We can make it quick and simple:
"Why are they selling it when they could mine themselves?"
Because they have a lot of those. They can do whatever they want.
I think they are selling them because mining with it themselves is completely useless. This is obviously not for large-scale mining.
Congrats on getting them released! I have been waiting for this post for some time now. Mainly because I heard a rumour that you would be charging ~$40 per miner.
The pricing is the biggest disappointment for myself personally.
At 1.99 BTC, and a conservative estimate of 20M difficulty over the next year, it will take me 352 days to recoup the 1.99 BTC cost.
It difficulty averages 40M during that time, it will take two years to recoup your investment.
The current 14-day average increase in hash rate is
1% per day. If this rate of growth continues, these devices will only ever mine 1.5 BTC.
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Would it run on a Raspberry Pi?
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You will most likely need a powered USB hub for your Pi. The Pi itself is powered by a micro USB cable, so it depends on how much power your USB adapter powering the Pi puts out.
Awesome product.
Unfortunately, your price point is, to be blunt, retarded.
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10pcs minumum and price about 1BTC and you will have huge demand. your terms only leads to group buy and resending units between forum members.
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I believe this is exactly what they want. They're a company that produces mining hardware. How many hardware companies do you know that sell directly to consumers?
Well, considering that a video card that makes 300 MH/s is about $150 right now (My XFX 6870 from eBay used cost me $70), I'd say it's a little hefty in the price range. What does one of these draw? I'm assuming about 5 or 6 watts vs a video card's 100 or so? Big difference.
They will draw no more than 2.5W (maximum for USB 2.0 devices as per the specification)