Would it be possible to convert low-end ASICs designed for mining Bitcoin into Litecoin mining rigs?

My friend and I have been discussing trying to mine Bitcoins or an altcoin. We've come to the conclusion that at the current difficulty one gigahash per second Litecoin mining will net ~$5 USD a day. Now, there are some low-end Bitcoin ASICs out there (such as ASICMiner Block Erupters which get 333 MH/s) that would literally take years with the current Bitcoin difficulty to regain the cost of the machine mining Bitcoin. Would it be possible to configure an ASIC of this type to mine Litecoin? Would the hardware be capable of supporting that?

Nathan2055

Posted 2014-01-22T04:39:25.780

Reputation: 153

Answers

Nope, ASIC implies a physically designed chip only meant for doing 1 thing. And bitcoin ASICs are only capable of SHA hashing while litecoin demands scrypt hashing.

John T

Posted 2014-01-22T04:39:25.780

Reputation: 2 759

No. The hardware would be ineffective, as it is designed to only calculate sha256. Try a different sha256 coin and convert it to Litecoin.

c0mraide

Posted 2014-01-22T04:39:25.780

Reputation: 36