Re: What hardware would be best for a hobbyist?

I just picked up an Antminer S1 on ebay for the cheapest price I could find (including shipping). Also not expecting to make ROI, hopefully somewhere above 60% ROI for the total amount I have invested in various bitcoin mining solutions. You might also consider something more efficient like the Rockminer R3 Box 450-500G, although that pushes you up to about $600.

http://shop.rockminer.com/goods.php?id=41

Thanks, I'll take a look there. Hadn't heard of Rockminer.

Quote from: j03 on July 08, 2014, 10:53:38 PM

Antminer has been coming through for people. I'd go with them. I'm invested in KnC, and can recommend, but like you said, on the cheap: Antminer IMO

Thanks for the support too. It's nice to see people with your mindset. And who knows, if BTC goes to the moon, you might even make a profit FTW.

Thanks for the reply! I've been mining some altcoins with my GPU casually for the past 4 months or so, and thought it was time I stepped up more into the Bitcoin scene. Yeah, I believe in Bitcoin's future and you are right, if I hold long enough I think ROI is no doubt a guarentee. Also recognize that I could make more by buying and holding bitcoin if that's all I cared about. But it's not!

I don't really understand why folks say it is impossible for an average person to get into Bitcoin though TBH... A couple hundred bucks and you can have a small setup just as likely to make money as a scrypt GPU setup 5 months ago. And it's not like the big investors have hardware that is tons better to beat the little guys with, right? I mean, they have more hash power, sure. But they also have much higher costs...

Wrong... kinda.

They may be using the same machines as the general public since many of the massive mining operations are the actual manufacturers of the ASICs. This means they get the newest generation sometimes months before the general public and they get them at cost. And then they turn-around and sell the used gear to the general public and profit AGAIN again after weeks/months of mining with customer's preordered miners.

They also have their own super-efficient datacenters with cheap electricity and cooling. In many cases, the cooling is free because of their geographic location, i.e. the Arctic Circle.

The playing field is most definetely not even. And @home miners are soon to be a memory once the difficulty adjustments make it impossible for anyone who pays for electricity to make a penny in profit. Coming very soon!

please home miners will always exist . just in the right spots. an s-3 running at 400gh and 240 watts will earn money well into feb of 2015.

it will then find spots that offer free power. or low cost power. large data centers will kill each other off mining in greenland and iceland. they will all have some kind of .2 or .3 watt a hash gear with no competitive edge on each other. small miners running gear in free power spots or low power spots will always be around.

and 2 businesses. food dehydration along with kiln dried wood will join up with miners.

I dry a few hundred hours a year maybe 2 weeks. i use a 300 watt machine.

I can just as well dry with a s-3 24/7/365 . I am working on a design as I type.

You're just all over the place today with your "free power", lol. Face it, you're one of the lucky few. This "free power" you speak of isn't available to most of us. So essentially the vast majority of home miners will just disappear. And new mining gear will not be sold to the masses... since there won't be any "masses" left.