evening all
some advise will be greatly appreciated please.
Ive been looking at the possibility of BTC mining but dont really have the funds to buy expensive equipment.
Really like the easy to use interface of BitMinter so am very keen to try this but wanted to know whats the minimum hash rate I need to be outputting to see some sort of return after electricity etc?
Would starting off with say a usb block erupter at 333 be ok or should I at least go for the one that gives around 1.6? The USB miners appeal to me more due to space issues.
many thanks
I like the antminers I have, but they won't work with the bitminter client yet. I found them at Amazon through Jones gear for about $65 each shipped free if you don't mind waiting. You might be able to find similar pricing on ebay, or check to see if anyone is selling them cheaper in the forum here, but most of those guys only take bitcoin as payment. If bitcoin prices go up you should get your money back, but realistically, you'd probably be better off just buying the bitcoin rather than mining. With some luck though you could buy the miners get a some partial coins in 2-3 months and maybe sell the miner at that point for close to what you paid for it and pocket a little bitcoin too. No way to know what the ants will be selling for then though, so you may lose money overall. There's a real problem with bitcoin mining at the moment, the cost of the hardware is so high and difficulty is increasing so fast it'll be hard to make your money back. It's hard to blame the manufactures really, though plenty of people still do, there seem to be plenty of people willing to pay for the miners at prices where they won't get their money back, so why discount them. That and the manufacturers could just plug their own products in and make the money themselves without selling at all, so they price them where it's worth it to sell them rather than mine themselves.
it is still kinda fun though.

And if the price of bitcoin continues to go up you'll still do just fine.
Korxax
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I had a great time building a rig from a raspberry pi and mining with ASIC Sapphires. I eventually collected 15, 7 of witch were on my windows pc with bitminter, SO EASY TO USE. I got them when the BC was in turmoil for 10 bucks a piece (miners, not BC) so it was easy to get my money back on that. I only sold half back before they were made obsolete by the antminer so now i'm right back into the game, waiting on a few units (antminers) to show up, with one already running alongside 8 ASICMINERS. I use my BC to buy stuff from some electronics stores that accept them directly as payment. I am still a super noob when it comes to all things mining. Korxax has got the right idea for anyone wanting to start out the easiest way but it only takes a few google searches to get an antminer going for quite a better deal per GH/s. I justified a lot of my spending as 'learning linux' since i mine mostly using pi's now, but it's all really just copied and pasted from smarter people's websites. I guess I just wanted to reassure you that it IS possible to get your money back, but mostly from reselling your hardware. If you're like me at all I'll warn you now it can be VERY addicting, even when i'm just mining 5GH/s (for now, mwahaha). Anyway, MAD love to bitminter for getting me into the hobby.
Peace, everybody, hope i can make some friends here in the community!