[Unboxing] Butterfly Labs 7 GH/S Bitcoin Miner

[RuecanOnRails]

As Whaler_99 said, you cannot use a Bitcoin Mining Asic for anything other than Bitcoin mining.

An ASIC is as it's acronym states, Application Specific Integrated Circuit. The only use outside of Bitcoins SHA-256 hashing algorithm is as an expensive paper weight. As long as it's profitable to run your asic over electrical costs, run it until that day happens or it dies.

 

Even with different software of firmware, you cannot change a bitcoin asic to do other tasks.

 

Older FPGA's however you can as those imply as the name states are Field Programmable Gate Array, those can be reprogrammed to do anything, while they were decent at mining, they will likely be inefficient at floating point operations such as folding.

 

 

*There are a couple coins besides Bitcoin that use SHA-256, and your ASIC would work on those, however they tend to be even less profitable than mining Bitcoin directly. Litecoin and most other Alt Coins use the Scrypt algorithm which would not work with Bitcoin ASICS.

[legopc]

Man, I want one

All I have is a ASIC USB miner -.-

how long does it take to mine one bitcoin with one of those?? im thinking about getting one 

[ShearMe]

how long does it take to mine one bitcoin with one of those?? im thinking about getting one 

 

It could take 5 minutes, or you might never get one - that's why pooled mining is a thing. 

[orangecat]

Spend real money to make fake money? I don't see a point.

[ShearMe]

Spend real money to make fake money? I don't see a point.

 

 

[legopc]

It could take 5 minutes, or you might never get one - that's why pooled mining is a thing. 

explane please 

[ShearMe]

explane please 

 

In order to gain the "reward" you need to mine the correct block. In order to mine the correct block, you need to be extremely lucky, and the more hardware you have the more lucky you'll be. with the current difficulty level, it's practically impossible to mine the correct block whilst mining by yourself.

 

In a mining pool, a bunch of people get together and split the reward if anyone of them mines the correct block and gets the reward. In a big enough pool, this means you get a relatively steady stream of income.

[RuecanOnRails]

how long does it take to mine one bitcoin with one of those?? im thinking about getting one 

 

Don't mean to be a dick, but I really want to right now Technically you can never mine 1 Bitcoin.

Bitcoins are not mined one at a time. Instead the reward for solving a block, and having it accepted in the blockchain was 50 Bitcoins. Every 4 years that amount cuts in half until the number is so small it eventually hits 0. Bitcoins can be divided down 8 decimal points and the flow of "new" Bitcoins will come to a halt in the year 2140.

 

When Bitcoin started each block would give the person solving it 50 Bitcoins. Currently each block reward is 25 due to it passing the first 4 year milestone. In 2016, that number will cut in half again down to 12.5. And so it continues every 4 years getting less and less. 50, 25, 12.5, 6.25, 3.125, 1.5625, 0.78125, 0.390625, ..., ..., etc, etc

 

As you can see from the numbers above, you will never be able to exactly mine 1 Bitcoin*

 

 

*exception to this will be when the reward is less than 1 Bitcoin earliest date is 2036, and the inclusions of the transfer fee's could potentially equal 1 Bitcoin. The miner receives not only the reward for solving the block, but also any and all transaction fees which occurred.

 

 

On a lighter note, when pool mining and receiving a constant steady payout based on participation in mining you can estimate how much you can earn using calculators which will factor in your hashrate, difficulty, and pool fees. You can estimate how long it would take to get the equivalent of 1 Bitcoin by dividing 1 Bitcoin by the estimated Bitcoins per 24 hours.

http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

This, or any calculator should be taken with a grain of salt as they are only reliable for a max of 2016 blocks, each block estimating at 10 minutes. (in a perfect world 2 weeks). This is because of the ever changing difficulty which cannot be predicted well enough to be reliable.

 

A site which allows you to input your own estimates of the difficulty curve can be found here.

http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/

[Slayersher]

id like to point out you can actually use bfl asics or other ascis for other tasks besides mining bitcoins 

 

there are new drivers for other software to do other tasks.

[ShearMe]

id like to point out you can actually use bfl asics or other ascis for other tasks besides mining bitcoins 

 

there are new drivers for other software to do other tasks.

 

The links to those "other drivers" just brings you back to the driver page... unless that changed recently? I would be interested in seeing how this thing performs in folding.

[RuecanOnRails]

id like to point out you can actually use bfl asics or other ascis for other tasks besides mining bitcoins 

 

there are new drivers for other software to do other tasks.

 

For the time being, and likely forever. The only alternate use for a Bitcoin SHA-256 hashing ASIC, is putting it into paper weight mode. By which you unplug and place it on your desk.

 

I'm very skeptical about alternate uses of mining ASICS. Especially when it comes to folding, or any claims outside of mining I do not believe it can be done.

 

You cannot re-purpose an ASIC/program, if you could, it wouldn't be an ASIC.

 

 

Other suggestions besides a paper weight... A warming plate for hot drinks, a small space heater, or a white noise generator.

[Whaler_99]

 

Other suggestions besides a paper weight... A warming plate for hot drinks, a small space heater, or a white noise generator.

 

A 4P folder also make for a wonderful heater.

[RuecanOnRails]

A 4P folder also make for a wonderful heater.

 

Change over in-home heating to distributed computing. Swap out all baseboard heaters with server blades. Heat your home and help advance mankind hehe. If you're heat is done by a central furnace, simply tap into the ducts as the exhaust for the heat output.

 

If I built more GPU mining computers, I could place one in each room... hmm.

[Whaler_99]

Change over in-home heating to distributed computing. Swap out all baseboard heaters with server blades. Heat your home and help advance mankind hehe. If you're heat is done by a central furnace, simply tap into the ducts as the exhaust for the heat output.

 

If I built more GPU mining computers, I could place one in each room... hmm.

 

A 4P folder for each bedroom, keep them toasty... then as you say, pull out the furnace, stack the rest there

[Missioncode]

id like to point out you can actually use bfl asics or other ascis for other tasks besides mining bitcoins 

 

there are new drivers for other software to do other tasks.

Those are or were for the FPGAs  

 

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/hardware-discussion/1114-asic-other-uses.html

[ShearMe]

Ya know, I don't have a problem if any specific ASIC can't do something other than what it was designed for. I do have a problem with the argument, "no ASIC can do anything besides what it was designed to do." 
 
On a lighter (litter? liter? more lite?  ) note, USB Block Erupters are only 0.12 BTC (~$17 at time of post) over at BTC guild: https://www.btcguild.com/index.php?page=store