janpec1000 You actually need separate standalone equipment nowadays to realise any return on investment from mining bitcoins at this time, as there are already 12 million of the cryptocurrency already in circulation out of a maximum of 21 million and the difficulty factor in mining this currency is rising at drastic pace daily.
I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to paste any links on this forum to other forums or products on the market, so I’ll give you some examples and references for you to google yourself so you can understand the full scope of where I’m coming from.
Google bitcoin calculator and you’ll find various sources where you can input data with regards to hashing speed, cost of equipment and even electricity costs which will calculate for you if you are going to see any ROI and if so, when based on the currently difficulty factor to mine bitcoin.
Mid last year bitcoin was hovering around £40 to £70 and one could pick up a USB device called a ASIC Miner block erupter, which had a mining speed of 333Mh/s for around £80 to £100, once can still buy them for around £30 to £50 but I personally would not, as you’d be lucky if you ever saw any ROI at this stage using that device now.
I personally own a ASIC Miner Cube which is capable of hashing speeds of 38Gh/s which is like stupendously faster than 333MH/s
1 KH/s is equivalent to 1,000 hashes per second. 1 MH/s is 1,000,000 hashes per second. 1 GH/s is 1,000,000,000 hashes per second
In saying this, my cube set me back around £700 a month ago and they are going for around £800 to £1000 on a famous worldwide auction site.
My cube will hopefully give me a ROI half way through February but by then the difficulty to mine bitcoins will once again be harder, so the cost of running my cube will be pointless.
There are new devices being developed every day with faster hashing power like the BitMain AntMiner, capable of 180GH/s or a HashFast babyjet, capable of 400GH/s, the more hashing power the device produces, the more it will cost and will make it more difficult for the small time miners like myself.
Devices and manufacturers you may want to look in to if you are still keen are:
Bitmain AntMiner
HashFast babyjet or sierra
ASICminer block erupter blade or cube
Avalon mini or 4 module
Bitmine coinCraft range
BlackArrow Prospero range
ButterflyLabs products
Cointerra Terraminer range
KNC miner products
Virtual Mining products
If I were you, I would personally look in to mining Litecoins, they are Bitcoins main competitor and have started moving up in price, when they were worth a couple of dollars around October last year, with the rise of bitcoin, they are now worth around US$30 and they can be mined used a computer with a good ATI graphics cards, otherwise known as a GPU.
On a final note, there are mining farms all over the world now mining in TH/s hash rates and you can quite easily buy shares in these setups/rigs/companies which pay one a dividend every so often, one can also buy shares in bitcoin startups and various other ventures funded by bitcoin, look into havelock investments and cryptostocks.
If you don’t have money to loose, do not get into this game!