Bitcoin Difficulty:    165,496,835,118
Estimated Next Difficulty:    166,831,022,420 (+0.81%)
Adjust time:    After 1 Blocks, About 9.7 minutes
Hashrate(?):    1,209,057,550 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):    
1 block: 9.7 minutes
3 blocks: 29.2 minutes
6 blocks: 58.4 minutes
   
Updated:    1:35 (4.7 minutes ago)

Looks really good!!!!

Are you "unbound" enough that you can disclose your state of any BitFury centric work?

I assume you have received neither documentation, nor actual chips from BitFury?

Chips can be late for a variety of reasons outside of BitFury's control. Documentation though should be available entirely at their discretion and interest in putting forth the effort. That's kinda worrisome.

While I forgot to make a guess this round, I probably wouldn't have guessed high enough. Looks to me like it's going to be north of 3%.

As for Bitmain and what it's shipping, I think that anybody that is expecting to receive a pristine newly manufactured device is deluding themselves. They are clearly selling "well tested" gear (i.e. used hardware with a full warranty). There may be some new production hardware mixed in, but the bulk of the latest batch will be used gear, just like it was with S5 in it's last batches. If you were to buy 10 of the latest batch, I'd be stunned if at least 6 weren't obviously used.

I have no idea what they are doing with any newly cleared shelf space.

OK, I'll bite: Why must the hashing power be gradually increased?

For what it's worth, btcquote.com seems to awoken from it's coma and is no longer stuck at $413.36.

It now reports $416.49 and changes.

While I expect that the original claim of "unlimited budget" isn't true, perhaps you should skip the miner altogether and just buy BTC. Yes, you are then reliant on any BTC price increase to make a profit. While you would have a risk of of a BTC price decrease, you are exposed in a similar way if you decide to buy a miner and run it.

The limit of 1000W is really the limiting factor in terms of how much you can expect to earn/profit if you go the route of actually running mining hardware.

As always, don't spend/invest more in BTC than you are prepared to lose.

Maybe the folks that are registering here as a Newbie for the purposes of promoting this kind of stuff, could just include "ponzi" or perhaps "scam" in their name..... 

My observations on the A6 are fairly new, but now that I have a correctly manufactured 4-pin cable connection, it's easier to experiment a bit and report some accurate results.

My first observation is that the "Chip Maximum Frequency" is pretty much ignored and a useless value. While I wish to repeat some experiments, I am confident that that after 2 hours of running, there is virtually no difference of the actual hashrate, or the fan speed that is present. I've tried values of 300, 400 and 500, and in all three cases after two or more hours, the miner is at roughly 3500 GH, and the fan at about 6700 RPM. That of course is way above the 35 value I set for a minimum fan speed. If you only look at the first 15 minutes of running, there is a difference in 300, 400, and 500 for chip frequency. After a couple of hours though, those differences are pretty much gone. I credit this to the the "Smart Speed" firmware. I think this may well be related to Phil's comment "the software has a mind of its own".

I am betting right now that the "Smart Speed" functionality is contained within the MM firmware, and NOT the Raspberry Pi image. On my used miner, that is version 601512-57532250 as I read the Advance cgminer status display. As I read the canaan website, that is one of the MM firmware versions that was released after the initial A6 hardware release in November.

I'd be interested to hear about other folks experience with their ability to "underclock" the A6 in terms of it's actual speed and fan RPM after a few hours. I am probably a bit spoiled by my SP20 which had really good range and control of the actual hashrate, and therefore heat and fan speed.

While way hugely early, there isn't any indication of a huge increase coming this time around.

On a related topic: Where do folks get the BTC price since btcquote seems to be stuck at $413.36 for a week or so?

Is it just me, or does BTCQuote appear to be stuck at $413.36?

It's also interesting that BTC price has been pretty much stuck in a narrow trading range (as I recall). No major swings, up or down. Unfortunately it's been stuck around $415, and not $450.

It would appear that heavy math and cryptography don't actually eliminate the "human element" from Bitcoin. As long as folks "trust it", it can work. Remove that, and no amount of math will save it (IMHO).

In some ways it's kind of amusing to watch. As always: Don't spend/invest/waste more on Bitcoin than you can afford to lose (please don't take offense at the word "waste").

You can actually read about this on Wikipedia.

In short, every 210,000 blocks, the "Block reward" contained within the block is reduced by half (i.e. the halving). At the present time, when a block is "solved" there are the transaction fees, plus a 25 BTC reward. This reward dominates the value of solving the block. Roughly in mid July, we should hit block 420,000. At that time, the reward will be reduced to 12.5 BTC. We have already had one "halving" back in 2012 when we hit block 210,000.

You know, there's nothing to say that Bitmain didn't internally didn't deploy an S7+ like apparatus. The controller had all 9 ports at one time, and they could have easily done so in-house without ever selling it to the public. If/when they decide to sell those units, they pop on two 3-port controllers and ship them out. Vacuuming them is optional to make them look more "new"..... 

+5.4 = alh

I am afraid our  recent decrease will prove to be a "blip", rather than the start of a trend.

Juat as is stated, the Bitcoin network protocol performs some "adjustments" every so often. The key items that I am aware of:

Every 2016 blocks, the difficulty is adjusted. This means that if 2016 blocks are solved in less than 14 days, then the difficulty will be increased. If it takes longer than 14 days, the difficulty is decreased. This is in an attempt to have the overall network solve 144 blocks every day. This self adjustment mechanism happens no matter what.

Contained within a solved block are supposed to be transaction fees, along with a block "reward". The reward is currently 25BTC and completely dwarfs the transaction fees which in total are well under 1BTC. This reward mechanism is how new Bitcoins are "minted" (or mined). When we get to block 420,000, the reward will be reduced by half to 12.5 BTC. I said block 420,000 since we already had a "halving" in 2012 where the block reward was reduced from 50 BTC to the current 25 BTC. This halving process will repeat every 210,000 blocks until all 21 million BTC are "mined". After that there will be no new Bitcoins, and the system will need to be self-sustaining on transaction fees. Based on the current solve rate, we can expect block 420,000 to roll around sometime in July. The exact date is fluid based on what hash rate is added by miners, and removed as equipment ages and becomes useless.

That is what will happen.

If buried in your question is "What will be the impact of the halving" then there is a great deal of debate, and it's not defined by anything in the BTC network protocol. The price of BTC may go up or not. This may cause some miners to discontinue their operation. All of that is the human response to the halving event.

The halving event is really quite straightforward to understand.  It's the resulting impact that is NOT.

Welcome to BTC mining!!!

Point taken on prior generation gear. You obviously need to have a high GH/$ ratio to get an ROI in the 60 days, along with EXTREMELY low cost electricity and other favorable conditions. The S7 clearly doesn't cut it.

As for that $25 S3, how many of those do you have? I am in Minnesota USA. Can you ship that one to me for .0602 BTC? Send me a PM and I'll be happy to discuss it further..... 

I see these comments about very short ROI (aka Break Even) times of 2 months, and wonder what all the items are that are required to have that happen. So I went to my favorite bitcoinwisdom calculator, and started plugging in zeros for a variety of items to see about an S7.

Based on 4700 GH, zero electricity costs, no maintenance costs, delivery today, no difficulty changes, a 1% pool fee, and a price of $665 with no  shipping costs. I saw that it had paid for itself roughly in mid-June, prior to the halving. Of course if the price on your S7 held up well, perhaps you could sell it for say $300. You better sell it then because the "halving" can't be avoided or "wished away" like I did with all the other fantasy numbers. Maybe you can also assume Bitmain will sell you an S7 for $500 TODAY, which helps you make the numbers.

Given that quite rosy scenario, your return would almost certainly be higher by just buying $665 in BTC today and selling at your projected higher price in two months.

Please show me the math that produces a 60 day ROI time for somebody. Of course if in your universe, most of the above is true, you'll do quite well.

You have to decide what is "profitable" to you. Operating profit? Pay off cost of miner after expenses? How long a time frame? What's your guess on difficulty changes? Effect of the "halving" in about 17 weeks?

In case you haven't used: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

Sorry for the terse reply, but you aren't a Newbie.

Even at this early date, I think we are looking at an increase (i.e. a positive value). Unfortunately that puts Phil on the wrong side of zero.

Magic 8-Ball says "Try again later".....