The mainstream option that most earners choose is to Mine bitcoin with their own hardware. I don't need to give you a rundown or an explanation of how mining has changed or what difficulty is or what equipment to mine with because there are already far too many other blogs, forum posts, forum replies, IRC rooms, and chat boards where you can even earn Btc, full of people who are immensely helpful.
Basically if you choose to go with the mainstream route you will be buying either FPGA hardware or ASIC Hardware. Since BTC difficulty is growing as what feels like an exponential rate, it makes no sense for new entrants to purchase FPGA hardware as it is currently 10X the cost for the same amount of hashing power that ASICs deliver. Unfortunately, the only currently available unis that fit the criteria of >5GH equipment are sold by ASICMINER which can cost more than twice as much as competitor's orders* I left the previous sentence with an asterisk to make the point that the other units available are only pre-orders with the bulk of them not available for receipt or delivery until the next year at minimum.
Furthermore, there are other small issues that need to be carefully monitored as a bitcoin miner: The temperature of your equipment (too high and it could be possibly a fire hazard or at the very least have an increased rate of hardware errors) the pool work rate and connectivity (I have found that my hardware hash rate is higher than the pool's assigned work rate and have yet to determine what the cause may be -- Update will follow once discovered), and I have found that a mechanism to automatically resume mining upon power failure is essentially necessary to circumvent Human error or Mother nature level mistakes.
Lately I've determined that there is a common theme in the mining equipment and securities industry: >5GH hardware is hard to come by without substantial upfront cost, often in the form of over-inflated block eruptor prices, ASICMINER 10GH/ Blade prices going for 5900 USD when you could instead a spot in line for you to purchase a WHOPPING 300 GH/s of hash power offered by the two smaller units offered by KNC Miner. anticipated for late October or early November and still save yet two hundred dollars. Many different small and medium sized companies are following the same model premium on "mining shares" that pay a distributed payout of earnings. I've also seen that many of the cloud hashing options available begin in September. These offerings include MinerLease (who uses BFL hardware), CloudHashing (hashpower on order), and Pyramining which appears to still be ordering FPGA power in tandem with ASIC power.
Finally, if you are interested in the idea of a mining contract but want a smaller cost, many individuals will choose to purchase BFL hardware, AVALON Hardware, or KNC hardware as an initial investment where you as a separate private buyer can buy permanent shares on individual mining hardware via a group-buy. This method may involve cost of electricity and maintenance and is not recommended unless money is not available for purchasing hardware outright.
If by chance you were reading this looking for financial advice - dont. I have none to offer as I am not licensed to do so. For myself though, I prefer wanting to purchase my own hardware as I can control which pools I choose to mine with (or choose to run solo instead with no fees involved). The reason for this is that dollar for dollar, Mining contracts stack up comparatively to FPGA equipment or ASICMINER equipment, all of which cost 10X more than ASIC hardware mentioned prior. The opportunity cost that many will brag about is that these ASIC units that I am recommending may not be available and that it is naive to think they could be available within the promised time-frame as this has been repeatedly shown to be the normal occurrence in the Bitcoin ASIC Hardware industry.
This article was written by Frankenmint.
Reposted from Canarymine.org with permission.
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