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We’ve decided to do a quick comparison between the different options that you have for around 30 MHS Scrypt ASIC miners that are available on the market at the moment in order to give you an idea on how they compare to each other. We have a GAWMiners Falcon Miner (ZeusMiner Thunder X3), Silver Fish Blade Miner and Innosilicon A2Mini Miner that we have either tested already or are currently testing (detailed reviews of the last two to follow soon). On the photo above you can see the three miners on top of each other, so that you can get a good idea on how they compare in terms of size. Do note that they are all different not only in terms of size, but also in terms of power consumption and completeness, and they also do come with different prices as well.
Here is a table to compare and summarize the three miners that are all averaging about 28 MHS or slightly more in terms of actual hashrate according to their specs and what we have seen so far in our tests. The Falcon is the largest one, essentially a ZeusMiner Thunder X3 from the earlier batches as the newer units do come with a bit different design and Zeus has already announced new miners with lower power consumption, though these are not yet shipping. The A2Mini miner based on Innosilicon A2 chips is the second one in terms of physical size, however this miner differs than the other two with the fact that it contains an integrated power supply and Raspberry Pi controller all built inside the case. The smallest one is the Silver Fish Blade, an interesting open frame solution that is not very widely available and popular outside of China.
All of the miners above have their own advantages and disadvantages, but the price is probably the deciding factor for every miner when considering the return of investment expected. This is especially true now when the Litecoin network difficulty has climbed up to a level that ensures just a bit over 1 LTC per day to be mined with any of these Scrypt ASIC miners. Obviously the A2Mini is the worst choice in terms of price, though we do like the miner a lot as it comes as a complete solution ready to be used out of the box and with the lowest power usage. At the price that it is currently being sold however it is not a wise choice and A2 really does need to update their prices. The Silver Fish blade is also an interesting solution, especially with the lower power usage it offers as compared to ZeusMiner’s alternative, here however we do not like very much the not so effective for cooling open design and the Windows only software miner available for the device along with network only connectivity. The price of the Silver Fish is also quite high compared to Zeus’, and even though the ZeusMiner and the branded products from their partners such as GAW’s Falcon with the highest power consumption it is still the most interesting solution in terms of price. And with the announcement of the new lower power usage products that offer higher hashrate at lower price ZeusMiner is probably the most interesting choice for a Scrypt ASIC miner at the moment as it should be able to offer the fastest ROI at the moment.
MinerEU, an official Gridseed and ZeusMiner distributor, has announced today a new summer sale of Scrypt ASIC miners and the promotional prices they now have for some of the miners are really attractive. In fact these new prices make it really much more attractive to order from MinerEU than to purchase directly from ZeusMiner, especially the larger Hurricane and Thunder miners that you can currently get at half their normal price. So if you were considering to buy some Scrypt ASIC miners and not do some pre-order, then you might want to check this promotion.
– ZeusMiner Blizzard – $80 USD
– ZeusMiner Hurricane X3 – $460 USD
– ZeusMiner Thunder X3 – $850 USD
– Gridseed G-Blade – $300 USD
Furthermore if you buy 4 or more ZeusMiner Blizzard miners you can use the promotional code blizz240 in order to get a price of $60 USD per unit instead of the regular single unit price of $80 USD. What we would really want to see however is a price promotion for the A2-based Scrypt ASIC miners as well, though apparently Innosilicon is still selling their 28nm Scrypt ASIC chips at pretty high prices and as a result their miners are still much more expensive compared to the competition for the same hashrate.
In the last month or so we have seen a steady increase in the network difficulty of Litecoin, the second biggest crypto currency at the moment after Bitcoin, in terms of market capitalization. This is direct result from more and more Scrypt ASIC miners being shipped to customers by companies such as Gridseed, Zeus and Innosilicon, even though most of the GPU miners have already moved to other crypto algorithms that do not yet have ASICs such as X11, X13 and others. What we are essentially seeing is centralization of the Scrypt mining hashrate in the hands of larger miners and mining farms, even though there are still quite a few small miners that have purchased some of the more affordable Gridseed and ZeusMiner Scrypt ASIC miners. In fact, what is getting more attractive for the normal small time miner are the services offering to host miners or even for cloud mining, as these cloud be easier to calculate and are more predictable over the long term and most of all no delivery times, extra cost and having to manage and monitor hardware all of the time. Unfortunately there is yet not enough competition like in the Bitcoin cloud mining segment for such services, so the price and features offered to customers are not yet that great, but hopefully we are soon going to see some more advancement in this field as well.
At the same time, with Litecoin getting harder to mine because of the increase of the network difficulty, what we are seeing is also a decrease of the price instead of increase. Interestingly enough, up until recently, Litecoin’s price was reacting pretty much the same way as Bitcoin’s, so it went up and down as the price of BTC increased or decreased, but that is not happening anymore. If this is a good sign or not is still early to tell, but since LTC is not yet as established as Bitcoin and the hardware manufacturers, especially the companies making ASIC miners may still see LTC as an extra source of income, apart from their sales of mining hardware, by mining in their own mining farms and dumping coins on the market instead of using some of their profits in order to support the crypto currency to be able to sell more hardware. As the moment with the current prices of most Scrypt ASICs and the performance they offer it is hard to decide to invest in them or not, especially when knowing that in a month or two there will be much more powerful solutions starting to hit the market, products that will seriously increase the network difficulty.
Furthermore, apart from LTC (number two) and maybe DOGE (currently number 7 in terms of market cap), there are no other more established and serious in terms of market capitalization Scrypt-based crypto currencies among the top 20. Feathercoin (FTC) is the closest one that takes the third place in terms of market capitalization among Scrypt crypto currencies in 23rd place at the moment, but it is much smaller than DOGE, let alone LTC. Then there is Karmacoin at 26th place, however the team behind this coin has already announced plans to move away from Scrypt, CureCoin at 27th place, PotCoin is 28th and a few others close by. There are also not a lot of new Scrypt-based coin launches happening lately, with maybe only Razor being a more interesting recent launch. So what will be the near future of Litecoin and other Scrypt currencies, it is still hard to predict, but we are still remaining positive about it and hope to see more decentralization of the network, instead of centralization as that is never a good thing in the world of crypto currencies.