Efficient USB miners

[breyno127]

Are there still any usb miners that are still viable? I have been looking into mining bitcoin, and I am looking for a relatively low cost entry. Everything I have looked at and all the numbers I have run seem to indicate that mining is going to end up as a net loss unless I spring for one of the $700+ Miners. I don't necessarily want to make a big profit mining, I just want to break even and support the creation of new bitcoin. Are there any viable options out there?

I have looked at the 5GH/s Bi-fury miner and the HexFury USB miner, but both seem to still be a net loss.

For reference, my Electricity runs about .08 USD per kWh.

[TReano]

Hey! Welcome to the board!

Sadly the difficulty is so high that you need several bigger modern mining computer like "Antminer S7" in order to get any notable Bitcoins mined. So you have invest at least several hundred $.


There are no USB-miners anymore which would make you even 0.01btc over a longer period of time. The time when USB miner were profitable was back in 2012-2013.

[breyno127]

Thats unfortunate, but I kind of expected that. What about cloud mining services like hashnest? Does anyone have any experience with these?

[TReano]

Thats unfortunate, but I kind of expected that. What about cloud mining services like hashnest? Does anyone have any experience with these?

About cloudmining: Most services I have seen are scams at some point. I would strongly recommend to stay away from cloudmining. Either you invest in a modern high effective miner but only if your electricity costs are super low. 0.10$ is already too high, especially you have to keep in mind that the reward is going to half in summer.


I would just say forget about mining completely. It's simply too late to make any money with mining.
Buy some Bitcoins if you want to get into Bitcoin. But inform yourself about risks before investing bigger amounts of money. Bitcoin is a high risk asset(That's what most people forget when talking about bitcoin)


Have a nice day!

[winspiral]

I mine with my U2 every day 300 up 600 satoshi.
i will perhaps never see a payout.

it is why i propose a comining to few micro-miners like me...

And about cloudmining...I advice you to invest in my site "about cloudmining"
You can start for free...

[notlist3d]

The best USB miner is the compac.  But USB minerss are mainly for learning or lotto mining, you will not make ROI in most cases.  

For ROI it takes cheap electricity and a good price on miner.  What is a good price? Hard to say right now with current difficulty.  And the cloud services your mentioning if you go cloud just go hashnest.   Don't bother with some of the others, just to many scams out there.

[winspiral]

and do not hear what is always said about negative trust points...
The day you will get negative trust points for wrong things you will understand...

[AJRGale]

The next best thing is putting money into BTC itself, buy a few coins when they have a low value, sell them when the price appreciates in value, rinse'n'repeat.. or just put $20 here and $50 there into the coins, over the years as it slowly gains value, sell off.

[breyno127]

I mine with my U2 every day 300 up 600 satoshi.
i will perhaps never see a payout.

it is why i propose a comining to few micro-miners like me...

And about cloudmining...I advice you to invest in my site "about cloudmining"
You can start for free...

You see how his trust is negative? That means you shouldn't take his word as a gold standard. I would stay far away from about cloudmining and even the reputable cloudmining sites.

If you really want to play with crypto for fun I would buy a gekko stick, if you want to try and make a profit some way, I would suggest staking alt coins.

Now altcoins ARE NOT bitcoin but alternative cryptocurrency, and staking is not mining but works by usually making around a  couple % of your wallet annually. You can do this even on solar power with a battery bank if you electric is an insane amount but like you at 8 cents a kwh you're talking 3.5$ in electric for the entire year of running it on your wall socket.

You can stake with a coin and sell the stake reward for bitcoin, if you use a popular coin you can shapeshift it instantly into bitcoin.

I would be interested to know more about "staking". Is there a place I could read up on it at?

[QuintLeo]

The Sidehack/Novak "Gekko" is the most efficient stick miner in existance for SHA256 - same chip as in the Antminer S5 (so one generation old as of right now).

There is a "Moonlander" (or some name close to that) stick around for Scrypt-based coins, IIRC using the Alcheminer chip, that would be closer to "state of the art" but obviously won't mine Bitcoins.


 Proof of Stake coins (short simple explanation, details vary) pay you for having an inventory of that coin in your wallet when a block is found for that coin - kind of like an interest payment.

[leowonderful]

POS is your last bet. Gekko miner will be a net loss next difficulty (+24%). GENERALLY easy money.

[QuintLeo]

Gekko profitability, like that of any miner, depends a lot on how much you pay for electricity.

 Even an S1 is profitable right now if your electric is FREE.

[notlist3d]

Gekko profitability, like that of any miner, depends a lot on how much you pay for electricity.

 Even an S1 is profitable right now if your electric is FREE.

But you pay so much it is hard to get that initial cost.  I paid 25 per compac on batch 1 and 2 I think it was plus shipping I believe.  Chances of them mining that back  (or the amount of btc I spent on them) very slim.  It's a compac... it's made by GekkoScience  

A lot of old usb miners go for more then they are worth in mining terms.  There are some who learn with them, some who collect, and some who lotto mine.  I think unless you lotto mined and got really lucky you will never get that cost back on it unless you sold it.

They are great and I love playing with them but I just don't see profit even at free electricity.  And I'm not dogging them I love my compacs, I just knew I was going to lotto mine them as regular mining would not pay for them, so might aswell have some fun and they are very low cost to run.  A S1 and a usb compac are like apples and oranges as far as miners comparing.

[greenuser]

The best USB miner is the compac.  But USB minerss are mainly for learning or lotto mining, you will not make ROI in most cases.  

This is true but you can make your USB mining RIG run for less money if you I wise.  I use an old Ultraportable HP mini 210 with a 7inch screen.  It has a small PSU of ~30w (laptop PSUs are usually anything from 45w to 65w).  I pulled the hard drive out (so no HDD spinning around anymore which can save 10watts) and put Windows 7 starter on a 15GB USB Thumb drive.  The whole OS is less than 10GB in size.  I use this to run my stick miners and a U3 for lotto mining.  Set it up so to not shut down when you close the lid and run it shut to kill the screen (just open it now and again to see it's good).  The 30w PSU never even gets warm. 

I have an old pentium 4 style ATX where the 12v runs the U3 and the 5v runs me a HUB with a couple of Bifury twin chips in it.   
I get ~70gh for around less than 70watts at he wall all in (inc. mini laptop with lid shut).

Some people use linux on a USB as their OS for the same reason.  I couldn't get my head round linux even though i made me a USB drive with it on as there is a good readme file in cgminer-9.4.2-windows all about how to do it if you fancy a go.  Its called "linux-usb-cgminer.txt" worth a read.

It would be interesting to know how others have got on with it all.

[ezeminer]

The best USB miner is the compac.  But USB minerss are mainly for learning or lotto mining, you will not make ROI in most cases.  

This is true but you can make your USB mining RIG run for less money if you I wise.  I use an old Ultraportable HP mini 210 with a 7inch screen.  It has a small PSU of ~30w (laptop PSUs are usually anything from 45w to 65w).  I pulled the hard drive out (so no HDD spinning around anymore which can save 10watts) and put Windows 7 starter on a 15GB USB Thumb drive.  The whole OS is less than 10GB in size.  I use this to run my stick miners and a U3 for lotto mining.  Set it up so to not shut down when you close the lid and run it shut to kill the screen (just open it now and again to see it's good).  The 30w PSU never even gets warm. 

I have an old pentium 4 style ATX where the 12v runs the U3 and the 5v runs me a HUB with a couple of Bifury twin chips in it.   
I get ~70gh for around less than 70watts at he wall all in (inc. mini laptop with lid shut).

Some people use linux on a USB as their OS for the same reason.  I couldn't get my head round linux even though i made me a USB drive with it on as there is a good readme file in cgminer-9.4.2-windows all about how to do it if you fancy a go.  Its called "linux-usb-cgminer.txt" worth a read.

It would be interesting to know how others have got on with it all.

There are guides to setting up USB miners on linux.

Also A raspberry pi will cost you like $30, a decent hub would be somewhere in the $20-$30 range. I am not sure if a pi zero for $5 could do the same work, but it could be possible. Overall at like 20-30W depending on your setup.

[notlist3d]

The best USB miner is the compac.  But USB minerss are mainly for learning or lotto mining, you will not make ROI in most cases.  

This is true but you can make your USB mining RIG run for less money if you I wise.  I use an old Ultraportable HP mini 210 with a 7inch screen.  It has a small PSU of ~30w (laptop PSUs are usually anything from 45w to 65w).  I pulled the hard drive out (so no HDD spinning around anymore which can save 10watts) and put Windows 7 starter on a 15GB USB Thumb drive.  The whole OS is less than 10GB in size.  I use this to run my stick miners and a U3 for lotto mining.  Set it up so to not shut down when you close the lid and run it shut to kill the screen (just open it now and again to see it's good).  The 30w PSU never even gets warm. 

I have an old pentium 4 style ATX where the 12v runs the U3 and the 5v runs me a HUB with a couple of Bifury twin chips in it.   
I get ~70gh for around less than 70watts at he wall all in (inc. mini laptop with lid shut).

Some people use linux on a USB as their OS for the same reason.  I couldn't get my head round linux even though i made me a USB drive with it on as there is a good readme file in cgminer-9.4.2-windows all about how to do it if you fancy a go.  Its called "linux-usb-cgminer.txt" worth a read.

It would be interesting to know how others have got on with it all.

That is true I run mine with a RPI and use very little electricity.  So I'm running about as least cost I possibly can. 

Even if I overclock my compacs I will not ROI by mining them.    There is no reason to debate this.  I do admit I ROI'ed on some by selling, which was nice as I got to play with more then sell some.   I did keep some as I really like them, but only chance of ROI is if you sell for higher then you bought.

This is just true to any usb miner, they cost a lot to produce compared to hash power.

[Langly]

Thats unfortunate, but I kind of expected that. What about cloud mining services like hashnest? Does anyone have any experience with these?

About cloudmining: Most services I have seen are scams at some point. I would strongly recommend to stay away from cloudmining. Either you invest in a modern high effective miner but only if your electricity costs are super low. 0.10$ is already too high, especially you have to keep in mind that the reward is going to half in summer.

The one exception to that can be when it doubles as heating. One winter my electric bill went up by less than my heating bill dropped while using an Antminer S1 and some other stuff. Studio apartment, gas heating. Antminer and the other stuff was enough to keep the furnace off a fair bit.

[notlist3d]

Thats unfortunate, but I kind of expected that. What about cloud mining services like hashnest? Does anyone have any experience with these?

About cloudmining: Most services I have seen are scams at some point. I would strongly recommend to stay away from cloudmining. Either you invest in a modern high effective miner but only if your electricity costs are super low. 0.10$ is already too high, especially you have to keep in mind that the reward is going to half in summer.

The one exception to that can be when it doubles as heating. One winter my electric bill went up by less than my heating bill dropped while using an Antminer S1 and some other stuff. Studio apartment, gas heating. Antminer and the other stuff was enough to keep the furnace off a fair bit.

My winter bill was so high they had to split it into multiple payments....  turns out mine if I pay credit card they max out at a certain number.  I'm usually 2-3 payments even with fee's I'm better off as I get reward points.  Might be a small bonus... but a little bit of rewards.  With living on a crop farm they don't have any trouble with high usage as far as the electric company.

I don't use mine for heating though.  I have a mining area that the goal is to get the heat out of it.

[sidehack]

I haven't had any problem keeping the shop warm this winter. Course we've only had about five actually cold days so far this winter (at least here; almost literally everywhere else in the country and even my own state has been hammered with snows since November) but 100KW of miners are making short work of it.

[greenuser]

I haven't had any problem keeping the shop warm this winter. Course we've only had about five actually cold days so far this winter (at least here; almost literally everywhere else in the country and even my own state has been hammered with snows since November) but 100KW of miners are making short work of it.

My S1 and my S3 are the only heating i have.  If it hadn't been for thoes miners i would have had a very cold damp winter.  I would have run them even if bitcoin was worthless just to keep warm. Here in the UK the humidity is always high.  Gas heating adds to the condensation.  Thanks to Bitmain, I dont have to wipe the black mould from my walls anymore.  I am a very happy miner.