How should that affect it? Pyramining it's not a "conventional" mining operation where someone buy an FPGA at $500 or more and will need to face "competition" for 2 years. At current conditions I have been able to achieve a price under $120 for one FPGA, and break-even is in less than 8 months. Even if ASICs would be ready next week, they don't have enough time to affect expected performances. Moreover, when an account is "completed", the infrastructure remains available (for free) for new deposits, until it breaks.

I am continuing my R&D to produce better and better hardware (in terms of price and performances). If BFL ASICs are good products and I can find them at a lower price than the stuff I will be working on by that time, I could buy their technology.

Pyramining is up and running since less than 1,5 months, it grew faster than expected, and there are two factors that are limiting it's efficiency:

1) a promise to not leave p2pool (and no spare hashing power to keep up with p2pool low efficiency).
2) limited supply of new infrastructure.

Both points will be fixed in short time (less than 3 weeks, I explained in previous posts the actions I am taking to keep ROI times aligned to expectations). Meanwhile if P2Pool keeps it's low efficiency, I won't point new miners at it, so its performances will not hit Pyramining.

For the future things can only improove, and ASIC technology can only positively impact Pyramining: new infrastructure will be bought at even better price/performance ratio.

I try to keep enough reserve, and I add it daily. In case deposits exceed available reserve, it may take as long as 1 month and 2 weeks (time required from the ordering of components to have new hardware delivered) to be put in production.

In case such a thing should happen, after the new hardware is ready, I would temporarily add some extra hashing power in order to make up for the delay.

I do the same when situations like what p2pool is experiencing (see statistics): its effciency is actually 46% but since me and some other Pyramining members want to support P2Pool, instead of pointing all the miners to a PPS pool, I will add some extra hashing power until revenues get aligned to the expected rate, when the 120GH/s batch will be delivered.


When I started the project around 10th of May, I had 25GH/s available and 40GH/s already ordered.
Pyramining is receiving a lot of members and deposits and actually the reserve is almost exhausted.
There is an order for 120GH/s that should be ready within 2-3 weeks.


The bonus % gets smaller because it's calculated on your deposit amount, but your "absolute" earnings don't decline. I already explained how bonus is calculated, however I  am posting it again, it is:

initial_bonus + ((sum_of_referral_deposits / your_deposit) / 10)

so, let's do an example:
you join through referral and deposit 10btc: bonus is 10%, you will get 11btc.
you get two referrals which deposit 5btc each: bonus is 20%, you will get 12btc.
you further deposit 10btc: bonus drops to 15%, you will get 23btc.

now let's do another example:
you join through referral and deposit 20btc: bonus is 10%, you will get 22 btc.
you get two referrals which deposit 5 btc each: bonus is 15%, you will get 23 btc.

as you can see, it is the same.

Hope it's clear enough, should you have any doubt just ask.

It's located in Italy.

I don't know if it's worth to mention, but on the roof of the facility that hosts Pyramining there is a PV plant (PhotoVoltaic) of 70KWp, producing a bit more than 60000 kW/h per year . It has been installed previously for other reasons, and doesn't feed equipment directly but injects power into the grid. Pyramining is consuming actually ~25000 kW/h per year, and the whole infrastructure (that exists beside Pyramining) is still under 60000 kW/h per year, so actually I can say it's running on green power.

http://pics.agaland.it/~pyramining/photo/photo_thumb.php?dir=505620706c616e74

It's password protected, password is:   sunpower!

If Pyramining will keep growing at this pace, this plant will not be enough to support it completely. In order to prevent pollution, I will take actions to expand it by installing PV cells over other buildings. I can't guarantee that Pyramining will always run only on green power, but I will do my best efforts to try.

it's something I have considered, but it requires a tool to verify emails (in order to not abuse the feature for sending trash mail to a victim, investing 0.00001 BTC per account), and for sure someone will change his email account / lose his password / anything, and if there is not a way to modify it, I am sure I will receive requests to do it manually...

Pointing new miners to a Pyramining address is not much work. Last week I had to upgrade the server and I caused at least 20 minutes of down-time (only to the web interface, mining equipment was working correctly).


I intentionally designed links to expire. There are several reasons for this, for example, it wouldn't be nice if someone posts a link in a "lucky" place that comes out as the first link on a google search: he would get a lot of referrals while others not. Another reason is that it would be a waste of resources if someone posts a link somewhere, his account gets completely rewarded (and then inactive until he deposits again) and he still keeps getting referrals without gaining anything from them due to the "inactive" status of his account. I think that this way is better, everyone has to actively "grow" his referrals portfolio, keeping an eye open on what happens.

The same time needed to repay 0.1, 10 or 1000 BTC, which is currently estimated in 8 months (9 considering your bonus).

If you find some referrals, the time needed becomes shorter.

I didn't do it until now only because I don't want to give hints to competitors :-)

It took me a lot of resources to design everything, including the 3U rack case, 400mm deep, with 48 FPGA units stuffed in and efficient cooling and that doesn't cost like a Ferrari.

I am talking of detailed pictures with open cases. If I make small pictures of the rack units, it doesn't prove anything, it would look like router / server equipment.

Eliale visited my company and he has seen it directly.

I am not sure about publishing them online, but at the same time I don't want it to be a mystery.

I am thinking about a solution, like:

- Showing pictures to an existing member who I can trust, who will be a testimonial for others.
It may be someone who joined earlier, who already posted on this topic, and that you  can trust too.

- Allowing access to pictures only to serious investors (for example, with a deposit of at least 1000 BTC).
It's fair to show the infrastructure to someone that trusts and invest in this project, also to reassure him about where his money has been spent. And they could be testimonial for others, too.

- Any other proposal made by someone of you, which I find reasonable.

What do you think?

In such an operation, what would it happen if hardware breaks? You need more than 2 years to break-even (considering only dividends, and a slight increase in difficulty, with bounty halved around December). The expected life of FPGA devices is about 2 years. How much value will your bonds retain???


It is not a ponzi scheme. Who joins though your account DOES NOT give you any money directly. It's Pyramining that rewards your commercial/marketing efforts with an increased bonus, that's made possible by the referred people investments in mining infrastructure. Your income (investment + bonus) comes ONLY from mining activity.

If you have any idea and/or find a way to bring new investments into this project, your rewards will be far more high than those on any bond out there. With other bonds you just have to wait passively and hoping that everything goes as planned.


With increased difficulty and halved bounty, added up to aging hardware, it's most likely that those kind of bonds will fall pretty much.

On the Pyramining side, you can notice that after last investments, expected break-even is 8 months and full reward 9.

The more people deposit/invest, the faster it gets. And when the bounty halve, it won't be a problem. Also new members/investments will buy fresh infrastructure that gets added up, at better and better prices (due to volume) and edge technology, so Pyramining is probably always the best investment available.

We design our infrastructure internally, so everytime economical conditions makes it possible, we improove it, using edge technology.

Last but not least, there are 3rd parties who offer you even some form of warranties (like The Rock does), giving an insurance on the capital invested (made possible by their increased revenue using them as sponsors), and on early quitting (buying your outstanding position).

I expect that many other services/warranties/ideas will come out when Pyramining gets better visibility (it has been started just 1 month ago).

With bonds your risks are definitely higher.

Those devices are not very reliable, and they can't be ordered in such quantities. If you order a few ones, they make you wait months...
They draw exactly 2 times the amount of energy compared to Spartan6 FPGA, and some of them have problems with cooling. You didn't considered electicity costs, and the fact that you need also a computer, and a place where you put them.

With the production batch of July, I will occupy 2 racks, 6 servers, and so on... I don't think that even with BFL (supposing you can get that many) you can stay under 10 months for a complete break-even. Of course if you only see what you want (without all the infrastructure involved), it might seem easier, but it's not sustainable as a business.

1) Infrastructure bought through Pyramining deposits remains allocated to Pyramining until it breaks up.
2) You get your capital back plus 10% earnings in 10 months or less. Try to buy hardware for mining by yourself and tell me when you break-even.
3) Infrastructure is totally managed, you have to do NOTHING at all. I am doing a lot of efforts to produce the hardware at the lowest possible cost, assemble the rackmount units, configure and maintain all the servers, replace failed units, maintain the datacenter and the internet connection, supplying electric power, and keeping the whole thing highly profitable for members. I keep only the 0.5% on payout transactions and Bitcoin transactions are paid by me. And in case of accounts with a deposit of 0.001, the payout transaction will cost far more than the 0.5%.

My real "profit" is that doing quantity orders, I can buy my private infrastructure (using MY funds) at a better price. Creating Pyramining allowed me to reach my target and at the same time giving an useful and profitable service to everyone supporting this idea.

If you can do it better than me, and offer in addition a piece of property, just do it, I am sure you will gather a lot of members.

Last but not least, if you find it unfair, you are not forced to partecipate.

I am using several addresses (each pool of miners has it's own). If you see your payout transactions you should be able to go back to which p2pool address generated it. I am also planning to publish more statistics on the site about mining revenues and transactions, but I am not sure yet if it's wise, I have to consider all the aspects (I am also considering to not display the total hashrate). I wouldn't want to attract hackers attention (even if there is not much to hack here, the wallets are offline and payouts are made everytime in a given account there is more than 1 BTC)...

A discussion about this is appreciated, with considerations about security vs transparency.

Pyramining doesn't support "quitting", I am just considering an agreement with "The Rock", which is a separate independent company.

The cost incurred by "quitters" is "eaten" by The Rock (Eliale), who becomes the owner of the position previously open by the quitter. On the Pyramining side nothing would change, the account remains active with its owner replaced.

Equivalent Hashing Power doesn't drop, and nothing changes to other members.

The only case scenario that is coming on my mind, under which Pyramining could not generate profit anymore, is where for an unexpected natural disaster all the equipment gets destroyed. I think that the chances are _extremely_ low.

If Pyramining business will grow big enough, I will geographically distribute all the mining resources to further reduce those risks.

Changing of the payout address is very delicate. I had a talk with Eliale who proposed this service of "buying" the outstanding position.

It could be done under the following conditions:

1) The owner of the account should contact Eliale and negotiate about the "exit fee".
2) Both the owner of the account and Eliale need to contact me.
3) The outstanding amount would be sent by Eliale ONLY to the payout address originally specified in the account, and not to any other address.
4) When I see the transaction in the blockchain (Eliale -> original account payout address), I can change the account original payout address to an address given by Eliale (I met him personally, and he can be trusted).

I support Eliale proposal only because actually there is no way to "get out" of pyramining earlier. If he is available to offer such a service, it might be interesting for members.

This is an additional "feature", nobody is forced or encouraged to use it, unless he wants to quit pyramining earlier.

With this post I just want to give an example on how you can use Pyramining in a creative way, that can lead to interesting revenues.

If you want to follow this example, keep in mind that it will take between 2 and 3 years to completely receive your deposit + bonus back.

Register 3 accounts, in this way:

Account A with your desired payout address, using someone else's referral link.
Account B using Account A deposit address as payout address, using a referral link from A.
Account C using Account B deposit address as payout address, using a referral link from B.


An example with numbers:

You deposit 100 bitcoins into account C.

If you are going to find referrals, start to point them to account B, until it will reach 50% completion. After that, point next referrals to account A until the end.

Do some math. If you don't find any referral, you will end up with around 158 bitcoins on account A within 2 years (more than 58% revenues).

Since funds on accounts B and A gets transferred slowly (the result of account C mining), you have plenty of time to find referrals to those two accounts.

If you manage to find referrals for 5% more (15% total) on account B and 5% more (15% total) on account C, you will end up within 2 years with more than 178 bitcoins (more than 78%).

If you can find referrals for 20% total on account B and 20% total on account C, you will end up with more than 200 BTC, more than 100% gain.


The only "risk" is that your bitcoins are invested for a long time, and in 2 years anything can happen, so don't invest ALL your savings, go for an amount you are comfortable with! :-)

Keep in mind that when balance on account A exceeds 1 bitcoin, you will get paid, so the total income is spread across 2 - 3 years (you'll receive a little at first and most of it at the end, because funds on account A are the result of account B and C revenues).

Anyway if you compare it to many GBLSE mining ops where in 2 years you only reach the break-even point, this is far more interesting.

This is just an idea, I am sure it can be further improoved.

I advice you to not make account chains longer than 3 accounts, it would take TOO long to complete, and you can't modify payout addresses after account creation.

Also, don't do it if you are going to invest only 0.1 BTC or similar, you'd wait around 2 years to earn a few bitcoin cents. Reasonable amounts are 50 BTC or more (anyway you are free to invest your 0.001 if it makes you happy).

Yes, at the end you would be rewarded with 1.011 BTC. The number calculated with that formula is the additional bonus, if you multiply * 100 you get the % that you can add to your initial 5% or 10%.

Your deposit * ((((total_referrals_deposits) / your_deposit) / 10) + 1.05 + (0.05 if joining through a sponsor))

Let's assume you deposited 0.01, a referral deposited 10, you joined through a sponsor:

0.01 * ((((10 / 0.01) / 10) + 1.10)   =   0.01 * 101.1   =   1.011


That's up to your creativity! ;-)

I thought it was explained pretty well in the FAQ, probably I need to spend some more time in adding more explanations.

There can be 3 cases:

1) You create an account without any sponsor.
You will receive the amount of bitcoins invested PLUS 5%, and then it stops. If you invest 100, you will receive 104,475 (+5% bonus, -0,5% transactions management fee)

2) You create an account through a sponsor (using a referral link).
You will receive the amount of bitcoins invested PLUS 10%, and then it stops. If you invest 100, you will receive 109,45 (+10% bonus, -0,5% transactions management fee)

3) You do some activity to find referrals, and someone joins using you as their sponsor.
You start with the bonus like in points 1) or 2). Everytime someone joins using you as sponsors and deposits any amount, your bonus will increase. The exact increase can be calculated with: ((sum of referral deposits / your deposit) / 10) ).

In the third case, reward can be also very high (there are members who doubled, tripled or even much more their investment, if you ask here probably someone could tell you directly about their experience), so this could be the most interesting way to use Pyramining. It's not easy to find potential members, but if you can, you get rewarded pretty well.

In all cases you will receive your investment back PLUS some earnings that depend on the way you joined/used Pyramining.

Accounts don't mine forever because FPGA units working at these rates wear out in about 2 years. I studied this business plan in order to be able to keep always efficient hardware at work so every member will get their expected results.
However the infrastructure is not removed from Pyramining unless it breaks up. This allows fast investment returns even to future users who will join with increased mining difficulty and halved block bounty.

Hope it's clear enough now. If you have any other question, just ask.

It's not possible because I use them to order/buy new hardware. Should you have any issue, write me a PM to discuss about it.

Profits are added when mined blocks get credited. Since mining is performed on various pools, times/modes change slightly. However on average it happens 4 / 5 times a day.

When you get all your deposit plus your bonus, your accounts becomes "completed", and you stop receiving rewards. If you want it to become active again you can deposit more funds, or you can start another (new) account.

As I explained in a few posts before, because of variance (and a period of bad luck on P2Pool), rewards have been slowed down compared to the calculated average. Since I would not like to move all the miners on PPS pools (a choice supported also by other pyramining members), when the next batch of hardware will be ready I will temporarily add extra hashing power at my expenses, in order to pair up with expectations. This will affect both all old and new accounts.

- 50 GH/s are currently in production and they should be ready around the end of June, first days of July.
- 100 GH/s are already ordered and expected for the end of July, first days of August.

However if "variance" makes you (and others) too much anxious, I will consider to temprarily move all the miners to PPS pools until the new hardware will be ready.