll tell you, if I had more electricity and could handle more heat in my bedroom, I would. (My room runs a bit hot, gotta have a fan on me).

Buying from bitmain is the best deal, but a third party will still be profitable at certain prices.

Tips for buying miners second hand:

First - Make sure you calculate the value using bitcoinwisdom's difficulty calculator, at minimum 1 month should look to earn you 50% of your money (because the difficulty will go up and this isn't factored in there).

Next, before picking it up or having it delivered, request 20min of the miner configured to your pool to verify the gh/s rate, you don't want faulty hardware.

Lastly, find out whether or not it comes with a power supply, this should be factored into the value decision. You'll want 500w+ for one miner just to be safe.

I thought about this last night, and I think it's important everyone understands this.

You started with "I know gold and silver are money. Is bitcoin money?"

The question is, why do you KNOW gold and silver are money? What makes them have VALUE to YOU?

It can't easily be spent, you won't know how much in spendable currency you truly have until someone offers to pay that amount to you.

It cannot be easily split into smaller pieces of currency, so owning it isn't feasible for the regular person.

It cannot be spent readily, (how many grocery stores accept gold as a form of payment?)

Stability, well it's gone from very mediocre to extremely valuable due to the world economy in the past 8 years.

So you have to ask yourself, why is GOLD money?

Gold is money because we know it is limited, it has rarity, and because we say so.
Sand is NOT money because it's too plentiful, it is easily obtained by everyone.

Bitcoin, IS money because we say so, just like gold.
But it is better than gold.

Like gold, Bitcoin has rarity, except we know exactly how rare it is (the total maximum number of bitcoins.)
Like gold, it is not easily spent at a grocery store, but that can change, unlike gold, which will not be accepted by your local grocery store.
Like gold, even though you can't eat it, or make a viable shelter out of it, it has value because of it's rarity. It's a "because we say so" store of value.

Unlike gold:
You can store all of it you own in a secure location in your house.
You can spend part of the amount stored in your house, and keep it safe. (You can have it all on a USB, put some on a phone, and if your phone is stolen, your phone has a secure password and you can withdraw the bitcoins from a backup of the phone's wallet, so you don't actually lose your money.)
There is no weight to bitcoins, so you can have an unlimited amount in your possession.


Although blockchain would like to use the term, "Be your own bank", I don't agree with your usage, but it does apply to bitcoin.
My usage of "Bitcoin: Be Your Own Bank" is more like,

You can store ALL of your bitcoin in your home, and withdraw and deposit as you feel like. So the trip to the bank is as simple as taking out the USB from your safe and putting it in your laptop to send some money to a hot wallet. Then returning it to storage.

So with bitcoin, you really can BE YOUR OWN BANK!

Thanks.