Try selling a Batch 1 S7 for half of what they sold for new.

 People will LAUGH at you, as the current new batch S7 price has dropped well over 50% from Batch 1 pricing.


 That's just the most recent example - S5 pricing is an abberation because of the Spondoolies/Bitmain price war and should not be assumed as a norm.


 Then there's an extreme counter example - Gridseed 80 "Blades" were originally $3000, had dropped under $800 for NEW ones less than 6 months later - a bit more extreme drop than even the S7 has shown in a similar timeframe.

 Depends, hydro is quite green and often VERY cheap.

 Wind and solar to date though = EXPEN$IVE even with subsidies, though they're getting slowly better.

 The A2 Terminator and the Farm Boy were sold by Innosilicon, though some of the design of the Terminator may have originated from Lketc.
 Yes, the A2 chip is Scrypt - but nobody specified "Bitcoin miners" in the "only Bifmain" statement I was responding to.





 Based on hashrate the last couple days, it looks like Bitmain appears to be shipping SOMETHING. Might be someone else, but I've not seen any reports at all yet of B-Elevens from BW.com for sale yet, and Avalon isn't shipping enough units to affect the hashrate noticeably.

 Avalon counts right now, though they don't seem to be repricing the Avalon 6 to keep it at all competative.

 Innosilicon counted 'till very recently (both their A2 Terminators and their Farm Boys, 'till they ran out of inventory on the A2 chips to make those with).

 Very soon IN THEORY, BW.com (which is part-owned by Lketc, so they sorta-count) if and when they start selling the B-Eleven publicly.

 The list IS short, but it's not JUST Bitmain.

I see it as impossible, as no country is going to adopt a currency they have essentially ZERO control over.

 I see it as very faintly possible that some country will adopt a digital currency, and it even might be based loosely on Bitcoin technology, but it will NOT be Bitcoin.

Probability ZERO for any country (you didn't mention WHICH nation, but it really doesn't matter).

 Nations like to have control over issuing their currency, after all - the EU is an abberation.

BTW - if the recent rate of difficulty increases continues, even at 3 cent/KWH an S5 will be UNprofitable probably in late May possibly sometime in June, the S7 and Avalon 6 will be bloody near unprofitable as soon as the halfing happens - and at higher electric costs it just gets worse fast.

 Have to find a NEW SP50 around somewhere first - so far as anyone knows outside of Spondoolies themselves or possibly someone under NDA, they seem to not be in existance or production yet.

 There has been NO announcement on price on the things anywhere public that I'm aware of (I've looked), just quite a bit of speculative guessing.



 While 7 cents/KWH (US) is fairly cheap, it's not VERY cheap or even close. 5.54 is getting close to the VERY cheap range, but definitly is not VERY VERY cheap 3 cent/KWH or less like most of the major farms seem to have access to - and if you expect to be profitable for the long term you've got to get at least fairly close to their ballpark.

I've never understood how losing money can be enjoyable.

 (I don't class "spending money on doing something FUN" as losing money).



 

 Forget mining. You will NEVER achieve RoI, and it's iffy if you'll ever see any profit at all, at THAT VERY HIGH power cost.

 Take a serious look at hosting and cloud mining.

 Even when the 14/16nm generation shows up, it's VERY VERY IFFY that you'll ever have a prayer at RoI when you're feeding so much to the power company.


 Difficulty might settle down some after the halfing, when a lot of existing hardware for most folks goes unprofitable and folks start shutting older stuff down - but I doubt it'll drop permanently, more likely a short-term dip (possibly semi-deep) then start climbing again as the Big Farms get their next-gen upgrades online and keep growing their hashrate.

 Speaking as someone that has suffered through both Sat and Cellular as a primary internet connection, there is no such thing as 100% uptime with those types of connection.
 They're viable in a pinch as backup connectivity, as mining isn't data-intensive, but redundant links of REAL Internet connections (one DSL, one CableModem for example) would be a TON better on reliability.

 When Iridium gets it's new constellation on line, they MIGHT be able to argue with DSL and Cable Modem on reliability (though not on speed) and be in the ballpark on lag, but any current Sat link is guarenteed to have well over a half SECOND of lag at best when it's working, and Cellular tends to have dropout issues a lot of the time unless you're right under a tower, and the towers themselves have reliability issues at times.


 The bandwidth does NOT remain constant regardless of the size of the hardware - but it's low enough even a decent 3G cellular link should have enough bandwidth (except when updating the blockchain) to handle multiple Petahash when the link is up at all....

 Don't. Just don't. Total waste of electricity trying to mine Scrypt with a GPU - ASICs blew all GPUs out of the water for Scrypt 2+ years ago.


 Any of the Maxwell-based cards can be profitable, if you pick the right (NON-SHA256 NON-SCRYPT) altcoin and your electric is fairly cheap.

 The way you were talking about the $8 million data tanks is what made your statement very unclear - and probably very inaccurate.
 I'm sure there is a lot more to those "Mobile Data Centers" than the tank.





 Almost definitely yes, and "It depends on how many folks are feeding from that transformer and it's sizing but possibly yes, ASK TO BE SURE."

Have you tried LiteGuardian?

 I've never had an issue there with my A2s (or any other miner I ever pointed at it).

Scrypt is NOT mineable at a profit with any GPU, nor has it been so for over 2 years - unless you have free electric.

 Even with VERY VERY cheap electric, first-generation ASIC like the Gridseed GC3355 based miners or stuff like the Zeus isn't profitable any more or is very very marginal on profit.

 About the only profitable (with average electric cost) Scypt miners are the Innosilicon A2-based gear, the Alcheminer and it's variations, and the KnC Titan (if they work long enough, their reiability even at the chip level is poor though most that are still working at all by now SHOULD keep working a while).


 For comparison, my Mega Terminator A2s hash at about 110 Mh/s while eating about 1250 watts (appx, varies about 50 watts with the specific miner due to manufacturing variation and variation in the power supplies in each one) in max turbo mode (1200 Mhz clock).

 They do a little over 90 Mhs each at a little less than 1000 watts in non-turbo mode (1000 Mhz clock).
 
 Their software changes the voltage to the chips depending on the clock rate, thus the change in efficiency.

 Watts measured at the wall on a Brand wattmeter, not estimates but actual. Some of my A2s appear to have the original "factory" power supplies in them with no markings on the PS, 2 have Seasonic X1250 transplant power supplies, one has some off-brand Chinese "1300 watt gold" PS (came that way from Zoomhash, works so I left it alone).


 You do the math - the Alcheminer is about double the hashrate for about double the power (very similar efficiency to a non-turbo A2 a hair better than A2 in max turbo), the Titan is somewhat more efficient, and ALL of the blow away those Zeus units you were looking at much less ANY GPU-based rig.


 Back in the day when GPUs were useable for Scrypt, the best price-performance point was at the 7950 as I recall. Hash per watt was pretty much the same across the board on most of the 7xxx series, most of the 2xx series were re-badged 7xxx series though at least one of the top-end 2xx series cards was new and "bigger" than the 7xxx series ever got to - but hash/watt was still pretty much the same.

Don't bother trying to mine Bitcoin with anything but an ASIC. "Normal" computers have been outdated for Bitcoin mining for years, you'll just spend money on electric for pretty close to ZERO bitcoins mined.
 You'll barely even manage to mine dust.


 Scrypt is almost as bad, the last 2+ years.

 non-SHA256 non-Scrypt coins can be profitable with some computer setups, depending on the cost of your electric, but RoI is still iffy due to low returns.

 Why do you ASSUME they are using some sort of "standard" tank?

 They DO own Allied Control after all - no reason they couldn't design and build custom tanks to suit THEIR need.

Quantum computing, as currently implimented and forseen, doesn't work very well or efficiency on simple liner computations like Cryptocoins use.

 It's entire strength is dealing with MANY variables at one time in a very complex way.

As of right now, the S7 and the Avalon 6 are the best available.

 The B-Eleven should be showing up for sale very soon - there's evidence it's in production but filling those sorta-cloud preorder contracts first.
 Hard numbers on it are a bit iffy at the moment, but it should at least match the S7 on efficiency.

B-Eleven (which is 14/16nm but not full-custom), S7, and Avalon 6.
I suspect THOSE are the primary movers on the last month of hashrate gains.