At this point, unless you steal power from the electrical grid in some weird squat or you have your own hydroelectric plant, home bitcoin mining is a sucker’s game.Sure you can make a little and you definitely help out the bitcoin network by processing the hashes that make up bitcoin transactions, but plugging in your own hardware usually means huge electricity bills and a trickle of BTC so slow that you barely make back your investment.With that in mind, then, I decided to plug in a HexFury 11 gigahash/second USB miner, one of the last powerful USB miners that can actually make you a few dollars a month.First, let’s understand what this thing is.The HexFury is a USB mining rig with six small ASICs made by a company called Bitfury.The ASICs, in this case, are chips that do one thing – mine bitcoin – and they do it very well.Up until the HexFury, most USB miners of this type could run at 2 GH/s per second or slower, enough to mine a few dollars a year.At this point these older ASICs cost about $12 while this model costs $200.

Could you mine with the smaller ASICs?Sure, but you’d essentially be burning money in a tiny bonfire.I ran a collection of three 1 GH/s ASICs and got about $1 a month.A unit arrived from Asicrunner and I unwrapped the single chip and checked it out.ethereum eth etcOn one side are the six ASICs and on the other side is a large, passive heatsink.ethereum digital assetsIt looks like an overgrown thumb drive with exposed innards, which should give owners of inquisitive cats pause.litecoin historical price chartThe device requires a 5V USB hub (Belkin makes a few good ones) and a separate fan.edward jones bitcoinI used this Arctic USB fan.pool bitcoin comparison

To mine I used a Raspberry Pi with a USB card onto which I installed Minepeon, a free mining platform that supports multiple types of ASIC miners.It is one of the simplest ways to turn your Raspberry Pi into a real mining rig and is very cool.psu for bitcoin miningYou can learn how to install it onto an SD card here.bitcoin next difficulty increaseTo run the chip with Raspberry Pi Minepeon installation I had to install and recompile cgminer 4.3.2, the latest version of a standalone mining app that runs on most platforms.bitcoin widget windows 10I had to recompile it to work with the current version of Minepeon.bitcoin widget windows 10Once you’ve put Minepeon on an SD card and booted up your Raspberry Pi, you need to download and compile cgminer for your environment.

Here are the commands I used: ssh -l minepeon (password:peon) cd /apps/cgminer/4.3/cgminer-4.3.2.tar.bz2 tar xvf cgminer-4.3.2.tar.bz2 cd /home/minepeon/cgminer-4.3.2 ./configure --enable-icarus --enable-bitfury sudo make sudo make install cd /opt/minepeon/bin mv cgminer cgminer.hold ln -s /home/minepeon/cgminer-4.3.2/cgminer cgminer reboot This should get you the latest version of cgminer.How does it perform?Well, with the fan pointed directly at it and the hub powered on, I consistently saw 12GH/s.This enough to make about $150 a year at this current difficulty and bitcoin price.This is a screen from Minepeon.You’ll notice that at that speed we would see about 0.018 BTC per month, or about $10.Given the cost of electricity and the constant rise in the bitcoin mining difficulty rate, this will eventually fall until 11 GH/s is a paltry speed.Home mining, at this point, is more about the experience of mining than any real money making.

While you can make a little money with this, you’re obviously going to have to connect a few of these together and have free electricity to make any sort of dent into the initial $200 investment.This is a speedy and powerful little chip and a real testament to what kind of power you can stick onto a small PCB.As these things catch up with higher-powered units, it’s only a matter of time before we can all make a few BTC a month with something the size of a stick of gum.In the early days of Bitcoin, mining was performed by individual computers running the Bitcoin nodes as they compete to solve algorithmic problems while confirming transactions on the Bitcoin Blockchain.The fastest computer to solve a particular problem is rewarded with a specific amount of Bitcoin, and that is how new coins are introduced into the ecosystem, hence the term “Bitcoin Mining.” As time passed, “Bitcoin halving” factors in, technology improves and more efficient mining equipment developed.This gave rise to increased mining difficulty as the rate of competition skyrocketed.

Instead of having millions of individual computers independently mining Bitcoins across the globe as is assumed to have been the original intention of Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, what is obtainable nowadays is the installation of massive mining farms.A Bitcoin mining farm is usually comprised of a huge number of processors, known as mining pools.These pools are interconnected to compete as a single unit in the transaction processing competition on the Bitcoin Blockchain.This, in essence, automatically makes it extremely difficult for small independent miners to carry out mining profitably.One major factor that determines the viability of Bitcoin mining is the return on investment (ROI).Jure Pirc sees Bitcoin mining in 2017 as a very challenging adventure.He notes that every person or company that decides to invest in Bitcoin mining must understand that the current ROI time for the most efficient miner on the market "Antminer T9" is between 9-11 months.However, ROI time varies with energy and cooling costs.

Therefore, countries with affordable electricity and a cooler climate hold a big advantage when it comes to mining profitability.Another important factor to mention is that the ROI calculation is also based on the prevailing network difficulty which keeps increasing as time goes on.Concerning mining hardware equipment, Pirc says: “I get quite a lot of requests to assist and advise with setting up Bitcoin mining operations and almost always the end result is that it makes more sense to set up a GPU mining rig where a user/miner has a lot more choice.” “When it comes to choosing the currency one wishes to mine, while with Bitcoin ASIC devices the only choice is to mine SHA256 based cryptocurrencies.There are a few of these out there that are still in the proof of work phase,” Pirc adds.For newcomers to the Bitcoin ecosystem, Pirc thinks that the individual mining process could be a very complex adventure.Blockchain Research Specialist Sean Brizendine describes the profitability of Bitcoin mining in 2017 as an unpredictable phenomenon considering the parameters involved in it.

“Bitmain sells an Antminer T9-12.5TH/s for $1,205 beginning April 10 (pre-paid).So you’re looking at $204.84 a month, with electricity costing $93.60, meaning that the profit after electricity is around $111.24 a month.” In Brizendine’s opinion, Bitcoin mining is not a particularly great investment but for the purpose of maintaining the network, he advises holders of a lot of Bitcoins to run at least one miner, regardless of the little profit.“Right now I would personally buy and run one Bitcoin miner to support decentralization and contribute to the strength of the Bitcoin network and also invest heavily into buying the Bitcoins and holding them in a cold storage hardware wallet like a Trezor or KeepKey,” he concludes.Aaron Foster, co-founder and CEO of TheBitPoint, explains that Bitcoin mining profitability depends on Bitcoin price.Given the scaling situation, if not resolved one way or the other he thinks that returns will be in the negative.Even worse, a hard fork with two chains, giving rise to the mining of either BTU or BTC.

Foster also notes that the lifespan of the hardware must be put into consideration, figuring out how long before a mining device becomes obsolete: “The best way to profit from Bitcoin for the smaller investor is with the buy and hold strategy for now.Unless you can get some ant miners cheaply and have really cheap or free electricity.” Fred Gondzar, president/CEO of Healthy Wealth, LLC, is of the opinion that being part of a mining club is the best approach for anyone who wants to earn rewards from the complex environment of Bitcoin mining.He speaks from the standpoint of a participant of such arrangements and claims to receive his dividends on a daily basis.“From my perspective, it is a good idea to be involved in Bitcoin mining, however, not as an individual but as a member of a Bitcoin mining club that is mining on a large scale.I am in a couple of groups that are mining like that, and it is paying me daily, so I am in favor of it.” Clearly, Bitcoin mining in 2017 could be a complex adventure which depends on several factors.