No, USA.

From an economic perspective, even if we achieve stability in the type and capacity of the mining hardware coming online, we still would not be able to see any profits significantly greater than other investment vehicles. With the increased media exposure, and more availability of hardware, the hardware will be priced to a level that one can only make a "reasonable" rate of return for the risk involved. That is more where I am coming from. The easier it is for people to buy hardware and mine BTC the closer the rate of return will be to other means of making money which means it will be low.

I don't think the jump to $260 per BTC had much to do with ASIC. At that time the Cyprus banking crisis (aka government confiscation of people's money from their bank accounts) lead to a panic and distrust of government controlled currencies. There was a corresponding increase interest and demand for BTC and thus the price of BTC went up. When that panic subsided the demand for BTC went back down to more "normal" levels so the price fell.

I have done some "day trading" in BTC as your prior post recommended. I may do more now that my mining play money fund is larger. I ordered one of those UBS miners for $100 just so I can still be in the game. But it will mine peanuts and I calculated I'll only recover $50 over a 1 year period. The $50 I am giving away is the cost for me to stay in the game and have something to keep me motivated to stay up to date with mining.

What I find it very odd how people are spending about twice what they can recover with the  hardware they are buying. I did it consciously knowing when I ordered the little USB miner for the fun of it. That was a small amount for entertainment and educational purposes. But I see people spending thousands of dollars on hardware on eBay and such where they will only recover 50-75% of their investment. Perhaps people are only looking at the current payout and not factoring in the exponential growth in difficulty when they bid up the price of hardware.

Please elaborate on how selling my Jalapeno was a bad decision and how I could make more than $2K in mining (assuming BTC price remains around $100 / BTC)? I hope I got this right but at the current difficulty and projected difficulty over the next 12 months my 7Gh/s Jalapeno would have mined  approximately 10 BTC. I stopped the calculation as of May 2014 because after that date my Jalapeno would be obsolete using more electricity cost that the value of coins mined.

If my math skills are right, 22 BTC I can buy now with the funds from the sale of my Jalapeno is greater than 10 BTC I could mine over the entire lifespan of the Jalapeno.

Even if I grossly miscalculated the payout and increase in difficulty, and if BFL is really going to be caught up with orders in 90 days, I could order 5 Jalapenos now for $1,000 (with 25% off coupon) and still have over $1K in the bank left over. Then I could go on my merry way mining with 5 Jalapenos 90 days from now. I really think it has to be a pipe dream that I can buy 5 Jalapenos now and 90 days from now be profitably mining with them.

Comments and suggestions welcomed. Like I said, I'm pretty green to all of this so I may have really screwed up the math. But when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.


................   Jul-13   Augu   Sept   Octo    Nove    Dece   Janu   Febru   March    April    May   
Difficulty    3.12   4.34   6.76   10.37   16.15   24.80   38.62   61.00   90.99   139.68   214.41   
Coins/mo   3.38   2.43   1.56   1.020   0.650   0.430   0.270   0.170   0.120   0.0800   0.0500   

Sell it now! Buy 20 to 25 BTC with the money you get for the Jalapeno. That is what I did. (Sold Jalapeno but did not buy BTC yet.)

I'm pretty green to Bitcoins and mining but I think we had a window of opportunity that is now closed for mining for profit. Or better said, mining for profit much over the break even cost of the hardware.

For example, I don't believe there will ever be a day you will be able to buy from BFL (or any other vendor) a machine such as the Jalapeno for $249, that will generate $400 in BTC in a month. That's a 61% rate of return on your investment in 1 month! When banks at paying 1% on a CD, that makes zero sense. It would be same as Amazon selling $20 bills for $10 with free shipping. Basic supply and demand principle would kick in and drive up the price of the hardware to the point where you would have to pay an amount that would result in you only being able to make something close to a normal rate of return on your money. You are going to have a shortage, as in more people ordering than the company can ever supply, and a few lucky people reselling the products at a price so high that your rate of return will much lower and closer to what other traditional investments pay.

So none of this is making any sense at all to me. It makes zero sense that someone like BFL would sell any of their products at all. Anyone with capacity to build powerful miners should be mining with them, not selling them. Something fishy is going on.

I basically turned $100 into $3,000 over 10 months mining but it was pure luck. My used GPU that cost $100 mined 8 coins. Ordered a Jalapeno last year that cost me $249. It arrived and I sold it for over $2K. Now I can't find anything in stock that can be purchased that has even a remote chance to pay itself off, much less make a profit. I'd like to mine again but everything I explore seems like a loser to buy now.

I have a coupon too. But even with 25% discount I don't think it is possible any longer to recover the cost of the hardware with mining given the delivery delay for any new order. Maybe you are lucky the order did not go through.

i feel so dumb... Thought 1 was minimum. Changed it to 0.5.  Thank you!

Have 0.79 BTC in Slush's Pool. They pay out when you hit 1 BTC. I sold my Jalapeno couple days ago. Wondering if a simple way to get the 0.79 BTC paid out from the pool now that I don't have a miner?

Just saw this graph. Only thing similar is our national debt. Think this photo says it all when interpolated for the rate hardware will start becoming obsolete.

That who are scammers, BFL? To be honest I was going to order a few miners from BFL last year, but after some research on management, I cut back my order. (Which I kind of regret now cutting back as I got my order early enough for it to have value.) I came out ahead as it was finally delivered, but going into the order I gave it only about a 40% change I would ever see a package arrive. LOL. But now that they are shipping I have confidence they can manufacture the product, but I'm still shaky on delivery expectations.

Thanks, yes! Between you and Xian01 it paints a grim picture to buy anything now that does not have a firm delivery date. Maybe there isn't any smart plan to follow now for new mining gear. It seems that very soon the only winners will be mining hardware manufacturers creating a quasi pyramid scheme. They manufacture more powerful miners that makes the existing crop obsolete. Then anyone who wants to mine has to keep upgrading and the cycle repeats faster and faster. But unless you are buying some serious hardware, I guess you won't make beans. And if you buy some serious hardware, you probably have to be at the front of the line to use it for a shorter and shorter opportunity window. I would also guess that when production reaches a level where demand can be satisfied in a short time period, basic supply and demand principles will have kicked in and dictate that the hardware would be priced in a manner that one could not make a very high rate of return compared to traditional investments. Dang, this stinks. Oh well, my GPU still works well for playing video games. :p

Here is a another video I shot today with it on top of a 16oz jar with hot water. Ran 1 hour. I also polished the tips of the flywheel shaft to make them mirror smooth. The shaft tip from the factory is a bit rough.

http://youtu.be/0cogigoXJeI

Just from intuition I thought that may be the case. But can I get more specifics as to why? For example...

In 4 months you'll be lucky to mine 0.5 BTC per month because _________.  Fill in the blank.

Sorry to be a pest. I just like to know the reasoning behind what is speculated.

Reason?  Is mining dead unless you can be king of the hill in hardware? For $1,000 I could get 35-40 Gh/s. But may take 4-6 months to get...

Aha, that makes sense! Wonder if any way to find out what will ship sooner?

I don't understand the lure of the BFL larger units. For example, the 50Gh/s unit is $2,490. That is the same price as 10 Jalapeños which would put out same hash rate. If the 50Gh/s unit craps out you have nothing to mine with until repaired. With 10 Jalapenos if one goes out you are only down 10%. So other than perhaps having to yell over the sound of 10 Jalapenos running in a room, I don't get the down side. I also think when it comes time to sell them it would be easier to get a better return on the used hardware selling the cheaper Jalapenos units.

But I really can't figure out how to factor in the difficulty issue. When is the next time the payout gets reduced in half?

So here is my dilemma... I have a 25% off coupon for any purchase amount at Butterfly Labs this month. I was thinking about spending $1,000 to buy 5 more Jalapeños. Would that be a wise move? My 8570 now only breaks even with electricity cost. I'm guessing it may take 4-6 months for the new Jalapenos to arrive. In 6 more months could the Jalapenos already be almost obsolete? Right now they make about $400 a month (1 coin per week.) I don't know how often the payout is reduced and the difficulty increased to make an intelligent decision. Would I be better off to buy some other type of mining gear with the money?

LOL - Cracking up here. I think it makes a good foot warmer under the desk.

It is a shame they can't be used for more productive things when they get old. Has anyone ever calculated the computing power used to mine Bitcoins to date? I imagine it is a very large amount of "wasted" power if you exclude the benefit to the person getting the coins.

Got it from eBay for $37.99 with free shipping but it was shipped to me from Amazon which was pretty weird. At eBay search for "Brand New Low Temperature Stirling Engine Education Toy Kit Free Shipping Via US" There are some a little cheaper but I didn't want to wait a month to get it direct from China. Arrived in a couple days. Seller was "greenpoweronline".

Thanks for all the tips and links. Will be going over all of them this weekend.

Kind of freaks me out the nothingness of all of this where if something goes wrong, you can lose it all forever.

Yesterday I downloaded Multibit. It works so much better than the wallet I downloaded about 10 months ago. My old wallet took HOURS to synchronize. Multibit took a few seconds.

Dumb newbie question: If I export the privacy key from Multibit, can I use that key with any another wallet that is not the Multibit wallet? I downloaded Multibit on two laptops. Then exported the key from one laptop and used it to access my money on the other one. It worked so that gave me a bit of a sense of security that if my hard drive crashed on one computer I could still get my money using the other one. But still confused. Is the key generated by wallet programs all you need to get your money from any wallet app as long as you have the key written down? If that is the case I feel better but still takes some faith to put any significant amount of cash out there.