Meanwhile, people are paying lots of money for squirt guns, thinking they'll get rich...

The games people play to try and pretend the USB miners are worth buying make the games that crashed the economy in 2008 look like child's play...

Solar is not "free power" if you calculate the system costs in...

There is not one available that is expected to be profitable to run. The only question is how much you will lose.

I can't speak for Litecoin but they're worthless for bitcoin mining right now.

There are plenty of "plug and mine" boxes.

There are no "plug and mine" boxes available currently for anything that may remotely resemble a reasonable return in bitcoin.

Any "plug and mine" box that may actually be worth running is a preorder that may or may not ship.

USB miners won't do scrypt.

A GPU is not a USB device.

Have you relaxed your original requirements?

I'm in.   And let me know when you're selling.

In general, I agree with your analysis, and think it's quite reasonable.

However, there really aren't only two options one is forced to take - there is a third, the "Do nothing" or "Buy and hold" option.

If one assumes based on observation that a large number of people will buy miners trying to get ahead, "buy and hold" is the winning option.  Or just hold, if it's bitcoin holdings to start with.

I expect mining to level off eventually (a long while from now - 2-3 years total) with industrial miners (so industrial power built in very cheap electricity areas, racks with power supplies per rack, possibly oil cooling to reduce operating temperatures for overclocking, and generally a PUE around 1.1 or better) barely profitable.  I don't see a way for an individual at home to compete with this profitably.

I expect within another 6 months, the Avalon chips won't be worth running.

There is no publicly available USB based miner that can do scrypt/litecoin.

Your request for a USB miner, capable of doing litecoin, for under USD$100, is currently impossible to fill.

Any sort of FPGA litecoin miner, when available, will require RAM as well as the FPGA, and will be over $100.  Also, this does not yet exist in a public form.

"So long and thanks for all the bitcoin"?

There's still flow into the dividend account, at least.

No, it's not.

The value is in the mined coins, in securing the network, or in some combination of those.

"It's not worth running but I will continue doing so as a donation to the network security" is a reasonable position.

"It's not worth running so I will sell off my hardware" is also a reasonable position, and one I've taken with my FPGAs.

"It's not worth running but Flowers and Puppies and Infinite Bitcoin Price Rises will make it worth it!" is somewhere between insanity and stupidity.  Sadly common, though.

The current market for ASICs only makes sense if you assume that a large percentage of buyers are actually acting irrationally.  It's a weird market to predict now.

Are you selling it?  If not, why did you post?  I'm not looking for 7990s.

I am not unless you are willing to go below $250.  It has a weird aftermarket style cooler that does not work well in server chassis for cooling.

I think some variety of math.  I really don't know.  Don't care either.

You do realize that the shovel sellers were the most successful businesses in the various gold rushes, and that several large businesses and fortunes were created by selling shovels instead of mining gold?

Same thing applies...

No. I'm interested in 7970s only. I'm not mining with them.

The good news is that the thief won't be able to get the fiat out for months...

I'm interested in picking up one of the WebPack supported ZTEX boards (so LX75 or below).  I'd prefer one with RAM onboard, though that's not strictly required.

Looking to pay with PayPal or bitcoin.

Pretty much what the topic says.

I'm offering PayPal or Bitcoin for your 7970s.  $250/card, shipped to 98033 (USA).

The card has to WORK - I 'm not interested in broken or glitchy cards.  I will be testing all cards that come in with a burnin cycle consisting of compute and correctness checking in standard ambient conditions.

PM me if you're interested.