ASICs

At $100/BTC, GPU mining might be profitable again. Slow, but profitable.

Unfortunately not, I have been watching GPU mining returns vs the BTC price for a while, all the time the hash rate of the network is always increasing a little quicker than the income from mining.

The ASIC's will continue to dominate. Per watt of electricity they are far more efficient and we will see thousands of ASIC coming into existence this year. GPU mining Litecoin and converting over the USD or Bitcoin is actually more profitable.

I fired up a miner again recently just for fun. Took 5 days to dig out $15. That's comparable to the $3/day the same GPU could mine back when the exchange rate was $5/coin. But yes, the ASICs are coming. There are only a few in the wild right now. Pretty soon there won't be much point to GPU mining.

Nice, that's not a bad return! I can't even get $2 a day out of mine.

I wonder how difficult it would be to build a ASIC yourself?

The difficulty is not going to be your problem; the problem is the initial mask costs.

PCBs can be made for hobby projects. ASICs cannot, unless you have money literally coming out of your ears.

http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7042/how-much...