people buying used miners

[thresher]

I don't get it.
Perfect example is the 336 mhs usb one.  It is not worth more than $2 under the most ideal circumstance (free power.)
Yet they sell for anywhere from 5-15 and actually move. 
Wtf   
Are the parts valuable or something? 
At the rate these used mienrs move, they are going to rip more people off than mt gox  (ok exaggeration.)

 

[altenergy]

Yeah, it's crazy. I watched 38Gh/s miners go for $500+ on ebay. That's more than $12 per Gh. People buying like that are what's making the price go up. A Gh is not worth more than $3.

[irrational]

I don't get it.
Perfect example is the 336 mhs usb one.  It is not worth more than $2 under the most ideal circumstance (free power.)
Yet they sell for anywhere from 5-15 and actually move. 
Wtf   
Are the parts valuable or something? 
At the rate these used mienrs move, they are going to rip more people off than mt gox  (ok exaggeration.)

 

You're right, but keep in mind that there are a lot of people who only want to "dip their toes" in Bitcoin at first. So, buying a $15 BE off ebay is actually a sane way to do that.

Now, continuing to do that once they're ready to swim out in the deep end is wasteful.

[BitcoinWebHostingRatings]

 lol its all noobies that are being introduced to mining. Some People I know buy them for fun, though just 1-2 for entertainment

[Rannasha]

I don't get it.
Perfect example is the 336 mhs usb one.  It is not worth more than $2 under the most ideal circumstance (free power.)
Yet they sell for anywhere from 5-15 and actually move. 
Wtf   
Are the parts valuable or something? 
At the rate these used mienrs move, they are going to rip more people off than mt gox  (ok exaggeration.)

 

You're right, but keep in mind that there are a lot of people who only want to "dip their toes" in Bitcoin at first. So, buying a $15 BE off ebay is actually a sane way to do that.

Now, continuing to do that once they're ready to swim out in the deep end is wasteful.

If you want to dip your toes in, you might as well buy BTC for $15 rather than a BE. A BE will mine a couple mBTC at best.

That said, I can imagine the price for BEs to be relatively high because of the gadget factor. Many people buy one or two just for fun, realizing that they will never get anything close to their moneys worth of coins out of it.

[thresher]

So we basically have, a lack of knowledge and people that are just into the mining process.
Oh well.  Nothing we can really do about it.
I guess no used bargain deals until people wise up.     

[TechByPC]

<sarcasm>
Are you kidding!? Those things saved me hours of clicking on faucets for a slightly better return. They are a great investment!
</sarcasm>

[designfail]

Yeah, it's crazy. I watched 38Gh/s miners go for $500+ on ebay. That's more than $12 per Gh. People buying like that are what's making the price go up. A Gh is not worth more than $3.

People could mine altcoins with sha-256 equipment, just for fun.
People may not be ready to spend few K dollars for 1TH machines but $500 is ok to loose. My 2 cents.

[DebitMe]

There are actually a couple of reasons...

1) As stated above, people want to try bitcoin out.  They heard about it and instead of dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars, this is the alternative approach.

2) People will pay a premium in USD for these devices.  This could be because they do not know how to buy bitcoin or for the convenience of being able to pay in bitcoin.  Either way, there has always been a premium when paying in USD over Btc.

3) People are ignorant.  They hear about bitcoin and immediately jump in without doing their due diligence.  I have been selling the USB eruptors (among other things) on amazon for $50 to $60 a piece! (a few unfortunate souls bough new ones priced over $110) when they would make maybe .01 btc a piece in their lives.  And it wasn't like one would sell every couple of days, I was dropping off 10 to 20 packages a day at the post office.  (and since amazon doesn't let me change the shipping costs, I usually make more off of shipping costs ~$5 per device, then I do off of actually buying and selling the eruptors)

Funny story, one guy once bought 18 off of me from amazon.  He paid almost $100 for shipping that cost me under $6 to send to him.

People are just ignorant and do not do research is my thinking.  I understand it may be kind of hard to just buy bitcoin in the U.S., but with a little work and research it is not impossible.  Maybe they do not want to submit bank info, or maybe they do not want to meet someone in person?  These are both viable points, but I keep coming back to, people do not research enough before jumping in.

[Und3rd0g]

My experience is that the ebay buyers are looking to "try out" mining and don't mind paying what we see as a "premium". It's kinda sad though that there are people who take advantage of this, charge overly outrageous prices, and then brag about it.

[phillipsjk]

Yeah, it's crazy. I watched 38Gh/s miners go for $500+ on ebay. That's more than $12 per Gh. People buying like that are what's making the price go up. A Gh is not worth more than $3.

Praytell, where can I buy mining hardware for less than $3/Ghash?

Assume I don't want to budget more than $1000.

I would also comment that these devices on e-bay are "in hand", meaning they may ship in less than "two weeks".

[DebitMe]

My experience is that the ebay buyers are looking to "try out" mining and don't mind paying what we see as a "premium". It's kinda sad though that there are people who take advantage of this, charge overly outrageous prices, and then brag about it.

I would not say its sad at all.  No one forced them to buy anything I offered.  Also my margins were hundreds of percent less than most things you buy on a daily basis.  That drink from Mcdonalds or coffee from Starbucks, do you know the margins on those?  thousands of percent!!  I was only offering a product, that they would not know how to get otherwise, and since I have experience and have invested my time in the game and learned the ins and outs, I feel like I should be the one making money.  Would it be different in any other industry?  Those with the knowledge make the money, how do you gain knowledge?  You invest time and effort.  I was willing to do that, those paying high prices did not, but instead decided they would take a chance without fully understanding what they were doing.  That hardly sounds like its my fault.

[Gate559]

Yeah, it's crazy. I watched 38Gh/s miners go for $500+ on ebay. That's more than $12 per Gh. People buying like that are what's making the price go up. A Gh is not worth more than $3.

Praytell, where can I buy mining hardware for less than $3/Ghash?

Assume I don't want to budget more than $1000.

I would also comment that these devices on e-bay are "in hand", meaning they may ship in less than "two weeks".

I don't think there is such a miner. Maybe if you buy second hand, don't pay VAT and the miner eats incredible amounts of electricity. And you get it next winter.

[crazyates]

Yeah, it's crazy. I watched 38Gh/s miners go for $500+ on ebay. That's more than $12 per Gh. People buying like that are what's making the price go up. A Gh is not worth more than $3.

Praytell, where can I buy mining hardware for less than $3/Ghash?

http://www.112bit.com/product/antminer-s1-dual-blade/

Easily OC to 200GH/s. Pretty damn close.

[madbit1000]

I don't get it.
Perfect example is the 336 mhs usb one.  It is not worth more than $2 under the most ideal circumstance (free power.)
Yet they sell for anywhere from 5-15 and actually move. 
Wtf   
Are the parts valuable or something? 
At the rate these used mienrs move, they are going to rip more people off than mt gox  (ok exaggeration.)

 

You're right, but keep in mind that there are a lot of people who only want to "dip their toes" in Bitcoin at first. So, buying a $15 BE off ebay is actually a sane way to do that.

Now, continuing to do that once they're ready to swim out in the deep end is wasteful.

If you want to dip your toes in, you might as well buy BTC for $15 rather than a BE. A BE will mine a couple mBTC at best.

That said, I can imagine the price for BEs to be relatively high because of the gadget factor. Many people buy one or two just for fun, realizing that they will never get anything close to their moneys worth of coins out of it.

You forget that there are other coins that they can dip their toes into other than bitcoins. So maybe people want to try this..

[stsbrad]

What if they buy this and just let that mofo roll and go long term. Would they be stupid if in 2020 1BTC=$50,000 USD?

[TechByPC]

What if they buy this and just let that mofo roll and go long term. Would they be stupid if in 2020 1BTC=$50,000 USD?

The most often cited argument against that is that it would have been more profitable to purchase BTC with fiat now rather than a miner. For a $600 investment you return $49,400. For $600 worth of usb block erupters (30 of them?) at 10GHS you'll "never" mine 1BTC, however you'll pay roughly $100/yr in electricity at 0.15/kwh and depending on the difficulty it is debatable whether "never" is actually true. At any rate, in 6 years of mining you'll have spent $600 in electricity which is what that 1BTC would have cost you in the first place, and you wouldn't have had the hassle of babysitting them. Oh, and I also left out the cost of running a computer or PI 24/7 because some people do that anyway, yadda yadda. The argument works without factoring it in.

Now if you have cheap/free electricity and you pay for your used miners with BTC and you make some calculations about the equipment's longevity and the rate of difficulty increases, you may find that you can return a profit in BTC, which is worth it.

People were willing to "waste" electricity on computing activities such as Distributed.NET, Prime95, SETI@home, Folding@home, etc when there was no chance of seeing a positive ROI. Mining has a far better ROI (positive or not) than any of those activities, and they were in no way small endeavors.

[stsbrad]

I'm not saying he will have 1btc. I'm saying what if one = 50k in years to come. For a USB miner and just letting it roll, it's kind of like their own little mini faucet. That $10 investment was insanely easy to make and could generate a good return. I'm just trying to say some people wanna dabble in mining and see what happens without going balls deep. What have they lost if it craters?

[TechByPC]

For what it's worth, I agree with you. The novelty / geeky-fun factor is what is relevant here. Some people would run these things even if there was no hope of a profit. That there is one (hope of a profit) makes it all the more appealing.

[stsbrad]

For what it's worth, I agree with you. The novelty / geeky-fun factor is what is relevant here. Some people would run these things even if there was no hope of a profit. That there is one (hope of a profit) makes it all the more appealing.

^^^^^^^^^^ this