Bitcoin Forum

Heres the thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178275.0

Anyone trustworthy enough that can run a groupbuy for this? Though i dont know how the rules for such a groupbuy could look, because the asics are auctioned and 10 at a time. Highest bids win.

Thanks for pointing out the auction.

Indeed. THank you for linking the auction, I don't read enough of the other forums to notice these things.

A group buy would be difficult as this is an auction, there is no set price. I would encourage people not to just blindly jack up the price by adding money infinitely into a group coffer. Partly because I would potentially like to buy in, but also because I'd hate to see mania grip people and have them later regret their choices.

The auction is well beyond a price that I would feel comfortable asking if people will groupbuy.  I thought about it and placed a bid to test the waters.

too much for 10GHs unit, almost better buy GPU at this price, ROI is 3 months, GPU is about that much.

I'd be interested in investing into a group-buy. I would buy a few straight up, but I lack the time/knowledge to set them up at my warehouse.

Feel free to PM me with info (to whomever starts one up :) )

To get 10Ghash out of GPUs, you need about 18-19 7970s at a cost of about 400$ each or 7600$ which is 111btc right now, plus the accompanying hardware, 5 rigs with 1kW-1.2kW PSUs and power circuits capable of handling 5kW + cooling.

Everyone's just going to bid each other up until there is almost no or exactly no profit in it (unless you hold your coins forever and hope they go up a lot in value).

this is kinda sad to watch. milking a monopoly. i cannot wait until we have the avalon chips on US soil and can have our way with them proper.

The lowest bid @ 32 BTC has a payoff period of 49 days at current difficulty. The problem is I think ASICMINER plans on selling/mining with another 250 TH/s in the coming months. This is a gamble but I don't think it'll payoff like 1st wave Avalon orders did.

It sounds like there will be a few more auctions and then ASICMINER will set a price and sell some more boards in bulk. At that time I might be interested in a group buy.

I don't know why but I feel I have to play devil's advocate.

To start with, let me say that I feel the price is too high really, but people will be people.

However, why is everyone is saying break even of 49 days is something awful? This is a 10GHash miner running at about 90W. It will still be profitable past 150M difficulty (1200THash). Assuming that it does break even after 60 days, and at that point Avalon batch 2 has fully arrived, and BFL has shipped something, you will still be making money for a long time to come, assuming price doesn't plummet to $10 (in which case tons of people are going to be unhappy).

It's not the buy of the century which is why I suggested caution earlier, but it's certainly not a bad deal even at a slightly inflated price.

For the sake of argument, here's my counter. 49 days assumes the difficulty does not change. Assuming ASICMINER onlines their next 50 TH/s and Avalon's next batch of 20 TH/s ships at the same time, you are looking maybe 120 TH/s on the network. You're now talking a ~100 day ROI. This isn't too bad, and I suspect by the time the network hits 120 TH/s you will have paid off the majority of the cost for one of these boards, if ASICMINER ships within a few days of the auction ending.

However, ASICMINER plans on a 200 TH/s deployment after this 50 TH/s deployment which will then result in a 4x difficulty increase and you're now talking a 1 year ROI. None of this factors in BFL which, if they ever deliver, has I believe several hundred TH/s of orders to fulfill. In the end if you receive your board in the next month I think you'll pay 30-40 BTC. I feel the real price for these boards will be around 10-20 BTC as you're going to end up with serious issues around profitability in a few months.

As a bidder paying way too much (and I don't think I'm going to win @ 32btc) here is my reasoning.

1) It's not to make money.  If it breaks even I'm pretty happy, if it makes more coin (which I believe it will) within 12 months I'm happy.

2) Testing to see if ASICMiner is legit and will ship immediately, how their communication is, if they can do basic things like say - fill out a customs form properly and provide tracking numbers in a timely manner.  I think we all know why this is important.  I prefer to do business with those who act professionally, and a test buy is always the first step of building such a relationship.

3) First of many - I'm obviously not going to build a mining farm at that $$$/hashrate, but getting one in-hand to "beta test" is valuable and worth a few btc in itself.  It takes time to properly build the automation necessary to run a mining farm.  While many of my scripts and tools can be translated from the current GPU cluster, I will obviously have to modify things to work with new hardware.  This includes stuff like automating adding additional machines to the pool, automatic power cycling should one lock up, etc.   These run remote in a datacenter and I have a day job, so it's important they "just work" without any hands-on from myself.

4) The novelty/coolness factor!  Why not be one of the first to have a unique piece of hardware only a few folks in the world have access to currently?  That right there is worth at least a few btc :)

5) Support the community.  If ASICMiner is as legit as people say, then I have no problem sending them some coin for their hard work.  I don't "invest" with shady folks who promise to ship 8 months later, these folks are unique in that they have product in-hand ready to ship and I really want to support that type of business model vs. what I've seen go down in this forum the past 6 months or so.

6) Bragging rights - so I can be the big swinging dick on the forums and rub everyone's faces in my eliteness ;)

Edit: spelling

It is going to go a lot higher than 30 something bitcoins... already getting 50 BTC bids and it's not even close to being over.

yeah, I'm out at those prices.  But I'd imagine at least some of the folks buying would have similar responses to myself.  Some I'm sure are doing the 'ole "pray to god I make money on this!" method, but I'd hope not for their sake.

Have to keep in mind some of these guys will have been mining for years now, and probably have a nice hefty stash of BTC that is only just now worth anything meaningful.  I know I remember the days where pool mining was optional if you had a couple GPU rigs.  50btc/day wasn't hard to achieve, and I considered myself a relative latecomer to the game.

I'll restate the BTC20-30 was the range for people not wanting to either have "bragging rights" or swing something big around.

I would say in quantity, that sounds high to me.  A one-off for testing, sure.  But 20btc is a bit steep if I were bidding on all 10 to actually make money with.

Hopefully w/ the Avalon chip buy, some projects get off the ground and we get some real competition in a business sense vs. hobbyist sense.

Elsewhere people are still buying MMQs. That is like 15 BTC per 1 GH/s at the current exchange rate.  I wouldn't be surprised if this auction went to 150 BTC.

There are some very generous bidders on that list.

These blades are actually part of that 250 TH/s. ASICMINER does not have proper power connection and/or network connection to utilize all blades. That's why they are selling in the first place.

it kind of is the only thing on the market in a way

Even if Avalon Batch3 ships in 3 months it will still make 2.5times more BTC in first month than the 10Gh/s Asicminer if received tomorrow and at the same price as Avalon. After that you got a unit that 6 times slower
Now they are auctioning off 10x10 units in 3 days, it should take them 180 days or 6 month to auction off 600 units, which was just one batch from Avalon.

BTW for that price a pic would of been nice.

Art

Don't forget that AM block erupter eats only 83W.

I appreciate everyone who selflessly donates their BTC towards securing the network. Once the hardware is cheaper and widely available I will also pitch in.

These look hard to setup, as these are just barebone boards - also there is some mention about pool setup in the faq. I guess only for seasoned miners. I guess about 15-20 btc per board is fair price, given 3-module avalon batch 3 was about 76btc shipped.

they are easier than you think

dont be afraid

These are beyond my pay grade already anyway.  :(

they are beyond anyone's paygrade if they are being reasonable.

goes to show what riches can go to someone if they bring us more choices to buy asic machines.

Waaay to expensive....50-60 BTC/board .... They are even more expensive than FPGAs....

The price blew up pretty quick as expected... These are going to go to people with too much money already.

I think the same... the whole communication about the price is too high only founds on the assumption that the difficulty will rise very high. I dont believe this in the near future. First, Asicminer cant possibly deploy 250TH. Its too much for the net, the >50 attack comes between and selling them all would only lead to Asicminer mining themselves being more and more worthless. So selling will be limited.
Then... which Asiccompany was able to meet their promises always? Asicminer had plans to be way further, BFL should have ship since a long time... but now everyone assumes this will happen in the next weeks?
I dont think so. I think even with 100BTC the buyer will make its break even and then pure profit.

I might be wrong but the past seems to show that the plans of asiccompanies mostly not come true. Even though i would love if Asicminer would be able to deploy much more hashinpower.

Keep in mind ASICMINER'ss options are not just limited to 1) online 250 TH/s 2) sell 250 TH/s. I believe their goal is to online sufficient hardware to maintain a certain percentage of the network. Because Avalon/BFL are so slow to the market, ASICMINER could sell 100 TH/s and online 150 TH/s and not pose a 50% attack. I also imagine BFL would see a massive wave of refunds if ASICMINER starts selling their 10 GH/s boards via a normal website shopping cart. That might spur BFL along a bit as they see their potential profits plummet over time.

Youre right... Asicminer could still hold the majority of mining power and sell so much to push competition out. The problem is that they would need to create many many machines. 25000 Erupter Blades with 10GH/s each. This sounds too much to be manageable in a short timeframe. When i see the speed of the past deployment when it still gone forward... But maybe they surprise...

Manufacturing the blades is the easy part. Setting them up though and powering them.. that is ~1300 kW/hr of power for 15,000 blades. That's quite the powerbill =)

Thats why they had problems with power supply. But in the next days they will get their professional data center power supply as far as i read.
I hope youre right with the speedy deployment... the shareprice of Asicminer went from 0.79 to 1.678 at the moment. So the auctions and the awaited deployment already has effects...