Bitcoin Forum

Summary
This is a group buy (GB), with subsequent hosting in the UK, for a 400+ GH/s bitcoin miner based on bitfury’s recently announced ASIC chips. Bitfury’s chips have been demonstrated in working devices (see below for links); they have very low power consumption (less than 1W per GH/s) and are very competitively priced from bitfurystrikesback.com (more than 3 GH/s per BTC for 400 GH/s miners). As such, they represent one of the most attractive ASIC mining investments available, but the cost of a 400 GH/s miner is beyond the means of many smaller miners, so we’re offering this GB to give access to this state-of-the-art hardware to a wider audience.

We will use a slightly different approach to other GBs and build up the 400GH/s miner in a modular way, ordering component modules as soon as the group has gathered sufficient funds. This will allow us to make orders more quickly and potentially gain a better position in any delivery queues. To provide extra security we are using John K’s escrow service to gather funds and place orders.

UPDATE: Stinky_Pete has placed an order for (and paid for) three drillbit mining boards from drillbit's first batch of miners. Note: this batch is no longer available for sale, only later shipping batches are available. Please see http://drillbitsystem.com/index.html for details: ~20GH/s per board, late October or early November delivery estimate. We will add this to the group's mining capability as component 8 in the GB. Please see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252534.msg3343876#msg3343876 for more details.

UPDATE: We have placed (and paid for) an early order for one of burnin's bitfury burner boards (see www.asic-hardware.com for details: 40-80GH/s, expected around 64 GH/s, early October delivery) and have added this component to the group's mining capability. Please see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252534.msg3176617#msg3176617 for more details.

**************************************************
CURRENT GROUP BUY STATUS = CLOSED
~245 GH/s already online
**************************************************

1 share = 0.5 BTC
1 share = 2.13 GH/s (estimate inc. hosting fee, at current BTC rate shown below)

0 shares remaining for current component (at current BTC rate shown below)

The estimated GH/s per share shown above assumes that all modules that make up a 400GH/s miner are purchased as part of this GB along with a 50 GH/s bitfury burner and three drillbit boards (at 60 GH/s).


Current bitpay.com Euro:BTC rate (at 19:28 BST 15/10/13) = 103.2781
The estimated component costs (in BTC) and number of shares shown above for the current component are based on the current bitpay BTC:Euro exchange rate (above) and are subject to change as the exchange rate changes. BTC paid and number of shares issued for ordered components is fixed at time of order.


Links
Bitfury burner supplier (https://www.asic-hardware.com/)
Bitfury’s chip testing thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228677.0)
Bitfurystrikesback (http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com/)
Bitfurystrikesback's thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.0)
A hashing bitfury video (https://bitcentury.io/blog)
C-scape’s new board based on bitfury chips (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228677.msg2796663#msg2796663)

********
Updated 28th July 2013: Another update to the summary and updates section for clarity.
Updated 26th July 2013: Clearer summary and updates section added.
Updated 22nd July 2013, 11:49: Now with no GB fee. GH/s per bitcoin for a 400 GH/s miner bought via this route is very competitive with other offers (see below).
Updated 10th July 2013, 22:15: Now aiming for October delivery hardware.
********

What’s on offer (the details)
A group buy (GB) with subsequent hosting (in the UK) for mining hardware based on bitfury’s ASICs. See punin’s thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.0), bitfury’s thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228677.0) and (http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com) for info on the hardware. We propose to buy, on behalf of the group, one “25 GH/s Miner Starter Kit” for October delivery. This will be followed (depending on the amount of funds raised by the GB) by up to fifteen “Bitfury 55nm ASIC H-Board” for October delivery . The potential hash rate for the GB is therefore ~400 GH/s, with an estimated power consumption of 400W (for SHA-256 hashing, based on advertised data from bitfurystrikesback.com). Bitfurystrikesback.com only accept payment in BTC through BitPay. The GB only accepts share contributions in BTC.

The main advantage to buying in this modular way rather than collecting funds for a “full” 400 GH/s miner is that we will be able to fill orders more quickly and potentially gain a better position in any delivery queues. Edit: An additional benefit is that a 400GH/s miner with October delivery is actually significantly cheaper when bought in this modular way rather than if ordered as a complete unit.

Chip features (from http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com)
•   55nm process
•   Full-custom hand-routed design
•   Experimental low-threshold voltage transistors
•   QFN 48 7mm x 7mm package
•   756 rolled hash cores
•   Demonstrated performance 2.7 GH/sec @ 0.835V (0.8W/Ghps)

25 GH/s Miner Starter Kit features (from http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com)
•   ~25 GHash/s
•   Price = 1000 Euro + VAT (at 24%) for October delivery (including delivery costs) (product not showing on bitfurystrikesback.com, but promised soon by punin)
•   25GH Miner with only 1 hashing board. Originally designed by c-scape for the 100TH mine.
•   Modular design expandable to 16 hash boards for total of 400GHash/s
•   Easy to install into racks
•   Compatible with ATX PSU, Total power  draw ~40W (Efficiency at wall depends on your PSU)
•   1 Master board, 1 Hashing board with 16 Bitfury 55nm ASIC chips, Raspberry Pi Model B with SD card and software preinstalled and 2 x Ring terminal to Molex-Jr adapter cables included.

Bitfury 55nm ASIC H-Board features (from http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com)
•   ~25 GHash/s
•   Price = 350 Euro + VAT (at 24%) for October delivery (including delivery costs)
•   16 chip Hashing Board to be used with the Master board (i.e. plugs into the above starter kit)

 
Collection of funds from potential group members
We will collect shares from potential group members at 0.5 BTC per share. Only payments in 0.5 BTC increments will be accepted. Since the hardware is priced in Euro and the BTC price has been volatile recently the precise number of shares required to purchase each component is a little hard to estimate. At current BTC rates one “25 GH/s Miner Starter Kit” would cost ~19 BTC, so ~38 shares as an example.

We will check the balance of the collection account at least once per day and when we have sufficient BTC for a component (i.e. starter kit, followed by individual H-boards) an order will be placed with bitfurystrikesback.com. A GB fee will be charged by us (2% of the order value to jlsminingcorp for organising the GB and 2% of the order value to John K. for the Escrow service i.e. a total of 4%) and Edit: An escrow fee will be charged by John K. (2% of the order value) and the total (component cost + escrow fee) will be used to calculate the number of shares awarded. If more is collected than is needed for the next component then those people contributing after the required total has been reached will be offered a refund or for their contributions to roll over to the collection for the next component. The blockchain will be used to judge the order of payment.

In the case that a shipment from bitfurystrikesback.com is stopped by customs and a fee has to be paid to get it back, all group members will pay the fee needed (in proportion to the number of shares that they own) to free it. This is unlikely, since we will pay the necessary VAT at time of purchase and the shipment will be within the EU. However, it’s worth mentioning what would need to happen just in case! If bitfurystrikesback.com decide to change their shipping policy and charge shipping (currently free) then this cost would be split between group members in proportion to the number of shares that they own.

Confirmation of share purchase
No personal confirmation will be given. If you want to check, wait for the next list with orders to be posted to this thread and search for your address. If something is not right inform jlsminingcorp. The list is the confirmation.

Payment of mined BTC to group members
Any BTC mined will be distributed to group members in proportion to the number of shares that they own and the number of coins mined by the miner (the miner is defined as all hardware components in this group buy that are actively mining) since the last payment.* jlsminingcorp will deduct power costs (currently £0.09 per kWh, but subject to change) and a 5% hosting fee before distributing mined coins to group members. The hosting fee covers the time required to look after the miner, share of the cost of internet connection and router, cover time spent to ensure payments are processed etc. The following formula will be used:

Pay per share (in BTC) = ((coins mined since last payment – power costs) * 0.95) / total number of shares issued for mining components that have been delivered

Payments will be made in BTC once per week to the addresses used to purchase shares. Payments will only be made to group members who have shares in components that have been delivered. Payments will not be made to group members who have shares in components that have been ordered, but not delivered. Payments, will not be made for potential group members who have made payments to the collection account, but have not yet had components ordered. jlsminingcorp reserves the right to deduct reasonable costs from coins mined (prior to distribution to group members) if these are justified to maintain the smooth running of the miner for the group. As an example, such costs might include (but are not limited to) replacement PSUs, fans, and other components for the miner, taxes etc. Group members will be informed if these costs arise.

* Note: the group is aiming to build a single miner with up to 16 hashing boards and mining proceeds will be paid to all group members based on the performance of the miner as a whole (not on the basis of the hashing power of individual components). There is an incentive for all group members (in terms of the ratio of GH/s to number of shares issued) for all 16 hashing boards to be ordered during the GB.

Hosting arrangements
jlsminingcorp will endeavour to keep the miner running as efficiently as possible to maximise the amount of coins mined for the group, whilst keeping costs for the group as low as reasonably possible. This will include choosing appropriate mining pools to minimise rejects, minimise pool fees (if appropriate) and maximise pool efficiency; providing a suitable environment for the miner; providing access to power (costs charged to the group) and an internet connection. This will not include overclocking of the hardware (this looks as though it may be impossible, difficult or at best risky with the current hardware design). UPS and redundant internet connection are not included, as they would significantly increase the hosting cost for the group. We have been mining 24/7 with GPUs for several months now with no power or internet stability problems, so they are also unlikely to be needed. We will provide a PSU and racking/support system that should be suitable for use with the full miner. However, in the event that these are not suitable for any reason then the costs for alternatives will be deducted from coins mined, prior to distribution to group members.

jlsminingcorp will run the miner for at least 12 months from the date of delivery of the first module, or until it becomes unprofitable to do so (i.e. if power costs outweigh the amount of BTC being mined by the miner),* whichever comes first. I would imagine that we may be able to run the hardware for longer than this before it becomes unprofitable, due to the low power consumption, but nobody can predict what the network hash rate or difficulty will be in 12 months’ time. When the miner becomes unprofitable to run I will attempt to sell it,** or its components to maximise the amount of money that can be returned to group members. Any profit from sale of the miner will be returned as a dividend to group members in proportion to the number of shares that they own.

* By unprofitable we mean when mining can no longer cover the electricity bill (in £). This will depend on difficulty and BTC price (rates will be taken from bitstamp.net and we'll take a rough average over a few days to a week when making a decision on profitability - i.e. it won't be turned on and off every hour as things fluctuate). There should be no problem with temporarily mothballing the miner to ride out short-term falls in BTC price if group members want this.
** We’re happy to organise some kind of vote on this forum to decide what to do with the miner when it's turned off due to profitability. We reserve the right to set the options being voted on (after consultation with the group) and a majority vote (constituting at least 50% of shares) for one of the options tabled will mean we take that option. If no option receives votes worth more than 50% of the shares jlsminingcorp reserves the right to decide for the group using the votes cast and the consultation as guidance. It may be that delaying a decision costs everybody money and we want the option to break any potential deadlock.

Hardware lifetime and failure
To the best of our knowledge bitfurystrikesback.com has not provided any details regarding the expected lifetime of this hardware (we will post here if this information is released). Considering the expected power consumption one would expect that it should run at least for the period described above. However, we can’t guarantee the hardware lifetime – there just isn’t enough information available to do so. If the hardware does fail then we will do what we can to get it fixed in a way that is most cost-effective to the group.
 
Non-delivery, damage, hashrate etc.
The GB organisers take no responsibility for the possibility that bitfurystrikesback.com does not deliver the miner (on time or at all). We all know that you can never 100% guarantee anything when it comes to pre-orders, particularly when it comes to bitcoin mining ASICs. We also take no responsibility for the accuracy of bitfurystrikesback.com’s description of the miner’s capabilities (hashrate, power consumption etc.), damage in transit or other factors outside of our control. If we believe that bitfurystrikesback.com has a case to answer should any of these problems arise, we will do everything that we reasonably can to get bitfurystrikesback.com to rectify the situation on behalf of the group.

Refunds
Refunds can be requested at any point until an order is placed based on those funds. Share purchases are binding once funds have been used to place an order for a particular module (they will be with bitfurystrikesback.com then and not us!) If you request a refund we reserve the right not to accept any further payments from you for this or future GBs (to prevent risk offsetting at our expense).

Sale of shares
If you would like to sell your shares at a later date I will charge a 1% fee (hassle fee) for doing this.
 
Acceptance of terms and conditions
By entering into this group buy you accept the terms and conditions set out here.

To purchase shares
1) Send 0.5 BTC per share to the following address (please only send multiples of 0.5 BTC)
2) Post a message on this forum (or PM jlsminingcorp if you wish to remain anonymous) stating: your forum nickname, the number of shares you want, the number of BTC you have sent, the sending address. Please use the following comma-separated format:

“nickname”,”shares”,”btc”,”address”
e.g. jlsminingcorp,2,1,1acer8EGZmqKvrRE4Qc9bUFf9PX3xaYTp

If your wallet application does not let you select the sending address and sends from multiple addresses, please post only one of them (and keep the address).

3) Sign your username as message using the wallet address that you used to send BTC (see the jlsminingcorp post below this for details of how to do this if you are unfamiliar, or see the excellent overview on SebastianJu’s group buy thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187660.0) point 13B for instructions).

Only send payments from an address you control (i.e. one you can sign a message with). If you send from MtGox or other exchanges, you risk losing your funds, as it will be impossible to prove that you sent them. If you’ve bought shares please keep an eye on this thread and make sure that the correct address and number of shares etc. is showing in the status update (updated at least once per day). If something looks wrong you will need to prove that you are the owner of that address by signing a message with your sending address. How to sign/verify messages? (http://imgur.com/a/nUmZ0, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179769.msg1922342#msg1922342).
Please note that some BTC wallets can’t sign messages.

I will use the sending address for BTC payouts of coins mined for the group and if you request a change of payout address I will require that you can sign a message with your share purchase address to confirm this. If you are unable to do this I WILL NOT CHANGE THE RECEIVING ADDRESS. This is for your own protection.

Who are we?
jlsminingcorp are two enthusiastic bitcoiners who are relatively new to the community, but are very interested in getting more involved. We’re based in the UK and have been mining since Feb 2013. Our ID has been verified by John K. (see post below).

Trust and communication
In order to gain trust we have verified our identity with John K. and we will use John K.’s escrow service to collect funds for the GB to provide trust and security. During mining, group members will be informed of the bitcoin address(es) that mined coins are being paid to by our pools. Group members will also be informed of the pools used and the nicknames used. This should ensure that anybody who wants to can watch the mining process in real-time. jlsminingcorp will post regular (weekly?) progress updates and news on a separate thread in this forum during mining. Videos of cgminer (or equivalent) miner output will be posted when new hardware is added, or when these are requested by group members (so long as this is not unreasonably often!) We hope that will give group members the confidence that mining is progressing and that payments are being handled fairly. We will endeavour to respond to all communications as quickly as possible, but there may be some times when we won’t be available, so would appreciate your patience. Wherever possible, we will inform group members of any expected prolonged “quiet” periods (the occasional holiday etc.) in advance.

Risk
Bitcoin price, difficulty, network hashrate, the reputability of suppliers and many other factors associated with this GB are unpredictable. There are potential rewards, but also significant risks to this GB and we don’t offer any guarantees about the success of the venture. Please ensure that you have done a careful risk/reward analysis before joining the GB. We expect all potential group members to have done sufficient research to understand the hardware and bitcoin ecosphere sufficiently to understand what this GB will be doing. We are not in a position to offer any financial advice relating to this GB or other bitcoin-related matters.
 

SIGNING/VERIFYING INFORMATION (from SebastianJu’s group buy thread)

•   Copy the sending address from which you sent BTC to the group buy. If you think that the sending address doesn’t look like yours it’s probably a change address. This address is yours of course when you sent bitcoins with it. If you don’t know the address then go to the transaction, where you sent bitcoins to the group buy, and check the details. There is a transaction-id. Copy this t-id and put it into the form field at blockchain.info. Then you can see the sending address(es) you sent the bitcoins with.
•   Choose "sign messages" in your wallet.
•   Copy the sending address in the field at the top where the address has to be.
•   Put your forum username in the message field. (If possible use only your username and not more signs or words to prevent errors while sending the info via pm or while verifying.)
•   Click at sign.
•   The signature IS NOT stored in bitcoin network (blockchain) and isn't automatically transmitted to me. The signing process only creates data, the signature, which is the long string at the bottom that ends in =. In order for me to verify the sending address you need to send me the signature. See next point.
•   Create a pm and set up two code tags. Like this here:

Example-Code-Tag (Created with BBCode, that is the hash-button on top of PMs or Posts while creating them):
Put the message and the signature each in such a tag.

•   The code tags are important so that while sending the pm no wrong signs come to it that could make the message or the signature faulty.
•   In the first codetag put in the signed message, for example your username. IMPORTANT: Upper- and Lowercase does matter. You have to verify the exact same text you used for signing.
•   In the second codetag put in the created signature. Please be careful to copy all signs of the signature. For example use ctrl+A to mark all signs, then ctrl+C to copy them.
•   Go to http://brainwallet.org/?vrMsg=sf#verify and put in your username (your message) and your signature into the fields. To be sure all is copied correctly first go in the field with the mouse, click ctrl+A to mark all the old text, then click ctrl+V to overwrite all marked text. Click "Verify Message" and see that the sending address comes out that you signed the message with.
•   If that happened successfully send the pm.
•   As soon as i have verified the signature and message and got the correct sending address out of it you will be verified.

Here a video tutorial to sign with the normal Wallet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oxM9_OCQKM (Thanks to Foofighter)
Here a video tutorial to sign with a Onlinewallet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S88ciN9DsRk (Thanks to Foofighter)

Any bonus for being first?

Stinky_Pete,3,1.5

Only the unending respect and admiration of your peers ;). Actually I'd had a PM earlier than this, but it doesn't make a difference to things at this point, you're both currently "in".

At current bitpay.com exchange rates we have over 25% of the cost of a mining starter kit pledged, so I will ask John K. if he is happy to open the escrow. Will update here when I have news. John K. has advised that he is currently traveling a lot (see his profile for confirmation of this) so may not be able to reply as quickly as usual, so we will have to be patient.

Please feel free to continue pledging until the escrow account is open.

Do you know what kind of window we have to purchase for August delivery? I thought I read somewhere (perhaps your other thread?) that they are getting close to a sellout. Just curious.

Not sure I'm afraid, I've sent a message to bitfurystrikesback.com to ask. We will move as quickly as possible regardless. If we did miss the August delivery then I'd be keen to order the components for October delivery (if members agree). There's a balance between higher miner costs for August delivery (vs lower costs for October delivery) and increasing difficulty with time, so the best strategy is something of a guess in any case.

Two shares please kind sir. Moving BTC around...  :)

Added to the list.

hardinero007,4,2

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

The escrow address for jlsminingcorp's Bitfury group buy is:

19HnCCDAGBZ9a2EY1mwsaKQv9CmW4z2y44

Please state and agree to the conditions (if item is received damaged, item lost with tracking, customs fee etc) beforehand.

If possible, GPG sign your agreement to prevent any discrepancies later on and please ship with tracking to prevent problems during delivery.
GPG signing is not a requirement, and any verbal exchange in the form of private messages or posts on bitcointalk.org, or email is effective as a statement of condition.

Do note that I am only responsible for the funds up to the point it is sent to Bitfury.
Any losses incurred by Bitfury's or jlsminingcorp's failure to ship/reship will not be borne by me, but I will release the following data to aid in litigation actions.

In addition to that, I confirm the receipt of:

1) jlsminingcorp's Driving licence
2) jlsminingcorp's work email
3) jlsminingcorp's credit card statement

The fine print:
This Contract is solely generated for the purpose of facilitating the transaction between the seller and the buyer, which refers to the pseudonyms used on bitcointalk.org.
The escrow holder, John, assumes and gives no liability or guarantees on the satisfaction of all parties involved, although he agrees to mediate and facilitate the deal to the fullest extent he is capable of.  On the event that any problems arises, he will release the escrow to whichever party that presents him with the most convincing proof and/or after an open discussion with others or theymos. 
The verbal acceptance by both parties (or the failure to reject) and the sending of Bitcoins to the escrow address above constitutes the acceptance of the terms and conditions stated, and the activation of this Contract.

Please understand that I am assuming the risk of holding the escrowed Bitcoins, and I am using my own time to facilitate this transaction.   
I am imposing a fixed and nonrefundable fee of 2% for this transaction, to be deducted when the funds are moved.

Thank you.

John (the escrow holder)
10 July 2013
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32)

iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJR3FWEAAoJEINT5jezqu6wkmgP/2mGv90S/c+iHoi4yWcdCrFx
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NApbF80Wk7x2tR+bAHdPvy5jeNXLIGnBqDmrv5e5GVco5InZNVV0hm8O9g4fxWMH
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p1Cg/d0w579BqRrom4l1
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Hi All, OK some bad news I'm afraid. www.bitfurystrikesback.com is showing the 25GH/s miner as out of stock (in fact all of the summer delivery kit seems to be out of stock). I think that the US resale site pretty much bought everything up in a day when they opened on Sunday.

So, we need to decide what to do now. My suggestion would be to continue collecting for an October delivery 25GH/s mining starter kit with some H-boards to add to this (also for October delivery) depending on how much we collect. However, I've still not had a reply from bitfurystrikesback.com about whether they will be offering this (I'll start pestering their thread now)! Another option would be to collect for a 400 GH/s miner for October delivery, although this is more expensive (7500 Euro + VAT), so will take longer before we are ready to buy. One final option that comes to mind is that we could collect for a number of H-boards (for October delivery, 350 Euro + VAT each) and look into options for somebody to build a master board for us to connect them to. I've a possibility in mind for this last option and will get in touch with them now about this.

Please post your thoughts on this. You are, of course, completely free to withdraw your pledges. Just post or send me a message if you'd like to do this.

The good news is that John K. has just sent the escrow contract and setup the escrow account (see above). I would suggest that nobody sends coins quite yet, until we have an agreed strategy for moving forward. Please send your thoughts on the above ASAP. I will explicitly post in this thread when I start the 24 hour pledge payment countdown - the clock is not ticking yet!

So, we are moving into pre-order territory, not a good place to be. It's a shame, I was hoping we could get an early start.

Am I right in thinking specs etc. for the master boards have been published? It's certainly worth investigating an alternative source, but if we can't get H-boards until October is there any point? Do you feel confident in your ability to set everything up, coming from multiple sources. It isn't something I'd be prepared to do with other peoples' money! Would bitfurystrikesback be prepared to sell us all the component parts and software ~ basically the whole starter kit without the master board?

I'm staying on board for now. I vote we continue collecting for an October delivery of starter kit plus as many H-boards as we can afford, unless the DIY route becomes less risky.

I think the August delivery was basically a pre-order too (although they may have already ordered the chips). At least the October offerings are generally much cheaper than the summer delivery offers, so price goes in the opposite direction to increasing difficulty. My preference would be the same as yours, to go for the same kit as planned and the same modular approach, but with the 25GH/s starter kit ordered for October delivery. The only problem is that at the moment there is no option on their site for a 25GH/s kit for October! I don't see any reason to offer H-boards in October without offering kits to put them in, so will keep badgering them about this until we get an answer. Will post an update as soon as I have news.

OK, so I've just had a PM from Punin, who confirms that they will be offering 25GH/s starter kits for October delivery shortly ;D. I'll be watching for any developments. Perhaps we should wait for pricing to be confirmed before I update the OP and get you guys to transfer BTC to the escrow account. Keep an eye on this thread.

Maybe for long term purposes, the 400 GH/s miner is a better option. watching

Ninjaboon is right, the closer the miner gets to 400 GH/s the better it looks (as there is a premium on the starter kit in terms of GH/s/$). This is the case regardless of the delivery date of the starter kit.

OK, so there's no sign of an October delivery 25GH/s starter kit on bitfurystrikesback.com yet and I'm not sure waiting longer puts this GB in any better position. In fact if there were to be any movement, it would be better for us to be in a position to put an order in quickly. I get a sense from some of the posts on the bitfury threads that there have been a lot of orders that have yet to be paid (particularly in the US). There is a possibility (albeit a slim one) that August deliveries could open up again if people don't pay up. I don't think this is too likely, but it's possible.

I propose the following. We start collecting BTC rather than just pledges from later today. Unless there are strong objections I'll modify the OP at some time between 22:00 and 24:00 (BST) this evening with the new details including payment details. As discussed previously if you'd like to keep your place in the queue based on your pledges, please could you transfer BTC to the collection account within 24 hours of me modifying the OP later today.

The plan will remain the same. We collect funds for a 25GH/s starter kit (though for October delivery this time, assuming that punin's assurance that this option will be available is correct) and order this, we then keep collecting for H-boards to add to the miner and order these when enough funds are available. If bitfurystrikesback.com announce a significantly different price for the 25GH/s starter kits for October delivery we re-evaluate the options. This would include the potential to keep gathering funds for the full 400GH/s miner (Oct delivery) etc.

OP updated now and we're accepting payments. Please could you pay for any pledges in BTC to the account as described in the OP.

Let's get this thing going ;D!

I hope you all bought your BTC last week by the way ;). The market is looking bullish (long may it last)!

Put me down for another 2 shares, please, in addition to my previous 3 (God, I love this ASIC mining).

Stinky_Pete,2,1.0

No problem, added to the list. Payment received.

Sounds like you're having fun ;D!

If you haven't seen this already take a look at a bitfury asic hashing (https://bitcentury.io/blog). It's not being driven very hard, as they have no cooling yet, but still running at 1.2GH/s! 1.03 A at 0.8 V = 0.824 W - looking good ;D.

dawie,1,0.5,1A5wVw3jThtjVhXpDN6fX85nxrwtucywBe

OP updated, welcome!

Hi All, we now have a product listing on bitfurystrikesback.com for the 25GH/s starter kit for October delivery (http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com/product/25gh-miner-starter-kit-october-delivery). Thanks Punin ;D! This gives us something to aim for, which is great. It's also nice to see that the starter kit + H-boards is still the cheapest way to build a 400GH/s miner, so I think this is still a good approach.

Sorry for the delay. Payment will be with you this evening. I will update with tx id etc as requested.

mistermint,2,1,1Dk7YG43rSPatnHNJjLAUzwamhf62b1Nsq

No worries, we've got a way to go yet.

Looks like the July chips will ship very soon (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.msg2739933#msg2739933) and design files etc. will provided for the DIYers who buy them. Looks like we will start to see some of these devices working quite soon - exciting times ;D!!

Updated the OP to give some details on potential GH/s per BTC for a full 400GH/s miner at current BTC exchange rates.

Hi All. I've devided to scrap the GB fee for this group buy and have updated the OP accordingly (there is still an escrow fee for John K.). In the end it's been less work than anticipated to get together, so this seems fair. I also want us to be offering the best possible GH/s per BTC that we can be to try to get things moving.

If we buy a 400GH/s miner via this route then the GH/s per BTC for this GB looks very competitive for bitfury kit (see the OP for some numbers), particularly as Felipeo and pajak666's share sales are now closed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=254929.msg2714038#msg2714038). Tell your friends to come and join ;)!

Whats the current situation with the GB? Any sign of Bigdaddyaz's payment so we can get this kit on order if at all possible?

Hi, we are still open, but seem to have stalled for the moment. Most of the bitfury GBs have been slow moving it seems, which I find surprising given that bitfury miners have good GH/s per BTC and have demonstrated working hardware. Maybe things will change when bitfurystrikesback start shipping units out next month. I've waived the GB fee to make this GB as competitive as possible (I think we have a good offer actually) and have made a couple of changes to the updates section of the OP to try to make things a little clearer. However, this may still need a little work and I will take a look at this tonight. Bigdaddyaz has not confirmed with me what he would like to do. For the time being I'm happy to keep his pledge in, but will put any paid up group members ahead of him in the queue.

If nobody has any objections to me being part of the GB in addition to coordinating it I will put a couple of BTC in myself tonight. Please let me know if you feel that this is a conflict of interest.

No conflict of interest - having you on board gives me more confidence that you will see it through with all speed (not that I had any real doubts).

OK, if others are fine with this then I'm in. I've updated the status with some shares for me. Unfortunately I've had no time to update the OP to make it a bit clearer, I'll take a look at this tomorrow morning. I was planning to reorganise the updates section as a summary and updates section and leave the fine print below this as is. Thanks for your confidence btw. I will do what I can to get things ordered quickly. If you have any suggestions then please let me know.

Take a look at some more bitfury-based hardware hashing away (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228677.msg2796663#msg2796663). Cscape is doing some great work (for pleasure rather than as a commercial venture I believe) with gen 2 hardware designs. It's encouraging to know that bitfury is one of only a few manufacturers to have demonstrated working chips (only ASICMiner, Avalon, BFL and bitfury I think - apologies if I've missed anybody off the list) - and the chips are working in several different pcbs too. Bitfury is looking good at the moment.

https://i.imgur.com/NMhgHd9.jpg

Is it bad to want to hug that PCB?

As long as it's just a hug I think that would be OK ;).

Hi all. I've just updated the OP with a new summary and updates section, which should make it a bit easier to read.

How many shares are there in total, how many have been sold and how many are left?

If you don't put this info in the OP it doesn't give a sense of urgency to buy the shares. I know you have a list of the people that bought shares but I couldn't find where you say what the total amount of shares is. Other GB even put "X shares left" in the Subject line and this is very helpful.

Hi, thanks for the feedback that's helpful. The exact number of shares will depend on the BTC/EUR rate when we order components. This avoids the need to set a higher share price than necessary (and subsequently pay GB members back later) or find some other way to deal with the variable BTC price. I think this is the fairest way, but as you've seen there are other approaches. We can, however, make a projection for the number of shares based on current rates and as things are fairly stable at the moment this should be fairly representative. I'll add this to the OP later today.

Well you could also set a target date for people to get in. Or perhaps increase the share price slightly after a certain deadline. This would also create the sense of urgency..

OK, OP updated, which I think is a real improvement, so thanks for the suggestion. I understand what you're saying about creating some momentum (although I'd never suggest that anybody part with their BTC in haste ;)), but I really don't like the idea of some shares being worth more than others. That seems to go against what I think that these GBs should be about - if you put in 0.5 BTC you should get 0.5 BTC's worth of the miner right?

What I could do though would be to discount the hosting fee for the 25GH/s starter kit that we're currently collecting for. For example, I could suggest that we offer 0% hosting fee if we buy the starter kit by the middle of next week and then 2.5% hosting fee if we buy by the week after that after this we'd go back to the normal 5% hosting fee. Would that be of interest to anybody? Let me know if there's interest by the end of the day and I'll write it in as a special offer, otherwise we'll keep things as they are.

Well this is what we're aiming for (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.msg2815244#msg2815244). Looks fab. I wonder if they throw the cardboard box rack in for free? ;D

Hi All, bitcoin price is going up (bitpay EUR:BTC rate now 70.279). If anybody was looking for a "sence of urgency" then getting the final shares sold and the current component ordered at this exchange rate is it - we'll get a good deal at these prices.

PM sent

Thanks Stinky_Pete, verification complete. I've updated the table in the OP to show this.

Now 13 / 35.63 shares remaining for current component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

Fewer shares remaining due to a BTC price rise.

Would I be right in thinking that Bitfury will ship in the order that units were purchased? And therefore the longer we wait to order, the later we will get our machine?

I suppose there are all sorts of unknowns, like production/delivery dates of the components, assembly time, conflicting time pressures on personnel. Have Bitfury said anything about this, or are they (wisely) not making any promises?

I would imagine that they will do it like this, but I haven't specifically asked. I think it's safe to assume that later orders will wait longer. However, if they have a good production facility then they should be able to churn out miners pretty quickly. The beauty of cscape's design is that it's very simple, the M-boards can be produced whenever (no ASICs needed) and the H-boards are all identical, so once tooled up the production line should be able to get on with the job quickly. Burnin's estimated capacity for example is 1000 boards per week, and this started out as a DIY project (although to be fair, it's looked more professional than many "pro" ASIC companies throughout)!

However, what does make me nervous is that there will be a limited supply of chips for the October delivery miners. We need to order before these run out or there will probably be a long wait or no miner!


When I asked Punin "How confident are you about your delivery estimates?" his answer was "Very confident". I guess that we'll see pretty soon whether August deliveries make it on time. July chip orders have gone out I believe (or at least some of them if I'm reading the threads correctly), which is a good sign.

Now 12 / 34.45 shares remaining for current component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

Fewer shares remaining due to a BTC price rise.

Now 0 / 34.27 shares remaining for current component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

Now 6 / 6.00 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

We're just waiting for payment from one pledger now and can then order the 25GH/s starter kit (I've pm'ed them). If I don't hear back by this evening, or if they decide to pull out, then I will re-advertise their shares.

I'm happy to open the collection for the next component (an H-board for October delivery) from now while we wait. If you contribute to this component it's possible that your contribution will be bumped up the queue and into the collection for the 25GH/s starter kit (if we don't hear back from the final pledger).

Yeah - Go Team Jlsminingcorp!

Now 12 / 12.16 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

OK, quick status update. I had a message yesterday evening from our final pledger, whose circumstances had changed and they felt they could no longer join the group. However, we've had a new member step into their place overnight (welcome to the group ;D). Their shares are now paid and I've asked John K. to place an order for the 25GH/s starter kit as soon as he can. I'll post an update as soon as the order has been placed.

The collection for the first H-board to upgrade the starter kit is now open. With the very favourable BTC:Euro rates at the moment this is a good time to buy, so if anybody is considering joining the group then this may be a good time to do so!

It's good to see that this group buy is finally getting some legs.

It may help others decide to join in, if I state my intention to invest all the Bitcoins mined by my USB ASICs during this month into this group buy. I may even throw in some alt-coins, if the weather cools down enough to let me run the GPUs  :) For all the usual reasons, I don't know exactly how much the total will be, but I'll be disappointed if there isn't enough for 6 shares, or half an H-board. But that leaves plenty of room for more boards.

For a bit of fun, is anyone prepared to match this?

[Remember, don't invest more than you can afford to lose. My contribution is subject to the usual exceptions, war, famine, extreme weather, family changes and so on].

Ha, a challenge, sounds exciting ;D. Maybe I can add to the fun. How about I give 50 YAC (a recent altcoin for those who can't keep up with them all) per paid share in the next component (an H-board) to the purchasers of those shares. This is a kind of cashback or YACback offer if you like. YAC would be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. You never know what your YAC will be worth in a few months time ;).

GB now with YACback offer
50 YAC per paid share in the next component to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for.

Now 11 / 11.86 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

Status update: John K. has very kindly put our order for a 25GH/s starter kit (Oct delivery) through and the order status is now "processing". On the bitfurystrikesback site this means the order is paid and we're now waiting for the kit. I'll try to post a screen shot of the order page tomorrow. We got a very nice Euro:BTC rate of 74.4235 in the end, so almost exactly 34 shares were issued. Please see the OP for updated numbers.

Due to the favourable Euro:BTC rate at the moment there are now only 11 shares available for the next component. Once again, let's make use of the exchange rate while it's in our favour.

Just a bit of information, the 400GH/s prototype miner looks to be functioning as expected (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.msg2855762#msg2855762). The hash rate is 380GH/s and power draw at the wall is 320W. Pretty impressive for a hand built prototype ;D! Looks like these miners should meet the advertised specs quite easily.

Hi All, as promised here's a link to a screen shot of the starter kit order and its order status (http://s10.postimg.org/qy0v3vfp5/starter_kit_1.jpg).

Now 12 / 12.11 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

Stinky_Pete,1,0.5,1EysFQHn5s8MbFTBGvgHigDdQJV23emtJP

Shares this month: 1

Now 11 / 12.14 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

Now 10 / 12.14 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

Hi All, Some of you may already have noticed that bitfurystrikesback.com have just made a significant increase to the price of H-boards for October delivery (from 350 to 450 Euros). Since this has a significant impact on the cost of our GB (miner cost has risen from 7750 to 9610 Euro), I’ve paused the collection for the moment and I need your input into how to proceed from here. I can see a number of ways to move forward (some suggestions below), but you may also have some ideas. Could you please let me know your thoughts ASAP, so that we can come to a consensus on how to proceed?

1) We continue with the original plan (i.e. keep collecting for H-boards to add to the starter kit) and accept the effect of the price increase on the total price of the miner.
2) We stop collecting for additional H-boards and run the starter kit as a stand-alone machine.
3) We request a refund from bitfurystrikesback.com and walk away. (Note: if a refund were issued in Euro then the Euro:BTC exchange rate and bank charges may affect how much we actually get back, so we would need to look for the most cost effective way to deal with this)
4) We see if we can convert our starter kit order into an order for bitfury chips. We then get these assembled into mining devices and use the assembled miners to mine for the group. Cscape and intron are both working on pcbs for chips, burnin has stated in his thread that he will probably design a bitfury miner once he’s finished with his Avalon devices and I’ve exchanged pms with two others who are quite likely to offer assembly services if a board design is available. The advantage of assembling miners from chips is that we are more likely to be able to achieve high hashrates from the chips (maybe up to 2.5 GH/s or more, rather than the 1.5GH/s from H-boards) and so the GH/s/BTC could be good.* However, there is some additional risk here, because pcb designs and assemblers are not confirmed yet. I should say that we have a personal chip order already and were planning to do this anyway, as part of our mining strategy, but the additional risk may not be for everybody. Also, bitfurystrikesback.com have just pulled chip orders from their site, so this may not even be possible.

*For example, a 20 bitfury chip bitburner from burnin could achieve ~50GH/s. The old price for 20 chips (before they were removed from the site) was 496 Euro (inc. VAT) and a very rough estimate for assembly might be around 150 Euro (inc. VAT), so a rough estimate might be 650-750 Euro for 50GH/s.

If the group wants to take option 3 then we should do this very soon (due to EU distance selling regulations). If the group wants to take option 4 then I will draft some terms and conditions for this and contact punin to see if it would be possible. Options 1 and 2 don't really require any urgent action.

Thinking out loud...
For me, one of the attractions of this scheme is that I can make small payments over an extended period, rather than having to put up a large sum immediately. I also suspect that adding more hardware over time will hold my interest (and thus the 'fun' factor) for longer. I hope that some scheme along those lines can continue. My major concern is how fast the difficulty is increasing, and hence any payback is shrinking.

I had been intending to continue investing in this group buy at least until 'the end of August' to see how the first machines were received by the community. I also hope that by then more will be known about how KnC are keeping to their timetable, and that some more details about the newest ASICs would be available.

I also want to see if there are howls of complaint about this price increase, and how Punin will react. I hope there are other potential buyers out there who will make a noise.

So for me the decision is between option 3) vs. all the others (with more information to be gathered). I'll think about it a bit more, since that decision has to be made soon.

I agree with Pete..

Hi Guys, thanks for your input. I would also like to continue this group buy if at all possible. I like the modular approach where we can build things up too. I had an interesting pm earlier that I need to follow up on in more detail, but there might be an alternative possibility for us to continue in a more economical way. I'll post as soon as I have anything substantive to suggest to the group.

Likewise.

Bet Punins inbox is burning like wildfire right now.

There's some interest on the US list in taking below par H-boards and fiddling with them.

It starts at the bottom of page 49 on this list https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.960 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251966.960)

I'd be happy to have sub-standard boards in our machine, providing they are significantly cheaper than a full board, and if they don't take up space which we could fill with a good board.

Meaning - if we can't afford a full set of 16 good boards, then fill the gaps with cheaper boards.

Yes, I know this is not contributing that much, but again I agree. I have no problems sacrificing a few Mh/s for cheaper kit.

It gets us running faster by filling the unit to capacity quicker, albeit with a lower ceiling for its maximum hashrate.

Nothing stopping us chipping in for another base unit and filling that up too, if the money spins in our direction.

Hi, that's fine for me too. The only difficulty is that there's no way to predict the supply of these boards, so it's hard to make plans on the basis of these.

I've had a vote from one of the potential group buy members in the 1st H-board "I would vote for option 1 first or option 3 second but not 2 or 4." Still working on other options.

***
Can I just check that I've understood you all correctly?

* There seems to be support to continue with the group buy if we can find a way to keep adding hardware at a reasonable price.
* I get the sense from you that with the price increase (to 450 Euro) that you don't feel that the H-boards are a reasonable price any more.
* If there's no option to get H-boards cheaper than this then we should look to get a refund on the starter kit?
* There is no support for an order of chips followed by assembly, hosting etc.

If any of this is misinterpreted please let me know ASAP.

Any news?

Hi Stinky_Pete, sorry for the delay. I'm just waiting on an email at the moment that might affect the way that we proceed with the next components. I'll let you guys know as soon as I hear back. I would hope to have all the info in the next couple of days.

We are running out of time...
I think we must make a decision in the short term.

Regards.

Hi bananton, agreed, did you see my pm from earlier today?

Reading it right now..

Hi All,

As you know from my pms to group members I've been looking into various options (different suppliers etc.) for how to continue our GB in light of the increased H-board prices from bitfurystrikesback.com for the last week or so. As I mentioned in yesterday's pm I think we have three options, which I'd like group members to vote on (I had no additional options put forward from group members in response to my pm). Please could you let me know ASAP which option you would prefer to take? A majority decision (based on the number of shares each member has in the group) will decide the way forward.

1) We continue with the original plan (i.e. keep collecting for H-boards to add to the starter kit). If options for cheaper H-boards become available in the future the group will decide on whether or not to go for these.

2) We request a refund from bitfurystrikesback.com and walk away. (Note: if a refund were issued in Euro then the Euro:BTC exchange rate and bank charges may affect how much we actually get back, so we would need to look for the most cost effective way to deal with this)

3) We request a refund and use the funds to purchase miners from the alternate supplier mentioned in my pm with hosting on the same terms as before. The same note about currency exchange etc. as above apply here.

Vote for option 1  - from swirlingbrain via bitmit.net message.

Option 1

Hi all, in order to get things moving, please could you cast your votes asap. I think we should be looking to finalise the decision by tomorrow night.

If it helps to move things along, I would also vote for option 1 for my shares.

option 1

OK, so the consensus seems to be to continue as planned, so I've updated the OP and we are now open again. Tell your friends ;D!

Now 13 / 15.32 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

Stinky_Pete,2,1.00,1EysFQHn5s8MbFTBGvgHigDdQJV23emtJP

Shares this month: 3

Now 11 / 15.32 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

mistermint,1,0.5,1Dk7YG43rSPatnHNJjLAUzwamhf62b1Nsq

Now 10 / 15.32 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

So punin is trying to keep me busy updating the OP every couple of days apparently ;)! There's been a price cut at bitfurystrikesback.com with H-cards now at 390 Euro. I've updated the OP with the new prices and estimates. The Euro:BTC rate is now pretty favourable, so it's a good time to buy.

Now 7 / 12.79 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

Fewer shares left for this component due to the changing exchange rate. The Euro:BTC rate is now very favourable, so it's a good time to buy.

Now 6 / 11.84 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

Now 7 / 12.03 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

Stinky_Pete,2,1.00,1EysFQHn5s8MbFTBGvgHigDdQJV23emtJP

Shares this month: 5

Now 4 / 11.75 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

Now 4 / 11.17 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

So bitfurystrikesback.com have started shipping August delivery units today (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.msg3018498#msg3018498). Even though they had some problems with their pcb fab a couple of weeks back they still look like they will meet their shipping estimates for the August batch. Congratulations to Punin and the team! This is a very positive sign for our October batch ;D.

Yes, very good news, and builds confidence. It sounds like there are some QA problems, but they have time to sort the problems out and/or release a higher spec board. Looking forward to October.

Yup, a few small problems, but sounding pretty good for the first production run. I must say, they seem to be dealing with the problems very well - they seem intent on delivering what they promised, by and large on time ;D. I'm guessing that not all will be shipped by the end of the week, but they've done an awesome job so far. As you say, there are a few weeks for them to sort out any teething troubles with the boards before they ship ours too.

jlsminingcorp,2,1,1NsVvGAYnK18s9bSvBJmeiQDb5oFDjGCn5

Now 2 / 11.17 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

GB now with YACback offer: 50 YAC per paid share in the next component will be given to the purchasers of those shares

YAC will be paid once the component is ordered and paid for. Only available for the next component (H-board #1).

mistermint,2,1,1Dk7YG43rSPatnHNJjLAUzwamhf62b1Nsq

Get that H-board 2 bought! :-D

OK, great stuff ;D. I've sent a pm to John K to ask him to order the next component and will update you all when this is done. I'll need YAC addresses from you once we've ordered to send you your YACBack - enjoy ;).

Now 0 / 11.17 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

Currently waiting for order to be paid from the escrow account. Please feel free to send contributions towards the next component, which will open officially when the previous order is submitted.

Hi All, so John was kind enough to place our order last night. A screenshot of the order on the bitfurystrikesback site can be found at (http://s13.postimg.org/e434vg2d3/hboard1.jpg). Strangely the VAT hasn't been added to this order, the site doesn't seem to be doing this properly any more, so we'll need to get in touch with Punin to sort this out. I'll update the numbers in the OP now and open the collection for the next component. Please could you let me know the YAC addresses that you'd like your YAC sent to

What is your mining policy?

I would prefer the use of P2Pool and merged namecoin mining, but wouldn't want to impose that on the group.

If/when my Bitcoin node is up, you may want to add it to the list of manually selected nodes. Again it is not something I would want to impose on the group.

My head hurts after trying to figure out if I would be interested in even holding YACoin :P (what concerns me the most is the 1 minute block interval)

Hi, that's a good question, thanks for asking. We've committed in the OP to "choosing appropriate mining pools to minimise rejects, minimise pool fees (if appropriate) and maximise pool efficiency". Our primary focus will be to maximise the revenue from the miner for the group, but I do want to protect the network too, so we would try to use smaller pools or P2Pool if they look like competitive options. I'll look in detail nearer the time at how best to balance pool efficiency against pool fees and how merged mining for other coins would affect the profitability of the miner. I have no objection to merged mining, if it represents a better return for the group (although when I was merged mining with GPUs I didn't get much benefit from it). I'd be happy to take a vote on some options nearer the time - I perfer a democratic approach. Not sure how well P2Pool would work with the bitfury miners, but the nice thing about bitfury miners is that they have just started being delivered to the first customers, so in a week or so there will be lots of people to ask about details like P2Pool compatibility etc.

Don't worry about the YAC, that was a bit of fun for the last H-board collection. The YACBack offer has now closed. Apart from anything else the YAC price is taking a nosedive, so what little value there was is diminishing rapidly :'(. Maybe we'll see a huge bounce back at some point ;).

So, my August total was 5 shares in the end, not quite as much as I had hoped. The price of all my alt-coins has dropped dramatically in the past 2-3 days, so I won't be topping-up the shares fund with them, instead I'll carry them and my bitcoin change into September, and make the same pledge. My Jalapenos may arrive this month, but 10Gh/s extra isn't very much in the present circumstances, I may even sell them quickly on eBay and reinvest the proceeds  :).

With so many unknowns it's difficult to predict how much I will mine in the next month, but with two large increases in the difficulty coming up I'm being cautious with my estimate ~ perhaps only 3 or 4 shares in September. Pretty much a guess though.

Hi Stinky_Pete, it's great to have your continued support, thanks for being part of the group. Things are changing rapidly in all bitcoin and altcoin areas at the moment, so let's keep the group informed, dynamic and responsive and see where the next few weeks take us.

If you want the YAC from the YACback fun and games from the last component by the way then send me a cryptsy deposit address or YAC wallet address and I'll send these over. I'll send double the promised amount to partially account for the nosedive in the YAC price that we've seen in recent days.

Hi All, if you haven't been watching the bitfurystrikesback thread then I thought that I would share the good news. Punin and his team have dispatched all of the August delivery miners and there are some great pictures and info being posted about the miners and their performance (e.g. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.msg3050985#msg3050985). These guys have done a great job and their commitment to meeting their delivery estimates and performance is really encouraging for our October orders ;D.

https://i.imgur.com/KXzVNV6.jpg

Very generous, thanks. Perhaps all the alt-coin prices will pick up again.

YHXbezq9f78gKrmdsDbb2vsWPzGQWgRV7m

OK, 500 big ones heading over to your YAC wallet now - enjoy! Yes, it would be good if prices did pick up or I may finally have to turn the GPUs off - a sad day indeed :(.

Two more please:

mistermint,2,1,1Dk7YG43rSPatnHNJjLAUzwamhf62b1Nsq

Hi All, as we're getting towards the time when our hardware should be arriving (well soonish anyway) I'd like to get your feelings on the best way to communicate with the group e.g. to keep the group informed of how the miner is getting on (including unboxing videos etc.), to ensure that everybody knows which pool(s) we're using (and the nicknames being used) and the bitcoin addresses being used to receive mined BTC before distribution to group members etc. We want to make sure that things are transparent and that this information is all gathered into one place that all group members have easy access to. We will also need a reliable way to get in touch with group members if any group decisions need to be made (as not everybody checks their forum pms often). Please could you let me have your thoughts on this? A few suggestions are below, but we're open to other ideas too.

1) Just use the forum - start a new thread for the group and post updates to this
2) A facebook or google+ group that is open for all to see
3) A facebook or google+ group that is closed and only for group members
4) A dedicated website for the group

For rapid communication between jlsminingcorp and group members are you happy to provide us with an email address that you check regularly? We would, of course, not provide this to anybody else and would only use it for communications relevant to the group.

Hi All, thecolonel has just joined the group and we now have enough funds to order the next component. I've sent a pm to John K to ask him to order the next H-board and will update you all when this is done (I think that he's really busy this week though, so we will have to be patient).

Now 0 / 10.92 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

Currently waiting for order for H-board 2 to be paid from the escrow account.

mare,4,2,1DSFkmqxzyH7CynXQ76d6uc1WzSxBHTha2

I'll take one share at .5BTC.

My wallet got corrupted and is having to do a re-sync (taking SEVERAL hours). I'll be submitting payment and providing transaction details as soon as my wallet syncs.

OK, no worries, I'll mark you down as a "pledge" in the OP for the moment.

Now 3 / 10.93 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

Time for a quick update. I've not had a reply from John K. yet about placing the order for H-board #2. I know from the last message that I had from him and from his forum profile that he's been really busy for the last week, so I think we have to be patient, but I'll send him a quick email now as he may not have been able to pick up our pm yet.

We're getting close to being able to order H-board #3 as well, so it may be that we can ask John to order both at the same time ;D.

flyswatta,1,.5,1KiF1wrGJx5a2yCa8qjonhGMXFDySKx4Ng

Now 3 / 11.00 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

I've had a message from John K and he's going to try to place an order for both H-board #2 and H-board #3 in a few hours time (tomorrow morning US time). We're still slightly short on the BTC needed for H-board #3, so if anybody else is thinking of joining the group then the next few hours may be a good time to do it, as it will mean that we can place an order for both boards today. Let's see if we can break the 100 GH/s on order barrier today :D.

Id like to reserve one share,

am currently in the office with no access to my wallet, however ill make payment at 6pm GMT this evening.

No problem, I've made a note in the OP. Welcome to the group.

Now 2 / 11.00 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

Many thanks, will update later today with payment.

Still showing 10 weeks behind on syncing. SOOOO SLLOOOOW. I definitely still want the share though. Just waiting on the wallet.

Ah, OK I think I got confused yesterday and thought that I'd spotted this coming into the escrow account. All sorted now, I know where we are.

I really want John K to be able to place the order later (I've suggested that I pm him with the status of things at around 18:00 GMT), so I may top up the escrow account with your share myself (if you're still waiting on the wallet) so that we hit the threshold. Would you feel comfortable sending your share contribution to the address that I use to top up the escrow account, rather than directly to the escrow account (to pay me back as it were)? I'd rather not have to bother John with doing lots of transfers. I'll post the address here, so all should be transparent (got to love the blockchain - unless you're downloading it ;)). Let me know if this sounds too scammy (it's not a scam) and you'd prefer to send BTC direct to the escrow account.

If my payment doesn't come through in time, then go ahead and put it through and I'll pay you back directly. I don't really see what difference 'escrow' on my half BTC payment will make in the grand scheme of things, since the hardware is all coming to you anyway... But I'd prefer to have a nice neat clear paper trail regardless. ;)

I'm still hoping to be able to complete the re-index by the next couple of hours. I'm at work, and the internet connection here is WAY faster than my home connection, so hopefully it will finish before then.

OK, sounds good. Keep me posted. I'd also prefer a neat paper trail and it sounds like you'll probably be done soon, so we'll hold on for you unless you let us know that there's going to be a big delay (in which case we'll go for plan B ;)).

I'm down to 7 weeks behind (block 247300 of 256959). At this rate, it SHOULD complete within the next couple of hours.  ;D

Date: 9/9/13 11:00
To: 19HnCCDAGBZ9a2EY1mwsaKQv9CmW4z2y44
Debit: -0.50 BTC
Transaction fee: -0.00000001 BTC
Net amount: -0.50000001 BTC
Transaction ID: 867c4f4c0ac8084dae820408668abc2c6448764a9135c5365bb5357142d5c987

Got it, thanks wrenchmonkey. Which of the two sending addresses would you like to use to receive mined BTC?

We should go through the process of verifying your address using a signed message (as described in the OP + second post) when you get a chance.

PM Incoming.

is it possible to contact john K for me , I want 2 shares @ 0.5 BTC each

Hi manawenuz, no problem, we have 1 (or possibly 2, depending on what happens with the share that monkeynutts reserved) shares left in H-board #3 (I had a share contribution come through via bitmit before your post, which I need to add to the list). We will then continue to collect for H-board #4, which you would also be welcome to join. There was quite a bit of action last night (John K placed an order for us and I need to check on the status of recent pledges/contributions) so I need to do the calculations to see where we are and give you all an update. Just doing it now.

so I'll be waiting for your response , thank you.

OK, so I've done the calculations based on what John K. paid last night (see the OP for details) and we've benefited from a better BTC:Euro exchange rate than expected ;D. This means that only 10.76 shares were issued in H-boards #2 and #3. Depending on what monkeynutts decides to do we may have one share left in H-board #3 (I'll pm him/her and ask what their plans are) and I've opened the collection for H-board #4. I've reserved you two shares in H-board #4 for the moment in case you want them, so just let me know what you want to do.

Time for an update. John K. was kind enough to place an order last night for both H-board #2 and H-board #3 - thanks John :D. The VAT was calculated correctly on these components, so I've updated the OP with the correct price paid and final number of shares issued for these components. Just as a side note, we've not heard back from bitfurystrikesback.com yet about the VAT for H-board #2, which was not calculated correctly at the time of order, so this still needs to be paid. We'll send them a reminder today.

Here's a link to a screenshot with the order in our bitfurystrikesback account (http://s13.postimg.org/q4qvkzwqf/hboard2_3.jpg).

We've now got 100 GH/s of bitfury hardware on order. A cool milestone I think ;D.

Kushedout,3,1,5,12hv7UcFgrBWLjWs5McPYP63Yza6ufT6Sw

/tx/dec547075f14ae2bc17a1edae7428470982459dfee8fbfe204d6a6228f1086b0

Thanks.

Welcome to the group Kushedout. When you get a chance, could you verify your bitcoin address (12hv7UcFgrBWLjWs5McPYP63Yza6ufT6Sw) by sending us a signed message, as described in the OP + 2nd post? This will ensure that signed messages are working in case you need to change the payout address etc. later.

Now 2 / 10.56 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

I'll take the remaining 2 for this as well.

/tx/dd4047d3726d942b02b957c8396dac437c04fe0b2b9073ca1ffc015f1ba2ed52

Thanks

OK, got it, thanks. I'll pm the two pledgers now and suggest that they make their contributions within 24 hours or we'll have to open up their shares again. Hopefully we can get this component ordered tomorrow.

Now 0 / 10.88 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

Now 0 / 10.39 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

Currently waiting for payment of final pledges before opening the collection for the next component.

payment hopefully made details, in PM

apologies for the delays in making the payment !

monkeynutts

Got it, thanks monkeynutts, I've updated the OP with your payment address.

When you get a chance, could you verify your bitcoin address (15p3joy1gDgbfty2VrJ2iz1HNLf1zLNuYi) by sending us a signed message, as described in the OP + 2nd post? This will ensure that signed messages are working in case you need to change the payout address etc. later.

Cheers

OK, now all the distractions elsewhere are over, it's onto the next board for me.

Stinky_Pete,2,1.0,1EysFQHn5s8MbFTBGvgHigDdQJV23emtJP

TX:e8272d05a23c3664b1fa666ce3a17d4f812bfd86bf86b8cc768362aecf62eb55-000

Shares this month: 2

The collection for H-board #5 is now open

Now 8 / 10.39 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

We've just asked John K to order the next component and will update here when it's officially ordered from bitfurystrikesback.

Unless there are any objections from group members, once H-board #4 is ordered and we've done the calculations based on the BTC:Euro rate at time of ordering I plan to amalgamate the fractional shares from components 4 and 5 to make a whole share (plus a remainder probably) and open this to the group. I think the fairest way to do this is to issue it in component 4 and shift the list of shares down by one share. An example of what the list would look like if we did this is below to help explain what I mean. Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this?

Edit: it may be necessary to amalgamate fractional shares from more than two components.

flyswatta, 1 share, 0.5 BTC, 1KiF1wrGJx5a2yCa8qjonhGMXFDySKx4Ng

Hi All,

We would like to gather opinions from group members and potential group members about whether or not to diversify this GB to include a different hardware supplier in addition to bitfurystrikesback. For those of you who have followed the Avalon chips disaster story you will know that burnin designed and assembled a very nice board (the bitburnerXX) for Avalon chips (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179769.0), but that this project was hampered by the big delays in chip deliveries from bitsyncom. Burnin proved himself an excellent hardware designer and a very honourable person to order from during this project. Burnin has recently announced that he will sell a bitfury-ASIC mining board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283992.0), which should cost around 470 Euro + VAT (19% in Germany) and should give > 40GH/s. It appears that his delivery estimate for these is early October. We already have a personal bitburnerXX order and it seems that as existing customers we will have earlier access than the general public to order burnin's new bitfury boards.

Could you let us know by posting here whether you think that the group should switch to collecting for burnin's bitfury miners rather than additional H-boards for a while? We always have the option of continuing to collect for new H-boards again if the price of these changes and makes them more attractive (in terms of GH/s/BTC) than burnin's offer. We would anticipate that any new hardware being ordered for the group would be added to the total mining power of the group (and not to individuals who have contributed to that component) and mined BTC would be distributed in a similar way to the plan that we outlined for H-boards. The details would need to be finalised (and posted here as supplementary terms and conditions) if we decided to go down that route. Your comments and suggestions will dictate what the group does next.

To get you thinking, here are some data:

H-boards (25GH/s): October delivery: 390 Euro + VAT = 483.6 Euro = 5.37 BTC (at 90 Euro/BTC) = 4.66 GH/s/BTC
Burnin's furyburner (> 40GH/s): Early October delivery: 470 Euro + VAT = 559.3 Euro = 6.21 BTC (at 90 Euro/BTC) = 6.44 GH/s/BTC

1.5 BTC sent
txtid : 52ee2167b40e4478c5cd8cdcdff9184c382eb40aaf90f0220bf62446ccd3d56d

username manawenuz , signed hash :
IITH5sPWropU/Z6BvzcWzIV6XxqMM4CHkXBGDZr85xbiSDVxPBTa/UAnPos+tCMo0F5g+0nYsgmHHQ6KXIEOjVY=

Got it and verified the address, thanks!

First thoughts:- I'm glad I wasn't involved in the bitburnerXX scheme

The hardware on offer seems to be standalone boards, rather than direct plug ins for our M-board (expected in October). So they would need a power source, fans, and some sort of physical support. Does jlsminingcorp have these available, or would part of our money be used for these parts? I'm assuming the useful life time of a PSU and fans is far longer than the mining boards, and don't favour buying new equipment. I do have a spare PSU that could be used if it is required.

I don't see that the >40Gh/s speed is guaranteed, rather it seems to be a design goal. End-user overclocking also appears to be a design goal, so final speeds will probably be variable from board to board, and dependent on PSU and cooling efficiently, as well as the end-users views on safe chip temperatures, life time, and general gungho-ness. Does jlsminingcorp have any experience in overclocking similar hardware?

Do I recall that the equipment will be in a domestic setting? I hope there is good ventilation since I imagine these boards will surpass GPUs in the heat produced.

The timetable is unclear, as one might expect. But it seems that CryptX will be handling all the sales and marketing and there is an implication, but no promise, that they will inform people with existing Bitburner orders before the public "We will sent a mailing to all the Bitburner clients with the exact launch moment." also "Prices and Hashrate will be made public at the moment of the launch." (People with existing Bitburner orders also get vouchers as part of a complicated refund scheme). My impression is that the window for purchasing could be short, and so having the funds available to move quickly would be important. (I'm thinking back to the order of the August Bitfury Starter Kit, which sold out in less then 24 hours.)

In these days of difficulty increasing by 30% every ten days, the thought of getting a faster board in early October is very appealing, and I would be happy to invest.

My usual preference is always to keep financial schemes simple, so wonder if this might be better organised as a separate group-buy. If that isn't a viable option, or if the group decides against it, then I would like to see a worked example with some assumed dates, difficulty, and expected payouts, because I get muddled when I try to work them out! Perhaps a spreadsheet so we could all tweak the numbers and see what effect delays or poor hashing rates have.

waveydave,6,3,18t5UwG4Ge1DLQy6bK5X6hpJ73uoin6Lno

tx: 75df8ba4782668154614f15d23b848ab65ba9a128279954019230800b6798300

Signed message sent by PM.

Hi Stinky_Pete, thanks for giving this some serious thought. I can give a bit more info on some of those thoughts now, but others we may just have to wait and see how things develop with the project.

Yes, what a shame that was for all concerned :(. To be honest, I think burnin was probably the most shafted by all of this - think of the time and effort and money that he must have put in to get that off the ground. Anyway, he's moving on and so shall we!


Yes, they would be standalone boards, but if the design is bitburnerXX inspired then they are easily stackable and can be connected together with CAN bus to make larger "clusters" (e.g. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179769.msg2900642#msg2900642, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179769.msg2901025#msg2901025). Some power sharing, as well as data sharing, is possible between bitburnerXX boards and I'd imagine will be here too. We have a power supply ready that will run the bitfurystrikesback miner. In principle it should be possible to run both sets of hardware from the same PSU, but I'm a bit wary of this, so another PSU would be better. We don't have another suitable PSU free at the moment, so borrowing one or finding a suitable second hand PSU would probably be the best way to go (only ~ 40W needed per furyburner). I don't believe any fans or supports would be needed (they weren't for bitburners).

I wouldn't worry about this actually. The bitfurystrikesback chips are seriously under clocked - for power efficiency in the 100TH mine that they were designed for. C-scape has demonstrated 40GH/s from 16 bitfury chips with very limited cooling (marto74 has a s-hash board running well at these clocks - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=293030.0). Burnin's design goal is 5GH/s per chip, but nobody has demonstrated anything that high with these chips - an interesting idea though. We've overclocked CPUs and GPUs if that counts. No magic smoke yet ;).

No need to worry here. A 40 GH/s board would only use ~40W, compared to the ~150W+ from a 7950. Cooling any bitfury ASIC miners will be much easier than getting rid of the heat from GPU mining.

This is the bit that worries me. We don't actually have much information to go on at the moment. However, I think if we've had the discussion now then we will be in a better position to make a quick decision when the time comes. I am particularly worried about the statement "Prices and Hashrate will be made public at the moment of the launch." If the price increases from burnin's initial estimate then these boards will look less attractive as an alternative to H-boards and there will be no incentive to switch. My suggestion for the group would be that we order the bitfury hardware with the best GH/s/BTC when we have funds to place an order, this makes decisions rather simple.

Our feeling is that to split the hosted bitfury GB into two would be a mistake. Apart from anything else it would penalise this group, who have paid a premium for the starter kit and need to add additional hardware with at least the GH/s/BTC of the H-cards added to the group's mining power in order to offset the higher cost of the starter kit. Having diversified suppliers would for the most part be simple I think. The group's hashrate will grow with more hardware added (whether it's H-boards or furyburners) and a certain number of shares, depending on the price paid for components at the time of order will be issued. If we're able to buy hardware at better GH/s/BTC rates then the GH/s/share for the group will ultimately be better. The only snag is timing - what if furyburner components arrived before bitfurystrikesback components? We've said in the OP that payments will only be made to group members who have shares in components that have been delivered (this is the incentive for early group members, who took the biggest risk). However, it would seem a bit unfair if later joiners whose shares paid for furyburners were to get mining payouts first. I need to give this aspect some thought. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Now 0 / 10.29 shares remaining for next component (at current BTC rate shown in the OP)

We will ask John K to place an order for H-board #5 as soon as he can and will open the collection for the next component shortly.

OK, so could we call the furyburner board 'component 7' and collect funds separately from components 6 & 8 (or whatever)? I'm still of the opinion that we should have funds ready to go when the orders are opened - if the performance/price when orders open is not good enough then we just let the opportunity pass and get an H-board instead.

I'd like to see how you propose to deal with the (most-optimistic) timetable if the furyburner board arrives in 'early October' and starts hashing, then the bitfurystrikesback starter kit comes a couple of weeks later. I haven't thought of a good scheme yet...

you could stick to the OP rule of payout only for delivered boards just for the H-boards while treating any Furyburners as a hedge for the whole group. In case the Furyburners arrive early the payout rule would change and payouts would be made to all share holders for the time being. Thus there would be an incentive for existing share holders to agree to this fury hedge. I for one would buy more shares to get this fury hedge going... not sure though how much this arrangement would discourage potential new share holders from buying into those slightly less attractive shares of the furyburners... just my 2 cents.

Hi Guys, thanks for your thoughts. These were the kind of things that were in our minds too. I will be away from a PC for most of today, but will post some more thoughts later.

Update: John K placed orders for H-boards #4 and #5 for the group last night, so we now have 150 GH/s on order. I'll post screenshots of the order details etc. later today.

I agree that this would be better as a separate group buy. I'm on the fence as to whether I will participate in this group buy, but I would participate in a burnin bitfury group buy

Hi All, so here's a link to the order page for H-boards #4 and #5 as promised

http://s24.postimg.org/ikbyyjjb9/hboards_4_5.jpg

I'll do the calculations and update the OP with the correct prices paid now.

Hi scotjam, thanks for your input, it's very useful to get some insight from potential group members. As I mentioned to Stinky_Pete, we're not too keen on splitting into two GBs. I do appreciate where you are coming from, but personally I think that we should be trying to get the best hardware (bitfury based at any rate) at the best prices for this group and if an alternative supplier comes along that may provide this then we should be highlighting this to the group and (if there's agreement) potentially switching suppliers. If somebody started selling H-boards at 60% of the price of bitfurystrikesback then it would be pretty clear that the group should buy from the new supplier (as long as they seem reputable etc.) I don't think that we would be discussing a new GB in this case. I don't see burnin's bitfury offer as being so different from this situation, although the exact form of the hardware is different to the H-boards. My concern is that if we split into two GBs then they will inevitably compete with each other and both will be weakened as a result. However, this is just my feeling and if the majority of the group want to continue with this GB as we are then this is what we will do.

I'm quite aware that not many current group members have commented on the burnin bitfury possibility yet. If you do have any thoughts on this then please do post here. Once there's been a bit of discussion in the thread I think that we'll be in a position to propose some possible ways forward and take a vote on these.

They're on sale!!

http://www.asic-hardware.com/

I've changed my mind, I now think the Bitburner Fury boards fit into this group buy, and I think we should buy one (with heatsink) or more as quick as we can.

The cheeky sods were supposed to email us loyal customers when the site opened, and yet did an email arrive >:(?

Anyway, thought that you would all be interested in some pricing on these boards - not quite what was initially announced :'(!

Burnin bitfury board + chips + heatsink + postage + VAT (> 40 GH/s) = 895.40 Euro = 9.95 BTC (at 90 Euro/BTC) = 4.02 GH/s/BTC
H-boards (25GH/s): October delivery: 390 Euro + VAT = 483.6 Euro = 5.37 BTC (at 90 Euro/BTC) = 4.66 GH/s/BTC

This doesn't look good in terms of GH/s/BTC if we assume that the burnin boards run at 40 GH/s. Since nobody has demonstrated chips running much faster than this it would be a bit of a gamble IMO to assume that they will run outside the 40-50 GH/s range (anything else would be a bonus - if anybody can do it then burnin can though). There could be an advantage with burnin boards in terms of delivery dates if burnin meets his early October delivery estimate.

So after being quite keen on the idea of using burnin as a supplier (based on his early estimated prices) I'm now not convinced there's necessarily a case to switch. It all hangs on delivery estimates now, which are fairly hard to predict.

Anybody else have any thoughts? Stinky_Pete are you still keen even with the new pricing?

Edit: Oops, they did email when the site opened it just ended up in my spam filter - sorry cryptx!

I agree that it's not as good as we expected. Have I seen a figure of 65 Gh/s actually achieved with one of these boards?

I have been looking at the numbers. If we order in the next couple of days we should get delivery "in the first week of October". Our "October starter kit" should come at the end of that month with the additional H-boards coming in later. The difficulty is going up by 33% every 10 days which is equivalent to 235% in 30 days. So spending BTC10 now gets us 4 Gh/s very soon which will be producing bitcoins; one month later spending BTC5 gets a 4 Gh/s board which will only yield half as many bitcoins. (I've assumed that the 33% increase is from sales of many, many USB ASICs and a few big players bringing their machines into the network - if KnCminer bring their machines to market in September that'll make the increases even higher). I suspect the retailers are using similar figures and are pricing their machines as high as they can so that the purchasers might just get a ROI, but may not make it. In late October and November other bitfury powered hardware will be arriving, the Drillbit boards from Australia, and two different makes of 2Gh/s USB sticks.

So from a purely investment point of view my bottom line is, buy now and get mining as quickly as possible. From a having-fun point of view getting one of these boards and tinkering is attractive, so again my view is go-for-it. I can put some coins in now, and I will stand by my commitment of investing my current ASIC earnings for September into more H boards, but it is probably only going to be 1 or 2BTC. I think the days of home-mining for profit are probably over.

I'm on board with Stinky_Pete.  The longer it takes us to get mining, the longer it will take for us to reach our ROI - if we ever can.  We should get mining as soon as possible.

Hi All,

Stinky_Pete and I had some discussions off thread yesterday and decided that the bitburner fury does indeed offer some attractive possibilities. Firstly, the estimated shipping start date for these is the first week of October (although we don't know yet if they can realistically achieve this) and as we all know the earlier we start the better with difficulty increasing as it is; secondly, as jlsminingcorp had an order with burnin for bitburnerXX hardware we could place an order for bitfury burners yesterday that would be processed in a separate queue to public orders potentially securing an earlier delivery (*see below); finally, there is the potential that the bitfury burners will have a quite competitive hashrate (the quoted range is 40-80GH/s, but apparently burnin has had one chip in his test rig hashing at 4GH/s over the weekend - see http://asic-hardware.com for info). CryptX the distributors have stated that they will offer a 100 Euro rebate on the order if the board does not reach a hashrate of 64 GH/s. As such, we decided to take the initiative and place an early order in for a bitfury burner using funds from jlsminingcorp and Stinky_Pete (http://s2.postimg.org/moagal7e1/furyburner.jpg). Please note that the "discount" on the order refers to the amount refunded for one bitburnerXX and so the total cost of the miner including VAT and delivery was 872.79 Euro.

*Quote from cryptx, who supply the bitfury burners "All orders made by Bitburner XX customers in the first 24 hours after launch will be placed in front of the public queue. This means your order will come in front of public orders even if public orders are made at www.asic-hardware.com before you." Our order was placed within this period.

We propose to offer this bitfury burner as the next component in our group buy, based on 20 shares** for the component (at 0.5 BTC per share) to the group in the same way as other components in this group buy, the only difference being that this component is already ordered and comes from a different supplier. The bitburner fury will become component 7 of the GB (in place of H-board #6). Those who have already contributed to the collection for H-board #6 will be given the opportunity to switch their contributions to the bitburner fury collection, wait until we are collecting for H-boards again or to have their contribution refunded. All other terms and conditions set out in the OP will remain the same. In particular, please note that we will still distribute any mined BTC in the way stated in the OP: "BTC mined will be distributed to group members in proportion to the number of shares that they own and the number of coins mined by the miner (the miner is defined as all hardware components in this group buy that are actively mining) since the last payment.""Payments will only be made to group members who have shares in components that have been delivered. Payments will not be made to group members who have shares in components that have been ordered, but not delivered." This means that if the bitfury burner arrives before the starter kit then group members who have contributed to this component will begin hashing first, but other group members will benefit from better GH/s/share when the components that they have contributed towards come online. I think that everybody should benefit from this.

Since the bitfury burners are estimated to start shipping in two weeks, we will only hold the collection for the bitfury burner open for a short time (until 9:00 GMT on 24th Sept 2013). If there is not enough interest by this time then jlsminingcorp and Stinky_Pete will run the bitfury miner privately outside the group (any shares contributed to the bitfury burner at this point will be transferred to H-board collections or refunded depending on the wishes of the contributors).

** We reserve the right to amend the maximum number of shares if there is a sudden, significant drop in the BTC price. This is to ensure that we are able to cover the fiat cost of the miner. If we have to do this then those who have already contributed shares will be given the opportunity for refunds. If the bitfury burner does not achieve a hashrate of 64 GH/s and cryptx refund us 100 Euro, as part of their hashrate guarantee, this will be distributed to those who contributed to the collection for the bitfury burner as a dividend when we receive it.

I hope this is all clear. If you have any questions then please post here.

Nevermind on the confusion. I saw the first post of this thread and it cleared it up.

Hi, not quite no, sorry if this is confusing. We've updated the OP, which I hope will make things clearer.

* All current orders and contributions to ordered components will stand as they are. They have to, since we've placed orders with bitfurystrikesback for these components.
* The next component that we are collecting for will be the bitfury burner (rather than an H-board). This has already been ordered and paid for, but we're offering shares in it until 24th Sept. If there's not enough interest then we'll mine with it ourselves (outside of the group) and go back to the original plan of collecting for H-boards.
* The hashpower for the bitfury burner will be added to the group's total hash power in the same way that is described in the OP for the other components.
* Once shares in the bitfury burner are gone we will go back to collecting for H-boards from bitfurystrikesback.

You beat me to it!

mare,6,3,1DSFkmqxzyH7CynXQ76d6uc1WzSxBHTha2

bought another share ,
here's the txtid :
6f64b77e66dce420ffa32620e35d9467d067e106c86383e63d8f135fd2b42666

thankyou.

Good news from Cryptz (supplier of the bitfury burner board)

Hi All, there's some exciting news on the BFSB thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.msg3209340#msg3209340). It looks like October delivery kit will start to be shipped out from bitfurystrikesback next week. So we're definitely getting closer to the time when we should start to see some of our GB components starting to be delivered ;D!

1 BTC sent
txtid : 87a8745e09bd7f8ccf6f47a5acb203b2885814a2c0933c522f615a053b985171

Hi All, so October delivery H-boards are now showing as "out of stock" from bitfurystrikesback. This is probably a good thing, as it means that they are being realistic about what they can delivery in their October batch. As such, we've paused the collection for the moment until we find out what bitfurystrikesback will be offering going forward in terms of both prices and estimated delivery. I'll post here when we have some news.

manawenuz, please could you let us know what you'd like to do with the 1 BTC that you just sent to the escrow account for the collection towards H-board #6? We can keep it in the escrow account until the collections open again (presumably for hardware with later delivery estimates) or we can ask John K to send you a refund. Just let us know.

i guess my BTC can wait with John K for a little while so , i'll be waiting for updates , would be nice if you could pm me if there was any developments .

Sorry to change my mind  jlsminingcorp , is it possible for you to ask John K to refund my 1 BTC , i guess i need it for an upgrade in another GB.
thank you.

Hi manawenuz, no problem at all. The US reseller (megabigpower.com) have stated that they will now wait until they have kit in stock before taking new orders, so if bitfurystrikesback take a similar approach then it may be a while before we could order new kit anyway. This means that getting your BTC back is probably a good idea.

I'll pm John now and copy you in. I have been having problems getting in touch with him over the last few days (we need to move BTC around for the bitfury burner still), I know he gets very busy from time to time, so I do hope that it doesn't take too long for you to get the BTC back.

Hi All, just a couple of quick updates:

John K has very kindly made the transfers that we requested to cover the costs of the bitfury burner and the VAT on component 2 (Bitfury 25GH/s H-board #1 (October delivery)). This means that the total cost for component 2 in the OP is now correct.

Bitfurystrikesback have now begun to ship october orders (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.msg3247580#msg3247580). Although they have had some unexpected problems with hot capacitors, and sorting this out is causing them to ship a bit slower than expected, this is generally great news. They really do seem to be doing a great job. Fingers crossed our components may begin to come through soon ;D. The interesting thing to note in punin's post is that when they open the shop again they will only be selling components that are on hand - no more pre-orders ;D.

We now have things in place that should allow us to start mining as soon as the components arrive. In addition, we have a few "add-on" items that should be arriving next week that will hopefully make the GB run smoothly (spare RPi, spare SD cards, a watt meter (for power consumption at the wall) and a shiny new multimeter). The next job is to decide on some pools to use. We have a couple in mind already, based on the experiences of those with August delivery kit. We'll post a list of our thoughts when we've finished looking into this, but if you have any suggestions in the meantime then please post them here.

This just landed in my inbox. Looks like cryptx are bang on schedule with the bitfury burner ;D (thanks guys!).

No news on hashrate yet, I guess we'll see in a couple of days!

Hi All, welcome back after the blackout. I guess you only realise how important the forum is when you loose it!

In order to keep you all informed of any updates we really need to find another way to communicate in addition to the forum (we tried to start a discussion about this a while back https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252534.msg3078989#msg3078989, but didn't get much of a response). It would be very useful to us, and to you I think, if group members could pm us with an email address that we can use to contact you. If you don't do this then please be aware that we have no way to contact you if the forum goes down again. If you pm us then we will send you an email address for jlsminingcorp so that you can contact us too. We're in the process of setting up a google+ group as well, so this may be a useful way to get updates, hashing videos etc. out there.

Now for some updates:

1) Bitfury burner: The FedEX notification that we received a week ago was apparently autogenerated when cryptx printed the shipping labels (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=294735.msg3267582#msg3267582), so as far as we know the bitfury burner has not shipped yet. This is very disappointing, but there are some reports of these boards arriving (e.g. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=294735.msg3290621#msg3290621), so I certainly hope that we're not far behind. I'll post an update as soon as I have one.

2) Bitfurystrikesback hashrate: Some good news on the October delivery H-boards. These have been "tweaked" and are now running at 30 GH/s+ out of the box (e.g. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.msg3284893#msg3284893), so we've had a free hashrate upgrade of 20% or so! Bitfurystrikesback seem to be working steadily through their order chain, so we're hoping that the group's starter kit will ship reasonably soon. Again, I'll post here as soon as we have any updates.

I believe setting up both a mailing list and a group in bitmessage would be more than enough .
much safer and better G+ and forum alone .

Bitmessage looks interesting, I've not come across this before. Anybody else have any thoughts?

+1 Bitmessage

Hi All, just a quick update to let you know where things stand:

1) Bitfurystrikesback: These guys seem to be getting through their orders really well and they suggest that orders in the 600s and 700s should get done this week (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.msg3294417#msg3294417). Since we have an early 700s order for the starter kit I hope that this will ship to us soon. Our H-boards are in the 900s and early 1000s, so we still have a wait for these.

2) Bitfury burner: This is not going so well >:(. We still have no update from cryptx on when this will be shipped and although there is evidence on the cryptx thread that people are getting their bitfury burners, they don't seem to be coming out very quickly. I will let you know as soon as our fedex tracking details are updated and we know that the unit is on its way to us. The final thing to note about the bitfury burner is that the "hashrate protection" offered by cryptx looks like it will be active. There's no report of them hitting the 64GH/s target yet (50-55 seems to be the limit), so group members with shares in the bitfury burner should be getting partial refunds (we'll get 100 Euro back for the whole board). Again, I'll let you know as soon as we receive anything from cryptx regarding this.

3) Pools: I suggest that we use Eligius and Bitminter as two of the pools for the group (both have low, or no pool fees, merged namecoin mining and are not too big), but we need three really, so if anybody has another favourite pool then let me know (Slush is out for the moment, as it doesn't seem to work well with bitfury kit). We could try to get into GHash.IO, which is good for bitfury kit, but there's no merged mining and it's already very big, so joining it is not too helpful for the network.

4) We've had a couple of votes for staying in contact via bitmessage. I'd appreciate some feedback from other group members on this, as it would be much more convenient if we're all using the same method of communication in case the forum goes down again.

That's all for now!

After a quick look over of bitmessage, it's something that I would have to install and configure and check from time to time. It seems to me that we would want to have a communications medium that everyone already has....such as email. I don't need to set up yet another account and have to check yet another source (facebook, twitter, linkedin, email, forum posts and then add bitmessage  on top of that).

Just my BTC.02

Thanks for your thoughts. Email is the obvious choice and, of course, is fine for us, but I appreciate that some people would like to protect their anonymity more than this. Ideally, we're looking for a single solution that everybody agrees on, which makes it easy for us to contact everybody at the same time. If this isn't possible, then we can use a couple (e.g. bitmessage + email) of approaches, but probably no more than this or it gets too unwieldy.

I would think that people that are worried about anonymity would have an anonymous email account and check it via TOR.

im fine with regular email,

i have an email account i use for all online stuff anyways.

Exciting news from punin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.msg3306875#msg3306875). This "could" include our starter kit, but in any case we're getting close.

Good news, the bitburner fury is now in transit. Delivery estimate is Monday though :(.

http://s7.postimg.org/oefm76jrv/fedex.jpg

great news !

Good to hear.

And going back a bit, email is fine for me.

Quick updates:

1) Bitfury burner: According to Fedex the package has now arrived in the UK. It looks like it's going to spend a lonely weekend in a Fedex warehouse though before we get it on Monday - don't they realise that time is of the essence ;)! Good progress anyway.

2) Bitfurystrikesback: Our starter kit order is now showing as "complete" on the BFSB site and they have generated a UPS shipping label for the package. This isn't with UPS yet though. It looks like this may also arrive next week.

So in terms of communication, we've got some group members who want to use email and some who want to use bitmessage. We're happy to do both (although I need to set up bitmessage this weekend). Please could group members who want to be contactable in case of forum downtime send us either an email address or bitmessage address (if you haven't done so already)? If you don't then we'll assume that you'll not panic if the forum goes dark and that you'll be happy with us just getting on with things in the background. Any group members who would like our email address please send a pm to request this.

Hopefully we'll be posting some un-boxing photos soon!

Delivery updates
According to fedex the bitfury burner has made its way over the last couple of days to a nearby town and so I think all is still on track for delivery tomorrow. Also, I've just checked the UPS tracking info for the starter kit and this is scheduled for delivery by Thursday 17th October. All looking good at the moment.

Since we'll be up and running soon please could you all have a final check of the list of payout addresses and number of shares for each component etc. in the OP and let us know if you see any problems ASAP

Payouts
Payouts will be made once per week, as described in the OP. This will probably happen on the weekend. We will be testing out our payout system with a small test payout when each new component arrives (as the list of group members with delivered components will change at this point and we want to make sure that all is working as it should). We'll post here when this is happening and we will need you to let us know ASAP if there are any problems that might affect the main payouts.

Pools, BTC address etc.
We're still planning to use Eligius and Bitminter and suggest "Horrible Horrendous Terrible Tremendous" as the third pool (~1% fees depending on share difficulty used, but no merged mining). The bitfury burner will be controlled using cgminer on a dedicated RPi and we'll start with Eligius as the primary pool with the other two as failovers. The BFSB kit will run bitfury's chainminer software, which uses load balancing across three pools rather than a failover mechanism, so all three pools will be used. Once the miners are running and we know that all is set up correctly we'll post the worker names and the BTC address that pool payouts will go to so that you can keep an eye on them in real time (if you're so inclined ;)).

Communication
We've only had a few email addresses from group members and no bitmessage addresses. If you want to be kept in the loop if the forum goes down again please pm these to us. It's been pointed out that there may be some issues with bitmessage in terms of resource usage and potentiall with security (e.g. https://bitmessage.org/forum/index.php?topic=1666.0). I don't know the protocol well enough to judge I'm afraid. Email would be our preference in any case, but we will use bitmessage too if group members want it.

That's all for now. Hopefully we'll have some unboxing pics to post tomorrow!

The bitburner fury has arrived! Some photos are below. I've spent quite a while today tuning the clock and voltage settings and we're currently hashing at around 49-50 GH/s in cgminer (275 MHz, 1075 mA, ~5% HW errors). The whole setup (pi + miner + a box of fans) is using 125 W at the wall (about 85 W for the fury itself). Pushing it any further just raises the % HW errors and power consumption, but doesn't have a big impact on hashrate (I've never seen above 51 GH/s), so on balance I think we're close to the sweet spot and we need to look at how it performs over a longer period now before trying to tweak any more. Obviously this is a long way from the 64 GH/s that Cryptx promised, so I'm expecting them to honour their 100 Euro "hashrate protection" refund.

We're currently mining on eligius and you can watch the miner by inputting the mining address (1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH) at the pool (bitminter and HHTT are the failover pools). Don't worry about the spikes in hashrate today, this is just a bunch of starts, restarts etc. while tuning. Fingers crossed the board stays stable overnight.

http://s24.postimg.org/a3r7jmdut/pic1.jpg
http://s16.postimg.org/4pwsg64zp/pic2.jpg
http://s15.postimg.org/fc7riuxej/pic3.jpg

great news !

nice to see some hardware hitting the ground and actually mining. Now i just have to wait for my H board to arrive before i start earning.

Hopefully this shouldn't be too long monkeynutts. Punin has just updated us all on the order queue (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.msg3342107#msg3342107) and things are progressing nicely.

I've also just noticed that our group's component 2 (H-board #1) is now "completed" on the BFSB site and we've got a UPS tracking number (its not shipped yet, but the shipping label has been created). Sadly UPS seem to be frustratingly slow with their shipping. Our starter kit has only just left Finland after sitting in a warehouse in Helsinki for four days (maybe they were waiting for somebody to row over in a boat from the UK to come and pick it up ;)). I swear that these shipping companies introduce an artificial penalty and sit on your packages for as long as possible if you don't choose their most expensive rates >:(.

Hi All,

So for those of you who have been missing the opportunity to contribute towards bitfury kit for the GB since BFSB stopped taking orders we now have something new for you that allows us to open the GB again. Stinky_Pete has managed to secure (and pay for) 3 Drillbit boards from their first production batch (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=266235.0). He is willing to add this hardware to the group's miner, while keeping some shares back for himself. This will work in a similar way to how we included the bitfury burner in the GB. We will open a collection for a new component (component 8 - Drillbit boards) and collect share contributions for this until 20:00 BST on 29th October 2013. If there's not sufficient interest by this point then Stinky_Pete will run the miner privately outside the group (any shares contributed to the bitfury burner at this point will be transferred to future H-board collections or refunded depending on the wishes of the contributors).

Drillbit board details
* 3 boards with 8 chips per board --> combined hashrate estimate of ~60 GH/s
* Boards will be stacked in a mini plane backboard, which allows for efficient power connectivity and simple control (e.g. by an RPi)
* Shipping estimate: Drillbit anticipate that they will ship these in late October or early November
* Costs (paid 9.3 BTC for boards, 0.75 BTC for shipping, 20% import VAT will be due on entry to the UK, heatsink costs will be ~ 0.2 BTC)

Details
We propose to offer the drillbit boards as the next component in our group buy, based on 25 shares** (13 of which would be kept by Stinky_Pete) for the component (at 0.5 BTC per share) to the group in the same way as other components in this group buy, the only difference being that this component is already ordered and comes from a different supplier. The bitburner fury will become component 8 of the GB. All other terms and conditions set out in the OP will remain the same. In particular, please note that we will still distribute any mined BTC in the way stated in the OP: "BTC mined will be distributed to group members in proportion to the number of shares that they own and the number of coins mined by the miner (the miner is defined as all hardware components in this group buy that are actively mining) since the last payment.""Payments will only be made to group members who have shares in components that have been delivered. Payments will not be made to group members who have shares in components that have been ordered, but not delivered."

** We reserve the right to amend the maximum number of shares if there is a sudden, significant drop in the BTC price. This is to ensure that we are able to cover the fiat cost of the miner. If we have to do this then those who have already contributed shares will be given the opportunity for refunds.

I hope this is all clear. If you have any questions then please post here. I'll update the OP shortly.

im in for a share on the drillbit system please.

ty.

Hi All, I'm very pleased to say that the starter kit arrived safe and sound today. It's now hashing away nicely at 32-33 GH/s ;D. A big thankyou to Punin and all the team. Talk about "under promise, over deliver" - that's a 30 % hashrate increase (compared to the advertised 25 GH/s) out of the box without any manual tuning, pencil modding etc!

At the moment all of the hashpower is directed at eligius on the same address as the bitfury burner so you can follow its progress at (1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH). Once it's bedded in a bit I'll switch over to load-balanced mining on all of the three pools that I mentioned the previous post (eligius (using 1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH), bitminter and HHTT (using the same address 1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH)). This seems to be the only way to have some kind of failover capability using the chainminer software (it's a bit different to cgminer in that respect).

Just to let you know, before starting up the starter kit I made a note of the BTC balance and kWh that the bitfury burner had generated up to that point. This will be used for the first payment for those who contributed to the bitfury burner (I still plan to make this payment at the weekend - it's not a job for late at night). The "miner" is now defined as both hashing components, as described in the OP.

I'll try to post some photos shortly.

Great news

looking forwards to more to come in the future :)

A nice fit in that case  :)

and a good bump in the hashing power.

OK, so I've made a test payment (just a small amount of BTC to ensure that the system we have in place is working) for GB members with shares in the bitburner fury. Details are below. Please could you let me know if there are any problems receiving coins, as I'd like to make the full payments for this week tomorrow?

http://s18.postimg.org/77rxq3hbt/test_payment_1_C7.jpg

Transaction ID: 810d7688bd2513eda0a28508a449c891413092b7b70e42fdabc5f3722279bc7b

Note: the second payment (0.0005 BTC) to 11EmQ.... is the hosting charge.

The micropayment yesterday seemed to work OK, so we've now sent this week's full payment to GB members with shares in component 7. This corresponds to all BTC mined (0.314947 BTC) before we added the BFSB starter kit (component 1). Please see below for the details. We'll make the payment for BTC mined since the starter kit was added later today. Apologies, the accounting for this will be a bit complicated until all components are here and mining! If anything is unclear let us know.

Transaction ID: 63874e8e43affb2220aa8d42738fea126121ab47335498ebda968d67c87dacc9

http://s18.postimg.org/r0datq3q1/payment1_c7.png

Payouts for GB members with shares in components that are currently hashing (#7 and #1) has just been made. See below for details. Please note that some shares on eligius have not yet been paid and this payout only constitutes what we have actually received to date.

Transaction ID: 9dfef1fef4ee4a5dcc4c941db68ea431924a674955657b5731c023e190317f36

http://s17.postimg.org/kfquzhq5b/payment2_c7c1.png

A quick hardware update for you:

Bitburner fury: The hardware has been running fairly stable at around 48 GH/s for some days now. Over the first 2-3 days it crashed a couple of times with a particular "usb_write error on avalon_write" error that seems to be common with these boards (based on reports on the forum) and this could only be recovered by re-flashing the firmware. I noticed at this point that the firmware that was controlling the fan speed was keeping this rather low and switched to powering the fan directly from a 12V supply. This is a little louder, but has significantly reduced the board temp and things have been running stable since. Keep your fingers crossed that it stays this way! It really feels as though these boards are pushing the chips to their limits, so we're not going to tinker with this hardware now, just let it get on with things. On the cryptx thread there are reports of a couple of people getting their "hashrate protection" cashback. We've not had this yet, but when we do we will let you know before sending an appropriately sized refund back to those who contributed to this component.

BFSB starter kit and H-boards: So far the BFSB kit has been very reliable and we've had no problems with it. The "autotune" function of chainminer seems to be rather conservative in terms of the level of hardware errors that it will allow and was tuning our H-board to around 30-32 GH/s. We decided to do some manual tuning of each chip a couple of days ago and this pushed things to around 33-35 GH/s with very few hardware errors, which is great. I think pushing these cards any further would require some fairly effective heatsinks on the chips and the voltage regulator. Our second H-board is due to arrive tomorrow and we'll let you all know when it's here - although you'll see the hashrate spike on eligius ;D! As with the previous BFSB kit, we'll let autotune take care of the board for 12-24 hours and then do some manual tweaking of the chips on top of autotune's best efforts to get the most out of each card. We've had no shipping notification for the other kit yet, but I would imagine that it will probably ship out soon.

That's all for now.

Forgive my confusion here, but I thought the deal was supposed to be that earlier investors would be getting paid before later investors. Meaning that your shares get activated when later orders go online, but not when earlier orders go online, until your hardware is online too.

Seems a little messed up that group 7s hardware shows up earlier, and all the earlier groups are still waiting. Wasn't that the system that was put in place, in order to encourage earlier investing?  ???

Not complaining, or trying to be a pain in the ass, just trying to figure out what the deal is.

Apologies for causing any confusion wrenchmonkey. There was some discussion on the thread about this before we opened up the bitfury burner component. In the end, we decided when we opened up the collection for component 7 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252534.msg3176617#msg3176617) that we should not change the terms and conditions in the OP.


Basically we think that this benefits everybody. Early adopters do not loose anything. The components that they have shares in still arrive when they would have anyway and they begin mining at this point, as planned. However, because the GH/s/BTC worked out better for the bitfury burner, adding this to the group's miner improves the overall GH/s/share for those early adopters, so they get more hash power than expected. The whole group also benefits from having two independent bits of hardware in the miner, as if one goes down for any reason then the other should keep running. The group members contributing towards component 7 did so anticipating that they might start mining earlier, although because Cryptx had no track record they also took a risk with this (we could have still been waiting for the bitfury burner), but they also joined the group on the understanding that all components become part of a pool that all group members benefit from when their components are hashing (as described in the OP).

I particularly didn't want to change the terms and conditions set out in the OP, as this is something that everybody signed up to. Also, if we had changed things to institute a "queue" of shares, rather than doing this by component, it would have made things complicated and confusing; and would have made the bitfury burner look rather unappealing to new group members. In this case we may not have secured it for the group and everybody would have been worse off in terms of GH/s/share.

I hope that this makes things clearer. Let me know if not.

Hi All, just a quick update. We started to get a slightly unreliable connection to eligius late this afternoon (DDoS?) and so have switched the miner to bitminter for the time being. The BFSB kit seems happy with this, but the bitfry burner is getting more rejects than it should, so this may not be the pool for us. We will monitor things and switch again if needed. Unfortunately monitoring things on bitminter is not as easy as eligius without logging into the account, so keep your eyes on the BTC address (1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH) for payments.

The second H-board (component 2) literally just arrived (I didn't realise that UPS delivered at 8 pm!), so we'll be installing that in a minute.

H-card number 2 installed and hashing. We're getting ~ 30 GH/s at the moment, as the autotuning will be doing it's thing over the next few hours to pre-tune the card prior to a final bit of hand tuning. It looks like we might have a half-dead chip on this board, but I understand from other posts on the forum that this doesn't normally cause a big problem. The other chips just hash faster to make up for it - we'll see how it goes. I'll post some pictures/screen shots tomorrow.

~115 GH/s online and hashing
177 W at the wall (including RPis, router + miner)

cool getting closer ! hboard 3 should be arriving in the next couple of days then ?


im right in saying my shares are in hboard 3 ?


cheers

We've just had confirmation from BFSB that our Sept 10th order (that's H-board #2 and #3) is completed. No tracking details yet though. Based on UPS' performance so far I'd anticipate that these boards will actually reach us early next week (as long as they are shipped today).

Yes, you'll start mining as soon as H-board #3 arrives :)!

great news,


thanks for the updates.

Yup, that clarifies. Thanks.

Hi All, we now have a tracking number from UPS now for all of the final H-boards that we have on order. These are scheduled to arrive next Monday. Judging from the previous orders UPS seem to be giving reliable delivery estimates (so far none have been early :( and none late :)) so all components should be hashing soon.

I've been doing some hand tuning of the second H-card and we're now averaging around 32GH/s from this card. It's definitely not as good as the first, which is typically running at 33-35 GH/s, but I think we can get it fairly close with a little more software tweaking.

Here's a pic of both boards (sorry about the poor quality on this one).

http://s7.postimg.org/bo6a9ldmj/pic4.jpg

Now collecting towards 3 drillbit boards from drillbit's batch 1 (~60 GH/s, late October early November delivery estimate). These have already been ordered and paid for. (Note: Orders from drillbit's batch 1 are currently sold out to new buyers.)

Now 11 / 25 shares remaining for this component

Just a reminder that we do have an open collection for some drillbit-based hardware for the group miner. This collection is only open until 20:00 BST on 29th October 2013.

Lol - UPS is really good at that. What sucks is when an order goes across the country in 1 day, but sits in one spot for 3 days. Of course if you pay the extra, it can get there in one day.  They have it down to an science.

I almost wish they didn't give out tracking numbers. It's painful to watch these things sitting in Helsinki (or wherever) waiting until you've paid an appropriate time penalty for not upgrading to their express service. Oh well, such is life.

Hi All. Cryptx have been true to their word and have refunded 100 Euro for the bitburner fury component, as this did not reach their anticipated 64 GH/s. We've now distributed this proportionally to group members who contributed towards the bitburner fury component and have reduced the number of shares issued for this component to take account of the lower price paid (using the current Euro:BTC rate at bitpay of 131.958 for calculations - 27/10/2013, 14:37 GMT).

We've just made the payment for GB members with shares in components #7 and #1 for the BTC mined before the arrival of component #2. See below for details. Just about to make this week's payment for those with shares in #7, #1 and #2.

TxID: 5c2af325633a1c7f38651242c268b1e44cd7d25704fe0672af8dfc84c610e2f1

http://s8.postimg.org/3vkg52idh/payment3_c7c1.png

This week's payment for those with shares in components #7, #1 and #2.

TxID: 55e7a29f2cf34c8eb697c7b578aeebd45a4f41db9b7142986e93920c9afc5e5a

http://s21.postimg.org/8kvtefp7b/payment4_c7c1c2.png

wrong me

Has your account been hacked ;)?

Hi All, you'll be pleased to know that the last four H-boards arrived late this afternoon and are now hapily hashing away ;D (all GB members now have their shares hashing). As with the other boards I'm going to give autotune a chance to work its magic before hand tweaking the chips individually tomorrow. Unfortunately we've got some dead/dying chips in these new boards too (6 in total across all the boards), but the remaining chips should be able to compensate fairly well for this. The BFSB miner is currently running at between 188 and 192 GH/s (280 W at the wall), with some hand tuning I'm hoping to get closer to 200 GH/s, but we'll see.

http://s24.postimg.org/deds18upx/pic5.jpg

http://s15.postimg.org/ubdnmodnv/all_web_app.jpg

DOA chips? That doesn't sound promising. Have you contacted the manufacturer to see if there are any remedy options for us?

Some chips are just poor performers/DOA on these boards. The chips are not tested and binned, so each board/miner gets the luck of the draw. The bitfury threads have lots of examples of boards that have worse issues, so I think we've done OK. I haven't contacted BFSB about this. They are all hashing between 30 and 35 GH/s, so considerably faster than the 25 GH/s advertised, so BFSB have certainly delivered what they promised. Also, if we were to RMA a board (and if they were to accept it) then the best case scenario is that we loose min 1 week to ship a new board out. I don't think this is worth it. If others do then we will investigate the possibilities, but my feeling for the moment is that this isn't really a problem. The boards are sort of self-healing - if one chip is not performing well then the others seem to pick up the slack - maybe they get some extra voltage because of a bad chip?

Don't go chasing a few GH when were over performing, yea you might get a few more ghs but when were down for a week+ and then the next difficulty hits that few ghs will be meaningless and it would have been more worth it to just stay with what we had.

There is much wisdom in this statement

Agreed, we would lose too much if we sent the boards away.

Payment for BTC mined by components #7, #1 & #2 before the arrival of the remaining H-boards.

TxID: 4047b245e562ea394522373fc666122cb3e304061d56f28ada24c2bacebeae9d

http://s23.postimg.org/q5i99ayuj/payment5_c7c1c2.png

This week's payment for all components.

TxID: e23dcb6b01bd118342d11aaf9d8adb93aaa5a3fe980766c3d6fcd4524125f630

http://s16.postimg.org/lhrcjo3c5/payment6_all.png

hi

do you still have shares and how much?

Only asking as title says 11 shares left but in the post it says closed

Hi, sorry for the confusion. I need to update the OP - should have done this a few days ago, but I'm afraid that it's been a busy week :(. The collection for component 8 (the Drillbit boards) technically ran out of time on the 29th. However, there were some shares left and I think that it should be fine for some of these to go to new GB members (based on some contact that I've had recently with Stinky_Pete). Shares are always 0.5 BTC each and 25 shares will be issued for component 8 (this is based on the actual costs for the component).

Let me know if you're interested and we'll take this into account before finalising things for this component. Stinky_Pete will take the remaining unallocated shares if I understand him correctly.

That will be fine, but I'd like to have everything cut-and-dried before the Drillbit boards are dispatched. The latest news is that they are being manufactured, but as with all pre-orders, there is no definite date yet.

Hi All, time for a quick update. The miner has been running stable again this week ;D. I've spent some time hand-tuning the "speed" of each chip on the BFSB hardware and this is now running at between 197 and 201 GH/s. It seems that it's possible to get about 5% extra out of the boards by manual tuning compared to using autotune. However, I think that this is pretty much as far as we can go without overvolting. Increasing the "speed" parameter, which presumably tweaks the chip clock frequency, any more than where we are at the moment just leads to a big increase in hardware errors. If the bitfury burner is anything to go by, it's important to increase the voltage available to each chip at higher clock frequencies in order to reduce hardware errors (the BFSB boards don't run in quite the same way though, so the comparison is not perfect). I put some heatsinks on one of the H-boards (see below) to see if this made any difference to the level of hardware errors when tuning, but unfortunately it made no difference. On the up side, this suggests that the current cooling setup is working well.

Others have shown that overvolting the H-boards (the so called "pencil mod", see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=287590.msg3079421#msg3079421 for details) means that it's possible to push each board to around 37-40 GH/s. However, cooling becomes extremely important under these conditions and longevity/warranty may be affected. Let me know if you have any thoughts on whether or not we should have a go at this.

http://s21.postimg.org/85mdqzrc7/pic6.jpg

Latest news from Barntech

So if you want to buy some shares in this component, do it quickly

Exciting stuff, thanks for the update Stinky_Pete. We're running the chips at > 3 GH/s in the bitburner fury, so providing there's sufficient voltage control in the drillbit firmware I'm cautiously optimistic that these boards will do 2.5 GH/s (hopefully more). We'll be adding a bit more cooling when this one arrives, so it will be like a hurricane inside that case! Hopefully that should suit them well.

Last call for shares in this component.

OK, I think it's time to close this component formally. I'll update the OP now.

I am selling 5 shares that I have in Component 5 (H-board #4) collection.

Please PM me if interested.

 

When might i expect to see my first round of payments ? I'm right in saying all H-boards are now hashing away ?

thanks



Doh, I have used the same address for you and my pool miners, that's why i didn't see the payments !. Confirmed payment received many thanks.

Hi monkeynutts, you were included in Sunday's payment TxID: e23dcb6b01bd118342d11aaf9d8adb93aaa5a3fe980766c3d6fcd4524125f630. BTC from the group's miner are being paid by the pool to 1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH, so payouts to you will come from this address.

Perfect, I was getting worried there. Thank goodness the blockchain allows us to track these things easily. One of the great things about bitcoin IMO.

sorry :) im still pretty new to the wallet and instead of generating a new address for these transactions i used the first one i found.

I have updated my mining pool with another address so i can now easily monitor income. Just have to remember that you didn't make any payments before 3 rd !

No problem. You may also find http://blockchain.info useful, if you weren't using it before. You can monitor your addresses, the miner's address, particular transactions etc. Very useful indeed.

Hi All, given the crazy BTC prices at the moment we thought that it might be useful to send out an early payout this week (just in case you're thinking of selling while the price is high ;)). Please see below for the payment details. I'll still send a payment out this weekend as normal.

TxID: b7aff66bc37bfbbbbd96fd432b9232c383d7e669031a92b879e0b63b6ee9ea42

http://s10.postimg.org/5xzb0j15l/payment7_all.png

Thanks for the early payment.  :)

sweet :) thanks for the payment

Hi All, the normal weekly payout has just been sent. Details are below as usual.

TxID: 6be6eeb49393d2d87760e4c962fe38fd65a65506860a1aa31f149fb0691f4a9c

http://s24.postimg.org/y1g84ag2t/payment8_all.png

Hi All, the normal weekly payout has just been sent. Details are below as usual.

TxID: 4b75c44a0996cb0934126b56f17c78d24f5111b1f2350976fb34769ca75fc3c1

http://s21.postimg.org/5pt7a1scn/payment9_all.png

confirmed thanks :)

any issues with the kit or has it all been plain sailing ?

cheers again

Hi monkeynutts, sorry for the lack of updates for the last week, it's been fairly hectic with other things. The hardware has been running very smoothly and the news on that front is rather boring I'm afraid :). No downtime or other instances to note. It's nice kit and once set up and tweaked just does what it should do without any trouble (fingers crossed it stays that way). I'm hoping to post something a little more substantial about the group's options for collecting for new hardware to fill up the M-board etc. later today, but have to dash for now.

Payment received, thank you.

We haven't posted any screen shots for a while, so here you go!

http://s10.postimg.org/ns7aw9th5/screen_17_11.jpg

http://s23.postimg.org/lmfmbcsjf/screen2_17_11.jpg

Hi All, the normal weekly payout has just been sent. Details are below as usual.

TxID: fb3f9a23d38ac4c1b4427c5e5389a6977c189ab46c10ad0a8ef57eae32a9e184
TxID: 2197c6836bea956a58f2dcb4c8f2ee32119c5b09fd48b9797ddcd7270fbdfdfd

Another quiet week with the hardware, it's happily hashing away nicely. The only issue this week is that electrum, which we're using as it allows transactions to be uploaded from .csv files, was being a POS today and was not happy about me completely emptying the GB account in one transaction. As such, I've sent off all of the GB member payments as normal and have sent our hosting fee + electricity costs as a separate transaction.

http://s23.postimg.org/wcu5gs10b/payment10_all.png

 :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(
need help
When i suppose to send few of (not working bitburner fury boards)?  FOR REPAIR

ANY contact will be great
thanks

Hi, don't send them to us, my soldering is terrible ;)! I would think that Burnin is the man to contact, but it depends on whether you bought them from him or one of the resellers. If the resellers wont RMA them then I'd contact Burnin. If you get no joy there then maybe a local electronics shop can help. Good luck!

Hi All, sorry for the delay in posting. This is the first time I've logged in since there were forum issues over the weekend. We made the usual payment over the weekend, but couldn't post the TxID etc. here. I'll do that now.

This week's payout details are below. It's been another quiet hardware week, which is great. Bitminter seemed to be having some server problems yesterday, although this only seemed to affect their front end rather than the pool servers. However, to be safe we switched the BFSB miner to load balance across Bitminter and Eligius. The bitburner fury is set to failover to eligius and then HHTT, so no need for any changes there.

TxID: 618434f0e67f7b304e9454eb618a68864f40154024848775c3c539ae5654da05

http://s30.postimg.org/jloaa36ox/payment11_all.png

Hi All. This week's payout details are below. The BFSB miner is still load balancing across Bitminter and Eligius at the moment, while the bitburner fury is mining on Bitminter and set to failover to Eligius and then HHTT. We've no other hardware news to give you at the moment, all still running smoothly :).

As you know, our GB status has been "paused" for quite some time now, while we've been waiting for additional H-boards or reasonably priced bitburner fury hardware to become available to fill up the miner. It's looking unlikely that this will happen any time soon (although we're keeping our eyes open). BFSB have announced that they will be selling new version H-boards soon (not compatible with the group's m-board), but the price (850 Euro + VAT) is not particularly attractive at the moment given the difficulty increases we've seen in recent weeks. The US bitfury resellers have just started selling old style H-boards (compatible with our m-board) for similar prices ($999) and they look similarly unattractive. Just to let you know that we would be happy to open up this GB again to fill up the group's m-board if there's any demand, but we'll only do this if the hardware pricing looks reasonable. Hope you agree that this is the most sensible way forward.

TxID: efa0803f41ded5005d26e7e75ff1ae0790ac8a4eeb49820f0ae75b0746577cac

http://s7.postimg.org/t93w0gc8b/payment12.png

Hi All. This week's payout details are below. Unfortunately Electrum is playing up again today and not allowing us to send a transaction out for the full balance of the GB address (may be due to the way that it handles newly mined coins from Eligius). As a short term fix we've removed all of the payouts to jlsminingcorp from this transaction, but have sent the payouts to all other GB members. We'll send our payouts as a separate transaction later when we get a chance.

TxID: 995066110552730e97a9efb4748851125a39dfd4bb91237e817ab8b3a1cf9c33

http://s28.postimg.org/ypfdcrarh/payment13_notus.png

Finally managed to find some time to send the delayed payment to jlsminingcorp from last Sunday (it's been a busy week!) We'll make the usual group buy payout to everybody tomorrow.

Merry Christmas everybody  :)

TxID: e70ded17a9ab8676809d5c4993f9b2b750d6cfe71b9c2974cc43d17678214bad

And here's this week's payout.

TxID: 88bcaedf26f793a4feb20a0b97e919e83d1d0c1d5f5b897daaf74d39afa17ef6

http://s14.postimg.org/4vxg0eqfl/payment14.png

Hi All, I've had more problems this week with electrum and so have split the weekly payout so that all gb members except jlsminingcorp have just been sent a payment. I'll send the jlsminingcorp payout for this week as soon as I can. The details are below. I think that the electrum problems either relate to the number of confirmations on newly generated coins or problems using up dust change. Will try an electrum update now (although this has not helped in the past!)

Hope you all have a great New Year.

TxID: 5dd3293467b01a779f6571ea34a98fd4864d8c6168c930bddede039e5c348b2a

http://s13.postimg.org/p1c39653b/payment15.png

Just sent the outstanding jlsminingcorp payout from last week.

TxID: eb51a93dd487e89a07075b108c445390bbacd6d8e5d417376be16dd6512b88bf

Hi All, I've just sent this week's payout and the details are below as normal. I've had to split it into two payments again, one to all GB members except jlsminingcorp and one to us (which will follow shortly), due to our continuing problems with Electrum. The only thing left to try to cure this is to update Electrum to the latest "stable" release (we were using the source from github with a workaround due to the fact that we were using an older seed version). This causes a slight problem as the newer versions of Electrum are not compatible with the older seed version that we were using. The only way to overcome this properly seems to be to move to an entirely new wallet. As such, we will need to set pool payouts from the miner to be sent to a new address. Apologies if this causes any confusion, fingers crossed it solves the frustrating problems we've been having with weekly payouts.

Please note that pool payouts from the miner will now be sent to 1JziHiUmGfTzTsqekmHBYQ7xQ9uytpAw41 and not the old address that we were using (1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH)

This week's payout (for GB members other than jlsminingcorp) TxID: b508782726c92062d9881d9a09f7029e1fe678f5324caed105ef7a7d768e2d41

Please note that we've sold the last few weeks worth of NMC and included the proceeds in this payout. Since the sums are all very small it only really makes sense to do this every few weeks.

http://i40.tinypic.com/2ypm7wi.png

Hi All, I made the outstanding payout from last week to jlsminingcorp earlier today.

TxID: 0fb7b1b7fc98be016e9e4304ec269a5446dd9d3ee91cc8eee6d8c0babf045fc9

This week's payout details are below. I have to apologise, there was a problem with the part of the bfsb miner that points at eligius for a little less than three days this week, which resulted in a hashrate that was 90 GH/s lower than expected during this time. I'm afraid that we didn't spot this that quickly (due to the change in mining addresses), so as a gesture of good will we've transferred 0.0957 BTC (the theoretical income from three days of mining at 90 GH/s) to the group's mining address and included that in this week's payout.

TxID: 7229e73eb1f1a5f67714eb36b4ebd5f8f5772014ffb7838ba4059b409725f216

http://i39.tinypic.com/2hgg2mo.png

Hi All, this week's payout details are below. Just a couple of things to note this week. We were beginning to have more stability problems with the part of the miner pointing at eligius around the middle of the week, so switched over to bitminter completely, which has been much more successful. Secondly, I'm afraid to say that the cheap electricity deal that we were on last year has now ended and we've had to switch supplier. As those of you in the UK will know only too well, energy prices have been going up and so our new energy deal includes a higher unit charge (now £0.1145 per kWh), which we've included on this payout. This new price is fixed for the next 12 months.

TxID: 664a3c5266580fe86e9ca5911ff728568963f70b1a94f570a04cd93dbf7f4249

http://i40.tinypic.com/2uo71wx.png

Just to let you know, bitfurystrikesback.com have now started selling H-boards again from stock for 250 Euro + VAT = 310 Euro = 0.51 BTC. This seems to me to be an OK price, but not a fantastic one, and with difficulty still rocketing up and new players about to enter the market (Cointerra, possibly Hashfest) I'm not feeling as bullish about mining as I was last summer. We still have plenty of space in the miner to expand its capacity with new H-boards, so please let us know your thoughts about whether or not to continue to upgrade our hashpower or to keep things as they are. If there's a desire to buy more hardware to fill up the m-board then we need to find a way to start a collection for this new hardware that fits within the framework of the original group terms and doesn't disadvantage existing or new GB members. If you have any thoughts on this let us know, I'm not sure I can think of an ideal solution given the big change in BTC price, the falling hardware price and the huge change in difficulty since we started.

Hi All, I'm travelling on Sunday, so won't be able to make this week's payout on the normal day. There will be somebody around keeping an eye on the hardware, but not to make the payment. As such, I've just made a partial payout for this week based on what has been mined already and will make another around the middle of next week. Hope that works for you all. As usual, the details are below.

TxID: 27e647c7847bc9b164d32e8f38ca4ac7a7e4fbee210126b063ffcef3f44a548d

http://i42.tinypic.com/i6gp6d.png

Hi All, this week's payout details are below in the usual format. Since there's been no response to my post from a couple of weeks ago about the new BFSB H-board availability and pricing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252534.msg4606540#msg4606540) I'm guessing that there is no interest in these as they stand (I also think that at this price it doesn't really make sense to expand the capacity of the miner). My feeling is that we should now consider this GB to be "closed" rather than "paused". We can open things up again if there is a new hardware offer that makes sense, but for now it makes more sense just to run the hardware that we have. Let me know if you have any strong objections and we can re-visit this decision.

TxID: 5082db6ea2f278086b6615cba36ecadb6243e97a94536afe12681084d27a859c

http://i62.tinypic.com/6zc9q8.jpg

Hi All,

Payout details for this week are below in the usual format.

TxID: 1b95bc624163401a053aff3db54477f77f57078decec70ee1ca25eca33f66bb6

http://i57.tinypic.com/o714co.png

Hi All, I'm going to be away from my wallet on Sunday, so have made this week's payout a little early. Please see the details below as normal.

TxID: 9da51258e9ad74442b59ea356f4264156274c5d89446f570fd35e2eacf812b9d

http://i61.tinypic.com/okwho1.png

Hi All, this week's payout details are below.

TxID: 873f4346daec9bf8bb02cfac1cb3510b905b8da850e7367b0f595a85123aad74

http://i61.tinypic.com/nnqlh1.png

Just want to say thank you for the way you run this group buy.
This has been one of the least headache causing GBs I've been involved in.

Hi Kushedout, thanks, that's very much appreciated. We were certainly hoping that things would run smoothly for everybody and we'll continue to do what we can to make sure this GB runs as smoothly as possible.

Hi All, this week's payout details are below as usual.

TxID: 1c25474bf75e5844189a95010c50b71f7bd9b931b8a5c4169da0f9e26c1132c2

http://i61.tinypic.com/2h72pfc.png

Hi All, this week's payout details are below as normal.

TxID: 15519f800aa3a479f5013aa28f28fa91ec04c1cb310916247e1c26d9fb3aa074

http://i62.tinypic.com/1rz1wm.png

Hi All, this week's payout details are below.

TxID: d4f6c834d9033b360d9df3ecc75ebf5026e6bbaaa187cd9309a480642997cc5e

http://i61.tinypic.com/111v58m.png

Hi All, we've been mining with quite good stability on bitminter for quite a while now. However, bitminter's % share of the network hashrate is not what it used to be and so we're more susceptible to variance at the pool. I'd suggest that we move to one of the bigger pools to mitigate against this - probably BTCguild (or ghash.io), as I've not found eligius to be as stable with the bitfurystrikesback hardware for some reason. If you have any feelings either way about this let me know, otherwise we'll switch this week.

Hi All, please see below for this week's payout details. We've been happily hashing away on BTC guild since yesterday - so far things look nice and stable.

TXID: f4709bfcf1769fcb599bcacd34c85294a8f3614b80671adbbfaec9b30d91ade8

http://i58.tinypic.com/b3q0l3.png

Hi All, this week's payout details are below in the usual format.

TxID: b3f0d55252ab625d96a1e1b4d5672cde9667634a715a7601d76de00dd5c3a789

http://i58.tinypic.com/ff8eie.png

Hi All, this week's payout details are below.

TxID: 6d94c6caf84d10b0ddabb79571433e3d6befc1f5b140a088a35928cb45fc6c27

http://i58.tinypic.com/2wr1amv.png

Hi All, here are the details for this week's payout.

TxID: a8d0aff3d813185715d0a32eccbbef783c5b87071fed5b2b264cccafc5f4922f

http://i62.tinypic.com/i71s8i.png

Hi All, please find the details for this week's payout below. Apologies for the slight delay with this, I had a busy day yesterday and didn't get a chance to send this out until now.

TxID: efc203439eb64f407d62d3cd665efbeac92aa2b15365064801a5cfd7a09af24f

http://i58.tinypic.com/zx7klh.png

Hi All, this week's payout details are below as usual. Since we're getting to the stage where payouts are now rather small (and difficulty keeps on rising!) would any of you object if we switch to making payouts every two weeks, rather than every week? We did agree to send payouts every week, so will continue to do so if you would prefer. However, it would save me a little time and us all some transaction fees if we switched down to two-weekly payouts. Let us know what you think.

TxID: 82bc7f73c19333e1a8b9b2ce63335b0199da97efc822ca7bbabd49c0fda9e5f3

http://s11.postimg.org/ljp4owej7/payment32.png

Hi All,

This week's payout details are below as usual. I've not had any feedback on our suggestion to move to payouts every two weeks, so I presume that there aren't any huge objections to this. We'll give this a try from now on and see how it goes. Any problems, please post here or pm.

TxID: 73c627b78ba72a9add8a838db5b7a2701402c6932c25ef49244468562cbef8ec

http://i60.tinypic.com/b3vtp4.png

Payments received OK. Thanks for keeping going with this. Fortnightly payments would be fine for me.

Thanks Stinky_Pete, it seems to make more sense this way.

Hi All, payout details for the last two weeks are below.

TxID: e90003458747b4567051fd387e4184c8f7a30d713f3b55adcd243de4c465fb1d

http://i60.tinypic.com/2qu3b6f.png

Hi All, payout details for the last two weeks are below as usual.

TxID: 7b69d8abcd702b8087fde748fa7766f3ff7adb8233fa8f9a4d95626ba458c3e5

http://i59.tinypic.com/27y00nk.png

Still going strong. Great host.

Thanks for your commitment.

Hi All, payout details for the last two weeks are below as usual.

TxID: 42c24847d54b81237ecf86693f09da2f4b3a800cd790d51b407f3c58a7a225c8

http://i61.tinypic.com/2cpb22c.png

Hi All, payout details are below as usual.

TxID: e93fe93964fc84362e09ff411693a5c64608013674eb58a9a0afdf821acce017

http://i57.tinypic.com/303b874.png

Hi all, payout details are below as usual. Things are still running fairly smoothly, but a couple of the cards have become slightly more temperamental - the connection between them and the m-board is lost from time to time and they need wiggling about in order to reconnect. It may just need another clean out in there, but it could be a bit of old age showing through.

TxID: a1c655a5a4e66b31629766d45be42ceb455799aa527634b7597a2500a009b650

http://i57.tinypic.com/rii0s3.png

Hi All. Just a quick post to say that we've decided to turn the hardware off for a few days (around a week at the most). For personal reasons we're not able to give it the attention that it usually gets and since it's been rather hot here lately we don't want to risk any heat-related hardware failures (or burnt down buildings ;)) while we're not watching. We will pay the theoretical amount of BTC that would have been mined during this time (minus theoretical power costs) to the group to cover the down time. Hope this makes sense.

Thanks for the update. 

Hi All, payout details for the last couple of weeks are below. We'll settle up for the time that the miner has been offline in the next payout.

TxID: 65381417d2e18b7e04a99f8006c7576881a5d458aaeb47b0ec64cb190978f541

http://i59.tinypic.com/2niabn8.png

Hi All, payout details for this week are below. We started the miner back up on Sat 2nd Aug, so it was not running for 8 days in total. At a difficulty of 18736441558 the theoretical yield for the group's ~245 GH/s is 0.00657607 BTC per day (so 0.05260856 BTC in total for the 8 days). Power costs then need to be subtracted from this. In order to keep things simple, so that we can use the existing payout spreadsheet, we've transferred the full 0.05260856 BTC to the group's address and then assumed the normal power consumption (~100 kWh is normal for 14 days) for this payout period. This underestimates power costs a little, as we accounted for the actual power consumption for the last period, but it's close enough for us. Hope this all makes sense.

TxID: b7ec20161ed11b066e2f1f2502e51a9a7286fb3303f0dbe71c634819506fa274

http://i61.tinypic.com/2cibuxk.png

Hi All, Apologies for missing the normal payout day yesterday I wasn't feeling well. Please find the payout details for this two-week period below as usual. We've been having some stability issues with a couple of the BFSB H-cards, which seem to be predominantly down to one bank on the M-board. Moving the cards to other banks has helped a bit with the stability, but they no longer seem to be in the best position for maxing out the hashrate, so we're around 10GH/s down on the average hashrate - not much by today's standards I suppose! Will keep playing with them to see if we can do any better, but the hardware is starting to show its age now :(.

TxID: 942ee3bd3d45c8a0be75578239dd91be4a40a0e7b03d67d87abff52564199d50

http://i61.tinypic.com/2mi2iaq.png

No worries man, you've done a fine job with this GB.
Thanks for the divs and update.

what he said :) this has been very well run from day 1. just wish id had the chance to invest more with you in the beginning :)


keep up the good work

Thanks guys, that's very much appreciated :).

Things are quite a bit more stable after some card position swapping, so nothing to report for the last couple of weeks. The payout details are below as usual.

TxID: c96942a9cd1facb879b828ac3d08e2aa5e93370ec5c586cbd4e8dec53a4106f0

http://i58.tinypic.com/sb4w3m.png

Hi All, payment details are below as usual.

TxID: c5c870ad1940c600e2e2d08ad6c38b3404f750c96e5184ca7e376d22fb078def

http://i59.tinypic.com/15q41w5.png

Hi All, well for the first time in about a year the miner is no longer covering its electricity bill :'(. We'll turn it off now and keep an eye on the BTC price/difficulty over the next week or two to see BTC rebounds making it worth turning back on, but it may be that the group needs to decide on the next steps (i.e. sell the miner, hold the miner hoping for a surge in bitcoin price etc.) We'll post again when it's a little clearer where things stand with the current BTC price issues.

http://i62.tinypic.com/rsa0j5.png

Hi All, well it's been a while now since we turned the miner off and nothing particularly positive has happened to the BTC price or network difficulty. As such, the miner would still not be covering it's power costs and so it's not worth turning back on. It's been an interesting year, but I think we're at the point where the group should decide what to do with the hardware and finally dispand. When we started this venture we anticipated selling the hardware at the end of the year's mining and splitting the winnings from the sale between group members. However, the landscape has changed so dramatically since we started and given that bitmain are selling S3s for 0.52 BTC, which have much lower power consumption and about half the hashrate, we're not likely to get much for it.

I'd be interested to hear everybody's thoughts on what, where and how to sell. Ebay will fetch the best price, but we risk chargebacks (and so would have to keep the proceeds of the sale on hand until the chargeback period has ended) and will then face costs for converting to BTC to distribute to the group. I'm happy to sell on this forum, and have made successful trades here, but most people understand the value of the hardware and so the price will probably not be too high. Finally, I'd be willing to offer the group £50 (0.23 BTC at current exchange rate) for the hardware, which is broadly in line with the GH/s/BTC prices for the S3, because it's less hassle to keep it than break it up sell it and post it on. Also, I've grown somewhat attached to it after having looked after it for a year and it feels like a bit of history. Let me know what you think.

By the way, I thought that you might like a final look at the frankenminer after the year's mining.

http://i62.tinypic.com/2cqxkow.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/w06v08.jpg

Thanks for the update and the pic.

This has been one of the best managed group buys.

I am OK with whatever other members decide to do. You can also keep my share of the outcome (if any)

my address 12hv7UcFgrBWLjWs5McPYP63Yza6ufT6Sw

Thanks again for the venture.

Hi

Thanks for the photo, its nice to see where the money went!

I'm fine with the idea of selling the hardware directly to you.

Thanks for the best organised and run group buy that I've been part of ~ its a shame the difficulty climbed so high, so quickly.

Hi All,

I just stumbled across the old GB miner in the loft and it reminded me that I completely forgot to make the final GB payment (from me to the group for the hardware) last year. I'm very sorry about this, I think I was waiting for a couple more replies to my post to ensure that everybody was happy with the plan and then time slipped by and I forgot. In any case, I've made the final payment now (enjoy the dust!) and so the GB is officially (as well as practically) over. Good luck with all of your bitcoin ventures in the future. I'm going to lock this thread now, as we're all done. Cheers!

http://i65.tinypic.com/2d174v7.png