people buying used miners

[Crindon]

Some may just be a novelty. The hash rate just isn't profitable. Sentimental value perhaps?

[anyone4u]

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

entertainment purposes = wow, look every month i'm loosing money to energy cost and I overpaid for the amount of coins I am getting? wtf

[johnsl]

The increasing difficulty and reducing payout per block mean that Block Erupters already have a trivial value and will fairly quickly be entirely worthless. There is no 'leave it on and after a long time it will return something'.

I did some calculations last Monday (St. Patrick's day - I'm Irish) :

If I started mining (24/7) with a Block Erupter on March 17th then the Bitcoin returns would be :
In 1 month : 0.0011 BTC   =  USD 0.69
In 3 months : 0.002357 BTC  =   USD 1.48
in 1 year : 0.003549 BTC  =  USD 2.22
in 2 years : 0.003603 BTC  = USD 2.26

So it will earn only 4 US cents from Paddy's day 2015 to Paddy's day 2016 (and use 43Kwh of electricity in doing it - not including the power costs of the infrastructure)

There are approximations in this (pool type - hardware growth [i.e difficulty changes] etc) - but if anything they are conservative as the more power that comes on stream the higher the difficulty curve goes and the sooner these little USB miners become completely worthless as miners. 

The residual value from selling the BEs on Ebay is by far the most significant factor in their current value - so sell 'em while they're still worth something.

The same maths worth for any  piece of mining hardware - the only question is where on the curve it is - but pretty much everything on sale on Ebay (even the newest, fastest and least power hungry of the USB miners) is selling for more than its medium turn return and most are selling for more than their total future return.

And if the underlying belief is that BTC will increase in value enough to make it worth while - then the correct response is to invest in existing Bitcoin.

John SL

[TRSundown]

I just started mining. I bought an Antminer U1 (1.6GH/s) off Amazon. I think I paid around $60 which was more than I should have... I found some later for around $40... but it got my foot in the door and helped me to figure out how this stuff all works, or at least gave me the illusion of understanding! 

Once I got a little comfortable with it I bought a 5 blade BTC Garden Miner setup that runs at about 40GH/s total. I just got it up and running a few hours ago. I'm going to let that run for a few weeks to see if it measures out relatively close to the estimating calculators online. After that I plan on investing into several Antminer S1's that run at 180GH/s...

So far so good... Just trying to better understand how the luck works and the best way to manage my miners. But those little USB things is how I got started...

Brandon

[Skaterdiejosh]

The key to being successful or at least make back what you invested is to only mine for about 45-90 days max then sale on eBay.. Then take all the bitcoin you mined plus the money from sales on eBay and upgrade to the next best miner.. This is the only way to keep up with the difficulty rise and stay in the game.. We are getting close to a point where its going to slow down some with the advancement in hashing power making it more modular so you can keep building on what you got allready going. After 20mm miners are more wide spread I see it pretty hard to get much more hashing power for what technology we have available. Under .5 watts per Gh/s will be hard to beat I think...

[flounderella]

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

LOL

[Relnarien]

If you're mining Bitcoin with USB ASICs, then you're doing it wrong. There are other SHA256 coins which offer a faster RoI. Mining newly launched coins for speculative purposes also speeds up getting your RoI by at least a factor of 5 (based on my experience, not generalized facts).

[flounderella]

If you're mining Bitcoin with USB ASICs, then you're doing it wrong. There are other SHA256 coins which offer a faster RoI. Mining newly launched coins for speculative purposes also speeds up getting your RoI by at least a factor of 5 (based on my experience, not generalized facts).

I like to have one or two of my old USBs solo mining. I know I know, the odds are ridiculous but just for fun

[tzortz]

Are we talking for the usb miners only?

[flounderella]

Are we talking for the usb miners only?

I think they are all overpriced on ebay and will never make ROI... but as a hobbyist, thats probably the only way to buy a 1TH machine quickly like a KnC. For ROI, I'll stick with products that actually deliver on time like Antminer S1s instead of Ebay. Also beware of scams on ebay especially when people try to sell you their pre-orders from BFL and such. These forums are full of sorry tales of getting scammed on them.

And use common sense. If a machine was making ROI and tons of BTC, why on earth would anyone sell it to you?

As far as USB ones go, remember you can buy them brand new for $15 a piece at today's BTC/USD price. Anything above that is you throwing your money away. It's still too pricey for me (price per ghs) but someone is buying these for sure

https://bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020140227111546291QgbvQbVr06FB

[phillipsjk]

The residual value from selling the BEs on Ebay is by far the most significant factor in their current value - so sell 'em while they're still worth something.

They may have some collector's value as well.

[tzortz]

The residual value from selling the BEs on Ebay is by far the most significant factor in their current value - so sell 'em while they're still worth something.

They may have some collector's value as well.

When bitcoin is over , you mean?

[waldox]

met  a few miners at the local bitcoin meetup

there are miners who learned about bitcoin and want to contribute, or want to try it out for fun, so they spend a couple hundred to check it out

bitcoin is a movement and it engrosses people who learn about it.

money is a side effect for many people.

[nlsupernova]

People who pay those prices are often new miners who dont understand the difficulty.
And the fact that most calculators only show current revenue. Or even worse, just multiply current value into the future. Asuming a year from now a miner makes the same amount of btc per month as it does now.

The only decent calculator i found until now is on the second page of google. The rest of the calculators are garbage or plain misleading. But most people use the ones on top of googles listings and are paying prices based on false information.

[jeppe]

for the people selling on ebay you have to add the fees.

[nlsupernova]

for the people selling on ebay you have to add the fees.

In auction prices are also often insane, and those are set by buyers who dont care about the sellers fees.

[EvilPanda]

If you're mining Bitcoin with USB ASICs, then you're doing it wrong. There are other SHA256 coins which offer a faster RoI. Mining newly launched coins for speculative purposes also speeds up getting your RoI by at least a factor of 5 (based on my experience, not generalized facts).

I like to have one or two of my old USBs solo mining. I know I know, the odds are ridiculous but just for fun

Good job. Those USB miners are also great gifts that introduce people into mining I gave some of my units to friends to let them experiment and decide if they want to invest.

[go4nature]

Still many people think that bitcoin rice will reach $10000 with in two years.They just want to get in to mining. But they don't understand the current situation.

[nlsupernova]

if you need a rise in btc prices to roi your miner you shoulnd`t buy it. just buy some btc and hold it. buying a miner only makes sence if it wil produce more btc then you can currently buy with that money.

[Und3rd0g]

if you need a rise in btc prices to roi your miner you shoulnd`t buy it. just buy some btc and hold it. buying a miner only makes sence if it wil produce more btc then you can currently buy with that money.

+1