Well, on 2nd thought, since Bitmain is asking $1,870 for this Nov batch L3+, I will be ordering zero instead of the 2-3 I was considering at a reasonable 1300-1400 price point.  I might kick myself later but that's just a bit too risky for me.  Oh well, back to the drawing board lol.

Food for thought for sure, but even if an L3+ rakes in 8 LTC in Nov, that's still $500/mo at current prices, and thats just straight mining, which as I understand, is severely less profitable than selling that hash through nicehash.  We will see in about an hour what the price for Nov batch is but it seems it should be in the 1300 range.  At that price, you're looking at likely ROI in 2-3 months, again, not using nicehash.

True about the better resale value of Ti's but I"m not hugely impressed that they are only really effective on a couple of algos. Certainly, if ZEC and a few others that it excels at keep hot, it might be a good way to diversify.

I've been with Dwarfpool for close to a year off and on and never had any issues with them. Quick, easy auto-payout and decent tracking metrics.

thanks for the additional info citronik, really appreciate it... especially on the new batch of L3+'s coming available tonight!  I just registered on the bitmain site so I can log on later and try to get at least 1 of them.  btw, do you know what the price is going to be?  The site doesn't say and their FB says prices only available at time of release of batch sales. Nov batch D3s were 1400 USD, so would assume lower price than that but if you have any insight, would like to prepare.

Also thanks for mentioning Eastshore. I noticed that they have Nov batch D3's for 2100 USD. Granted, thats 700 more than original price from bitmain, but 2-3x less than I have seen on ebay.  Have you or anyone else ever ordered from Eastshore?  Would be curious as to what people's experiences with them have been.

Hi Citronik... always appreciate your insights! But it seems I must be missing something regarding the D3 vs L3+.  D3 gets 15 Ghz (which is 15,000 Mhz if Im not mistaken) using 1350 watts for a daily profit of right about $200 according to what-to-mine.  But doesn't the L3+ only get 504 Mhz at 800W?  If so, that only churns out about $30/day profit.  Even factoring in a huge if you triple that with nicehash rental contracts, it still not even close to the Dash profit with the D3, right?  So, what am I missing here?

I only have 1 measly Baikal mini and 4 x 6-470 rigs, so well under-repped on the ASIC/FPGA front.  Been really happy with that mini... it's  already paid for itslelf 5-6x over and even now is still pulling in ~$2/day.  I really missed the boat on both the L3+ and D3 and could just kick my own arse about that. But, was just too busy at work over last few months to spend the time tracking Bitmain releases.  Still, even with the 3-x4 hyped up resale prices for say the D3, it's damn tempting to pull the trigger given that it can currently pull in close to $200/day.  If I could get a hold of a Sept batch D3 for around $4-5k, I'd probably do it but sadly, even the Nov batch are going for more than that now and by then, I imagine the $/day will be way down under $100, so probably not worth it.

1200/1900 seems to be the sweet spot. at least on my 6x 470 rigs, I can get close to 700/gpu while pulling 700-750 watts. You can also get a bit more hash by switching from -a2 to -a4 and no notable watt diff, at least for 470s.

The crappy thing about 1080 TIs is that they are not much better on XMR than a 470 is but they cost 3-4x as much. Yeah, I know they are beasts at ZEC and a couple other alts, but i'm not sure how much I want to invest in GPUs that can really only mine 1 algo effectively.

No lol... you should be thanking ME for that price hike! ;-)  I sold 10 of the 40 XMR i've been holding since mining them in Dec/Jan the night before the increase.  I was thinking at $55, they probably would't go much higher for a while, but sure enough... next day it eclipsed $80.  This is not the first time something like this has happened, so next time anyone wants a coin to bust out, just ask me to sell some of my holdings lol.

Nice to see XMR rising towards $100! If that keeps up, may extend the useful life of my 24 470's lol.

Was actually considering changing over my 2 rigs that can't dual mine to XMR but it's been so freaking long since I mined it, I couldn't remember the sweet spot for strap-1500 modded 470s... as far as core clock/memory clock settings go.

Something like 1200/1900 rings a bell, but can't remember for sure.  Anyone have any suggestions for this scenario?

Very interesting conversation about rx 470/480's & 1080ti's... when to sell, convert, etc.  Certainly I missed the $300+ sell window that Phil mentioned but seems 470 4GB are still going for between $250-$275 on ebay recently.  I actually just sold my 1 new 470 that I had been holding in case 1 of my 24 running crapped out... but figured with 5xx easier to get now as well as Vega starting to hit, I better sell it now. Got $350, which is 2x what I paid, so happy with that.

But, I have been thinking about the whole conversion/upgrade thing a lot since this is my first time in that game (not quite been mining 1 year). Originally, I was baffled (like a recent poster) because I just couldn't see the reasonable ROI in going with a 3 or 4 1080ti rig.  And, certainly, if you were new to mining and buying those 1080's straight up with cash as an initial investment, that would actually hold true as current ROI mining ZEC is about 240 days, which is certainly not great. 

However, for those with $ already invested in GPUs (assuming already ROI'd as in my case and probably anyone else who has been mining since beginning of 2017), you have to look at it a little differently.  If upgrading your GPUs, you need to factor in what you can get for selling your old ones.  So in my case, I am looking to start by upgrading 1 6x470 rig to either a 3 or 4 1080ti rig.  My assumptions are that I can get $250 per 470, so $1500 total.  I know Phil said ti's can be had for close to $700 or less but I only saw $750-$780 on newegg today, so I am figuring $750 for now. 

So, for a 3-card 1080ti rig, my investment would only be $750  ($2,250 for 3 ti's less $1,500 for the sold 470's).  Currently, a 3 1080ti rig nets a bit over $9/day mining ZEC, so your true days-to-ROI (all else being equal) would be about 80 days, which is clearly very reasonable. A 4x ti would take about 120 days because you are now $1,500 out of pocket, but still not bad, especially if you are bullish on the future of ZEC.

The other thing to consider in this is that ETH is on its last legs. Even before the rewards halving (when exactly is that supposed to be?), the daily increase in difficulty is killing profits, and once more Vega's hit the market, it's going to get even worse.  When I look at my profit charts right now, converting may not make sense at first glance since each 6x470 rig is pulling in $8.60/day profit and that 3x 1080ti rig would only be doing slightly better than that (~10%) on ZEC... AND I have to fork out the extra $750 for the 3rd ti... BUT... the mitigating factor in this is that ETH profitability is dropping MUCH faster than ZEC and one way or another, will almost assuredly be dead by end of year, of not before.  ZEC is still a relatively new coin so should still be reasonably profitable to mine for some time. So, it's more about future proofing and preparing for EOL of ETH in my mind.  Hopefully I can get 1 rig converted in the next month and see how it goes from there. I don't think 470's will be completely obsolete for a while as there are still other ETHash coins than ETH that are at least currently still profitable without the upcoming issues facing ETH.

One thing that you will learn over time is that most of the mining calculator sites will sporadically show a non-major coin rise to the top of the profit chart.  However, unless you can start mining that coin very quickly after it jumps to the top, you are likely to "miss the boat". The main reason for this is that a lot of miners are using auto-swtiching, which means the second that EXP or other coin hits #1, you have a mass amount of rigs switching over to mine it.  In your case, given that most of the global hashrate on ETHash is mining ETH or ETC, as soon as a big chunk of that hashrate moves over to mine EXP, the diff starts to go through the roof.  Net effect is that very soon, its profitability will drop back down into the weeds again. When I first started mining, I saw this a lot and was tempted to swtich, but after I realized what I described above, i pretty much ignored it.. unless of course if a mid-level coin were to rise significantly in price and stay up there for a while, but that simply hasn't happened, at least this year, since ETH has pretty much been at the top the entire time (at least for RX cards).

Firstly... simply due to the facts others have mentioned already, this is at least 95% chance of being a scam.  In addition, if you simply consider their claim of 400 Mh/s on only 850W, that essentially locks it as a scam.  Think about that for a minute... they are claiming that this unit will produce the same hashrate as 2.5 6-rx 470 rigs, but at the power draw of just 1 of those rigs. Sound too good to be true?  Exactly!

And I know this has been mentioned already but just contemplate what pre-paying $3k 3 months in advance means... ESPECIALLY for ETH!  Even if you ignore the pending move to POS (which you shouldn't), just consider what the exponential rise in ETH difficulty is doing to mining returns!  At this point in time, it takes about 600 Mh/s to mine 1 ETH per week.  In 3 months time, that's going to be much closer to 1 ETH per MONTH, if not worse due to all of the new Vega GPUs that will hit the market between now and then.

So, that means best case scenario, this 400 Mh/s unit will mine you .67 ETH per month upon arrival, and go down substantially every month after that.  Even if ETH goes to $500 by then, you are looking at an impossible ROI scenario.  It is most likely that ETH will only be minaeable 3-6 months at most after arrival of this unit, so at max, you MIGHT be able to mine up to half the cost of this thing, and that is being VERY generous, and assuming almost 2x rise in ETH prices. If it were to stay around $300, you wouldn't even recoup 1/3rd of the cost.  Now yes, there are other coins to mine after ETH is defunct, but the whole point of this is that them marketing this as an ETH beast is simply nonsense and goes to further prove this is a scam.

If you have $3k to burn, why not just buy 10 ETH right now with it? Then, if it does go to $500 be end of year, you will have yourself a $2k profit, instead of a $2k loss ;-)

Hey Phil... funny, when i saw BTC spiking up this morning, I figured you would probably sell one since you were talking about doing so a couple days ago.  Good move waiting it out for a few days after the split.

I know hindsight  is 20-20 but I've been kicking myself a bit for only keeping 1.5 BTC on the exchanges at the split.  If I would have even moved 50% of alt holdings into BTC Bittrex, I not only would have made a killing from the BCH split off (assuming I would have sold it all at the .3 I sold my 1.5 at). Not only that, but if i would have left it BTC until, would have made another killing... although technically not as much since most of my alt holding are also up.  Anyway, no sense crying over spilled milk... I was trying to mitigate risk based on all of the doom-and-gloom crowd thinking that BTC would crash after the split lol.  And as we all know... mitigating risk is no way to get rich lol.  But whatever, it's still a really good day today... let's hope it continues a bit longer.  My ETH mining days appear to be numbered based on the new potential HR of Vega cards, but time will tell. I've almost been mining 1 year now and overall it's been a great experience!

Yeah, i was reading that email in my inbox earlier and was just about to give Coinbase some credit... until I read the punchline... January'18?!?!?  Seriously, I am by no means hoping that BCC tanks but it's already down to .12 and dropping.  it could very well be worthless by the time Jan'18 rolls around.  I really doubt this is going to satisfy any of their customers who had BTC in their wallets on Aug 1st.  What I don't get is, why even bother to make a useless announcement like that when the've got to know 95% of the people will still be pissed?  And why exactly does it take CB 5 full months to get a BCH wallet/system up and running when sites like Bittrex, etc did it in what... 2 weeks?  Clearly they have not been using the millions in transaction fees they are collecting to reinvest in their own infrastructure. Poor management to say the least.

Not sure what Bittrex did wrong in this split... I think they actually handled it quite well as my BCH was credited in my wallet there quicker than I expected. I have since sold it for BTC in 2 chunks... both above .3 BTC, so pretty happy overall.  I am not grasping why them allowing trading but not transfers off the site is a big issue.  If you help BTC and were credited BCH on Bittrex and wanted to move the $ off bittrex, you could just do like I did and sell it for BTC then move the BTC.  The other scenario would be if you held BTC in cold wallet and wanted to move your resulting BCH after the split to Bittrex... but  I dont see why that would count against Bittrex.  Plus, they published what they would  be doing several days prior so not sure what the issue is. Certainly, they handled it WAY better than Coinbase did.

Now, to the US Gov issue... certainly any US-based exchange is a potential target for them. I would like to think that they only go after ones with clear wrong-doings like BTC-e but sadly that is far from the case.  The bottom line is that with VERY few exceptions, the primary or sole driver for them is cash grabbing. If they stand to make a killing by shutting anything down, theree's a very good chance they will do it... with or without cause.  A primary example of this is the DOJ shutting down Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker a few years back. Of course they used some BS interpretation of some archaic law to justify it, but everyone knows that it was done becasue they saw a HUGE amount of money being played with and they were not getting 1 cent of it!  Now, after many years, Poker Stars is back in a couple of states, but of course, only because they are "officially licensed" meaning, the government is getting their piece of the pie. 

Yes, in fairness to Coinbase, they did gave ample warning... but it's still fishy IMO.  Luckily, I was able to move all of my BTC off CB in time, but others either didn't see the notice or ran into withdrawing issues and are rightfully pissed off.  Bottom line though is that as long as CB has a virtual monopoly on USD cashouts, they will stay afloat from transaction fees alone... regardless of whether or not people pull all of their BTC/ETH/LTC of their CB wallets.

Based on your post, I just checked out Cryptopia and at first glance, I really like it.  I too have essentially emptied out my Coinbase accounts... just a few ETH left there now but will likely move that off shortly as well.  I have most of my small alts on Bittrex and have had no issues with them at all.  Still, I have been considering moving ~50% of them to another exchange (as a hedge/protection) and Cryptopia indeed looks like a good option for that. I also have a few oddball coins on Poloniex still but given all the issues they've had, I want nothing more to do with them either.

The one problem that still exists is though is the isn't Coinbase still the only viable option for cashout via USD?  Now that I will not hold any balances on Coinbase, it's going to be a pain to have to transfer BTC or ETH there every time i want to do a cashout.

You're right in that BCC makes more sense.  However, the problem is that there is already another coin in existence with that acronym... BitConnect Coin.  The problem arises in that this is not yet a widely-listed coin, so the exchanges where it was not already listed have adopted that acronym for Bitcoin Cash.  This can only cause confusion and issues down the road... having 2 coins with the same BCC designation.  Seems like there should be some kind of central registry to avoid this but apparently there is not... at least not yet.  Anyway, that's why I call it BCH fwiw.

No, it's real... at least with the BCH balances credited by Bittrex.  I just sold .75 BCH and got about .23 BTC for it. Technically, I could move that .23 BTC over to Coinbase right now and cash it out, so it is essentially free money.  The school of thought prior to the split seemed to be that logically, the combined value of BTC & BCH should be roughly equivalent to the pre-split value of BTC, which was about $2,800-$2,850.  However, that has clearly not been the case, at least not yet, since BTC is only down slightly to $2,700 but BCH, while starting to fall a bit, is still above $700, so combined value of $3,400, which is good 20% over BTC pre-split price.

What i find very interesting is the huge difference between BCH prices on Bitrex vs Kraken.  Bittrex has been running around $300 higher than Kraken for some reason. Just counting myself lucky that I had my little balance on Bittrex.

Yeah, the value of BCH is much higher than I expected at this point. I really thought it would bottom out under $100 after the first few hours of people dumping huge amounts to convert to BTC, but that didn't seem to happen.  I have most of my BTC & ETH on a Ledger Nano S, but I left about 1.5 BTC on Bittrex just to see what would happen with the split and to potentially dump BCH early on while it was still high (in my theory anyway).  Fortunately, I got tied up with work and couldn't monitor my Bittrex account closely and by the time i realized they had credited me with my 1.5 BCH, it was at about $350 so I just decided to leave it there and see what happens.  

Woke up the morning and saw it around $800 so I dumped half of it.  Crazy to see that it was actually over $1000 at one point but i was literally sleeping so missed that boat lol.  Very glad I moved nearly all my BTC off of Coinbase prior to this event... seems like there are a lot of people that either didn't read their notice or had trouble moving off their BTC and they are livid, accusing CB of stealing, etc, etc.  

As I understand it, my balance of BTC on my Nano should also get the equivalent BCH correct?   I read some press release indicating they would be adding BCH to their BTC wallet app but it wasn't clear if I had to do something manually to split the coins or if the BCH balance would show up automatically.