Bitcoin Forum

My BFL Jalapeno has been hashing along nicely for 4 days now at approx 5.5GH/s according to bitminter. At the time of this post, bitminter reports that I've mined exactly 1BTC. Hooray! But now I could use some advice from you veteran miners:

1) Should I just sell my Jalapeno since they are apparently in silly-high demand this week (might be worth about $3,000 USD based on an auction just completed on bitcointalk)

or

2) Should I mine with it and hope that I can mine $3,000 USD worth before the difficulty goes through the roof?

TL;DR: Kill golden goose, or harvest eggs?

I just don't have a good sense of how fast/crazy the difficulty is changing with all these ASICs coming online. I've looked at some charts, but I'm betting folks on this forum have put a lot more thought into this question than I have:

What do you think 5.5GH/s will earn 100 days from now? 0.2BTC/day? Or more like 0.02BTC/day?

I'd keep it. I'm keeping mine when they arrive. so, when did you order yours?

June 24th (order no. 1950). For what it's worth, what burns me here is that on one hand $3,000 USD sounds great. On the other hand it's more or less break-even since I paid 25 BTC back in June. These were BTC that I would certainly have hoarded into today's value of $3,250.

For $3000 I would sell the baby.
If the difficulty increases at its current rate you will not make that much in block rewards.

Onkel Paul

I'd keep it for a while then sell it.

If your still hoarding in 3 months, you wouldn't have 'lost' anything.

I don't know how those get updated. You can only add your order, you can't change it's status yourself.

I would keep it as well, you will make your btc back eventually, and then you will have a decent miner working for you.  Also, it may be more profitable to mine ppc or other altcoin right now or in the future. 

Sell while you still can.


Wait, sorry. The trollbox said that.

Anybody that tells you to sell it just wants to buy it themselves, or is jealous because they haven't gotten theirs. You are one of the first few to get one and will probably make a killing by the time it becomes unprofitable (which will take quite a while @ under 40W).

If you would like to sell your Jalapeno, you can do an auction here or list it on ebay..


So, $3250 ??

At 8% difficulty I calculate 3224$ in 6 months with current BTC price. 
At 18% difficulty it looks like 2070$ in 6 month

sell it, if you can get $3000 for it


in bitcoins, or person-to-person cash transfer  ;)

I will do you one better. Take a picture of yourself with it and sell that pic to us poor sods still waiting for our own.

sell and buy BTC when they get cheap or wait 6 months and buy 20x the hash power for the same price.

Agreed. Or rather - sell it now, and either keep BTC or keep the $ in an exchange to buy.

Use part of the money to order more ASIC's. I expect the production to follow a classic bathtub-graph. Now it's only a trickle, but since demand is so high and profit on the units must be high, at some point they will ramp up production and churn out units.

The $3K or BTC24 equals 3 months of hashing(or about expected ROI). You may have to wait longer for the replacement ASIC, but doubt it will be much longer. In the meantime you can play around with them at an exchange.

Money right now is better than the same amount of money in the future.

Selling it today and buying 30 BTC with it is the most profitable longterm move...

If it continues like the past few months, I'd say less than 0.1BTC/day

Man, I would take the 25 BTC immediately.

Just do the math, it's a no brainer.

think in long terms, 2-3 years and what btc will cost then. if you make now 0.25 btc per day and hoard, that can be good amount of  uds later on. difficulty is not so scary as it painted, with rise in diff value of bct will rise too. maybe not in exactly synchronous fashion, but in long term it will.

A lot depends on BFL.  If they get process working good and start shipping lots... then selling sooner is better.   But if they keep going slowly like normal... price will prob slowly go down and you can mine and not worry.

If you see BFL post a huge list of shipping dates... sell lol. But i dont think we expect that.

For all the modeling I've done it's about 3-4 BTC per Ghash over the next 6 months; with BFL chips being unprofitable around 9-12 months out. So I'd value a 5.5 Ghash machine at around 20 BTCs. If you could get more I'd sell.

It is a very simple 4 step process:  ;)
1) Try to turn of the 'greedy' part of your brain.
2) Look at the math and try to find a reasonable advise you would give a close friend.
3) Turn the greedy brain back on and face the fact it is you, and not a close friend.
4) Finally, try to stick with that advise you found in step 2!

My personal opinion: Keep it, if you don't need the money (right now).

FTFY

Don't mean to doubt, but seriously take a picture with it and upload it. I'd like to see proof of ownership. I'm contemplating purchasing one but am waiting for the community's attitude toward BFL to change.

You are getting around 0.23BTC/day now.   

With difficulty increasing at 8% per week, you will get about 0.11 BTC/day in 100 days.
With difficulty increasing at 15% per week, you will get about 0.05 BTC/day in 100 days.

He won't get 25BTC in the next year.

So yes, I would sell immediately for 25BTC. No question.

Yeah, unless there is a slow down of network difficulty after the market is saturated with ASIC devices, you will never earn 25 BTC with this machine over its entire life time.

That's a pretty bold statement. "Unprofitable in 9-12 months"? So, they're drawing 30W, which works out to around $2.50 (or less in some cases) of electricity used per MONTH! For a BFL ASIC to be "unprofitable", it would mean that BTC prices remain stagnant and the difficulty becomes such that you would only mine roughly 0.02 BTC per month, or around 0.00067 BTC per day. That would imply a difficulty ramp to 4 billion or higher (a 375x increase from today's difficulty of around 12.5 million). And that, frankly, is lunacy.

Now if you mean you expect BFL hardware to fail thanks to a poor design and manufacturing process and that you won't get more than 9-12 months of use out of the Jalepeno, that's a different matter. I'm not sure things will be quite that bad, but I wouldn't expect a Jalepeno to merrily mine away for several years without issue.

Just keep it

Why is this even a debate?!

If you can get +3k or even better equivalent value in Bitcoins, do it.

You then have saved a hell of a long time recouping those coins having something unnecessarily running 24/7 and that's *if it continues without fault. It's hardly as BFL will be prompt in fixing faulty equipment even if with a 'lifetime guarantee', why risk it?

You can then reinvest in something with actual longevity, like be ready to pounce when 2nd Gen ASICs are announced, by say, Avalon.

You could probably delay the listing on eBay by a week, or make it a nice 10 dayer, enjoying a couple extra coins along the way.

Should've made a simple poll. I would sell it for 25btc, if i were you.

Hardly, courtesy of jspeilberg; Bitsyncom's chip wallet is currently holding ~60,000 BTC which represents 760,000 Asic chips which translates to +215THash worth of asics coming on line once they ship.

AsicMiner... BTCGarden and others are good for another 100 - 200 THash in the next 2 months.  BFL will most likely still struggle to add any serious hashpower onto the network for a couple of months.

That's first gen ASIC online approximately August ~ 4 months away. A years time while be a very, very different landscape. Bear in mind as Yifu stated at Bitcoin 2013, we don't even know the effect from private equity developing their own chips and won't until they come online, which they should also by August if they started in Feb. They're Yifu's words...

I guess it depends on your goals/attitude.

If you are mining for fun and you won't kick yourself if you make less... Keep it!  You have a rare item with a ton of history drama and street credit.

If you are here for profit only, then you would be odd not to not take 25btc.  Put it up for a 10 day auction and enjoy it some.

If you are serious about mining, I would start thinking about investing strategy for gen2 asics.  Your best bet would be to sell the miner and wait for the new tech.  I am guessing March 2014.

Yo, and one thing I'd do immediately is try and get that firmware revision that bumps your device up 2gh/s, then sell immediately. You'll prob get another $1-2k on eBay...

Judging by the unofficial BFL twitter feed they're getting thousands of chips per week and hundreds of boards... very soon.  Not sure if they're just stringing us along by (again and again) promising the world and then delivering almost nothing, or whether things will really be different this time.  If BFL will finally do what they've been promising since October 2012 and ship en mass to customers then it may be a good idea to sell a Jalapeno to those desperate to get their hands on one.  If BFL keeps going like they have been and delivering a few units per week then keeping your Jalapeno and continuing to mine is a wise move.

Cluster the point is BFL delivering or not no longer dictates the exponential future effect on hashrate.

Considering the Asicminer blades are selling for BTC50+ @ just over 10 GH/s he should definitely be able to get $3K for it.

If you sell it, sell it for BTC and fuck the dollar. don't use the dollar for anything. i think that's where bitcoins true value is. getting away from the dollar altogether.

Totally understandable. See attached undeniable photoshop photographic proof of me with my seven Jalapeños.

https://i.imgur.com/94teL3S.jpg
(Couldn't resist.)

This forum needs a like function. I would like your post. Twice.

Selling it now if you get a good price would be nice.

5.5Ghs is not going to be that much in a short while, and there is the risk of having to wait for the initial $3k to ROI for too long.

canton, let us know what you decided based on these posts  :)

Are those jalapeños powered by geothermal power?

In Alaska - may be, but in CA or FL -- solar power is just fine :)

Funny you should ask! In fact, right now (since I'm leaning strongly towards keeping the Jalapeno based on the kind advice offered in this forum post) my current plan is to get the Jalapeno running off of my Raspberry Pi board and solar power. My current solar setup is a 100W panel and a car battery+inverter which isn't quite enough to keep it going 24/7, but I figure if I bump my solar output to about 200W that should cover nighttimes & sets of cloudy days (which are infrequent where I live in New Mexico.)

PS: That photo is from a vacation to Giant's Causeway in Ireland, which is an extraordinary spot with all those stone pentagrams...

More pix: http://tinyurl.com/ogz9tr5

Ha ha!

If you sold it, what would you do with the gold earned?

i.e. if you plan to re-invest it into an asset which is yielding higher returns, do it.
otherwise, what's the point?

I'd sell it and hold the BTC*. Purchase additional hardware once someone can ship out product the next day. By then the prices will have plummeted and we'll have a better idea on long-term BTC profitability.

*- assuming you are bullish on BTC. Otherwise hold the resulting USD.

Here is another thing to consider. IMO it will only be a matter of time until someone figures out how to reflash/overclock one of those. If you are adventurous enough to try it and void your (vapour)warranty then that would add a little more value to it. Personally, half the reason I ordered one is for the entertainment value. I've run out of things to screw with on my video card lol.

Is that not what BFL have done with their +2gh/s firmware upgrade?

what I would do is check the math to see if you should sell for btc and buy avalon chips with proceeds... figure on july/August, then use those chips and turn them into Klondike units and keep hashing :)

Definitely sell a good month before the K16's mail out.  The total for 4.5GH/s off those is somewhere around BTC3.  Sell it and start an order for 7-8 of those.

If you can sell your Jalapeno for $3000, then consider this:
$3000 can buy 250-300 Avalon chips. Those can hash at 300 x 280MH/s per chip = 84GH/s.
Even if it costs you half of that $3000 to have them put on Klondike boards, you still turn 5GH/s into 42GH/s in 2-3 months.

Nice, I'm thinking about solar too, but panels and battery banks still cost way too much.

btw, i was making an awful joke about them being powered off the rocks they are on since there are no power cables coming off of them.

Oh and if it were me i'd keep it. but that's because I'm a bitcoin enthusiast more than I am a profiteer.

Yes, if you want to pay for it. Plus is it an upgrade you can buy after the fact or do they have to do it at the factory? Either way I'm sure it won't be too long before someone figures out how to do it at home for free. I haven't looked into it much so pardon my ignorance.

That's cool, but it cold potentially net the OP a better price.

Yeah, unless paypal or ebay user scams you... I'de just mine and forget about the US$ for a while.

Best advice, probably garnering the most risk. High risk yields higher profits.

Just to throw my .2BTC in here...

At today's difficulty, it would take you around 10-15 days to recoup your initial investment (in $USD).  It'll take you much longer to recoup your BTC investment, but it will probably still be around 6 months to a year.

I'd keep it and mine it if it was me.  But it's not me, it's you.

If you want to sell, you'll make money immediately, but if you keep it it will probably be worth more in BTC over 2-3 years.

How much do you think it will be worth when the 300USD Klondike16 (4.5 GH/s) will ship in about 2 months? Still 3000 USD?

Which will get you 25BTC faster?

A/ sell the Jally for 25BTC
B/ mine with the Jally
C/ mine with 10x the equivalent of a Jally?

Which will get you more BTC in 12+ months?

A/ sell the Jally for 25BTC
B/ mine with the Jally
C/ mine with 10x the equivalent of a Jally?

25-30 BTC will buy you 15x more GHs than you have today. Maybe even 20x if you hit the right group buy. Problem is you may not be able to buy it in next 3 months. Optimists will tell you in a month, but that's not realistic. The longer you wait, you may see your 30 BTC offer go down to 2-3 BTC when other miners come to market.

Question is: will difficulty go 15x higher in 3 months? My opinion is that difficulty will not go that high, so I would sell, wait 3 months and buy 70 GHs.

But it is tough call.

Forget difficulty... There's a more serious wave (https://twitter.com/BTConomist/status/338494827614322689) approaching from a distance (https://twitter.com/BTConomist/status/339640477353668608).

Go away bear, we want the OP to take more BTC off the market with his sale and pump the price even further. BTC TO THE MOOOOOOOON!!!!!




















did I do well as a BTC speculation troll?

Is it me, or something is not right with one of those Jalapeno shadows?  ???

It's just you.

It's a tough call, but I think about $2700 is break-even. If you can get more than that now, I'd sell it. That's based on 15% difficulty increase every two weeks going forward. To make >$3000 over its lifetime, difficulty would have to increase less than ~13% every two weeks, which I think is pretty unlikely.

Overclock it till it burns!  Run it for all it's worth while the difficulty is low :)

They are magical lucky charms that float in the air.

The best bet would probably be to keep it though selling it to some sucker for big price is not bad thing too :)

I personally would never buy it if the price wouldn't be at least 20% less than it is usual prediction of what it could produce with difficulty rising.

Why would I put the risk from your back to mine for very small chance of difficulty staying lower and me gaining a bit more..

FYI  a couple of people have asked so I'm posting this here:

Idle: 14W
Active: 33W
Typical Hashrate: 5.7 GH/s
Temperature (as reported by BitMinter client, anyway) around 46-50 C.

I'm pleased with everything except the noise (hadn't anticipated a fan at all based on the "coffee warmer" marketing back in june 2012) and the power consumption (because I can't quite run it off my hobby solar array which would have handled a raspberry pi + 5W jalapeño just fine.)

It's been running 24h for a week now, no problems so far. I do wish BFL had thought to include at least a paragraph or two with their packaging along the lines of "how to use this." It's not like they haven't had enough time to organize shipping materials. Instead the mysterious cube shipped with the requisite cables only and what the fuck a coffee mug like I'm actually going to set a cup of coffee on something that's more valuable than my laptop. No "read me". No "don't eat this" silica packet. Just a cube and a mug. Anyway:

Here's how it's installed right now, adjacent to the PowerBook G4 running Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.5 which I *hope* to use for mining once I can figure out how to compile a compatible miner... The exposed hardware you see behind the Jalapeño is my wife's Nexus 7 which she dropped in the bathtub today. I figured the Jalapeño's hot air output would do a nice job drying out the Nexus circuits over the next couple days:

https://i.imgur.com/XtDIaK5.jpg

Conclusion? I decided to keep it. Might not be as financially lucrative as selling it for 25BTC and holding onto them, but I got into Bitcoin for the excitement / hobby aspect, and having this little whirring supercomputer makes it feel more fun, especially in case this whole economy tanks and all I'm left with is memories and electricity bills. :)

Self-serving plug: For any readers who are interested in either hoarding bitcoins long-term or having a way to *gift* bitcoins to friends, family, or coworkers with beautiful and idiot-proof paper wallets, I cordially invite you to check out my hobby project to embed Bitcoins on what I think are the the most elegant and secure paper wallets made to date:

http://bitcoinpaperwallet.com (http://bitcoinpaperwallet.com)

I put a ton of heart and thought into this project and I hope you'll check it out.

Over & out,
- Canton

Glad you got it and it is mining!

Keep us posted on stability etc great to see hard evidence of these things mining and posts from users thanks.

Congrats Canton!

I am glad you decided to keep it (though I think I advised selling it earlier in the thread).

The heart and the head lead to different paths but that doesn't mean they both can't be right.

Glad you made up your mind, even though I would have chosen differently. :)

I guess the coffee cups were ordered a long time ago, when they still thought it would be USB powered.
Exchanging the heatsink/fan might make a lot of sense with this unit, although it will no longer look as sleek. But then again, it will look a lot more geek, and that is even cooler. ;)

I assume that you may be able to flash it in some time, and get more than the stated 5Gh.

And who knows - in the future it might become a collectors item.

Congrats!

Mining forever!  8)

Sorry for digging up this thread. It's be 12 months. Difficulty is over 10 Billion. trogdorjw73 - not, frankly, lunacy anymore. There are unprofitable/maybe squeaking out a few cents at the most efficient settings.

Told you so...

lol. ;D