Why are you comparing yourself to national lotteries when your main competitors here are going to be other number-based gambling sites that have lower house edges and thus get more traffic and plays than your site? It's great that you think your game is great and I respect that, but the fact remains that there's not much that differentiates similar number-gambling sites besides house edge, and an edge of 6.25% isn't exactly attractive for gamblers. You're just not competitive compared to other sites that have house edges of ~1% or less.

This thread is nearly a year old (the information presented here is mostly outdated),  and Shopawl has since changed their name to Bitwants and they now allow you to purchase products on eBay, though I'm not sure if they allow purchases for the non US site.

If only you'd actually go to the Shopawl site again that redirects you to Bitwants without you needing to do anything, you'd see that eBay is displayed as one of the sites you can order from. It doesn't take that much effort.

Being able to gamble more anonymously than previously possible with fiat money and sometimes quicker deposit times and more convenience with crypto (if you're depositing from a hot mobile wallet like me) are three of the big components I can think off the top of my head that allowed online gambling to increase with crypto involved. Fees are also part of the story as you mentioned, and fees will likely further decrease once the Lightning Network is adopted by online casinos and other businesses alike.

I've basically given up on debit cards and I've gone to buying the aforementioned eBay and Amazon gift cards at a discount for purchases. There are also services on this forum that claim to allow you to buy products off Amazon and eBay for the website price 1:1. One I've found for eBay is on Bitify from a relatively reputable user (Bitify offers escrow regardless), and Bitwants, who migrated from Shopawl.com to their new domain. I had no problems with Shopawl for ~$150 in AliExpress transactions in the past, and I expect they're essentially the same now. They now do Amazon, and eBay in addition to AliExpress nowadays, not a bad option.

I also agree that covincing merchants to accept BTC with Lightning coming officially soon and lowering fees is a good solution in the long term. Doesn't take a lot of time to even suggest accepting BTC, but it goes a long way.

I personally find it hard to believe that a new website with basically zero information on it has found a way to convert ASICs like the S9 and L3+ to hash algorithms that they were not made to mine and will most likely not ever be able mine. Seems like a poorly made scam to me.

The fact that there's no way to verify if the game is truly fair is concerning to me (why should we take your word for it?), and I'd suggest adding an option to register an account through an email and password instead of the available login methods with Google, etc.

Additionally, there's no information about how your affiliate system works on your website. Would you mind elaborating on how rewards are distributed in your affiliate system?

The site works fine on mobile, but upon logging in for the first time, I had to scroll a bit to the right to be able to input my username (the page was blank otherwise, with just the background color present). A small hassle, but the rest of the site works like a charm on mobile.

Another alternative I mention all the time to those with high electrical costs and noise restrictions is to get your miners hosted. If you're sending them off to a colocation that is trusted, there's relatively little risk involved, and it comes with all the benefits of home mining minus noise (and most colocations have very reasonable electrical rates, though there are maintenance fees in some areas).

As of right now, most colos I know of that I trust are near or at capacity, but this thread contains details for several hosting companies. Whether or not they're to be trusted is your decision in the end.

A friend doesn't sell another friend a miner that costs less than half the price the D3 is going for direct from Bitmain, and regularly sells for even less than that. You're getting ripped off buying a D3 at this price, and according to Nicehash's calculator, you're making roughly $100 per month without electrical costs, so if you're able to secure a D3 near Bitmain's price it isn't a bad buy. Just make sure you can accommodate for the power and noise that these things make, they're extremely loud.

Yes, the PSU (APW3++ for example) also costs money, but it's not worth ~$400 dollars if you take Bitmain's D3 price off $700.

Here is a listing for the D3 at $250 + escrow on the forums. Much better deal than what your "friend" offered.

Actually sold out. Here's another listing.

Here's a TomsHardware article with a comparison of toothpaste against various types of thermal pastes using a CPU cooler with 'high' mounting pressure. Doesn't seem to perform too bad if you don't have anything better, but I have a tube of MX-2 in my house for CPU and GPU use; it's not much more expensive than the AS5, and it does a bit better in most applications. Unless you're buying paste from a noname brand or in bulk from China (I have had pretty bad experiences with bulk paste from Aliexpress), any thermal paste should work as long as you're applying it in the correct amount, cleaning off previous paste and mounting the GPU cooler on properly afterwards.

So the 'new' S9is are just rebranded S9s and nothing more just like what happened with the S7 -> V9 but with no major changes except for the name unlike the V9? I'm taking a quick scan through specs and it seems just about the same. Perhaps chips were tweaked to provide better power efficiency a bit or something of the sort?

If anyone here's looking for a more accurate estimate there are sites on the Internet that show you electrical costs for your Zip code (I know several for my area, and I live in the US), and I find those are near what I pay for my electrical costs. I assume there's tools like the one I stated in other countries, though I can't speak about accuracy on other sites if they exist.

Elaborating some more on electrical costs, I know there are areas where things like "transmission fees", etc are charged onto your bill, usually in Rural areas here in the US (and they can be pretty costly). I can't suggest highly enough to find what those costs are as they make or break mining.

Overall nice guide and formatting, I haven't seen an explanation thread for kWh for as long as I can remember being on the forums, and it's quintessential in mining. Good work!

Ignorance combined with what's already been said. People fall for obvious scams like Nigerian princes and invest in HYIPs and Ponzis (cloud mining is one!) every single day, and posting and setting up alerts can only do so much. The apparent flexibility and simplicity of cloudmining compared to getting miners hosted also reels people in, and don't forget all the ads. Investments in cloudmining will probably continue to be popular for a few years if Crypto is still as valuable in those days.

As for cheap miners, it’s usually possible to get the Antminers V9s for near MSRP individually as they’re generally not in very high demand right now. Great bang for your buck with them, or you can try ordering the new T9+s from Bitmain. IIRC there is a member selling his V9 for $150 and FS within the continental US in the Computer Hardware section right now, couldn’t hurt to take a look at that. Just keep in mind most ASIC miners are very loud, comparable to a vacuum cleaner for the S9/T9/V9 and many others.

It's not always necessary to ensure funds are escrowed on some signature campaigns if the organization is trusted and the person organizing the campaign is trustworthy (in the case of FortuneJack), but it's generally true that you should apply for campaigns that have escrowed funds whenever possible.

I also avoid bounty campaigns in Bitcointalk for alts 100% of the time as they're often plagued with alt accounts and most coins don't go anywhere, with some rare exceptions here and there. By joining a BTC-based signature campaign you lower risks of coin prices crashing.

As for reputable signature campaign managers, Hhampuz hasn't previously done a lot with campaigns, but he's a good manager in every respect, and the same goes for Lutpin and Yahoo62278. I've participated in many campaigns managed by them, and I have nothing bad to say about them at all.

Alright, thanks for letting me know. From what I can tell most people here are going to receive their miners tomorrow on the 4th of May, so I assume Bitmain, Viabtc and co. will most likely start officially opening their pools around then. I'll keep my eyes peeled for any news about pools until then.

Antpool just released its Bytom pool, linked here. Should work better than that aforementioned CN pool requiring a CN number to mine. Only showing two active workers right now interestingly enough, but at least Bitmain delivered in time for miners to start hashing. If anyone can confirm the Bytom pool successfully works on Antpool, please post back. Saw this on Reddit a few minutes ago, not sure if it actually works for mining.

EDIT1: Not working as of now, Bitmain hasn't officially started the pool yet. See two posts below for details.

If you're looking to legitimately invest, doing so in an exchange or an online crypto casino is a much better way to go (though what you'll earn from both will be less than what this Ponzi claims to give you). There's still risks involved with both lending to an exchange or a casino, but it's less than with the Ponzi you just listed.

Always remember- if it seems too good to be true, it most likely is.

Searching for your address on a block explorer should also work. Try multiple block explorers like Blockcypher or Blocktrail and search for the transaction on your address. Chances are it's just blockchain.info running slow like the people above me have posted, and the tx will show up on the block explorers I listed above, or it's a BCH tx like LoyceV said.

Most likely people are using different addresses, emails and/or using a VPN or something of the sort to change their IP in conjunction with different addresses and emails to bypass the 1 per customer limit.

On the topic of coupons, are there actually coupons out there that are greater than 50% of the value of the Z9? I’ve only seen the $400 coupons around here and no amounts greater than $400.

This thread was made to ask simply whether or not FortuneJack is legit. It’s just one simple question, and I don’t understand why half the people here are getting butthurt about scam accusations. Naturally if you haven’t heard of a gambling site before you’ll want to make sure it is legit, and that’s what OP did. Of course nobody’s forcing anyone else to join the site, people just want answers to their questions, and that’s what this subforum is for.

If anyone has conclusive proof that FortuneJack is a scam, post here with the evidence and/or in the Scam Accusation subforum. Otherwise, you’re just throwing around claims with no backing.