Bitcoin Forum

Come into some money in the new year. and I'm thinking, screw it. We have the cheapest power in the country, and why give someone else my profit.

I'm considering buying the Black arrow X-1 (ten of them I guess)
Or maybe just suck it up and buy the X-3.

The neptune looks promising but is more than double the x-3 for 50% increase?

But as a noob to mining. Could I reasonably get this in the mail. plug it in down stairs and monkey my way through setup?

Or do I need an IT degree and weeks of learning to get it setup?

All in or all out. I'd essentially set this up and forget it.
Do I setup a wallet on the machine that it sends the coins to?

This mining thing has me a bit miffed lol


Thank You

Shawn

P.S. Half the year I can just crack a window and get free cooling ;)

From my sources I can say the minion chips from black arrow have a good amount of headroom to overclocking so it's very good we will be coming out with a Minion Hive that will clock out at with 8 wasp blades x 2 Chips Minion 28nm chips per Wasp would mine at over 1.8 Th/s  The Neptune does look promising though.

I'll be honest I believe Black Arrow is what I want.

But the only mining I've done is basic or erupter, so is it the same? I simply add my BTC Guild info to the Black arrow device, and let it run?

Or with such a big machine are there more efficient ways to go about this?

Seems like such a noobish question but having a hell of a time finding how you set one of these big bastards up lol.

thank You

Many ASICs have built in software (KNC, Bitfury, Avalon, ASICMiner) that sometime run on a built in Raspberry Pi or BeagleBoneBlack.  You just need to configure it with your Network and Pool settings to get them to run.  You can set them up and forget them for the most part.  Or you can fiddle with them until your fingers fall off.  Other devices (Butterfly Labs) need a host PC to run CGMiner or BFGMiner (and in some cases, a Stratum Proxy although apparently BFGMiner has it built in now) to run them.

I honestly don't know what BlackArrow are doing but I would guess that they are standalone.

Sorry if this is too much information but you are trying to dive into the deep end without learning the basic fundamentals and it's probably going to be difficult for you.  It was for me too and I still learn new stuff every flippin' day!

And you are a bit behind the curve to earn the easy coin.  It becomes more difficult every day and who knows where we'll be when you finally receive your preorder months from now... if it ever comes.  Scams are everywhere!

Good luck!

I figured as much I realize they are self contained. But do they generate the coins? Or are you still tied to something like BTC Guild to place shares and get some in return?

Thanks for the info.

The chance of actually finding coins is pretty low at this point.  It's a statistics thing.  Pools will pay you for your effort towards finding a coin, because with enough people working together, they'll find a certain number of coins on average.

With all the power coming online over the next few months, unless you are pumping out 100s of THs, you're better off mining from a pool.  Which pool, I'll leave up to you.

You could in theory solo mine.

You do understand there is little to no difference in how you configure your miner right?  On one hand you point the miner to yourself which means if you find a block, and the network agrees, you get the entire award.  If you point it towards the pool, you get in general the ratio of the share, for the work you did if the pool finds the block.

You should not be investing thousands of dollars without understanding the risks of buying a miner.  All the documentation is out there.

Listen to the guys in this thread.  You are receiving good, honest advice.  Mining itself is pretty darn easy.  The hard part is making informed decisions.  You NEED to do your research or you will almost certainly lose money.

Oh I understand the risk, I'm not dumping anything into this I'm not willing to loose. But I considered just buying 5-6k in coin Or buying a rig, and If I'm going to get a rig, I may as well buy the biggest and brightest.
The pool idea seems the best. I'm sure some offer better rate's over others. I've heard plenty about btc guild so have stuck with them but I'll do more research on them as it goes.  I've just never gone the rate of 2 TH lol so wasnt sure if thing's got drastically different at that point :)

As I've said, electricty is extremely cheap here. As far as it can be anyways. So I would jsut tie it to a BTC guild user and let it run.

Hope for the best :)

Black arrow has probably the cheapest GH/$ of the offered preorder miners at the moment.  They are,  however,  an untested company for producing their own chips.  If you order from them,  there is a chance they will be late,  like Hashfast was.  They are entirely based in china

KNC has a history of shipping *almost* on time =).  They also have a history of under estimating their chip specs... the 3TH machine is probably going to be a 4-5 TH machine.  They have a productive partnership with OrSOC,  and in general are pretty reliable.  The shipping date is uncertain at this time for the neptune.  It is also likely that the amount of power it can draw will be greater than what the average electrical system in the US can handle.

In my opinion,  neither product is obviously *better*.  It depends on your risk tolerance (I believe KNC is less risky), your price point,  your hosting setup,  etc.

Any electrical I can do, as I'm an electrician,
But that machine is a LOT more money and simply more than I'd like to spend. the 6k range is about my limit.

I know there's risk even in hoping BA will deliver... But one can hope..

I don't think there is too much risk with black arrow... they seem to have their act together.  But it worries me that they don't have their asics taped out.  I see it likely that their product will be delayed by a month or so.  But their product is close enough to state of the art that it will not be obsolete when you get it.

Thats my thought as well

So question is. Is BTC guild the best? or where would I get the best return?

As mentioned before in this thread, pool mining is the only logical way to go unless you are a whale. and even then the variance can be a killer.  Bigger pools (BTCGuild and CEX.io/GHASH.io being the two biggest right now) have less variance over time and that can mean a lot when difficulty is rising so quickly.  You can get stuck in bad luck on a smaller pool for days and that can kill your earnings for that difficulty period.  But having said that, all pools are quite similar.  The only real difference being fees and mining stats on the websites.  If you choose a reputable pool (all of the top pools, except maybe 50BTC) you really can't go wrong.

And something else I haven't see you mention yet is the future of mining.  You do know that all the earliest preorders are sold out or still months away from delivery.  And it sounds like you won't have the money to make an investment until the new year.  Unless something seriously changes with the preorder game, you are most likely 6 months away from possessing your own multi-TH mining rig.  And even a single month in this world is like a friggin' lifetime compared to all other investment opportunities.

One other thing... if you are seriously considering buying Bitcoin at $1000+ each, you have bigger balls than me!  I know people like to think that this isn't a bubble and Bitcoin will continue to rise forever.  I'm not a believer though.  I think we can expect a major "correction" any time now.  And most new/casual investors will freak out and sell low.  Bubbles happen all of the time but for some reason people never seem to learn from them.  If something seems to be too good to be true... IT IS.

I'm feeling temporarily Bearish right now and to me, buying mining hardware during a bubble is the perfect timing.  Paying 10 or 11 bitcoin for a $10,000 ASIC miner is a no brainer to me.  A month ago, a miner like that would have cost something like 60 BTC.  But in a few months I'll still be able to mine with the hardware with hopes that BTC will rise again or simply sell it on eBay for a good chunk o' change.  But there are others who think exactly the opposite of me though.  They think I'm an idiot for not buying and holding and instead reinvesting my earned BTC back into more mining hardware.  It's a whole bullshit argument (miners vs ROI-nazis/B&Her's) that the two sides will never see eye-to-eye so it's pointless to continue to argue about it.

Oh god that was wordy of me!  Lol.

I believe by feb, the difficulty would have been a lot higher. think of other 2TH coming into the picture. 1 x 2TH might look like 200GH by then.

I'd like to know why knc discontinued a product that isn't even really available.  I thought after the initial batch of Jupiters sold out there would be another.  I was ready to buy the next in the 2nd batch when they got their shit together.  Now it's not even available to order and the next new thing is preorder (Neptune).  It's like they love to have a perpetual preorder making it risky for buyers.

And how does a successful and proven company like ASICMINER not have a 2nd gen product?  Their Cube is just a repackaged Blade (using the same power hungry chips).

The Difference between millions of dollars for 1 chip design.... KNC



and Making Billions from only 1 chip design.....  ASICMiner

I also dont understand this logic..... why not do another batch of 28nm...... instead of just taking preorders for a 2nd gen product......    common sense says keep a product available..... unless they kept a bunch and need to protect that investment

Quick buck for sales I guess but got to assume a company building top of the line product such as these would hold onto a large number of the first models to farm themselves.

Why sell money printers when you can just plug them in.

Maybe they made enough to sit happy and are going for gold. rather than settling on silver.

For those of you waiting for a 3rd batch of the 28nm miners from KNC...  I'm guessing that once the preorder for Neptune sells out, they will once again offer Jupiters (and maybe Saturns) up for sale.  And they would also ship from stock so there would be no waiting.

Think about it, they are pushing the 20nm right now and if they were selling 28nm at the same time, it would cannibalize sales from the Neptune.  They would be competing with themselves.  Also, they are still shipping the last bits of batch 2 and maybe they are waiting for that to finish first.

But... they also had a "network protection statement" that said something like, "they would do no further batches until another vendor started to ship their 28nm in bulk."  This is to protect against rapid growth of the network hash rate therefore giving their already existing customers a better chance to ROI.

3 things need to happen before they ship more 28nm
- finish shipping November batch
- sellout 2nd batch of Neptunes
- another vendor needs to starting shipping en masse

Im gonna suggest that as a noob, you dont start with a $6k machine. It also depends on how much $6k is to you.

Im just saying, there is HUGE potential for heartbreak in mining.

Lets say You buy an X3 today for what, 7 BTC. Then they dont end up shipping until June because of issues with board/power draw.

Your miner will now only return 2 BTC. So you spent 7 BTC to make 2. And, lets say BTC goes crazy and is worth $5000 each. You lost out on $25k.

The best investment strategy for BTC is buy and hold. Mining, especially in 2014, is for bigtime gamblers with balls of steel.

Oh I understand the steel balls thing.
But you figure if a 2TH  item isn't shipped until June, the return would be so low it would never get back what was put into it?
6 grand is 6 grand, its far from pocket change, but it's also not my kids school fund or my retirement lol.

I'd like to buy a large machine in the new year. but yes the issue seems to be none of these bastards are reliable enough. sigh. Which make's all of this hard to bite into.

I'd buy into any machine right now. I'm even trying to find a reliable mining company to buy share's off... as an alternate option..

It's a sin this whole damn BTC setup is such a scam. Probably the coin's biggest flaw :( Or the community at least.

Try https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251423.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251423.0) for a reliable mining company.

Ha.  These miners need about the same attention as a newborn home from the maternity ward.

Unlike a well known and well trashed in the forums hardware manufacturer in the US, it seems the KnC people look at the what their production does to their customers' mining effectiveness.  If they just dump all the miners then can manufacturer out into the wild, return will plummet - miners will make squat.  It's an ethical decision.  Their customers put faith in them by paying pre-orders in sizable amounts to an unknown company.   It paid off.  Existing customers now get first shot at limited production miners and they go fast.  It seems unfair if one doesn't own a KnC miner but then there was that pre-order risk.