Bitfury's chip is more efficient in terms of gigahash per joule of energy. This is likely because they did a full custom ASIC. Maybe the actual device will be a bit closer together on efficiency due to one being solo chips and the other being VLSI, but Bitfury's chips is significantly more efficeint.

It's probably gonna be like 750 watts. Bitfury is still winning that battle.

Technology will take care of this. You create an online database tied to GPS records. You can then lookup the legal set of any property simply by visiting it, and the agreement can be served to you digitally without needing to even interact with anyone else.

Do your lease give you a flat rate on power or something?

I wonder, after the first 6 months if we couldn't bring the devices home and set up a mining arrangement with some local business-office that has a spare room and set electricity costs... could extend the profitable life of the device another year or so.

It also depends drastically on the price of bitcoin

Long story short, a KNC miner has the best prospect of long-term mining profitability around, except for perhaps Bitfury whose chips are more efficient. (But for how long? Gen-2 KNC device will probably beat them on that metric).

It's not about rising difficulty, it's the question of, if the difficulty were 1 billion today, would the device earn money above its electricity costs. The answer is yes, about $17.50 a day:

Yeah, I'm curious too what that picture there is showing? Probably transistor layout of the hashing engines, but it sure looks funky at that detail size. Almost random-like.

Pretty sure upgrades showed up in the store a day or so ago. You should be able to buy them now. It's just that the ability to upgrade ends in late august.

This device, as specced, would still be profitable if the difficulty were 1 billion.

You're good, methinks.

Lol, I love how you can always just jump to the worst possible conclusion Kinda sad really.

I suppose for people who asked for a refund, it makes sense for Bitsyncom to immediately begin mining with those machines, as their cost is probably less than $2k, and thus they can achieve ROI in a matter of days. And that's their prerogative, and more power to 'em.

But I doubt they're actually mining with machines they intend to ship, save a short burn-in period to guarantee it boots up and heats up without issues.

I did.

Also there was a delay of 30 min between first and the last payments. So hold tight.

You can see all the details of it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=257748.msg2750933#msg2750933

Sure, let's say you adopt that law for your property.

I come to visit you for the first time. You present me with your rule-set to agree to. I object to your 'lethal shoe rule' and you then have a choice. Amend the agreement for me in particular so I will stay, or else stand your ground and I will leave.

If you change the rule for me, we have no problem. If you don't, I will refuse to set foot on your property because you're being unreasonable.

How is anyone hurt by that?

Sure, do all that, lol. Sounds tedious, right?

Which is why in a situation such as this, the likely result is that a few people would want to craft their own laws, or tinker with them at least, but most people would subscribe to the legal theories and adopt laws crafted by professionals, judges or lawyers let's say, that offer legal positions already constructed for them.

Which is to say that law production enters the free market, at last, and can be bought and sold like you might buy a book or a bike.

The result is communities of agreement, where those who adopt similar law-sets would group together and enjoy living their own chosen way in their region, and next door people do things there slightly differently, and those communities which succeed would attract new converts, and those which are annoying can be escaped easily.

Honestly I doubt they'll bother producing an Scrypt miner. Leave that to another project and team.

Shouldn't matter. They priced in bitcoin they should refund in bitcoin. Really that's what all asic companies should do.

No one buys BFL's silly rationale of giving USD refunds. If the price of bitcoin had gone down from when they first sold miners instead of up, who among us doubts they'd be offering the dollar equivalent in bitcoin instead with an equally self-serving rationale. It's all a self-protection strategy. Giving 1500btc refunds on a mini-rig today would break their bank, so of course they're giving USD refunds

Not so. I received a full refund.

Like I said, the numbers got too skinny for me. But that's where risk management comes in. Bitsyncom offered full refunds to everyone. If you didn't take the refund, now isn't the time to bitch. You made your choice. 

Well, I think you've miscalculated. I didn't just come here to piss on your parade but to say you're simply not offering enough to generate excitement.

You toss out things like people getting 100% of the mining profits and 0% pool fee--naturally since you've already cut to the bone on price per gigahash.

What you probably should've done is be less slippery and done a regular group-buy and group-share with realistic pricing and brought people along for the ride. But you couldn't have obtained 1,000 btc that way.

But that doesn't mean you aren't still competing with those kinds of deals. 1,000 btc can buy a lot of shares in an actual group-buy, where people will be paying very close to $19 / gh, so you're simply pricing yourself out of the market by asking people to pay your costs up-front.

If you were offering shares in future revenue from the miners bought with 1,000 btc explicitly, that would be something else, but you're not. Miners get to give you 1k btc and then only receive another terahash of mining.

That's not how investment works. If we buy your 1kbtc machines, we should be profit-sharing in them. So the fact that you're not doing that makes it seem very suspect, like a regular stock-scam. And you don't even mention trust issues. Are you even offering escrow. Nope.

I just think it's an ill-conceived plan designed such that you, the operator, benefit disproportionately to everyone else involved, and that's not going to fly.

This is fantastic news. Here's what it comes down to.

Knc is going to protect our ROI by selling not in batches but time-periods, giving breathing room.

Like when Avalon announced chip sales, that was a surprise to everyone. Similarly, would batch-2 have sold well if they knew batch-3 was coming and coming right on their heels.

It is, yet again, a sign that Knc is a step above everyone else out there.

As for this gen-2 device they plan to sell in March--wasn't I just talking about them doing this ^_^ If these guys plan things right, they'll form a bandwagon that we can jump on. Imagine if they keep delivering in six month cycles. They'll blow everyone out of the water. Even Asicminer will have trouble keeping up and may falter. And if they keep bringing customers along, wow. It's a good time to be mining.

--- Breaking news, they just updated with Bitcoinorama's write-up: https://www.kncminer.com/news/news-19