This may interest some people, looks decent for mining in some of the designs with the lion battery. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-liberator  looks like time is short for the discount, but they ain't expensive without it.

HE said both were shipping, they are not. Jupiters in the 1st early batch had a few issues which were solved either by firmware or replacement boards. Cointerra are not shipping, and neither are hashfast in any real numbers yet. KNC had 2000 plus rigs delivered in 4 weeks the 1st time they ever manufactured an ASIC...next time they'll have learned from that.

As for a 2k rig hashing 600GH breaking even if paid for when BTC were 100 dollars...you think a 600 GH rig starting mining today will manage to mine 20BTC? I don't. Paid with flat it will break even but buying rigs for BTC can be the stupidest mistake.

This calc does that http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ , as for solo mining it may be unlikely that you'd find a block and getting less so, but people solo mine other coins with ASICs and exchange for BTC and do not so bad. You could look at it as a constant lottery too if you did it on BTC, especially if a block is around a grand per BTC or higher. You could get lucky.

You'd need to buy the chip at least, not really possible without serious skills and knowledge sadly. Some people on here have done group buys and built some stuff though...maybe find some info in those threads. The chances of finding a faulty ASIC and repairing it may be half decent though, there must be some around and if your dad does that as a hobby maybe he could do that?

Worst care scenario in what you seem to think, no more mining? What would happen to gold if gold mining stopped? It would aall vanish, or the price would rocket? It exists, it can't vanish, only change in value. Same for BTC.

There's only one sensible way to go for miners now as far as new rigs are concerned. Miners developing their own rigs using crowd funding to bypass the mnuafacturer's profit.  Become the manufacturers of the rigs you're already funding with pre-orders. Not an easy option at all but it's possible with the money to pay expertise. That's exactly what KNC did but they used pre-orders and our money to pay for it and kept the profit. Nice work if you can get it eh?

Not likely at all.

Scenario 1. ASICs carry on as they are increasing in power. Companies who sell them NOW make money because they have large profit margins...and we fund the upfront costs with pre-orders. When the development reaches a plateau and nothing radically new is coming, who's going to prepay an order for a rig that most likely won't make them a profit? No-one sane, so the model has to change or companies vanish. A lot will anyway, like any area of manufacturing. Still...if nothing new is coming, there's little profit, why mine with them at all?

Eventually people will quit mining and buying rigs, that will decease the hashrate and the difficulty with it...so people will mine when difficulty allows a profit instead of all the time like we do now?

Scenario2. It carries on but goes outside the pockets of normal people mining at home and into corporate size operations. Instead of companies like Hashfast and CT and KNC selling us rigs, they just make them to use themselves, easier for them to make a profit since they are paying trade price not what we need to...so for them it's economical. I'd be surprised if private operations aren't already onto this given the price of BTC.

The system works based on people mining and their hashrate governs difficulty. If people stop due to the difficulty, it will drop. Then they maybe jump back on the horse and it will rise again ...people stopping mining won't kill anything. What would you do if this time next year difficulty was lower than today because loads of people quit mining? You can't say you wouldn't get the rig back online. Can you?



Gonna be an interesting year 2014. Year of the ASIC in the bitcoin calendar.

What? The next difficulty won't be anything drastic, and we all know it's always rising..but to rise 100% as it has in the past do you realise how much hash power would need to be added?

Those 3TH or likely 4TH 20nm rigs will be the new norm, it's the stuff we all have now and that is about to roll out that won't be so sparky anymore....unless of course BTC prices rise significantly again...which will make slower rigs viable.

If a 3 or 4TH rig isn't worth shit when it's the ONLY such 20nm rig available next march or april..mining is dead , simple as that.

Who cares now? I expected my rig to be useless in january but what happened was much better for me. Hashfast (lol at that name) are in effect delivering a Jupiter, old tech, same speed ...way too late to come close to break even, but just in time for 2400 big KNC rigs to come into the game in spring giving hashfast owners a month or so to recoup their investment.

Time is everything now, I was mad at KNC for the bullshitting over a 2 week delay on delivery which in the grand scheme is nothing compared to other companies...but that was 14 day and a diff increase of about 100% leaving me on .5 btc a day for a short while...cost me at least 7 btc that delay of 2 weeks at the prime time. Almost what it's mined since. 

As for the new rigs getting bigger...IMO 2kw per rig is already showing the way it's going. Industrial. Selling rigs won't make sense, in fact I can't see all the companies we know now existing in a year. BFL for example..why would they? I can see private investors getting into mining with deep pockets, not buying rigs, buying the people to make their own and using them. IT's possible to get tax breaks, grants, alsorts of money recouped from your running costs,..and it pays back super fast. Even the rigs are attractive to sell when no longer profitable enough.
We'll see if/when  it happens.

Waste a lot of space. 

Personally I think they are in too deep to dump. Nothing to do with the economics as such, more their reputation.
They have been so strong for so long about their belief in bitcoin that their reputation would be damaged badly by a u-turn made to make a few bucks. Who'd trust a word they said in the future..assuming they intend to stay in some financial business in their long futures? "Oh they said that about bitcoins just before they jumped ship" would be said about whatever else they supported or got involved in. 

A very logical post in a bitcoin forum. I really don't understand why there are so many people in bitcoin forums wailing about how its going to crash and burn, like the one now quoting some guy I never heard of who's respected in the finance world saying BTC would be 10 dollars this year? What does he know about BTC really apart from what he's picked up or read? IT's like people wish to fail?

3 months ago no-one I know personally knew much at all about BTC, but when I go for a pint tomorrow in my local I'm sure at some point someone will want to talk about it...normal people, non techies. That's good, more people seeing how it could benefit them in many different ways.

As for companies adopting BTC and that swinging exchange rate, Bitpay helps there and others will pop up. I can''t help thinking that a really large sector could push bitcoins right into the public eye though, one with no reason to worry about the swings. Charities. Quick, no fees, a lot of people with fairly large value stacks of funds they never really expected to have and more of an ethical stance than the average bear to draw on as supporters? It seems ideal for fund raising for charity to me. They have nothing to lose at all, yet the exposure bitcoin would get by being associated with charities..that smells nice to me. Would you run a charity branded USB eruptor to mine for kids in a hospice? I bet a lot of folk would, and I bet the press would like that. A great use for all that old kit.

Bitcoin hasn't even warmed up yet IMO. This time next decade we'll be millionaires Rodney

Signed up.
A section for links to places that take BTC might be a good idea...then people can add them when they find them? Links in general really..UK biased ones.

Been that way a while now, depending on how you look at it, or more accurately if you weigh buying BTC against buying a rig to mine them.

You'd imagine my KNC merc costing 2k dollars and mining 8 BTC since late Oct was a profit wouldn't you? Fact is, that was 20 BTC back then...so the way I look at it is a cash profit (at the moment), but in BTC it's unlikely it would ever break even. Worse, it was supposed to mine at 100GH and it's sat here at 145 roughly since the hour I got it. If it had worked out as most of us hoped, BTC would be worth 200ish and it would have mined 1/3 less of them. Either way, I'd rather have 20 BTC wouldn't you..and no months of hoping the rig I'd bought would ever arrive or work when it did?

A KNC Neptune would need to mine roughly 10 - 15 BTC to break even when it arrives...at 4TH maybe it will have a better chance ? Even a huge increase in the hashpower added to the network won't do the damage we've seen so far...imagine how many huge rigs would have to start hashing to double what we see today? Not going to happen every month is it?

Rigs like the Neptune look to draw about 2KW too...so large numbers of those in domestic situations isn't easy on the wiring.

I think that for a while at least these bigger 20nm rigs will be nice for those of us with more domestic gear, purely because they will hold value and be something affordable on Ebay...and the only thing worth running at all. Not everyone can afford of wish to sink 10k plus into the bitcoin gamble. A grand or two..maybe.

The email I had a few hours ago from Cointerra says different. Chips and boards..no rigs. Pretty pics of the boards and chips..not a finished machine in sight. They would mention that wouldn't they?

Worry about the KNC rigs, early and faster seems likely so 2400 x 4 or 5 TH rigs about march. That's pretty likely

Thanks to the OP for the warning, hopefully no-one lost due to this. Got to say that it's a fairly obvious target for anyone with skills and the mindset to try this eventually.
Could have been worse, could have been 2 months ago by someone sensible enough not to be greedy and milk a lot of rigs a little each day.
Posting ANY details was a bit "look at me" though, no need for that here, just warn KNC and advise the PW changes needed etc.

As for the rigs mentioned that seem to have lost some hashing, if they are on Slush there was a problem recently where earnings were deducted or some such nonsense which may account for that..which has been remedied now.

The threshold you can set to anything you like above the bottom limit , it takes a while to pay out to your wallet ...mine is set to 0.1 and usually I'm at 0.13 or so before it pays. OFC it's got to be confirmed

Spot on there. Dunno about Cointerra and the other half decent companies with big ASICs imminent but I do know that KNC sold 1200 3TH minimum rigs (in a day or so) due in about April and another batch the same size a week later, and if past performance is a measure they'll be faster by some margin and earlier than they say cautiously after the last run...so 2400 rigs @ 4TH each from just one manufacturer.
Those are 20nm boxes, next gen. I don't think they'll ever be available off the shelf from any manufacturer though...once it gets to that stage they won't be worth running. 2KW rigs costing 10k plus won't break even...in fact if I had paid for my KNC rig in BTC that would be a long way from break even now too..there may not be a rise in exchange rates to save future miners like the recent one.

Same here, been that way for a week or more. Roughly 5 to 10% loss most of the time. Hashing at 140 give or take a couple and 120 to 130 shown on Slush. IF it carries on like this I'm off to find a pool that works.

Thanks for the info myax.

This is one of many negative viewpoints, and not being based on much solid fact together they fuel the price drops like the big one now..and the reverse is also true when things get into the media and they big it up. Who uses a currency that moves in value that much for anything mainstream? Not as a currency in it's own right anyway. Which business could stand the rollercoaster that the last 3 months have been?

China is important. Simply because a large number of small businesses and individuals use it. IF they drop out the price will be back to where it was a long time ago as they sell and not so many buy....leaving the question, who's going to buy a  ASIC rig yo mine BTC worth 50 dollars for several grand which will never pay for itself?

A lot of the media know bugger all about bitcoin. so when they need a quick story and Google it..they'll see all these wild positive and negative threads and use them to fill their gaps. Journos don't care about truth, sensation trumps that. You won't see "Bitcoin is ticking over nicely", you'll see "Boom!" "Crash!" ..not much else. Feed them with ammo and we'll suffer.