If USB Block Erupters are not worth the trouble, what is?

[kevinm]

The Bitfury-based USB miners look like they'll be the next "big thing" - 2.5GH/s+ on a USB stick.  I know I'll be replacing my Erupters with a rack of them.

They don't run on anything but RPi for now.

I am running 14 Bitfury USB miners on one laptop and another 98 via a motherboard.
Not a RasPi in sight   

250 Gh/s total

cheers,
kev

[BorisAlt]

Buy a 7950 GPU. When everything else fails you can still play a game of Doom.

[Maidak]

So wheres a store that actually ships the bitfury miner usb sticks?

[kano]

The Bitfury-based USB miners look like they'll be the next "big thing" - 2.5GH/s+ on a USB stick.  I know I'll be replacing my Erupters with a rack of them.

They don't run on anything but RPi for now.

I am running 14 Bitfury USB miners on one laptop and another 98 via a motherboard.
Not a RasPi in sight   

250 Gh/s total

cheers,
kev

250 / (14 + 98) = 2.2 GH/s each

As of now 2.2GH/s will make 0.00982339 BTC a day

Assuming difficulty will rise 20% each diff change (it has risen average way higher than that for the last 10 diff changes)

2.2 GH/s will make about ~ 0.54294555 BTC in 100 days
2.2 GH/s will make about ~ 0.65738121 BTC in 200 days

again they are most likely OVER estimates.

So anyone paying 0.6 BTC or more for them is most likely gonna lose.

[Bicknellski]

The Bitfury-based USB miners look like they'll be the next "big thing" - 2.5GH/s+ on a USB stick.  I know I'll be replacing my Erupters with a rack of them.

They don't run on anything but RPi for now.

I am running 14 Bitfury USB miners on one laptop and another 98 via a motherboard.
Not a RasPi in sight   

250 Gh/s total

cheers,
kev

250 / (14 + 98) = 2.2 GH/s each

As of now 2.2GH/s will make 0.00982339 BTC a day

Assuming difficulty will rise 20% each diff change (it has risen average way higher than that for the last 10 diff changes)

2.2 GH/s will make about ~ 0.54294555 BTC in 100 days
2.2 GH/s will make about ~ 0.65738121 BTC in 200 days

again they are most likely OVER estimates.

So anyone paying 0.6 BTC or more for them is most likely gonna lose.

Have you done calculations for BFL products?

[Professor James Moriarty]

 Telling someone elses product is bad doesnt make yours good.

 Yes bfl is a horrible and terrible company,

 Yes your product looks good and works good and cool.

 Yes I would buy for hobby or look reasons.

 But HELL NO your product doesnt offer any ROI whatsoever , it is expensive as hell and nothing close to being a financial investment.

 Altough when I buy a painting at a grocery store not expecting a ROI , I expect it to be a decoration , so I think your product is for decoration purposes only

[Zeek_W]

As I tend to wander a bit and find other hobbys every now and then, having a hub full of Erupters just doing their thing (and all paid for from old GPU mining funds) is nothing but fun for me and if after 6 months I come back and see some BTC sitting there, yay!

I left for a while and came back a month ago and realised my BTC from previous endeavors ($35USD at the time of my mining days) had made quite the proxy ROI. But that is debatable.

My friends do comment on the Erupters flashing away and it is a good talking point and if it gets them into the world of BTC then its for the greater good. Purhaps the value will increase again?

[kano]

The Bitfury-based USB miners look like they'll be the next "big thing" - 2.5GH/s+ on a USB stick.  I know I'll be replacing my Erupters with a rack of them.

They don't run on anything but RPi for now.

I am running 14 Bitfury USB miners on one laptop and another 98 via a motherboard.
Not a RasPi in sight   

250 Gh/s total

cheers,
kev

250 / (14 + 98) = 2.2 GH/s each

As of now 2.2GH/s will make 0.00982339 BTC a day

Assuming difficulty will rise 20% each diff change (it has risen average way higher than that for the last 10 diff changes)

2.2 GH/s will make about ~ 0.54294555 BTC in 100 days
2.2 GH/s will make about ~ 0.65738121 BTC in 200 days

again they are most likely OVER estimates.

So anyone paying 0.6 BTC or more for them is most likely gonna lose.

Have you done calculations for BFL products?

No point - they don't have a BTC price and you can't know when they will deliver - as everyone knows.
No one would buy a BFL product now with the problem of not knowing when it will be delivered.

Especially when you consider now that the current difficulty - 112,628,548.66635 - means a network hash rate of (at least) 806.2389 TH/s
Certainly well above what I thought, 5 months ago, what it would be now.

[Bicknellski]

 Telling someone elses product is bad doesnt make yours good.

 Yes bfl is a horrible and terrible company,

 Yes your product looks good and works good and cool.

 Yes I would buy for hobby or look reasons.

 But HELL NO your product doesnt offer any ROI whatsoever , it is expensive as hell and nothing close to being a financial investment.

 Altough when I buy a painting at a grocery store not expecting a ROI , I expect it to be a decoration , so I think your product is for decoration purposes only

Not the point of my post.

[operrajunk74]

Buy a 7950 GPU. When everything else fails you can still play a game of Doom.

As long as people buying alt coins, it is not bad strategy at all (considering you have cheap electricity)

[Professor James Moriarty]

 There are still people buying gpu farms and mine a lot of alt-coins and turning it back to btc or ltc. I mean ltc is just 2-3 dollars right now , consider if that skyrocketed like bitcoin right now? What would happen than? The asic mining folk will kick themselves for not investing ig scrypt as well

[jjmicmic]

alt coin with gpu cost way too much power, i tried and it didn't work out that well

[kano]

...
Not the point of my post.

Commonly known as misdirection.

[Bicknellski]

...
Not the point of my post.

Commonly known as misdirection.

You would know more about that than I would.

[reactor]

...
Not the point of my post.

Commonly known as misdirection.

So the people selling ASIC hardware are basically trying to screw people on hardware that will never ROI, the people buying ASICs are screwing themselves with machines that cannot predictably pay themselves off, and the community trumpets each new ASIC vendor that comes out even though every game in town is playing with "pre-orders".

Full stop.  

If Coinbase and BitInstant can get venture funding to the tune of several millions, and they just process payments, why doesn't venture funding go into something like a K1/N1/BE that will provide ROI based on projections?  If AM tomorrow released a product guaranteed to ROI people would buy them like hotcakes, so even if the profit point is $5 that is $5 per unit, and that is lowball.  And a few million will cover design, development, fab, testing, assembly, and boxing of a ready-to-ship product.  Then it is price based on BTC/Diff and profit away while the technology remains valid and the market remains full of suckers.

The market is ready for anyone to release *shipping now* hardware and both the manufacturer and the miner can profit, but this industry is full of greedy bastards and this has yet to happen.  It is proven people will buy working, proven hardware, even at a premium.  Charge less of a premium, be the only person selling shipping, ROI-worthy products, and you'll own the market for long enough to make cubic shit-ton of money. 

[Spendulus]

I don't understand why you NEED a Pi for the BitFurys?  That doesn't really make any sense.  Yes, the BitFury Blades, but the USB ones?  I call BS.

There are no drivers for standard computers as i know. CGminer is not able to use them nor any other miner atm.
Bitfury uses their own program called chainminer (?) for mining with them

Yes, and chainminer is currently only on the RPi.
One day that may change, but not yet.

So they can work on normal computers, and don't need a RPi?  They just need some drivers written.  Glad we sorted that one out then. 

The R Pi is a pretty 'normal computer."

[Trongersoll]

...
Not the point of my post.

Commonly known as misdirection.

So the people selling ASIC hardware are basically trying to screw people on hardware that will never ROI, the people buying ASICs are screwing themselves with machines that cannot predictably pay themselves off, and the community trumpets each new ASIC vendor that comes out even though every game in town is playing with "pre-orders".

Full stop.  

If Coinbase and BitInstant can get venture funding to the tune of several millions, and they just process payments, why doesn't venture funding go into something like a K1/N1/BE that will provide ROI based on projections?  If AM tomorrow released a product guaranteed to ROI people would buy them like hotcakes, so even if the profit point is $5 that is $5 per unit, and that is lowball.  And a few million will cover design, development, fab, testing, assembly, and boxing of a ready-to-ship product.  Then it is price based on BTC/Diff and profit away while the technology remains valid and the market remains full of suckers.

The market is ready for anyone to release *shipping now* hardware and both the manufacturer and the miner can profit, but this industry is full of greedy bastards and this has yet to happen.  It is proven people will buy working, proven hardware, even at a premium.  Charge less of a premium, be the only person selling shipping, ROI-worthy products, and you'll own the market for long enough to make cubic shit-ton of money. 

The Problem is that no machine at any price can promise a return on investment because there is an unlimited number of them and a finite number of bitcoins to be mined.

[ipxtreme]

...
Not the point of my post.

Commonly known as misdirection.

So the people selling ASIC hardware are basically trying to screw people on hardware that will never ROI, the people buying ASICs are screwing themselves with machines that cannot predictably pay themselves off, and the community trumpets each new ASIC vendor that comes out even though every game in town is playing with "pre-orders".

Full stop.  

If Coinbase and BitInstant can get venture funding to the tune of several millions, and they just process payments, why doesn't venture funding go into something like a K1/N1/BE that will provide ROI based on projections?  If AM tomorrow released a product guaranteed to ROI people would buy them like hotcakes, so even if the profit point is $5 that is $5 per unit, and that is lowball.  And a few million will cover design, development, fab, testing, assembly, and boxing of a ready-to-ship product.  Then it is price based on BTC/Diff and profit away while the technology remains valid and the market remains full of suckers.

The market is ready for anyone to release *shipping now* hardware and both the manufacturer and the miner can profit, but this industry is full of greedy bastards and this has yet to happen.  It is proven people will buy working, proven hardware, even at a premium.  Charge less of a premium, be the only person selling shipping, ROI-worthy products, and you'll own the market for long enough to make cubic shit-ton of money. 

Reactor,

I agree with you at some point at this market level of value per Bitcoin. If these units make very little BTC, and the value goes up to say $1,000 per BTC, it will pay for itself. But it would be better to by the BTC instead of buying the hardware. No one can see the future.

I see it as a hobby. Not to quit my job for.

[EzCheese]

That calculator has saved me from spending so much money.  Numbers always comes out in red! 

Getting back to the statement by ckolivas :  “Highest risk + Highest potential gain<---> Lowest risk + Guaranteed loss”

I used the calculator at http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ to see what the various hardware would produce.  I was surprised to note that even the fastest, and most expensive, unit advertised (the Virtual Mining Platinum Unit, 6 module + 6 cases) at 24,576 GHs will only be running at a profit for 8 months.  After that, the electricity costs take all of the efforts.  Note:  I don’t have a clue how accurate the calculator is, YMMV.  If the calculator is close to accurate, the days of mining for a profit are almost over. 

I keep reading about all of the PHs coming onboard and have to wonder how long it will be before I see used 500 GHs units for sale cheap.

/Frank   

[EzCheese]

I was going to say bullshit, but thought about my garage full of real gold prospecting equipment.  How much I spent vs that little vial of gold I have.  Yeah, I could find a nugget (btc hitting $1,000) and roi on gold, but we all know and keep fooling ourselves it will pan out. 

...
Not the point of my post.

Commonly known as misdirection.

So the people selling ASIC hardware are basically trying to screw people on hardware that will never ROI, the people buying ASICs are screwing themselves with machines that cannot predictably pay themselves off, and the community trumpets each new ASIC vendor that comes out even though every game in town is playing with "pre-orders".

Full stop.  

If Coinbase and BitInstant can get venture funding to the tune of several millions, and they just process payments, why doesn't venture funding go into something like a K1/N1/BE that will provide ROI based on projections?  If AM tomorrow released a product guaranteed to ROI people would buy them like hotcakes, so even if the profit point is $5 that is $5 per unit, and that is lowball.  And a few million will cover design, development, fab, testing, assembly, and boxing of a ready-to-ship product.  Then it is price based on BTC/Diff and profit away while the technology remains valid and the market remains full of suckers.

The market is ready for anyone to release *shipping now* hardware and both the manufacturer and the miner can profit, but this industry is full of greedy bastards and this has yet to happen.  It is proven people will buy working, proven hardware, even at a premium.  Charge less of a premium, be the only person selling shipping, ROI-worthy products, and you'll own the market for long enough to make cubic shit-ton of money. 

Reactor,

I agree with you at some point at this market level of value per Bitcoin. If these units make very little BTC, and the value goes up to say $1,000 per BTC, it will pay for itself. But it would be better to by the BTC instead of buying the hardware. No one can see the future.

I see it as a hobby. Not to quit my job for.