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While a handful of investors no doubt made a killing in the past month with the meteoric rise of bitcoin's value, those making hardware specifically to mine bitcoins are doing pretty well too – but they aren't the only ones.
While Avalon's ASIC systems have all pretty much sold at around $1500 (£980) – with 1,500 units, that's a lot of cash – making the creators a very rich few in just a short time period, some of those that pre-ordered hardware and have yet to receive it, have also been making a killing. One such buyer, who paid the near £1,000 earlier this year, has put his pre-order up on Ebay and the bids are already over $30,000.
But for whoever wins this expensive auction, will it be worth it? Those that got in early with this specialist mining hardware – circa start of 2013 – have definitely done well for themselves. Wired is reporting those users with first batch Avalon systems have been cranking out four or five bitcoins a day for several months. Even today at the reduced bitcoin pricing, that's around £400 per 24 hours.
That's a hell of a turnaround from a $1500 investment into something he hasn't even received yet
Just a few years ago when Bitcoin first launched, you'd have been able to do the same with a standard home CPU. GPU computing added a bit more processing power when Bitcoin mining grew harder, but doing so with your home system these days is impossible – it's just not geared to handle the algorithms necessary to be in with a chance of winning a bitcoin. Really, don't think about it unless you're willing to invest in real hardware, but even then you're looking at a big wait as those selling the pickaxes in this gold rush are making a killing, but they're well behind schedule.
KitGuru Says: I'm sure many of you are kicking yourself for not getting in on Bitcoins earlier, but there was no way to know. Until this year's explosion it was still a pretty fringe currency that wasn't doing much. It was also shown to be volatile based on last year's crash from $30 to $3 in one day.
