So what the hell are we supposed to buy?

[DPoS]

the cheapest right now is the alreayd mentioned "diy miner" using avalon chips and assembled by burnin.

however, ASICminer should shortly be auctioning it's so called "honeybee" miners - single asic chips ready to plug in to a USB slot and mine at about 300mhash. the pricing is up in the air though, for now.

i can see some really cool honey bee colony setups now... 

[1715165083]

1715165083

[1715165083]

1715165083

[1715165083]

1715165083

[Hiroaki]

I think the best option is to order chips from Avalon and create a DIY miner.

At least more people move to competitors of BFL, there were just too many issues and difficulty is rising quickly...

Another option of course is just wait and have a look for new offers/players in the "ASIC world"

[arklan]

the cheapest right now is the alreayd mentioned "diy miner" using avalon chips and assembled by burnin.

however, ASICminer should shortly be auctioning it's so called "honeybee" miners - single asic chips ready to plug in to a USB slot and mine at about 300mhash. the pricing is up in the air though, for now.

i can see some really cool honey bee colony setups now... 

oh, agreed. thinking about this makes me want to shop for usb hubs... notthat i could afford a bunch right now... but still!

also, i should point out to the OP that another auction of "block erupter" blades from ASICminer has begun. these are 10 gigahash units, price to be set by the auction. last batch went for 75 btc each, and were delivered in 4 days. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=189248

[HjerterEss]

If you`re looking to get in to bitcoin mining, you are kinda stuck now. There is virtually no reason to buy a dedicated GPU miner, difficulty today is that you break even after 3-4 months. Difficulty will skyrocket with ASICs pouring in pretty soon, from BFL, from Avalon, from DYI who have preodered tens of thousands of these chips. There is also no reason to order anything from BFL or Avalon either since there is a ton of people ahead of you in line waiting for their device. So when you reach yours, the difficulty will be so high the ASICs will be just as profitable as GPU miners are now.

It looks like a dead end to me unless you snatch up a Asic miner from Ebay that either an Avalon or someone who preordered an ASIC from BFL 1 year ago since they will be the first one to get it.

Really frustrating

[TheSwede75]

So what the hell are we supposed to buy?

Bitcoin, I guess.

Seriously.  Ask the people who plunked down 150+ BTC in June 2012 for a BFL single if they today had the option would they take back the 150 BTC or would they still want deliver of their ASIC single.

Mining has very rarely returned more than 1 BTC per BTC invested.

To be fair, BFL accepts payment in USD so if you sold BTC to purchase that sure sucks but no one forced anyone to do that. I ordered Jalapenos in 2012/early-2013 for USD and am pretty sure I'll make my investment back several times over even if delivery takes 2 more months.