What is the purpose of mini/usb miners?

[blickbox]

I don't understand the purpose of these mini-miners (USB dongles etc). The metals on the circuit boards are probably worth more than it's possible to mine, so profit is obviously not the purpose? What am I missing? Are people really putting these to work for $1 a year, and losses in electricity?

[1715295065]

1715295065

[1715295065]

1715295065

[wavelengthsf]

They're fun to learn about mining and ASICs without investing a ton in hardware.

They also work great as a solo lottery, or to mine altcoins.

[mocacinno]

I don't understand the purpose of these mini-miners (USB dongles etc). The metals on the circuit boards are probably worth more than it's possible to mine, so profit is obviously not the purpose? What am I missing? Are people really putting these to work for $1 a year, and losses in electricity?

There are several purposes for such a mining device:

• Some of these usbminers were once profitable (albeit, this is no longer the case)
• They make great learning tools
• They can be used for testing, for example when you're developing new pool software
• They can be used as lotto mining devices (altough the odds of hitting a block are really low)
• They can be used to insta-mine a new altcoin
• They can be used as a conversation starter, for example: if one of your friends sees a comaq's flashing light and asks what that's for, you can start a conversation about bitcoin
• They do quite well on some testnets, not bitcoin's testnet specifically, but other ones

[leowonderful]

They’re fun to run and they’re also nice collectibles. I have a long obsolete Block Erupter I bought from 2013 and I only keep it to remind myself of the old times. They also look pretty nice as display units. Then you have lottery mining too with more recent sticks. Mostly I like them because they aren’t as plug and play as the big miners nowadays and it brings us miners back to the days when huge miners didn’t exist.

[blickbox]

Thanks a lot It makes sense now

[g0atios]

I like to plug mine in and tell my friends I'm hacking the NSA and these are special hardware to break their cipher... or a good paperweight

I try to jump on new altcoins when they come out but I'm always too late

More of a novelty now I guess than anything

[monkeydominicorobin]

I don't understand the purpose of these mini-miners (USB dongles etc). The metals on the circuit boards are probably worth more than it's possible to mine, so profit is obviously not the purpose? What am I missing? Are people really putting these to work for $1 a year, and losses in electricity?

It is popular because it is the cheapest. They just don't care about profitability they just want the experience of mining instead of wasting money on cloud mining scams. Besides bitcoin is going to the moon. So who cares if you earn cents worth bitcoin from little miners. Bitcoin is going to the moon or so we think.