It's been a fun adventure so far I started off with a monoprice 3d printer ( https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Select-Printer-Heated-Filament/dp/B01FL49VZE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1472173723&sr=8-2&keywords=monoprice+3d).   It has amazing review's for the money on it.... but I got unlucky and guess mine was not checked for quality.   Fan fell off during printing which is bad... then the filament feeder broke a few day's later luckily amazon has great return policy.

The little one got the bug in me that enjoyed it enough after returning that monoprice one I upgraded to a Lulzbot 3d printer after much research.  Have been just starting off with PLA/ABS plastics to get my skills up.   Once I know what I am doing it is not even just plastic limit with this 3d printer everything from stainless steel, magnetic iron, copper, tons of plastics, to even wood - https://www.lulzbot.com/store/filament .  

Been a fun week to say the least learning.   Messing around in a loft during summer is not a whole lot of fun to say the least.   Been a while since I have went into my barn's loft.   Hope all is well with your solar array, still a very sweet setup from pictures you have shown.

Higs posted link to it above and possibly the release price:


If true that is not to far off of current PSU from Bitmain assuming you mine 2 R4's off new PSU.   The APW3 is 120 right now so 240 to run 2 s7/s9 (with 2 items shipping could factor in  some to possibly higher.  If price is right 300 the new PSU is going to be higher price per miner.  But with silent and run's off 120 or 240 will be interesting to see how sales of them are.

With old gear in a lot of cases you are dealing with a individual seller, not a distributor.  Not sure if OP is US but going to guess so.  If so he can go to ebay buy one pretty easy and shipping is not really that high on S5 and S7 is a little heavier but still not bad.  I don't think shipping is going to make or break your ROI unless you for some reason have horrible shipping to some remote country.

And besides ebay the forums tend to be cheaper as no paypal protection, but there is escrow.  So that is another option out there for S5/S7.   But think your idea about distributor is kinda wrong in most cases when it comes to dated gear.

After last big drop with DAO ETH has been kinda steady 10-12 dollars mainly.  So it really is not varying a ton but ETC could push it I guess you never know on alt's.   Getting a GPU is not a bad idea with 300 budget.

With S5 should be able to do miner and PSU.  Don't forget the PSU cost when figuring it out as I don't see you getting a S7 and S7 PSU for 300 dollars, you could do it if you up budget.   But on original budget I don't see S7 as option.

Bitwisdom is not horrible:

Bitcoin Difficulty:    217,375,482,757
Estimated Next Difficulty:    226,353,508,895 (+4.13%)
Adjust time:    After 557 Blocks, About 3.7 days
Hashrate(?):    1,583,483,457 GH/s

I'm not sure what to expect coming in future with R4: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1596886.0 .  Pretty drastic change in miner design will be inserting to see how it does, it should give 120 people something to be happy about.  So unsure how much this will effect difficulty if bitmain will use design internally or keep with bigger miner's.   Or they could have like a R4+ for internal looking at it there are 2 unused hashboard spot's ready to be plugged into and many without a connector.  But all guesses there.

Price I am decently happy with so far this period as no big drop's it seem's.  I have kinda slowed slowed down watching price and posting currently I have really gotten into 3D printing and it's taken up a ton of my free time.   

One thing to important about electricity is it being reliable.   Some of Venezuela is not known for the most reliable electricity among other thing's.  And you have free to a point do you have a house or apartment?  I think you will find you don't have a ton of electricity for free.  One of the longest and best threads about mining in OP's country is here.  I think it's a tough road to go down with expectations like you have.


If your goal is to make a little bit of cash yes buying old gear you likely can do it there.   But you have to have the extra capital where if it does not work you still will be able to live fine.  But it's hard to factor things like official exchange rate/black market exchange rate/political factors (there were reports of 2 arrested for mining that not much info ever came out from).  But again making a little extra cash very possible but if your goal is to make enough to move countries I think you are going to be disappointed.

Yea they seem like a bad bet in my book's I saw them post a while back: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1454739.msg15795079#msg15795079 .  They say they have been around for 6 year's, and seem to overstate/blur words to make them sound like more then re-seller.  You can see in link above I website has not been around 6 year's.  Even seem to be using LKETC's dragon model name to possibly make people think they were around back then.

Only legit shop's direct are Bitmain's site and BitmainWarranty's site.   No one should even mess with a company like them in my opinion I would love to see some data center pic's from them... as location is hard to believe aswell.

Interesting design cant' wait to see hat it does in real world.   I'm not so much interested in quiet of new fan design, but would love to see if it keeps it even cooler.  As it looks like a big area for fan.

One other thing is does it look like to anyone else a new PSU - https://enshop.bitmain.com/adv/detail-R4-gallery.html ?   I'm wondering if they are going to be selling new PSU's for this model.

Sounds like possibly a controller issue which is not much fun.  The one fan unit's actually did much  better then I expected and  ran well, but just out of curiosity what is the fan doing still working?  As it is summer some places a fan failure could not be good.

But checking networking to unit make sure it works fine, can hook a laptop up to cable to test it.  Assuming it works then again back to controller which most likely you will buy another to stick on it.  Although some might flash it via serial I have never had to do this yet myself.

Keep hoping to see some raise in value but seem's small drops were pattern, but that is better then a big drop.   And all news considered could have been far worse.  Last period I got really into 3D printing really neat new hobby so forum activity went down hard to say how many hour's I have already put into it.  Has been a good new hobby though. 

The difficulty jump was higher then I like, which is under 5 is my goal.   I am wondering if big sales are going on with S7's from bitmain to low electricity companies.  They are not focusing on S9 sales to public so   I wonder on those if internal upgrades.   Likely we will never know as they are very good at keeping internal secret's. Either way will be a interesting week to watch most likely.

I'm about the same between year and year and a half have not looked it up, but will miss this campaign.   We were allowed to speak and not be sock puppets, and always treated fair.   I will likely stay in till the very end, this past week really got into 3D printing so have not been on the forums as much.   

I do wish Marco and Bitcoin_BOy$ both luck in future endeavor's a and thank them for all the time.   Not to mention running a great trusted campaign.   Wish the best for both of you.

The problem with this thought is your holding all your coin's in a hotwallet.   This can end bad if there is ever a security breach, granted blockchain.info has good history but still you should use cold storage depending on the amount.    A properly done paper wallet can have a huge security advantage over a hot wallet.

So if you are storing any sizeable amount I would re-think that idea.  Possibly investing in hardware wallet which in case of say Trezor are easy to keep secure for most.  Or looking into mentioned paper wallet as they really are secure if done right, and the key is done right one security issue on computer when creating it can defeat all paper wallet security if key/seed is compromised.

I would be careful joining a signature campaign if you feel you are not "writing books".   To be honest some post's that are proper can feel more like a book then say a tweet.   There have to have a post that contributes and helps something or someone, so I think you will be surprised the amount of time that go into post's. And these "good" posts later on really help when you want to join a higher paying campaign as most look at your post's when joining so they know they get some quality.

I honestly don't send people twords them till full member.  You honestly will not lose much money by doing this it is small amount's in these "newbie" campaigns and gives you time to learn the site and about many topics.   So in almost all cases waiting till full member I think will serve you better if your looking at the long run.

Good question on country as many like me who are in US find you need to fill out your information due to know your customer laws, meant to prevent money laundering.   So if in US to be a exchange following laws they must get a lot of information about user.   A great example is coinbase as they follow it and even track if you do certain things like gamble they don't support it.

I think most popular is going to be localbitcoins which a few have talked about.   But remember here your are dealing with other people so kinda loses the "reputable exchange" in my idea as you deal with a seller who is not the site.  But many use it without issue.  Also you normally pay a higher price then a "regular" exchange so I would make sure your really can't be linked to it before paying that extra percentages.

One thing to make sure is what type of electrical are we talking about?  For example if you  have 240 volt and 30 amp you will have a very easy setup with PDU's.   If you are talking 220 volt say 20 volt or so you are talking much more outlet's/wiring.   So I would look at this as it will highly impact what you purchase and what quantity.

But free electricity is always a good place to start, I would make sure to check contract for any amount though.

Sounds like a odd mix of issues.   Not being able to power up on controller does make it sound like bricked most likely.    But if your RM1000 is dead even if you flashed and fixed that it would not work.  Out of curiosity did you hook RM1000 up to PSU tester?  As if not under load they can be very very quiet.   I have not used for S7 but older smaller miners with RM1000.

Either way best of luck on return ebay heavily favor's buyer on policy so should end up fine for you, just going to be some headaches on time wasted and getting through return.  But that can depend on seller they can effect time frame hugely on return's.

Half of the time I am looking at other thing's then just the miner's.  I am looking at cooling, or storage which is shelf's on a lot due to cost's.   I would agree altcoin allows for much more variation on setup and are interesting.  So I hope it remains mixed on miner's types as it has been for a very long time.

But can't argue some with a miner or two can be boring just all depends.  Again cooling really impresses me on some so some even with just a few can be interesting at least for me.

It would be a neat project to see for fun with a few gekkos I agree.  Don't know on power as fan's cooling radiator and adding in a pump seems power might not make sense, but still a neat project.   And technically some might be running gekkos at a frequency that don't even need fan's so guess it depends.  I would love to see a OC'ed watercooled one though again just as a neat project.

I personally never intend on doing another water cooled miner the C1's were enough for me (although that was due to company making cooling parts syscooling).  I have used on gaming computer's without issue though.  So can see why some like it but I will be sticking with CFM's from fan's.

If you look at blocks to Kano currently look's very positive: https://kano.is/index.php?k=pblocks  Short term looked amazing to over past few day's:

Last 5 Blocks   14.5hrs   105.2%   60.64%   60.64%   0.1901   164.91%   171.95%
Last 10 Blocks   1.5days   104.7%   76.54%   76.54%   0.2414   130.66%   135.52%
Last 25 Blocks   4.4days   103.6%   91.65%   91.65%   0.3584   109.11%   112.07%
Last 50 Blocks   8.2days   104.0%   83.15%   83.15%   0.1116   120.26%   124.00%

I still can see why PPS for some makes sense as electricity cost is there even if a pool does have bad luck on blocks, but Kano I agree is a great example of how PPLNS can work.  And it has a huge following of loyal miners, I don't know that I have seen a mining pool with a more loyal userbase.

The key thing there is "a couple month ago" as this would be before having.  And there is HUGE difference on before and after having as far as mining gear goes.  A S7 pre having yes was good at 10 cent's, but post having it changed to where at 10 I would not buy a S7.  So I'm not sure where you find difference in math on running a s7.

Just look at running cost at current BTC value.   Running 4.73T even if you get " Power Consumption: 1293W + 10% (at the wall, with APW3, 93% efficiency, 25C ambient temp)" I just don't see as profitable currently.  If BTC takes a huge jump up could that change yes.  But as of right now 10 cent's I think S9 is onlly thing that makes sense again currently.

And again to be clear we are talking about now (current), not a couple month's ago.