I wasn't aware there was a strategy necessary for posting on this forum.  I post to help people, to communicate with others who are involved in this world of crypto, and to learn from others.

Strategy isn't even part of the equation.

Thanks for the confirmation.  When I read that OP "fixed" the problem by just removing the change address I was like, "who messes around with multi-sig stuff and raw transactions without even understanding the basics?"

Yes, it's quite possible.  The PSU will happily take the 220v power.

Perhaps I should have been clearer in my statement.  My point of view is not that a coin is dead once minting is done.  A coin is dead when minting is done and the fees miners get from transactions do not incentivize them to continue mining the coin.  These coins, along with all the other coins that implement the aux-pow circumvent that by piggybacking on Bitcoin.  Nobody would be mining either of them if it weren't for the fact that Bitcoin miners do it for free.  The downside of getting Bitcoin miners to do the work is that your coin's difficulty skyrockets disproportionately.

If Bitcoin follows suit, in that transaction fees do not incentivize miners to continue to mine, then it - along with all of these coins that ride on the aux-pow method - will die.

Neither.  People who send transactions add a fee when they send that transaction.  When a block is found all transaction fees are added and included with the block reward.  Not all pools distribute those fees back to miners.  Some keep them.

Well... is it being blocked at your ISP?  Maybe your DNS can't resolve the name?  Try pinging 119.9.104.217 to see if you get a response.

If you buy an S5 on HashNest, aren't you limited to it only mining on AntPool?

Not having any problem from my end... I can log into the pool just fine.  What the the URL you're trying to connect to, and where is it timing out?  For example, you simply don't get to www.antpool.com, or you get there, but login through passport.bitmain.com times out?

You get to actually physically meet somebody who's interested in Bitcoin?  Maybe you sit down with them and have a coffee... discuss your experiences with BTC... share stories... maybe you negotiate a different price with them... heck, maybe your local seller is the man/woman of your dreams and when you two meet up sparks fly.

You gonna find the love of your life by posting an order on an exchange?

If you're creating the raw transaction and don't provide a change address, doesn't that mean you just spent the change in miner fees?  In other words, if you have two input transactions of 1BTC each, and the amount you're spending is 1.01BTC, without a change address, 0.99BTC becomes transaction fee.

Do you purchase goods ?
Yes, I purchase goods and services with BTC.  Mining hardware, cloud contracts, rental gear, gift cards, etc

Do you keep the Bitcoin in a wallet, in hopes it will appreciate in value someday ?
Absolutely.  Just like I keep cash in savings accounts, mutual funds, stocks, etc.

Do you immidiately trade it for fiat to cover costs, and use up the remainder ?
This is one thing I typically do not do.  I guess maybe indirectly I do, since I use the BTC as explained above in purchasing goods/services.

Do you keep the BTC and use it to daytrade in the Exchanges ?
Rarely do I play around on the exchanges.  I do it from time to time, but I'm not too experienced in trading, so I usually don't do so well

P.S - side question :  Do you refer to Bitcoin as a plural form or do you prefer "Bitcoins" as the plural form ?  just wondering if there's a strong inclination one way or the other
I suppose it could go either way, and I've probably used both forms in written and verbal communication.  I think I typically stick to "bitcoin" for both the singular and the plural, but I can certainly see both uses.

I like the way MRR handles this scenario.  If the renter's pool goes offline, or fails, and the renter doesn't have a backup, MRR effectively looks dead to your gear.  Your gear then fails over to whatever pools you've setup as backups so you as the rig owner don't lose any time.

For example, I've got my rigs setup like this:

pool 1 - stratum+tcp://us-east01.miningrigrentals.com:3333#xnsub
pool 2 - stratum+tcp://us-central01.miningrigrentals.com:3333#xnsub
pool 3 - stratum+tcp://104.131.12.128:9332

So, if a renter screws up, my gear fails over to my p2pool node.

@BitJohn, setting up something similar on Mintsy would be extremely useful, and alleviate the problem reported by ThePhwner.

You realize that I0C and IXC are dead, right?  The last coin-generating blocks were mined last year.  You're just mining transaction fees at this point.  Not that this is a bad thing, but there are no more coins rewarded for finding blocks.

Great point.  I neglected to mention cooling in my post.  Bad things can happen when you don't take care of the necessities...

Stop... you'll encourage them.

At least tell them to change the block time, or reward, too...

Well, ck locked down that one and tossed it, so OP is left with this one now.

So...

You've got free power and no costs whatsoever besides hardware.  Are you in a datacenter setup with cabinets and rack mounts, or are you more free-for-all with whatever you decide to do?

If in a more professional datacenter setup, I'd suggest the SPXX gear (Spondoolies SP10, SP30, SP31, SP35).  The BitmainTech gear would also fit the bill, but you're going to face some trouble with both the hardware itself (PSUs, dead boards, overall build quality) and the software (firmware is flaky, doesn't work with all pools).  That being written, I had good luck with the later batch S2s.  Also, there's the ancient CoinTerra stuff.

If it's a looser setup, then you can always get some S3s, S5s, SP20s, Tubes.  All of them require at least an external PSU... some also require a computer running the software (a Raspberry Pi works here).  This approach is a bit more geared towards the "home" type miner, but can certainly be fit into a professional farming setup.

My advice would be to get some standard datacenter racks, some good PDUs, some network switches, a couple machines to proxy things, a bunch of network cabling, and the rack-style datacenter hardware I suggested above.

Get as much gear as you can.  If you can afford it, try to get at least 1PH/s of gear and run your own private pool.  Then, rent out that gear on places like MRR, NiceHash, Mintsy.  Mine your own pool primarily and fall back on the rental sites when the price is right.

You can thank me "VERY MUCH" with BTC.  You can find my donation address in my profile (hint, click on my user name.  The address starts with 1DevLdog...)

All kinds of choices... depends on what you want.  I rent my gear out on MRR, so that's my primary pool.  I fall back onto my p2pool node in case MRR can't be reached, or in the case where the renter screws up and his pool goes offline.

I've mined at Eligius, BTC Guild, Slush, kano.is, solo.ckpool, mintsy, GHash.io, nastyfans, and more.  Like I wrote... a lot of choices out there for you.  Everybody's got their own opinions, and eventually you'll form your own about where you like to mine .

Can't help you there... I don't own that miner, nor have I ever played around with one.  Sorry.

Great point.  Then again, if the order is set for the max of 0.0101 and the price goes beyond that, wouldn't the order just sit unfulfilled until the prices dropped back down?

By the way... is that a hint that some SHA-256 alt coin is launching this weekend?

You'll have to take that up with NH support.  I don't know how they coded the display of best share... looks like they just report the best share ever found since that worker started.  Here on ck solo pool, the best share value is reset every time a block is found.

It's scrypt.  The project is based on LiteCoin... so you're just creating another scrypt clone.