Advice for newbie mining please

[fasteddie9987]

I've been thinking about mining but I only have a laptop. I have a raspberry pi and I've seen videos of people using them to mine bitcoins.  If i can convert the pi to mining needs and get say about £200-£300 worth of asic miners to start off ebay, would I see any financial return?  I know i probably wouldn't make anything from mining bitcoin with such low mining power but could I from other cryptos? Oh and my internet connection is only wifi so I cant use an ethernet cable if that makes a difference?

Any help much appreciated

[fozler]

Probably not anymore. Those days are over. Considering just buying a few bitcoins you'll probably be better off.

[EMIYA]

Better to just buy bitcoins or use cloud mining.
Difficultly is high up right now that you'd need dedicated mining rigs which is a lot of electricity.

[sully9]

I'm new to the game myself, but from what I've gathered the Bitcoin mining train has come and gone, at least without a pretty serious hardware investment. I think the best bet is to hop onto a fresh alt and hope it flies, and make sure you have fun in the process  

[alose]

Its totaly possible to still make money with asic, just not mining bitcoin. There are other coins and if you get that amount of hardware you are looking at likely 6gh and thats about $1/day

[colinfx]

Focus on altcoins and you can make a few $, hold on to them and you might get lucky with some of them. I've learnt you need a lot of gear in the BTC game and the returns are timely and low.

I just got in a week or so ago, I accept I missed the BTC boat. But if you believe in BTC then the altcoins will ride on the coat tails of BTC's success and so you have a chance of getting some action by getting in cheap and the coins you mine after the hardware cost are free anyway, and it's fun too.

The early BTC miners took a leap of faith and made a fortune. To make a fortune, it takes such a leap. Enjoy the ride and you might make some money along the way

[Damnsammit]

Snag up some used GPUs and build a Scrypt rig... or get down on a legit group-buy for a CoinTerra machine if you want to do the ASIC thing.  The latter is more risky, but those are pretty much the only two possibilites of profitting.

If it's just for a new hobby, then I'd reccomend GPU mining Scrypt... it's more fun to me, but I imagine I would shit a brick if I had a device hashing SHA256 at 2TH/s

[fasteddie9987]

Which other alt coins could I could mine with asics and make a profit are are they all needing big boy rigs now?
Scrypt based is probably my best bet looking at other posts by you guys but could I do this with my Pi?
I'm on a strict budget so can only afford to spend around £200-£300 on equipment. 

  

[Damnsammit]

Which other alt coins could I could mine with asics and make a profit are are they all needing big boy rigs now?
Scrypt based is probably my best bet looking at other posts by you guys but could I do this with my Pi?
I'm on a strict budget so can only afford to spend around £200-£300 on equipment. 

  

No way to mine Scrypt with a Pi that I am aware of... got any spare PC parts laying around?

You can probably find everything you need on this forum.  You can get a used 5850 for $60-80, and should be able to find a cheap mobo/cpu/ram solution, then throw a cheap PSU on there and an old harddrive and you will be good to hash away Scrypt at ~340kH/s

It's not much but it's certainly a good place to start! 

[fasteddie9987]

Which other alt coins could I could mine with asics and make a profit are are they all needing big boy rigs now?
Scrypt based is probably my best bet looking at other posts by you guys but could I do this with my Pi?
I'm on a strict budget so can only afford to spend around £200-£300 on equipment. 

  

No way to mine Scrypt with a Pi that I am aware of... got any spare PC parts laying around?

You can probably find everything you need on this forum.  You can get a used 5850 for $60-80, and should be able to find a cheap mobo/cpu/ram solution, then throw a cheap PSU on there and an old harddrive and you will be good to hash away Scrypt at ~340kH/s

It's not much but it's certainly a good place to start! 

Thanks for your help.  I'll read up a little more on this then I'll be back to ask more questions 

[oneword]

If you want to mine like bitcoin coins try and find other coins that use the sha256 algo instead of scrypt you wouldn't be able to mine much with a ras pie or your laptop. If you are mining scrypt get a 7970 graphics cards or a r9 280X and start mining litecoin, world coin, peercoin and other scrypt coins. Mining is dead for home users unless it's a new coin like dogecoin.

[alose]

Home mining isnt dead, its just what you are willing to accept. Home bitcoin mining paid about what home litecoin mining does now on a $/day/coin basis. Its just now 2 years later you see that those few dollars in coins are now worth way more.

[rothnarge]

Newbie myself but I just got an Antminer U1 off ebay for $90 it is running on Win7 at 1.6G as advertised. In BTCGuild pool, I want to get it set up on my RaspPI $35 and a powered USB hub $15.
Total invest $140 if I set and forget it(not really) I should be able to make some coin. I'm not expecting to quit my day job. Power usage is minimal. It mines NameCoin while mining BitCoin.
I was running my pc with a AMD6870 getting Litecoin but it is a power hog, plus you kill your video card.

Just being an optimistic Newbie/hobbist
Roth

[Superdaan]

One avenue to also consider is to build a cheap scrypt mining rig and point it to a coin-switching pool such as middlecoin, which mines the most profitable alt coin at the time and exchanges + pays out automatically in BTC at the end of the day (or after 7 days if your balance is low). That way you don't have to worry about what coin to mine and you still get some BTC.

[cp1]

Newbie myself but I just got an Antminer U1 off ebay for $90 it is running on Win7 at 1.6G as advertised. In BTCGuild pool, I want to get it set up on my RaspPI $35 and a powered USB hub $15.
Total invest $140 if I set and forget it(not really) I should be able to make some coin. I'm not expecting to quit my day job. Power usage is minimal. It mines NameCoin while mining BitCoin.
I was running my pc with a AMD6870 getting Litecoin but it is a power hog, plus you kill your video card.

Just being an optimistic Newbie/hobbist
Roth

That'll only make about $35 in today's dollars

[Kenshin]

You will better off, if you buy bitcoin instead of mining.

[BitThink]

If you want to make profit, just buy bitcoin with the budget for buying ASIC. If you love mining, then go for the ASIC and considering it as a game cost money but there's some subsidy.


No altcoin is more profitable than BTC if you are using ASIC.

[fasteddie9987]

I'm thinking I might just have a go for fun with a usb miner for bitcoin.  The rent I pay includes electricity so I don't have to worry about paying those costs but a litecoin rig would probably upset my landlord a little.  I know I won't make much but I'm going to look at it as an opportunity to learn something new and it'll count as a new hobby .  I'll get to use my raspberry pi for something cool too. 

If I got myself a couple of ant miners, could I then add say one of those cheaper usb miners at a later stage to the same rig or do they all have to be the same type?

[Damnsammit]

I'm thinking I might just have a go for fun with a usb miner for bitcoin.  The rent I pay includes electricity so I don't have to worry about paying those costs but a litecoin rig would probably upset my landlord a little.  I know I won't make much but I'm going to look at it as an opportunity to learn something new and it'll count as a new hobby .  I'll get to use my raspberry pi for something cool too. 

If I got myself a couple of ant miners, could I then add say one of those cheaper usb miners at a later stage to the same rig or do they all have to be the same type?

You can add both types of miners.  No issues there.  As long as it's just for a hobby, then go for it.  Just don't expect to make any significant amount of money.  If nothing else, you will have succesfully turned cash into some Bitcoin with your hobby.  And yeah, you would have been able to buy more Bitcoin with your cash than you will mine, but it's your choice and mining can be a fun little hobby

Good luck!

[avw1982]

I'm started wit FTC and now i'm mining EAC.