hey, I just watched a video on YouTube where someone managed to mine BTC with USB sticks plugged into a laptop, and they even made some profit. I mean, the energy savings would be huge! But is it actually doable to mine like this instead of using an ASIC?
It would be an ASIC USB stick like this one:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5355470.0
Of course it's 200-300 times slower than a 100TH/s miner so makes 200-300 times less ...
All older ones would be slower than that one also.
so it would be possible almost i'm tempted, of course the gains would be much lower but also the energy consumption would be almost zero, is a fairly recent video of 2021 without wanting to advertise them i place the link in case tell me and i will removed it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyRGkbu-LB8
I haven't watched the complete video... just the first 10 seconds...
This guy is showing a newpac usb miner... You can find them on sites like this one: https://www.bitshopper.de/en/shop/sha-256-miner/usb-miner-bitcoin/newpac/
The device hashes @45Gh/s (maximum... it is rather difficulty to make those usb miners run consistently at those speeds), and at these speeds it'll draw close to 10 Watts.
Let's assume for a moment, you're able to get it running @45 Gh/s whilst it draws 7 Watts and disregard the power consumption of the rPi (or pc) you need to connect it to. Let's also assume you only pay 5 cents/Kwh for your power.... These are huge assumptions: you'll probably won't keep it running @45Gh/s consistently, if you do it won't consume only 7 Watts, and you'll probably pay way more than 5 cents/kwh
Let's plug in those numbers at a mining calculator:
https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/calculator?h=45.00&p=7&pc=0.05&pf=0.00&d=19893045048575.00000000&r=6.25000000&er=1&btcer=59348.38830000&ha=GH&hc=11999.99&hs=-1&hq=1
Even at these absurdly low assumptions, you'll only make 1 cent/day, so it'll take you 12.000 to recuperate your initial investment (not including the S&H, taxes and customs charges... Nor the investment of an rPi).
Even if you disregarded electricity completely, this gear would still only make 2 cents/day...
No, they will probably make no money. Then again these are aka "Lottery Sticks" because there IS a chance you might get a block from a solo pool. In that case -- cha ching!! If you sometimes buy a lottery ticket then ya might as well go for a stick to try your Luck because at least they are dirt cheap to run.
Two things:
1) No you don't go buying USB miners to make a profitable mining company - everyone knows that - no one does that.
You buy USB miners for learning about bitcoin mining, for fun and for lottery mining since they use so little power.
As I already stated above, the rewards on those old slow small USB miner is 100's of times smaller than a current miner.
2) The current USB miners are around 365GH/s at around 15W
i.e. 3 of them, with simple cooling, can get you 1.1TH for around 45W
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5355470.0