I don't understand why folks think that for Bitcoin to succeed that there must be 1 million or more miners. If folks are worried about the dreaded 51% attack, then won't 100 equally sixed mining pools cover that? If it's going to be some kind of useful payment scheme, then it's going to need to have low transaction costs, or it will be a failure compared to existing systems. Some degree of centralization will almost be a requirement in order keep economies of scale up.

Yes, it was cool when folks could all mine Bitcoins on GPU's. That was an interesting starting, point, but it's not the long term (i.e. more than 10 years out) future of BTC, nor it's final destination.

Are you expecting to run the miner only when the sun is shining?

I would encourage you to scale everything back by at least a factor 10. Furthermore I would suggest you consider just buying some BTC. If the price increases, then great. If the price decreases, then there is zero chance that the mining farm you've proposed would make money either.

I have to believe that there are less risky ways to invest a million dollars, and will produce a better return.

As for for how much you'll need to convert to fiat along the way, that will depend on your costs. I am assuming that you have to pay for rent, cooling (at least fans), electricity and the like in something other than BTC. While it would be nice to calculate "Return on Investment"  strictly in BTC, that's rather foolish since there is virtually no place that will accept BTC for the associated costs (e.g. rent, electricity).

I think it's a bit silly to try and compare their current device and associated "mining pool" to a more usual "ASIC miner + Pool". They repeatedly point out that the whole idea isn't to mine Bitcoins. As best we know at this time, it's not possible to redirect it's mining engine towards anything other than their "pool".

Anybody that's unhappy with any conventional metrics (i.e. $$$/GH, J/GH) have not been paying attention to what they have written and their stated goal. If you don't buy into the "I want to do something with BTC and micro-transactions", then this device will not satisfy you. Since their "pool" isn't open to the general public for other miners, it doesn't make sense to try and compare it.

While I'll admit this is speculation on my part, I'll bet that the profit margins on the S7 are way higher than the margins on the R1 router. And by margin I mean both as a percentage, and in absolute dollars/BTC (obviously).

Does anybody know what the peak was in terms of R1's that logged into Antpool to do their duty for the collective (i.e. help mining for Antminer). My recollection is that an R1 user/owner has some insight into that information.

I think you also have to include Slush in the category of trustworthy pools. The list you provided was pretty short, and i'll bet incomplete. I expect Antpool is trustworthy though I have no direct experience.

As to sound, I've heard "Somewhere between an S3 and an S5 for loudness". Take that for what it's worth.

I think you need to take the most recent specs with a "grain of salt". They say the miner has 135 chips, which yields 45 chips on each of the 3 boards. Yet, you go and count the spots on the picture, and there are very clearly 54 ASICs shown. Those are the original boards for a 162-chip miner (i.e. Batch #1 etc.).

I think the reality gets a bit jumbled up with the various "cut and paste" actions to keep the website mostly close. I expect the website guys have every bit as much difficulty trying to keep stuff straight as we do.

While maybe this has been discussed before, have you (sidehack) tried contacting 21 Inc about their mining chip? Since their device is out atop a Raspberry Pi, it can't be a 100W power sucking monster. It might be BGA, but I thought I would ask.

It would sure be interesting to know if the 135-chip miner is actually a de-populated 162-chip miner with "dummy jumpers" in place of the missing chips. I hope that somebody that gets a Batch #6 or Batch #8 opens it up enough to count.

OK, I am in:

+8.3 = alh

Thanks again for running this Phil, and suchmoon for funding it!

Assuming there is a Batch #8, I wonder if it will be a 135 chip miner (ala Batch #6), or a 162 chip version (ala Batch 1-5 & 7). It seems odd that they would go to the trouble of making new boards for Batch 6, and only do that one batch. Would it be possible to take a 54-chip board (i.e. the 162-chip miner) and stuff in 3 dummy non-hashing chips into each string to make a 45-chip Batch #6 board? That would eliminate the board re-design.

We probably won't really know what happened until there is a Batch #6 miner "in the wild" in December.

It's really going to take a score-card to keep all the flavors of S7 and their various attributes straight. Should make for a crazy resale market in the future.

No, it's not an Sfards chip. 21Inc produces their own ASIC, and that's what's under the black fan shroud. To date 21Inc. hasn't seemed to be interested in producing miners for sale, nor have they expressed any interest in selling their ASIC's The whole premise of the $116M they got from Venture Captial folks was "Internet of Things with built-in SHA-256 hardware". When you read their announcements, they don't seem interested in mining Bitcoins per se. Though when you look into the Blockchain they are certainly collecting their share of BTC rewards.

It's really unclear where exactly this whole adventure goes.

That's a great idea, though it may prove a bit onerous. As I understand it, there is a 128Gb MicroSD card as part of the configuration. It could take a while to dump that thing. Supposedly it also contains a copy of the Blockchain on the MicroSD card, so there will be lots to dump.....

YES. Just check www.bitmain.com for the specs. Yet another variant of the S7 specifications in terms power, cost, speed, etc. Looks to be priced in BTC.

I think you might want to position the fan directly adjacent to the window. As your diagram current shows, if there is any kind of blockage at the window, the FAN st the end of the duct will be "pushing" against the miner's exhaust. You really want the fan to "suck" the warm air out of the duct, rather than pushing cooler air into it. Where the fan is currently shown, you could close it off, so that the air would have to flow through the miners to get exhausted.

Maybe you missed them, but some folks have mentioned that a a "slight loosen" of the fan screws have cured their machines of various fan noises. Might be the equivalent of the tape you applied.

Just a thought to consider.

I think this is essentially difficulty trying to catch up with BTC price. We've a significant run up in price, and difficulty is "chasing after price".

I thought the current network size was so large that it was going to virtually impossible to get a 10% increase in difficulty, just because the numbers are so large. Looks like maybe I was wrong.

I am going to wait a bit longer to guess. This going to feel like a brutal increase.

His feedback though is terrible. I don't think I have ever traded with anybody that had an 80% feedback rating. It's a cheap item though.

One other suggestion: I laid my SP20 on it's side such that the heatsinks are facing "up".  If you look at the end where the PCIe plugs are, lay it on it's right side, and then the heatsinks will be "up. I had one "Hot ASIC", that is now gone since the heatsinks will pretty much level out with gravity helping. It also positions the controller off to the side, rather than directly about the hashing boards. I figure the controller will be cooler.
From what I have read SP20's don't really like to be run too cool. Your intake and exhaust temperatures are plenty low. The ASIC temps always read 85C until they get warmer than that. In other words, even though the line indicates 85C, it might actually be 50C.