USB SHA256 Mining Lottery Insights

Hey folks I've been exploring solo mining with a USB SHA256 lottery setup. I've got two Gekkoscience Newpac2 miners hooked up to an old ThinkPad. It's running a StorJ node on a 10TB HDD, and the CPU is busy with some Monero mining too. Pro tip: get a powered USB hub if you wanna overclock those miners. I even added a couple of cheap fans to boost the cooling.

I’m curious how people will respond to your post in the mining section, but I dig it. Your setup reminds me of this YouTuber who always rocks a Raspberry Pi for crypto stuff. Honestly, all this might be a bit pointless, but I still find those USB miners fascinating, even in 2021. Man, if only I could’ve jumped into Bitcoin back in the day when you could actually make money with just a few of those little guys.

There are definitely some lesser-known coins out there, mostly scrypt, but a few SHA ones too, with low difficulty that can actually bring in a little bit of cash. I’m talking about a buck or two a day. The problem is, if someone rolls in with a good Antminer and starts hammering the network, your profits pretty much disappear. You gotta keep chasing the next coin and finding reliable exchanges and pools. I dabble in some smaller mining setups too.

Exactly! I love minimal setups like Raspberry Pi. I sometimes wish I could rewind a few years and just stock up on cheap USB miners, lol. Seeing those things listed on eBay for over 100 bucks is wild. Sellers are just hoping some newbie will buy them, thinking it’s an easy gig, when you could get them much cheaper from places like bitshopper.

Great post, wishing you lots of luck! Check out my lottery rig I recently revived sitting on top of my lightning node. Had some issues last month with a stuck transaction, but now I feel more secure being plugged into the network.

Thanks! Good luck to you too, mate! I've got a lot of mining power here, but I still hold onto my 90 GH/s sticks, haha.

I'm running 14 of those USB sticks right now... and yeah, I’ve preordered a couple more. I always wanted to get into mining, but I thought investing in crypto was better. Never liked those loud S9 miners. With BTC priced at $1-10M, each stick is raking in about 40 cents to 4 bucks a day ROI. Honestly, I might be better off just buying BTC instead, but I'm all about mining and holding for the long haul.

Hey, if you're cool with it, drop your node URI here. I’d be down to open a channel with others. Might be some folks interested!

That bold claim you made hinges on a big "if". Right now Bitcoin is nowhere near that low-end price you mentioned, and while those USB miners are cool, they aren’t making much money at the moment. But hey, no hate for using them! People always say claiming free Bitcoin from faucets isn't worth the effort, but remember when they used to give out 500 sats every few minutes back in 2015-16? No clue how those are looking now.

Quick update: I’ve done 796G of work with a Bestshare of 2.2T so far. I added some R4 miners and will be putting in two R606s for the solo pool soon. Will keep you guys posted on my progress!

Wow, haven’t seen Butterfly Labs gear in forever! Are you buying those back from a couple of years ago or snagging second-hand stuff on eBay? You’re definitely OG! Good luck to both of you, the odds are slim, but how will we know if we never try?

I haven't bought new gear in a while. My Newpacs are pretty old, and I've got a few other ASICs like S9s and S17s still running profitably. I won’t grab more hardware right now, even though S19 pros are tempting at good prices. Honestly, it’s easier just to hold BTC. Even in Europe, with cheap electricity, it's not worth mining anymore since the war in Ukraine shot power prices up.

Any technical issues over the last two years, or has it been smooth sailing? How’s the constant operation?

No issues with the lottery setup so far. The ThinkPad did die, but it was super old. Just swapped out the two USB fans for one high-RPM fan. Now I’m on a POS server with 24V USB ports, and it boosted the hashrate a lot. Only problems I had were with some S9k and S17 boards they’re known for being unreliable.

Awesome! Thanks for sharing all that. I had a similar idea, but I was worried about the maintenance side of things. How's the experience been with babysitting the rig?

Yep, I can confirm. There’s zero babysitting as long as your fan doesn’t die. Good luck out there!

How much TH are you getting from your solo mining setup? Why stick with KANO instead of just solomining?

I’m pulling in a steady 0.3 TH/s with those USB miners pointed at KANO around the clock. Sometimes I turn on some Antminers R4, but that’s less than 70 hours weekly. Also, I'm pushing 14 TH/s to BTC Solomining.io 24/7 because I really respect the pool owner and his work. I’ll be adding another 2-3 TH/s to KANO soon with my new R606s. I treat BTC solo mining more like a lottery, can’t risk too much hashrate there.

Mind if I ask why you’re using that CGMiner fork instead of the official KANO release?

I went with that fork since it was what the Gekko reseller provided back then. Now I’ve switched to KANO’s CGMiner for about 5-6 months.