4 Best USB Bitcoin Miners in 2024

Bitcoin is a dominant power within the cryptocurrency business, boasting the most important market cap out of all cryptocurrencies by an enormous margin. It maintains its safety by counting on a decentralized community of miners to validate transactions. These miners use specialised {hardware} generally known as “mining rigs”, they usually play a pivotal function within the functioning of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Nevertheless, these machines are generally giant, power-hungry, and most significantly, costly. For somebody who can’t afford to attend years for his or her a number of thousand greenback miner funding to repay, they aren’t a viable possibility. As such, USB Bitcoin miners(also called stickminers) current themselves as an reasonably priced various that nearly anybody might use. However does this affordability come at a price?

On this article, we’ll discover the 5 greatest choices for USB Bitcoin mining and whether or not or not they’re the precise possibility for you.

What are USB Bitcoin miners?

USB Bitcoin miners are a easy and reasonably priced possibility for these seeking to get into the world of Bitcoin mining. In precept, they’re a plug-and-play machine that hardly takes up any area they usually barely require any electrical energy to perform. In idea, this makes them a pretty possibility for these seeking to mine Bitcoin for reasonable.

Nevertheless, they can’t examine to the effectivity of the very best Bitcoin miners, and even the very best USB Bitcoin miners barely generate any revenue.

As such, USB miners should not a great possibility for these seeking to make a revenue. As a substitute, they’re an affordable introduction to Bitcoin mining, serving to folks study the fundamentals to make higher use of the dearer ASIC machines. One other various for experiencing Bitcoin mining for reasonable is utilizing cloud mining platforms, which regularly supply bonuses and unique offers for brand new customers.

Bitcoin USB miner (un)profitability

Sadly, the prices of working such gadgets outweigh the potential earnings you’d achieve from utilizing them. In truth, even when we ignore the value of electrical energy, if we take essentially the most highly effective USB miner out there, the Compac A1, and overclock it to its most potential, it might solely mine about 0.00012775 BTC in a yr.

This could quantity to a mere $8.70, which means it might take you just about 30 years to interrupt even in your funding at Bitcoin’s present value. Hopefully, this places into perspective how unprofitable these gadgets really are. Even with our bullish long-term Bitcoin value prediction, these miners are greatest left to stay as studying instruments for individuals who wish to examine the mining course of earlier than committing to purchasing a correct Bitcoin miner.

Greatest USB Bitcoin miners

Now that we’ve gone over the fundamentals, we will dive into our checklist of the 4 greatest USB Bitcoin miners out there in 2024.

GekkoScience Compac F – The preferred possibility

The GekkoScience Compac F is highly effective for its measurement, nevertheless it requires lively cooling to work correctly.

The Compac F is a compact USB miner that stands out with its 400 GH/s hashrate and low 10W energy consumption, due to its AntMiner BM1397 ASIC chip. Nevertheless, whereas it’s spectacular for its measurement and may be overclocked for higher efficiency, this miner, like most USB miners, received’t repay your funding. The price of electrical energy outweighs any potential earnings, making it extra of a hobbyist software than a worthwhile enterprise. Even with overclocking and a USB hub for enlargement, the returns merely aren’t there to justify its use for severe mining.

NanoFury 2 – Designed for longevity

NanoFury 2 is one other USB miner requiring lively cooling

The NanoFury 2 boasts a hashrate of 5 GH/s, which appears virtually pitiful compared to the Compac F, not to mention a correct mining rig from Bitmain. Nevertheless, its comparatively giant warmth sink, together with a cooling fan will possible hold the miner up and operating for a very long time.

GekkoScience Compac A1 – Strongest USB miner

The Compac A1 is essentially the most highly effective USB miner out there

The Compac A1 builds on its predecessor with a better hashrate of as much as 500 GH/s when overclocked, utilizing the highly effective AntMiner BM13962 ASIC chip. Nevertheless, regardless of this enchancment, it falls into the identical entice as different USB miners. Even with the elevated energy, the miner is way from worthwhile. It calls for a devoted USB hub and lively cooling simply to perform optimally, which provides to the setup price. Combining all this with a frankly outrageous value of $249, this USB miner has no actual makes use of, because it’s too costly to even be a studying software.

Luckyminer LV03 – Most cost-effective USB Bitcoin miner

The Fortunate Miner LV03 is the most cost effective possibility out there

The Fortunate Miner LV03 is the most cost effective USB Bitcoin miner out there, however when it comes to profitability, it’s additionally the worst one. Providing a low hashrate of 75 KH/s, this miner’s solely objective is to be an affordable studying software for brand new Bitcoin miners. Don’t anticipate any actual financial worth out of this one or every other USB miner for that matter.

The underside line

USB Bitcoin miners should not worthwhile at present Bitcoin and electrical energy costs. Whereas they may function a great entry level for folks seeking to get into the world of Bitcoin mining, their value and hashrate don’t actually give them every other use case. If you happen to’re seeking to make a revenue, it’s best to in all probability look into correct ASIC miners as an alternative.

Another choice for studying about Bitcoin mining is to make use of your GPU for the duty. That is typically an unprofitable course of, however the very best GPUs for mining might provide you with a small revenue, together with with the ability to play the entire greatest video games.