Is most ASIC mining a scam?

[Aubis2]

I have really been wanting to get into mining BTC for a while now but from what I have seen a lot of the cheap miners seem like they will never pay for themselves. Then there are the ones that cost 2k+ that would pay for themselves in about a week or 2.
 - Why do these companies that make ASIC miners just use the technology for themselves to mine bitcoins if it pays for itself so quickly(at the current cost of bitcoins)?
 - What is the best ASIC miner for someone getting started.(would like 5 or so between different price ranges.)
 - Is Xtreme Miners a legitimate business selling ASIC miners?
 - Risks of ASIC mining?
Thank you in advance if anyone responds to this thread.

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[imbladednow]

Then there are the ones that cost 2k+ that would pay for themselves in about a week or 2.

These does not exist yet. You have to preorder and hope for delivery + hope difficulty does not increase too much

[shorena]

-snip-
 - Why do these companies that make ASIC miners just use the technology for themselves to mine bitcoins if it pays for itself so quickly(at the current cost of bitcoins)?

What makes you think they dont? Also selling the Miners is safe money, while Mining is unrealiable. There is this saying "not the average gold miner became rich durring the gold
 rush but those that sold the shovels"

- What is the best ASIC miner for someone getting started.(would like 5 or so between different price ranges.)
 - Is Xtreme Miners a legitimate business selling ASIC miners?

No Idea

- Risks of ASIC mining?
Thank you in advance if anyone responds to this thread.

The main risk is the rising diffculty. What looks profitable now may cost you more in electricty in 2 months than you get back in BTC.

[bosco2010]

Check out bitcoin wisdom's calculator:  http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

Assuming it takes 90 days to actually get your rig, set it up, and start mining, there's really no way to make money with these things.  Also, most of these machines require you to pre-order.  So you're locked in on the cost just waiting weeks or months for delivery.  Not to mention the power costs could change and there's always a chance of an outage too.

[keeffy]

Out of interest does anybody know anything about Xtreme Miners?
They claim to have 3 machines coming out in Jan/Feb 2014? 2 of them are listed as faster, cheaper, and using less power than the Neptune, whats the catch?  or is this a scam? Please does anybody have any hard facts or advice about Xtreme Miners machines?
Any advice most appreciated.

[SamCyanide]

Be very careful who you buy from.

If you want a BFL ASIC, do not buy from butterfly labs. I bought one back in February and it only arrived a few weeks ago.

This has caused me to lose a massive amount. It will take me quite a while until I can pay off the cost, and I probably won't make much after that.

If you are looking for an ASIC, buy it from someone that has it, and can ship it fast. (One example is the block erupters, which are a little slow for what they cost, and would take quite a while to return their investment cost, but you can get them fast so they would have been good a few months ago)

[hoewer4what]

- Risks of ASIC mining?

Noone knows how many preorders are waiting to be delivered, so the more people mine the less you can mine Bitcoins yourselves. This is because only 25 BTC can be mined every 10 minutes

[otsaku]

Before starting mining I read a lot about the process mostly on return of investment.

Then there was all the articles about Bitcoin and the opinions of financial "experts". I'd followed Bitcoin for a couple of years mainly because it was decentralized and lends itself well to my political leanings.

But the whole argument as to whether Bitcoin would become a viable currency was based on the dollar rate rather than the value the community placed on it.

I bought some usb erupters - 50 - and got mining, on the basis that my return of investment was long term.

Then Bitcoin hit $300, then $1000 and mining equipment shot up in price. I secured two jalapenos at a reasonable price, just bought a 30ghs Cube and think that long term they will pay for themselves.

The trick as I see it - is there is no trick, you either put your faith in Bitcoin long term and expect that your investment pays off eventually or you go for the quick buck. The last will see you paying a lot more for mining equipment than the first.

My usb erupters didn't pay for themselves mining but on resale I got my initial investment back. The jalapenos are working away and I'm getting around 0.008 Bitcoins a day. I'm not going to get rich in the short term and probably not in the long term but I'm having fun and haven't risked any money I can't afford to lose.

I saved my liver from two bottles of GOOD single malt and got into mining.

Don't risk what you can't afford - don't think cause Bitcoin is around 900 again that you can make a shitload of money in february when the new equipment starts coming. Invest in bitcoin for bitcoin and not for the dollars..?

[jones31]

Before starting mining I read a lot about the process mostly on return of investment.

Then there was all the articles about Bitcoin and the opinions of financial "experts". I'd followed Bitcoin for a couple of years mainly because it was decentralized and lends itself well to my political leanings.

But the whole argument as to whether Bitcoin would become a viable currency was based on the dollar rate rather than the value the community placed on it.

I bought some usb erupters - 50 - and got mining, on the basis that my return of investment was long term.

Then Bitcoin hit $300, then $1000 and mining equipment shot up in price. I secured two jalapenos at a reasonable price, just bought a 30ghs Cube and think that long term they will pay for themselves.

The trick as I see it - is there is no trick, you either put your faith in Bitcoin long term and expect that your investment pays off eventually or you go for the quick buck. The last will see you paying a lot more for mining equipment than the first.

My usb erupters didn't pay for themselves mining but on resale I got my initial investment back. The jalapenos are working away and I'm getting around 0.008 Bitcoins a day. I'm not going to get rich in the short term and probably not in the long term but I'm having fun and haven't risked any money I can't afford to lose.

I saved my liver from two bottles of GOOD single malt and got into mining.

Don't risk what you can't afford - don't think cause Bitcoin is around 900 again that you can make a shitload of money in february when the new equipment starts coming. Invest in bitcoin for bitcoin and not for the dollars..?

So , It was far better if you would have invested in bitcoins from the start.
If instead of buying some worthless usb eruptors you would have bought bitcoins , you could have made 8 times the amount.
Also you managed to get your investment back only because of the bitcoin rise in price.

Based on your strategy I would advise against buying minign equipment , or at least , that kind of mining equipment.

[Alvara80]

The problem with block eruptors is that the cheap ones aren't so cheap anymore. I bought 8x 333 MH for between $24 and $33. There was a time they were cheaper. It's taken me a couple weeks to pay off even one of them.
Now they are upwards of $70 or more. Haven't looked in a couple days. I'm contemplating resaling them and just buying btc's. lol

The 2+ GH ones are a little pricy.

Now if you had really wanted a cheapish asic. BFL had a sale on Black Friday, that you could have had one for ?20%? off that was guaranteed to receive by xmas. Their old models. Supposedly they are completely caught up on pre orders at the moment for last years model. I'd be wary buying the 50GH but the 5 GH that you could have briefly got for ~$200 would have been nice. 5 GH seems to be no longer available.

The final thing you need to understand. If all the release schedules come true. At the end of February and into March. The difficulty will go through the roof. So these baby asic's are not going to be good for much.

Reasons to run an asic miner even at a slight loss is a philosophical reason. Due to the nature of the algorithm, someone could take over the network if they get more than 50% of the hashing rate. If they chose. So you buying and running even a cheap asic is your own little contribution to make sure it doesn't happen.

I preordered the Black Arrow Prospero X-1 (100Gh/s) from http://www.minersource.net/mining-hardware/

Regards.

[driver]

The reason you can not buy a fast machine without waiting for 3 months or a year  is because these manufacturers know that stocking this equipment could be a very bad move since this whole mining thing is likely to come to a very quick end soon . Why build a thousand units and not be able to sell them all because difficulty went up too high or bitcoin price dropped to too low or the company down the street sells theirs for a lot less . Better to make you pay up front for what they do not have so you take the screwing not them .
 I almost ordered from scam artists BFL until I started reading what must be many thousands of complaints on them .
 Then you have people pushing coreminer . Very risky business there for sure . But then someone has to take the first leap into the darkness . I am not brave enough myself .
 hashfast , might be okay for the price if they actually deliver then in 4 months and not a year.

[lordoliver]

I bought a 25GH miner in April from Butterfly Labs. It came 2 weeks ago.
When I ordered it, I would have earned about 0,25 btc a day. When I got it, I only earned about 0,02 a day, less than 1/10.´
As difficulty goes even higher at the beginning of the next year it will take more power for the amount of btc, than the btc can ever be worth.
There is always better and better hardware out there.
At the moment you can't buy, because all companys prefer to use their hardware themselves, until the profit is not worth it any more...
Why should a company sell something, what gives them more profit, if they use it themselves?

You have to wait, until we come to a point, where the hardware doesn't get better. I think this will take at least another one or two years.
Then the hashing rate maybe won't increase any more and you can buy a steady income machine. With very less income per $ spent, but for a very long time.
Maybe we will even never get to this point, because also on cpu speeds we thought there will be and end somewhen and there was not for 30+ years now...

[jones31]

The reason you can not buy a fast machine without waiting for 3 months or a year  is because these manufacturers know that stocking this equipment could be a very bad move since this whole mining thing is likely to come to a very quick end soon . Why build a thousand units and not be able to sell them all because difficulty went up too high or bitcoin price dropped to too low or the company down the street sells theirs for a lot less . Better to make you pay up front for what they do not have so you take the screwing not them .
 I almost ordered from scam artists BFL until I started reading what must be many thousands of complaints on them .
 Then you have people pushing coreminer . Very risky business there for sure . But then someone has to take the first leap into the darkness . I am not brave enough myself .
 hashfast , might be okay for the price if they actually deliver then in 4 months and not a year.

That could be a reason if we talk about normal companies.
In short most asic manufacturers don't have the money to produce thee equipment without pre-orders.
They need those money to start acquiring the parts and then start shipping.

If we're gonna have a successful company , they might be able to produce enough asic to have them in stock. But they currently don't have the resources for it.
Also , with pre-orders already bought for products that will ship in march or april , stocking isn't that easy...

[jones31]

The problem with block eruptors is that the cheap ones aren't so cheap anymore. I bought 8x 333 MH for between $24 and $33. There was a time they were cheaper. It's taken me a couple weeks to pay off even one of them.
Now they are upwards of $70 or more. Haven't looked in a couple days. I'm contemplating resaling them and just buying btc's. lol

The problem with block eruptors is that they aren't miners.
At the price per GH , you can consider them some novelty or a cool keychain that you cam play with it when you're bored.
Even at 20$ , that would make it 60$ per GH , I won't even dare to compare it to a Knc miner.

[Septimus]

It's hard to tell what exactly is a 'scam' in this gold rush. There are at least a few developers who have released products with (satisfied?) customers to testify for their reliability. Just like in any newly formed industry, there are predators and there are prey. You have to be cautious and do your homework before throwing your money into the sarlacc pit and hoping it poops out a big golden turd.

We have to ask ourselves where these companies came from and what their history in the chip manufacturing business is. Did they just start from scratch? Do they have some history in chip making? Why are they just appearing out of nowhere? Obviously they have some money somewhere, or they wouldn't be able to start developing and mass producing chips on a whim. The entire concept of Bitcoin sounds like a scam to me; anonymous man develops the algorithm, and then the world sets to work making it popular with no backing whatsoever other than processing power and interest. The federal government then publicizes it and suddenly we have people scrambling to buy from anonymous start-up businesses banking quite possibly millions in a very short amount of time. Someone has created a need and a million dollar industry out of thin air. That's a pretty amazing feat.

[kolesozw]

I preffer to wait the companny really deliver without delay first, then Im comfortable to preorder in 2nd batch.

[redresolve]

Youtuber mjlorton does a good review over the Butterfly labs miner. You should check it out