bitcoin miner Archives

There are some important factors to look at when determining which Bitcoin mining ASIC to buy:

Hash rate – How many hashes per second can the Bitcoin miner make? More hashes cost more, which is why efficiency is crucial.

Efficiency – You’ll want to buy the most efficient bitcoin mining hardware possible. Right now, this is the Halong Mining Dragonmint T1. Since miners use a large amount of electricity, you want to buy one that converts the most amount of electricity into bitcoins.

Price – How much does the bitcoin miner cost? Cheap mining hardware will mine less bitcoins, which is why efficiency and electricity usage are important. The fastest and more efficient mining hardware is going to cost more.

Don’t try to buy a miner based on only price or only hash rate. The best ASIC miner is the most efficient bitcoin miner. Aim for value.

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You can also mine litecoin with Bitcoin mining machines, but it’s usually just best to buy litecoin from an exchange.

Bitcoin Miners for Sale on eBay or Amazon

If you’re a hobby miner who wants to buy a couple rigs for your house, eBay and Amazon both have some decent deals on mining hardware.

Used Bitcoin Mining Hardware for Sale

Both new and used bitcoin mining rigs and ASICs are available on eBay. One may want to buy used ASIC mining hardware on eBay because you can get better prices.ASICs for sale on Ebay

eBay’s customer protection ensures you’ll get a working product. Other bundled equipment may be included with your purchase depending on the seller.

We recommend purchasing the Dragonmint or the Antminer S9.

Hardware Profitability

You can use a bitcoin mining profitability calculator to determine your estimated cost of return on your mining hardware.

Reminder

Don’t forget to think about your tax obligation on the coins you buy or mine. There are some great tax software suites to make it easy! For instance, we have a great guide on how that software works to pay taxes on Coinbase buys.

Be sure to take electricity costs into account. Most mining hardware appears profitable until electricity costs are accounted for.

The best way to determine actual profitability is to figure out your electricity cost per hash. That is really what will make or break your operation.

Most Efficient Bitcoin Miners

While good Bitcoin mining hardware needs to have a high hash rate, efficiency is just as important.

An efficient Bitcoin miner means that you pay less in electricity costs per hash.

To improve your efficiency, there are also companies that will let you order hardware from their warehouse and run the miners for you.

You could also cloud mine bitcoins, though these deals are usually scams. Both options are also a lot less fun than running your hardware!

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Companies

Bitmain – Bitmain makes the AntMiner line of Bitcoin miners. Bitmain is based in Beijing, China and also operates a mining pool.

MicroBT – MicroBT is another Chinese ASIC miner manufacturer, based out of Shenzhen. Their WhatsMiner series is a major competitor to Bitmain’s AntMiner line.

Canaan – Canaan put the very first commercial Bitcoin ASIC miner to market. In addition to making Bitcoin mining machines, Canaan also has a suite of blockchain tools and business solutions.

Bitcoin Mining Equipment

In addition to a Bitcoin mining ASIC, you’ll need some other Bitcoin mining equipment:

Power Supply – Bitcoin rigs need special power supplies to funnel and use electricity efficiently.

Cooling Fans – Bitcoin hardware can easily overheat and stop working. Buy a sufficient amount of cooling fans to keep your hardware working.

Backup generators – You may want generators as a backup in case your main source of electricity goes down.

You can find Bitcoin mining equipment for sale on eBay.

Bitcoin Mining Without Hardware?

It’s still technically possible to mine bitcoins without dedicated mining hardware.

However, you’ll earn less than one penny per month. Mining bitcoins on your computer will do more damage to your computer and won’t earn a profit.

So, it’s not worth it unless you’re just interested to see how the mining process works. You’re best bet is to buy dedicated hardware like the Antminer S19.

ASICs’ Impact on Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is based on blockchain technology, a decentralized platform which takes power away from a central authority and gives it to the average person. Sensitive information is stored on the blockchain rather than large data centers, and is cryptographically secured. A vast amount of people, known as miners, all work together to validate the network, instead of just one person or government.

In the beginning, CPUs were used to solve cryptographic hash functions, until miners discovered that GPUs were far better equipped for mining. As block difficulty increased, miners turned primarily to GPUs.

Some GPUs were made solely for mining Bitcoin.

Eventually, technology was developed solely for mining, known as ASICs, or Application Specific Integrated Circuits. Their hashrates are significantly higher than anything GPUs are capable of.

With stellar performance comes a high price tag – the best ASIC chips will run you a few thousand dollars each. Upon creation, Bitcoin blocks were confirmed by the average person using their desktop – once ASICs hit the market, things changed.

How?

ASICs rendered GPUs useless. ASIC developers, including Bitmain, granted early access to large mining cartels rather than the average person.Photos from inside a Chinese Bitcoin mining operation

Thousands of ASICs all mine simultaneously in a mining farm (large warehouse). Evidently, most people can’t afford even one or two of ASICs so thousands of them would be out of the question.

When ASICs hit the market, the blockchain’s validation process became more centralized as more and more hashing power was consolidated into a handful of mining companies, rather than being spread out amongst many miners. Unfortunately, Bitcoin is no longer as decentralized as it was once intended to be.

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Successor to the Throne

Bitmain Antminer S19 Series

PROS

Market-leading hashrate at up to 115 TH/s, and efficient at ~30 Joules per TH/s
Reasonably priced at $440 new (plus shipping)
Popular miner with plentiful guides and parts available

CONS

Out of stock at Bitmain and tricky to find elsewhere
Very high power consumption of 3250W
Very noisy at 81.4 dB

Miner	Hash Power	Price*
Antminer S19	95.0 TH/s	$10k-12k
Antminer S19 Pro	110.0 TH/s	$15k-17k
WhatsMiner M30S+	100.0 TH/s	$8,500
Antminer T17	42 TH/s	$1,900

How to Find the Best Bitcoin Miner