where are you getting "16-17=10" from? If you look at the theory by Syke it is probably safe to assume he is initiating his calculations from when the blade arrives, lets say in a month to be safe. from there, he estimates about 30% difficulty rise every month. That means if you have 16 BTC/month now, in a month (when his calculations start from) it would be 11.2 BTC, which isnt much greater then 10.

follow that logic, and you can expect to see about 47 BTC in six months, making you one of the few that will make a profit. However, at this point in time, 40BTC would be a better price in my opinion

the metamorphosis of BTC from a caterpillar to a butterfly?

also, i think aiming for a rack unit is not the way to go. Bring a smaller 20 Ghash unit to market and it will sell better, be a more appropriate "version 1.0", and pave the way for putting a more concentrated and knowledged effort into a 3RU system after

will offer BTC-e rate ($113) for each, verified account.

I know how to convert to BTC using SLL for ~20% losses due to fees, and find this unacceptably high.

I want to trade with someone who has a good reputation for trades and can trade at a fixed fee of 10% or less.

I would like to first trade $50 USD for at least 0.4 BTC, and then a minimum of $250 more once successful, for BTC equivelant of BTC-e asking price minus 10% or less in fees

Its hard to tell. my basic research and calculations indicate that at the current rate of ASIC development/release you should be able to break even in a 6 month time period if there is no major release by avalon, BFL, or any other underdog thats still in R&D.

optimistically, the blade could pay for itself in about 4 months, and at the end of its "lifespan' of 2 years (i refuse to look any further due to diminishing returns and the possibility of hardware failure you could make about a 200% profit.

less optimistically, if the value of BTC changes or ASICs quickly come into the market at competitive pricing, this could take 8-10 months to break even and may only see a 100% ROI during its lifespan (which will require 24/7 uptime, basic user interaction, and the chance of hardware failure)


If i had 50BTC in my wallet I would probably buy one of these now. However, I don't and am willing to wait another month for when you can get at least 50% more hash per dollar.  i would love to see 5Gash for 20 BTC - that would be my trigger to buy one

Fairly simple question that seems to come up a lot recently is what an ASIC device is worth. we have examples like the blockerupter USB at 2BTC for ~300Mhash  (150Mhash per BTC) and the avalon at almost 750Mhash per BTC.


what's your opinion? In the next few months I expect we will see several ASIC variants that are 300-5000 mHash with minimal power use and rapidly falling prices. Right now, virtually none of these are available, so i think the better question might be *in a month from today* what would you decide to buy in terms of MH/BTC?


Myself, it has to be at least 200Mhash per BTC, though 300Mhash per is my goal. A device like the blockerupter at 2BTC for 600Mhash would be a strong purchase for myself.

I anticipate once the first batch ships, and we see other competition catching up on pre-orders or avalon-based designs, we could see a more reasonable price/power ratio.

I would not purchase any asic design unless i believed it could pay for itself within 6 months, especially since 60% of that would probably occur in the first 3 months. For me, I want to see 4 chips on a device, with a total of >1GHash for less than 4.5 BTC after shipping/taxes/etc and a few reviews before i invest in such a crapshoot.

There will be a period of time where early investors profit (that was avalon batch 1 and batch 2), then a period where the asic technology will advance and drop in price at a rate that makes investing in the earlt part of the phase a poor choice (IMO, this is avalon batch 3 and the block erupter v1). Eventually this will level out somewhat, probably in a few months, and the ideal opportunities will arise with 16-chip designs that push 6Ghash a board in the $750-$1000 price range. Every year this price will half.

I would be okay with 2btc for 600mHash. but for 300 i dont see it as a ood investment

at this point, people are willing to pay for 150mhash/BTC (at about 7w)  based on demand for the blockerupter's 300mhash/2BTC. I personally will not invest unless it is at least 250mhash/btc which will come soon. by september we could see 1GHash/BTC based on the cost of avalon chips and competitive designs.

looking at the blockerupter:

basic calculations for $300 investment (asic + microPC/rasperry Pi), 100w draw, 300mHash, and a 10% higher starting difficulty indicates that you would pay off the system within about 4-7 months, and at the end of a year make 50-120% profit, with dwindling returns of maybe ~50% in the entire second year. This assumes that you have an almost 24/7 operation, no failures, and other competing asics are slow to release.

i think if you could use a powered hub (1A or 1.5A per port), you could get 2 perhaps even 3 chips to operate with almost no additional components that are not found in 1-chip designs

unfortunately, I'll still have to pass on this purchase. my calculations indicate 6-12 months to pay it off, and maybe a 200% ROI after 2 years of operation. I would rather wait a few more weeks and hope we see 2BTC able to purchase >600mh

first - the price is at least 25% too high. these will be mass-made in only a few months time, probably by the time these are received and reshipped...

second: why would i trust you to re-ship tens of thousands of dollars in hardware, that you could make another 50K on by using yourself for a month....?

man these waffles taste like the best distraction ever! nice way to turn a BFL bitch-fest into a mouth waterer!

best technique is to underclock the memory a bit, as that reduces the heat production and is uneccessary to mining, and increase the core speeds slightly. If noise is not as issue, you can manually increase the fan speed setting as well to get a few degrees drop to temps. So long as the card runs smoothly and at a constant temperature and load, up to 65C is not an issue. (some drive thier cards up close to 80C, but that is risky IMO for the reasons you mentioned)

^this. looking at the pics it seems like only the caps are broken. If that is the extent of physical damage repairs could be easy and effective. However, the stability and future performance of the boards could be affected by damage that is not visible to the human eye

agreed. I want to see ASIC devices start a mass-rollout though, as $4000 for 45GH is a tremendous deal for early buyers, but probably carries over a 50% profit margin for avalon.

Would rather see mass-produced 1-3GH/s devices for $300-500 a peice. It would end up with many more small investors and aid the distrobution of the BTC network far better then selling more hashing powerhouses that key players or big investors can only afford

could a raperry Pi or arduino handle these sort of comms? The asicminer and avalon setups indicate that most of the system content is asic chips operated by a fairly small controller. It would be fairly cheap (and hopefully simple) to make small 4-chip, 1.2GH/s cards that run on USB. I would be happy paying $250 for a device like this, which leaves significant margins for whoever can mass-produce first.

I think right now is an odd time to get into FPGA use. An FPGA costs around $0.50-2 per MH/s at [almost] negligible wattage. An ASIC costs around $0.10-$1 per MH/s at slightly higher wattage but far greater power density and [presumably] ease of setup.

That said, you can get a ~400 MH/s FPGA right now for around ~$400, while the 40,000 MH ASIC could take 2-4 months to receive and cost ~$3000

an FPGA can be re-programmed though, while an ASIC device has few other uses besides bitcoin.

easy 2-part question to answer probably:

1) its been about an hour running and the reported hashrate on the site is only about 60% of my actual (15 minutes ago it was around 40%). I know it can show the average across the last 10 blocks (obviously a long delay to reporting), but what about the "MHash/s*" found beside my slave details?

2) Im running a 6950 at intensity 12 with zero rejects or hardware errors reported by cgminer. Would i anticipate a better hashrate by raising or lowering from here? The machine is used for coins so the GPU doesn't handle much besides hashing

Some cards might handle 90c or higher, but that is dangerous to some, and depending on the setup can also affect other components (an open-air rig would be a different story however, and can run a bit hotter so long as the air vents away properly)


the other thing is, as i mentioned, rapid heating or cooling will do the most damage. running at 70c 24/7 is okay so long as the card isnt forcing 95%+ fanspeed (indicator that temps are VERY high), and a constant temp is fine for hardware. however, if after 24hrs you turned off the PC and walked away, the card could cool from 70c to 30c fairly fast, causing metal heatsinks and traces to flex every so slightly as they shift/contract. Same thing heating up from room temp to full operation too quickly. It can effectively open a solder point and disrupt the data/power flow of the entire chip.

Campbx.com

they have 2-factor authentication, Mccafee security cert, and a lot more.

only deals with BTC, but looks rock-solid