Is it worth it to get USB miner?

[MRKLYE]

Howdy, I'm currently mining around 50MH/s and would like to know if you guys think it would be worth it to purchase a K1 usb miner?

[Trongersoll]

Only you can decide this for yourself.

[Trillium]

Well have you read about the projected difficulty increases over the next 12 months and run some calculations with a few profitability calculators? You'll probably be very dissapointed. You'll probably not make back your initial investment (at least 0.89 BTC/ea at present).

On the other hand, if you want it for non-profit purposes then go for it.

[Moebius327]

Only if you buy 100 and get them tomorrow.

[adviceadam]

Not if you want to make money.  But if you want to help secure the network and make some of your money back, go for it.  Try paying for it in fiat and not BTC though.

[cp1]

I think a K16 is a better choice.

[polarhei]

You have to know what you are doing with. Eruptor USB may be a good idea to target...

If fiat acceptable, then you may take a try. I notice some people seeking to throw the eruptor usb away by using fiat, if you unsure, consider the general first as There are people getting tricked by some suppliers except AMD's GPU ( a form of ASIC mainly targeted in drawing with accelaration of Integer calculation)

[billotronic]

no, it is not.

[9l]

no

[sikman]

if you look around the answer will be no, you have almost 0 chance of getting back ROI in 1 year

[reactor]

I'll throw in my $0.02 about these suckers.  Short version - I've got 20 on order.

I had to turn off my GPU farm because electricity vs. difficulty vs. price of BTC means I'm losing every month.  While I'd love to believe an investment in BTC is an investment in some utopian future, I'm realistic in that I represent a group who has combined put $12k into BTC at this point, split between hardware and trading.  And that's $12k, fiat currency, meaning that at the end of the day that is our "break even" point. 

We can easily pull our $4k out of trading, that's no problem, so ROI is ensuring we're not holding BTC when the bomb drops.  But hardware is a different story -

- If you weren't in early in the game, AsicMiner blades and Avalons are either out of reach or too expensive to validate the ROI for aftermarket
- If you're ordered from BFL, you're still waiting (like me!) or have a jala or early single
- KNC is still vapor until my shares are hashing

So what's left for a miner?  FPGA or GPU.  Both are quite frankly overpriced after the AM usb miners had their price drop.  As of right now I'm in the process of selling a handful of 7970's and 7950's, if I sell each one for the price I'm asking it'll cover all 20 USB sticks (and gamers are always out there to buy 'em). 

The difference, my farm was 3.6GH/s and at my electricity rate absurd to run.  My new farm will be ~7.8GH/s, 37.8 when BFL ships, with nearly zero power draw as I can run all my AM sticks off of the home server that runs all the time anyway, so my $200 => $350 => $425 > $578 electricity bill will go back to $200 (so net +~$300 for me each month, minus obvious difficulty increase effects), no longer have the loud hum of all the gpus, no more heat, and at net zero cost above my original hardware cost because I invested in GPUs I knew I could resell.  And for the same initial hardware investment (strictly talking GPUs) I have 2x the farm power that'll be live before two more difficulty changes push through. 

Not a great investment if you're considering the ROI of *one* stick, but considering I'm effectively performing a hardware / hashrate upgrade at zero additional cost while saving on electricity, it only makes sense.

THAT SAID...

If BFL tomorrow said that they're shipping 5GH/s Jala's for $274, I'd feel like the suckers who purchased the 2BTC usb sticks (greedy freaking bastards charging that much at first) only to see people who will get theirs from BTC Guild first and cheaper.  But that's the game.  This is the ideal, if not the perfect opportunity to recoup investment, get mining again, and have some fun new tech.

That's my story.  Time for video games.

[norulezapply]

Howdy, I'm currently mining around 50MH/s and would like to know if you guys think it would be worth it to purchase a K1 usb miner?

No, not at all.

PS what on earth are you mining 50Mh/s with? And why? Surely you are just burning money unless you have free electricity.

[k9quaint]

Click on expert and look at the "break even considering reduction" field.
http://www.coinish.com/calc/#

350Mh/s @ 0.99 BTC will never break even with a 9% reduction per week.

[thegoldbug]

The calculator shows that the purchase prices has to be at $59.00 or under to ever break even at power costs of $0.10 and a 1watt draw.

[ujka]

Click on expert and look at the "break even considering reduction" field.
http://www.coinish.com/calc/#

350Mh/s @ 0.99 BTC will never break even with a 9% reduction per week.

OP is talking about K1. There are assemblers for K1 doing it for $25. It can earn maybe 0.4BTC. I don't see a point in buying those for mining for profit. It's for fun - you have a GPU hashing power in an USB stick.  Or as a gift.

[bassclef]

Gifts or novelty items are the only reasons I can think of.

[gateway]

So 10 or so would cost lets say $1000 USD.. granted the price is a bit low for btc to USD..

that gives you a guesstimated hash of 3500 Mh/s provided it can each one can do 350 Mh/s.

"The expected generation output, at 3.5 Ghps, given current difficulty of 21335329.113983 , is 0.0825016411333 BTC per day and 0.00343756838056 BTC per hour. "

so lets say btc is still at 100.. thats about $8 a day..

$1000 USD / $8 give or take is about 125 days for ROI and thats if it was 125 days of no diff change.

math is pretty simple.

[jspielberg]

So 10 or so would cost lets say $1000 USD.. granted the price is a bit low for btc to USD..

that gives you a guesstimated hash of 3500 Mh/s provided it can each one can do 350 Mh/s.

"The expected generation output, at 3.5 Ghps, given current difficulty of 21335329.113983 , is 0.0825016411333 BTC per day and 0.00343756838056 BTC per hour. "

so lets say btc is still at 100.. thats about $8 a day..

$1000 USD / $8 give or take is about 125 days for ROI and thats if it was 125 days of no diff change.

math is pretty simple.

The K1 which the OP is talking about is closer to $50, and won't be available for at least 2 weeks.  Probably looking at around 1 year to break even at $50.  That being said... $50 is much cheaper than a video card, and USB is a lot easier to deal with than PCIe risers and what not.  So... if you are just looking for giggles, a USB miner could be fun.  If you are looking for something more future looking, I would guess that 2 GH Bitfury USB miners will be available at some point... which would be just as much fun, but would help protect the network about 9x better.

[seleme]

It is for AsicMiner 

[logicbomb666]

I have one and I still think its cool.  Of course, when I first purchased it I was not expecting to get my money back from mining.