One other reason why people might rationally mine with hardware that is apparently no longer cost-effective: if they want the heat output anyway.
I've been thinking about this a bit more.... Perhaps the very long term equilibrium is that the electricity costs of mining will be somewhat, or maybe even substantially higher than the returns... The bulk of mining will be done, for example, in combination with electrical heating (with the coins defraying a part of the electricity cost) and other similar circumstances. The idea of mining and throwing away the heat output (or even worse, using more energy for AC) will be reserved only for the few who have the absolute cheapest electricity, if it happens at all. That end game is probably a decade or two off, though roy |
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One other reason why people might rationally mine with hardware that is apparently no longer cost-effective: if they want the heat output anyway.
For people who use electric heating, why not run an old miner instead of a conventional electric heater? One could even imagine die hard enthusiasts hooking up miners to thermostats and time switches to supply heat when needed.
What would be a decent 1kW miner to buy, as a space heater, I wonder? This time next year I imagine I will be able to pick up a 4-module Avalon for little more than the cost of a fan heater :-)
-roy
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I'm not 100% convinced of that. The issue is not slowness (well, it is an issue), but that these systems may be running out of RAM. For instance, it just can't be run on 32-bit because of the lack of address space. But if you virtualize a system that runs 64-bit OS with 16 GB of RAM (using 14 GB of disk), it may be possible to actually run it even though it takes 3 hours to sync.
I'd be interested to see someone try it, though I would bet 2:1 that it still doesn't work at all. But I can see why it might work. Can you run a 64 bit VM on 32 bit hardware? That doesn't seem right. Anyway, the original question was whether setting up a VM would help alleviate the problem of only have 2GB of memory, as the VM could "have" 64GB. The answer is of course no.  From stackoverflow: You can't run a 64-bit VM session on a 32-bit processor. However, you can run a 64-bit VM session if you have a 64-bit processor but have installed a 32-bit host OS and your processor supports the right extensions. It's my understanding that every desktop/laptop CPU under the sun is 64-bit by now, even though many people still run 32-bit OS. So it is most likely possible to do this. Yes, slow as dirt. Painfully slow. But it might actually, eventually work, instead of seg-faulting when it hits 94%. There's a bit more to it than that. To run 64-bit VMs your CPU also needs to support Intel VT (Virtualization Technology) or the AMD equivalent, and VT has to be enabled. Most CPUs do support VT, but I believe Intel doesn't include it on some of their low-end CPUs. But having a VT-capable CPU isn't enough - VT needs to be enabled, and this is normally done by the BIOS. Often VT isn't enabled by default, but there is a BIOS setting to enable it. But if your computer manufacturer chose not to provide a means of enabling VT then you may be out of luck, even if your CPU has the requisite capabilities. roy |
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I would suggest you contact burnin ASAP and ask him - he may not realise there is still interest in the Avalon product given so much talk about refunds (in his thread too) but since he pre-ordered many parts for it, he might be willing to take some more orders for it. roy |
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We're doing everything we can to get the price down as low as possible, but please have reasonable expectations as we can't sell them for less than the chips cost, plus theres a bunch of other parts, board, heatsink, and NRE costs that we have to recover. These small units aren't going to have the world's best ROI, you can only get that promise when you buy $5k worth of vaporware. Real things in hand cost more than powerpoint slides and renderings.
Anyhow we are trying to keep a sub $100 price point to give entry level miners some meaningful hashrate.
Hmm, I don't like your comment very much. ASICMINER USB sticks, a real product from a real competitor, is existing competition to your vaporware. Furthermore, and I can't believe this is not obvious, your production costs do not matter to the buyer and should not factor into their expectations. But ASICMINER USB sticks are 335MH/s which in today's environment is not a 'meaningful hashrate'. Sure, you can build a farm of them (and I have nothing against them - I have four of them mining myself) but it's not direct competition. Are there any other USB sticks that offer multi-GH/s hashrates? roy |
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Remember, batch 6 is different, because it was ordered from one of zefir's last batches rather than directly from Avalon. And zefir ordered his batches with his own coins and then took orders from the community to pay for them.
So, bizarre as it seems, if I understand right, our batch 6 was actually ordered from Avalon before our batch 1.
ETA: And when Sebastian says we could refund batches 1-5, that's just because those are batches he's ordered. I imagine that doesn't mean batch 6 can't/won't be refunded - just that he doesn't know because he's waiting on zefir to decide what he is doing with his batches.Ok, so doing some more reading it appears I'm completelyi confused Still, being in batch 6 doesn't necessarily mean you can't get a refund from Sebastian. AIUI, Sebastian is moving people who want refunds to batches that are being refunded (and vice versa, is moving people who want chips to batches that are not refunded). But he can't make everyone happy - time will tell how things work out. roy |
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That is a good point. Another way to look at it is difficulty may overshoot before correcting. We say this multiple times over the years with GPUs. The trend is something like, exchange rate rises rapidly and then difficulty follows over a much slower timeframe as miners deploy new hardware prices, eventually prices peak and decline and thus pushes the most inefficient miners into a negative operating margin. Maybe they hang on for a while hoping difficulty goes lower or prices rise but eventually they give up and difficulty declines back towards equilibrium.
If the electrical cost to mine a Bitcoin is slightly higher than purchase cost miners may continue to mine for some time. One reason is that it is an easy anonymous way to "buy" Bitcoins from your power company. However it is important to keep in mind that unlike the GPU world the efficiency between the least efficient rigs and the most efficient ones is on the order of 12x (possibly more if/when Bitfury produces a 28nm device). So while electricity is still a small % of gross revenue for a cointerra miner it will be >150% of gross revenue for an Avalon one. So difficulty can continue to rise far beyond the break even point of an Avalon miner to a level where even the most "stubborn" miner will admit defeat (Paying $5 in electricity for $1 in BTC).
Yes, I agree with you on that. But to continue, my feeling is that almost no one buying recently or now or in the near future will get ROI, both due to overoptimism and also due to a significant number of unprofitable miners hanging on until they finally hit their pain point - whereever that is. I think we're looking at a period of time - maybe a year - where virtually no one will get ROI. And following that, ROI will only return when the prevailing wisdom on mining changes from bullish to bearish - i.e. when the majority of posts here are saying that mining is a mugs' game and that the only way you can make money is if you either have free electricity or are like ASICMINER designing your own chips. What I haven't decided is whether that change in sentiment is going to happen gradually or suddenly. But I'm pretty sure sentiment will overshoot, and when we switch from the current prevailing wisdom that there is money to be made in mining, to one that there isn't - then, of course, the 'pessimism bias' will make it much easier for the miners who keep the faith to attain ROI. I'm leaning towards 'fairly sudden', I think, but not sure... ETA: 'Sudden' is good of course, because it means more overshoot in sentiment... roy |
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Except, ten weeks from 1st June is 10th August, so 1st June chip orders are already three weeks late, unless he was no longer promising "9 to 10 weeks" by that point.
Ah, lastest news from YiFu - 1st June was a typo - should have said 15th June. Now, chips ordered on 15th June orders would already be a week late, but I think that might just be that YiFi miscounted. If he's claiming that orders after the cutoff date won't be late (by much) then the chips must be shipping in the next few days. roy |
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Update: Chips Delivery Update, September Edition Due to events outside of our control, the delivery of chips have been delayed so far. While the situation are improving and chips are shipping, we have ultimately decided to revert our policy on no refunds and offer the option for customers to request a full refund(in bitcoin) if so desired. The link to the request form is below, please note this only applies to orders made earlier than June 1st. In other news, for those who decided to wait or wish to know more about delivery schedule will be glad to note we are receiving a batch of 400,000+ chips on Wednesday, with that we expect to be in good shape for meeting the upcoming deadlines of chip deliveries for orders made in June and later. In addition, we hope to wrap up generation one, finish shipping the chips, construct the modules and build the 2 module Avalon mini, put this pre-order mess behind us in general and switch gear into 55nm production, tape out generation 3, and start work on improving chip design for generation 4. Only sell what we can produce in a day on the assembly line, and only what's in stock. RefundI don't think I understand this, there are 400000 chips coming, but NOT for orders from April but for orders made in June or later? No, I don't think that's what he means (at least I hope it's not). He seems to be saying that he now has enough chips that if you ordered 1st June or later then your chips will be shipped within the promised timescale - hence no option of refund for those orders. I hope chips from April and May would still get shipped first... Except, ten weeks from 1st June is 10th August, so 1st June chip orders are already three weeks late, unless he was no longer promising "9 to 10 weeks" by that point. |
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The cost to reach the "break even point" is based on current cost so I don't find it too useful, because cost will decline significantly. The network will approach a small margin below the break even point.
I've always assumed that, in the short-to-medium term, the equilibrium point will be on the wrong side of breakeven, due to optimism bias in the purchase decisions. It's true it wouldn't make much financial sense to continue to mine under those circumstances, but there are other reasons to hash than profit, and even the people who were in it purely for the money will find other ways to justify their purchases to themselves. roy |
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Yes, statistically its enormous sample, and this ratio (3829 / 25915 = 14.77% want to receive the chips) will almost certainly apply to total number of chips.
It's not a representative sample, though. The kind of people who check this forum daily (or more!) may have very different wishes from the kind of people who are less interested in following progress. So the proportion for those other buyers might be very different (either more or less than 14.7%). roy |
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Yifu practically revealed Avalon has no chips to deliver as he now favors
refunds over more waiting and/or new chips with cheaper price.
That was not how I read YiFu's words, unless he's posted something new that I've missed. Of various options that the community presented to him, such as refunds, partial refunds, extra chips or upgrades to next gen chips, he said his prefered option was refunds for those who want them. I don't think he ever said he wants people to refund - just that he prefers that option to other forms of compensation that the community had proposed. roy |
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Yes, would be up for 2 BitFury boards. Will probably keep my Bitburner XX order open too, rather than transferring to the new product.
ETA: and would be happy to pre-order
roy
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Yes, there is no good option that I can see :-( Oh well, I trust you to do your best to do what you think is fairest...
roy
Looks like zefir in general would work with us when it comes to this... but till now not many sent me their wish. So lets see how it turns out. Cool, pooling will likely make sense and I was hoping we could work together with zefir again. As you say, let's see how it turns out. And thank you for your efforts here. roy |
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Today's news about Yifu preferring refunds for groupbuys [...]
C'mon, don't take this out of context. I don't think YiFu prefers anyone to ask for a refund. The context of this quote is him saying that he'd prefer to just refund people as opposed to considering the various requests to give chip buyers partial refunds, or extra chips, or a trade in to next gen products. |
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If only 500 chips in all batches want to be kept it wont be possible to keep a whole batch then i guess.
Interesting that people who want refunds will get precedence over those who want chips, given there was nothing in the OP about a batch being cancelled if other group buy members change their mind. What happens in the more evenly balanced situation where 5000 chips in all batches want to be kept (i.e. exactly half a batch)? Does that batch get ordered or not? Besides, given the batch 3 refund experience, who knows if refunds will happen in a timely manner (if at all)? What happens if you force some people in a batch to take a 'refund' they don't want, and then the 'refund' never turns up, even though YiFi finally ships all chip orders that remain open.? Still I don't want to make a big deal out of this - I will accept that you can do what you feel is best if at any time you feel it becomes impossible to keep the group buy open. I really feel that people like Sebastian, zefir, burnin, etc are the innocent parties in this and first and foremost these are people who are doing work that benefits the community, and I don't want them to be hurt by this situation. But still, given the choice of holding out for chips or holding out for a refund, my preference remains chips - at least as long as burnin remains willing to assemble them. roy [Edited lightly for readability] ETA: So it seems to me it would not so much be offering a refund (I wouldn't ask or expect you to refund out of your own pocket), but more cancelling our orders and putting our trust in YiFu refunding... But still, as I say, my order is small and I don't want to make a big deal out of this. I ask all members how many chips they want to get anyway. If we get 10k together then i would try to get a refund for all batches except batch 1 and all members get their chips from batch 1 then. The thing is... who will pay the 9500 chips that remains? You? Iam? Or will you find a buyer? Or which of the buyers should be forced to buy anyway? I mean it wouldnt be fair to move all chips to batch 1 then because all batch 1 buyers cant get a refund than. In this case in theory no one could get a refund because every batch would contain some buyers that want to keep. Thats the problem here. So i think the only solution at the end would be to handle this democratic since the solution is somewhat black or white. The choice in between is slim. But i already posted a question to zefir if we could merge such chips into one batch that isnt refunded in case we only get enough chips together with other groupbuys. If nothing works i guess there still will be some chips are sold somewhere that could be bought. At least Yifu most probably will have a good amount of chips at the end that he only can sell for low prices. Yes, there is no good option that I can see :-( Oh well, I trust you to do your best to do what you think is fairest... roy |
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Hahah nice one on the chipsworth lolz. Yes, so we might attempt the same thing as we did for batch 6 --> team up with other GB's (that just doesnt sound right lolz).
If cancelling has precedence: In the end the buyers might need to buy more, if they can't they face cancellation?
If buying has precedence: All cancelling buyers share the loss of remaining chipsworth in the batch that is not filled. Chips could be sold by auction, minimizing this loss....
Cancelling precedence seems to be easier to handle...
The problem is, this isn't about chips and refunds. This is about promises. We can have no real confidence that either chips or redunds will happen in a timely manner, if at all. We have evidence that chips are shipping, slowly. We have little evidence that Avalon has yet honoured many of the promissed refunds to date (despite offering refunds for the delayed Avalon batch 3). I don't imagine Sebastian is saying he might cancel my order and give me my coins back. I think he's probably saying he might cancel my order and then hope for the best and if and when Avalon finally refunds the coins I'll get a refund. But anyway, as I said, I don't have much skin in this game and anyway I will go with the will of Sebastian (as, no doubt, led by the will of the group). roy |
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[I assume fragmented batches (and they will all be fragmented), will be merged.
Sure. But since (ignoring batch 6) we're very unlikely to get anything close to an exact multiple of 10,000, how do we get one? Either we force some people who want refunds to get chips or we force some people who want chips to get refunds. ETA: So to clarify: Pretending batch 6 didn't happen for a moment, to keep things simple: If we have 15,000 people across all batches wanting chips, do we order two batches or one? And how do we deal with the people who didn't get their way? Either way there will be 5,000 chipsworth of people who didn't get there way. And BTW, I claim 'chipsworth' as a new word :-) roy |
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If only 500 chips in all batches want to be kept it wont be possible to keep a whole batch then i guess.
Interesting that people who want refunds will get precedence over those who want chips, given there was nothing in the OP about a batch being cancelled if other group buy members change their mind. What happens in the more evenly balanced situation where 5000 chips in all batches want to be kept (i.e. exactly half a batch)? Does that batch get ordered or not? Besides, given the batch 3 refund experience, who knows if refunds will happen in a timely manner (if at all)? What happens if you force some people in a batch to take a 'refund' they don't want, and then the 'refund' never turns up, even though YiFi finally ships all chip orders that remain open.? Still I don't want to make a big deal out of this - I will accept that you can do what you feel is best if at any time you feel it becomes impossible to keep the group buy open. I really feel that people like Sebastian, zefir, burnin, etc are the innocent parties in this and first and foremost these are people who are doing work that benefits the community, and I don't want them to be hurt by this situation. But still, given the choice of holding out for chips or holding out for a refund, my preference remains chips - at least as long as burnin remains willing to assemble them. roy [Edited lightly for readability] ETA: So it seems to me it would not so much be offering a refund (I wouldn't ask or expect you to refund out of your own pocket), but more cancelling our orders and putting our trust in YiFu refunding... But still, as I say, my order is small and I don't want to make a big deal out of this. |
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hopefully enough batches will cancel overall that this will bump our batches up the list a bit.
I just had this thought (probably more of a risk for zefir's group buy than ours): if enough batches file refund requests then it might happen that the group buys (at least the ones that ordered earlier) might find they've suddenly received several of their batches before they've even managed to reach any consensus on what to do about refunds. (Personally, if all our batches shipped this week because so many other batches cancelled, it would seem like a good outcome, but I realise some people really want their refunds.) roy |
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