Mine truly is my best friend and partner in life.  As for loans, we are trying to do this without loans.  Hence, only 50 to 55 rigs starting out when arriving in Washington State.  I may consider a loan after 6 months out there.  At the moment, I'm just hoping the difficulty doesn't go crazy between now and then with the price of bitcoin remaining the same.

I'll chill out now with the somewhat off topic communication.

Sounds like you have the security taken care of.  I will have similar security as well.  I only hope I don't have to do it at multiple sites.  My wife is staying home in Alabama for the first 4 to 6 months.  She's very supportive of our mining aspirations.  As it sounds like your wife is supportive as well.  It's good to have that support.

That's what I might have to do in Washington State.  However, I'm hoping I'll be able to avoid this.

I was thinking about increasing the power here at the house to 400 amps service.  I had the power company come by to have a look at my feeder cable to see if it was large enough for the upgrade without replacing the feeder cable.  He said the existing cable was good enough for 500 amps max.

However, I decided I prefer to move to Washington State if the difficulty doesn't get out of hand with price of bitcoin still low.  If price of bitcoin gets higher to offset the difficulty rise, I'm fine with it.

Edit:  I'm actually running 150 amps during the winter when I had the other rigs going.  I couldn't do it during the summer when the AC wanted to come on.  The main breaker would trip...  lol

I could only do 120 amps during the summer.  Which meant I never had the dryer on at the same time as the cook top/oven while the AC was running.  The main breaker would trip.  Then I just got to the point where I would cut of one or two S4's if I absolutely had to cook and dry clothes at the same time.

Thank you, notlist3d.  Mighty kind of you to say.  Hopefully, these last 3 sell fine without another hick up.

Sorry, I will not be hosting.  I will not have the power I desire when first starting out for hosting.  Maybe later on.

Also, if the difficulty is fine and I buy the other 41 to 46 S7's, I will be moving to Washington State.  Meaning, I will no longer have the same setup you see in the pics.  

I WILL TAKE THE PICS DOWN IN A COUPLE OF HOURS MODERATOR...

There won't be much change other than gear.  I sold all of the S3's, S3+'s, S4's, S5's and SP20's.  Well, I still have two S5's and one S3+ remaining but their auctions end in 3 days.  I had to re-list them.  That was a bad number to re-list after 44 auctions.  Only 3 of them didn't pay because they were all zero feedback winners who did not pay.  Hopefully, I don't have zero feedback eBayer's win any of these last 3 auctions.

Here's a pic of what "was."  [The S5's were not available yet when this picture was taken].  That is NOT burn marks on the wall.  That is where I painted cast iron staircase spindles against the wall.



Here it is now with my last two S5's and one S3+.  This mining closet is itching for some new HW.  You might notice the grilles installed in the door on the side where I had most of my rigs.  It worked out quite well with the 14,400 CFM exhaust fan suck air through those grilles into the rigs.



Here is a pic of the outside of it:

Thank you for your input as well, alienesb!!!

I like hearing from both sides.  I believe I'm going to go ahead and take the plunge.  It's a gamble... but what the hell.  I'm a gambler at heart!  I'm ordering 9 right now and another 41 to 46 the end of December if the difficulty hasn't gone crazy.

By the way, does anyone have S7 coupons they are willing to let go of?

No, can't blame them.  I would want to make money too if I were them.  It's not just them and the S7 I'm worried about.  It's KnC and Spondoolies as well.

Yes, I'm the one who had that "kid" constantly harassing me.  But hell, a lot has changed since then.  I never expected Spondoolies to stop selling to home miners and stop providing competition in the home mining arena.  A LOT has changed.  I want to continue mining.  It's just too many unknowns at the moment.  I want to barrel ahead and continue but I also want to be smart.  It's possible I could still buy 9 or 10 S7's.  I will say this though:  If I buy 9 or 10 units here soon, that means I'm going to Washington State.  No way in hell will I continue here in Alabama with 10.6 cents per kWH at present difficulty and price of bitcoin.  Yes, I can make enough money here to ROI more than likely, but not near as much as Washington State.  At nearly $2,000 each rig, it's quite a gamble with all the unknowns.

Thanks for clarifying about it being pricing of rigs and not bitcoin.

I actually think the other companies will hit the network hard with a lot of hash at less than 0.12 per GH/s to push out a lot of miners.  It will be rough in the beginning for them but they will ultimately push everyone out.  The chances of them doing this during the winter is not as good as this coming spring.  So, if people are going to continue mining, this winter may be their final opportunity to do it at this low of difficulty.  I can see 90+ billion in difficulty quite easily by spring time with the new rigs about to hit the network.  The only thing home miners have to hope for is an equivalent rise in price of bitcoin to offset it.  That means price of bitcoin would have to be at least $420 if difficulty was 90 billion.

I'm just thankful I have sold all of my rigs.  I had 44 rigs.  I have two S5's and one S3+ remaining.  Their auction is almost over on eBay now.  I had a couple of S4's sell for over $600.  The other S4's were around the $550 to $570 range.  I sold many of the SP20's for more and/or for the same that I paid for them in the 15 package with free shipping.  S5's have been going for around $365 on eBay lately.

The chance of another vendor selling to "everyone," like bitmain, is rather bleak, imho.  I think they will mine for themselves and only sell to large operations.  All I know is "I'm scared as hell to buy more rigs now."  I'm actually kind of feeling it is a trap.

I'm assuming you are saying it will halt the hiking of price because there will be more people selling it [creating downward pressure on the markets]?

Yes, but you know Bitmain...  They will raise the price of the S7 if the price of BTC rises to 300.

Also, if BTC price rises to $300 after I bought 70 BTC at $224, I will have made $5,320

You have a point there with the "winter" mining.  Sounds like I may be holding onto my money and using it to trade pairs conservatively on FOREX.  

I was thinking very seriously of moving to Washington State in December [if not sooner]  to start out with at least 50 S7's (243 TH/s).  I was wanting to be in place with cheap power in anticipation of a surge in bitcoin price by the Spring.  Now, I'm wondering if the difficulty would be so high to make it all for naught?

You have a point there with the more efficient chips from lower NM chips.  That could potentially FORCE a lot of people out of the game with a power push.  It all scares the hell out of me.  Talking to you has me thinking now that I need to hold off.  However, I'm thinking the price of bitcoin could go up soon.  This would make the price of the S7 go up soon.  So many damn variables to consider.  My brain has been burning the past 12 hours.

Yes, that is my concern as well.  I'm not sure what KnC is going to do; what Spondoolie's is going to do...  It's just too damn hard to say.  I came close to purchase of 9 S7's just a moment ago but I did not have the method of shipping chosen.  So, the order did not go through yet.  I did not know to take that as an omen or what.    So, I still have not ordered yet...

If KnC and Spondoolies add a hell of a lot of hash, we could see difficulty as high as 90+ billion by December or January.  However, if the price of bitcoin is the same by December or January, that will only hurt them and not help them.  However, you have to think if they shot the difficulty up to 90+ billion that a lot of miners with less efficient rigs in high power cost areas will have to drop off line.  Which means the difficulty would drop to less than 90 billion.  No?

I was actually thinking about buying 9 or 10 S7's for now and another 40 in December.  However, I'm quite concerned about difficulty jumps between now and December.  Any thoughts on this subject would be appreciated...

I know as the difficulty rises there will be others to drop out of mining if bitcoin prices remain the same.  Those who drop out will mostly be home miners with substantially high power costs and less efficient HW.  How much of the network hash rate actually falls into this category?  Hard to say...

Any idea how many rigs BITMAIN will make in the first batch?  That will give me an idea (rough estimate) of how much the difficulty can possibly rise each month over the next 3 months.

If you haven't noticed, the hash rate is turning up rather sharply on bitcoinwisdom.com.  Can we expect this angle of ascent on the chart for the next several months?  If so, we are looking at 70 billion difficulty rather easily by some time in November.

How many rigs can BITMAIN manufacture in one month?  Maybe 5,000 units?  Knowing this can assist with determining what the future difficulty can be potentially.

Bitmain is in a rather sweet position by knowing how many rigs they make.  This can give them an edge in knowing what the potential difficulty can be at a particular time +/- about 5 to 7 percent accuracy.

The S7 is definitely a game changer at this point in time.  It forces one to really weigh their potential purchase a lot more.

3 "X's" on board #3.

In case no one has noticed, we have only ONE (1) pool member who added an average hash rate of 12.27 PH/s.  If you look at the bubbles on the "System Stats" in "Pool Statistics" you will see the large bubble with 12.27 PH/s.  That one user has almost half of the pool's entire hash rate.