I bought a couple of Bitmain Antminer U1s and played around with mining with them.
Bought the first one 1/15/14 for $69.99
Bought the second one 2/20/14 for $48.75
I don't have records for how much I've earned with them because I tried mining on a lot of different pools (including auto-switching pools and dedicated alt-currency pools) just to see how things worked. My conservative guess is that I've made around $12-18 mining with them. I know that I earned over $6 the first month with the first miner because it was hooked up to the same pool that whole first month until I cashed out at over 0.01 btc and the bitcoin price at the time was ~$630.
Now I have them both up for sale on eBay thinking I'll get $50-70 for the lot.
I tell you all of that because it is the kind of evidence that is used to say that mining isn't profitable. But people who use this example have obviously never owned their own business, because a real business person seeing those numbers will think they look pretty good.
First off I'm not at all saying my investment in ASIC hardware was a wise one. There are better ways to get started mining than with USB miners.
Second, I'm assuming that Bitcoin will rise in value at least as fast as the difficulty rises over the long term.
Third, I'm looking at long term "wealth building" not income to pay for next months food.
Those things being said I believe I would turn an eventual (within 7-10 months) profit mining with these if I kept at it. The main reason I'm selling them is because I'm tired of "babysitting" them. Remember that time should always be figured into profit/loss.
Most any business person will say that turning a profit in less than a year is a pretty good investment. Plus I would still have an asset at the end of that year. Though they will probably only be worth $7-10 each by then.
Yes, you can make a profit mining with ASICs. but you need to think about what you want out of your investment.
Do you want income to pay bills with? Then you need to invest a lot. At least $3000 for a decent supplement to existing income, or up over $10,000 to actually pay your bills every month.
Do you want to build a small amount into something more over the long term? Buy 20 MHz on
http://pbmining.com/ for <$4 each and keep rolling your earnings into more MHz each week. Or, if you like the idea of "day trading" buy some GHz on
https://cex.io/, and trade/hash your way to more bitcoin.
I didn't make money with my equipment (though I could have if I stuck with it), but I did "profit" in a lot of knowledge because I started my little mining project that inspired me to do research. That knowledge I gained is worth a lot of money to me now. Sure, I could have done the research without "wasting" money but I doubt I would have without moving forward with the project in the first place. It's useless to steer a parked car.
Mod note: removed affiliate links.
