Hey thanks for posting the link, I'm always scouting the news feeds for enjoyable quick reads on the mining industry and this was surprisingly useful. Each short blurb on the operations/operators was pretty informative. It made me think how much time I've also spent researching the 11 named groups and why some of the facts were still new to me.

In regards to the top three pools colluding and possibly executing a 51% attack.. I'm sceptical. The way I see it these operations (aka corporations) will be far more profitable to see the price of Bitcoin rise through its own brilliance than to cause mass hysteria from an attack that will only cause a crash in price leaving themselves with worthless assets.

I run a small mining operation in Australia and we pay our tax, in fact we're always dealing with the accountant to keep the books up to date.
We pay tax on the income we earn through bitcoin mined, bitcoin traded and from all the sales made when re-selling mining equipment.

The 16nm 3d finfet looks like an exciting and impressive chip, certainly another leap forward for technology in the mining industry.
I'm interested to know if anyone had or has a mining contract with KnC? What was the service like and did you ROI?
Also, given the 16nm deployment, will anyone be looking to purchase new contracts?

I think the name is what really intrigued me to get started here, F2pool and it's alternative Discus Fish. Very unique.
The 'less is more' styling the website has is also appreciated and the PPS reward system that hasn't been late for me has been exceptional.
And given their existing market share it seems possible that F2pool could continue to grow in size and influence the network,
but if you look at what happen to Ghash.io going from hero to zero in such a short period, who knows what could happen to F2pool next.

I like many have been following the changes in cooling techniques offered by datacenters for consumer and commercial miners. Sometime ago I was discussing a similar oil immersion cooling option from Gray Matter Industries and NextFort. I'm not sure if they ever proceeded with the plan but I suspect they were utilizing the same GRC product or similar.


Moving to colder climates is definitely a workable solution: KNC, BitFury, PeerNova and DigitalBTC would all agree given their primary operations are in the Arctic Circle. However for the small medium business mining operator that doesn't have the resources to orchestrate an overseas enterprise, immersion cooling is definitely an appropriate move. Taking ASICMiner as the example mentioned, they recognised the potential of 2 phase immersion cooling while they were still experimenting with FGPA clusters. It should very interesting too see how BitFury scales up Allied Control and the 2 phase immersion cooling configurations.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZavKweMrP4

1. To what degree do miners collaborate with each other (for example: purchasing miners in bulk, purchasing datacenter services , electricity etc) ?

In my opinion you will find miners in collaboration almost everywhere, when thinking about it, although they serve a crucial yet relatively mundane role mining pools are the first thing that come to mind. Next would be shared service providers matching customers with others that share/rent equipment. ASIC hosting is becoming widely available and Buying Groups are very common. Maybe cutting costs is the key factor we're highlighting but if you think about Bitcoin as an open source collaboration itself you're bound to see common traits throughout all it's following.


2. other than Bitcointalk, and reddit forums,  are there additional "spaces"/forums/groups/other that miners use to catchup on things and/or use for discussions  ?

IRC, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/IRC_channels/
Cryptocoin news platforms allow for comment discussions, see http://www.coindesk.com/

Was this ever confirmed?

p2p.antminer.com:* still don't work for me and sends back connection refused error.

If the project was abandoned why advertise a link that doesn't work.

Do you purchase goods ?

YES. Developers, Mining rentals, Mining contracts, VPN services and Usenet indexes. I'd pay my Usenet provider if they would accept but they don't..

Do you keep the Bitcoin in a wallet, in hopes it will appreciate in value someday ?

YES. I typically split accross a few cold wallets depending on volume but I like to use bitvc.com's yubibao accounts to earn bit of interest too.

Do you immediately trade it for fiat to cover costs, and use up the remainder ?

YES & NO. Typically I'll exchange to fiat whenever costs aren't covered by mining equipment sales. I usually Buy, Mine, Sell over a 8 weeks cycle. Any profits made on the sale usually cover my expenses unless one of the miners breaks for good, that might offset turnover forcing for the exchange. I also have a few hosted servers in datacenters which don't accept btc.

Do you keep the BTC and use it to daytrade in the Exchanges ?

NO. I'm happy to put my btc into a fund to earn interest or a syndicate that knows how to trade and will then share in the return but on my own trading hasn't been all that successful.

P.S - side question :  Do you refer to Bitcoin as a plural form or do you prefer "Bitcoins" as the plural form ?  just wondering if there's a strong inclination one way or the other

Bitcoin, I would rarely refer to the payment system or the coins in the plural configuration. But as written, instead of 'Bitcoins' I do use 'coins'.

What you can achieve will depend on the particulars you left out: Budget, location, climate, security of facility, degree of your skill and competence in hands on computing and networking?

To keep it simple let's assume it's already got some security and because it's a large place, you can't do it all yourself so we're prepared to hire some good technical contractors.

1. If it's not already sorted. Get your internet connection. A typically business package with guaranteed up/down is best. Preferably a fibre connection.
2. The facility structure might determine this but we're going to assume we can house a minimum of 20 full size racks. Plan this out with an electrician. You will need a decent amount of power to run a configuration like this. The racks shouldn't cost to much to buy and install but you will need some basic servers and comms equipment: proxy servers, routers and switches, and technicians to set up it all up.
3. Cooling? This is another deal breaker.. Let's assume we're in a closed building so let's order in two or three large units and pay someone again to install them.
4. Now we're set. Let's order the miners!! Now depending on where you're mine is will probably determine who your order from. If you order from far away, you're going spend more on shipping and wait longer, therefore order from the closest. I would only choose from Spondoolies or Bitmain as they tend to have the best products in my opinion.
5. When your miners arrive get them installed ASAP. Pay people to help and work all night if you have too, just get them running and returning on the investment.
6. Given you only have 20 racks your probably don't need to hire full time staff but you should pay for some decent monitoring software something that will alert you when miners stop working.. which they will..
7. If you live far away from the mine. Think about moving closer. I spend a fortune on petrol driving back and forth to my mine.
8. As soon as you start mining, start planning how you're going to get rid of the miners, mining equipment depreciates faster than you think. You will need to find a way to sell off your equipment and replace each unit within a 3-6 month period.
9. Don't be afraid to go big!! If you have a good budget, power consumption isn't a big deal and the facility can support a decent supply. Buy as many miners as you can!

 

Hah, that'll teach them wretched kids! Maybe you could barricade the door with the miners.

Yes on average 8 weeks and I normally generate reasonable btc in that time. Sales come from ebay and similar markets. Fees are ok, you gotta spend money to make money.
The real annoyance is the maintenance and driving around. I might drive out to the mine just to power cycle a miner, or swap a PSU (this happens a lot) or install new miners which usually takes some time to configure.
I might drive back to where ever I came from only to find something got sold so I then have to drive back out again the next day.
By far the worst is missing a delivery of new miners and then having to wait a few more days for them to get returned or drive to the delivery depo which is always no where near the mine..

Typically I buy, mine and sell all in a 8 week rotation, also never selling for less than I paid and typically making profit on the sales to cover the electricity costs involved in operating.
Through the cycle I could have anywhere from 1-10TH and normally only small form factor as they're easy to ship. I've had lots of miners including models like R5', S3, S3+ and the S5.
If I was to recommend one, I definitely recommend the S5, presently I'm getting around 0.01 btc per day per unit. They're a lot noisier than then the predecessors but quieter than SP's.

It's never too late to start anything  If you're a fan of computing and like to play with new toys I implore you to buy an Antminer. The small form factor is great for home mining and if you consider an S5 it should yield well, I get somewhere around 0.01 per day per S5 before expenses. Also home mining is typically more about having fun learning the industry. For example most home miners will buy, mine and sell equipment on frequent basis. The more you do it the better you'll get at it and with that the more profit you'll learn to make. Best of luck.

Thanks for the calculation. I really suspected this value to be much higher, I guess it's just bad luck when pools that have this value or more do struggle.

Given KNC design, manufacture and operate multi data center scale operations, you can’t simply imagine the phenomenal expenses involved. To give you an idea the company said it will invest $150 million more in the next 18 months. Press information indicates KNC raised $29 million in the past 12 months, Bitfury which runs equally sized farms raised $40 million. http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-venture-capital/

Also if you're interested in the costs of this magnitude try hunting around for the company's annual report, this is typically available to investors. For example take a look at the regulated mining firm DigitalBTC, they're required by law to publicly disclose this information. http://digitalbtc.com/announcements/

You're correct. This is KNC's Clear Sky Mining Farm in Boden Sweden.
They operate out of several hangars, on a former military helicopter base right next to a hydroelectric station.
Given the cold climate of Sweden it is assumed KNC are "free air cooling" without cold or hot aisle separation, a simply matter of opening the hanger doors.

https://www.knccloud.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWiT4RxY18s

I believe you need to have around 0.3% of the network to get a block a week. 1PH.

We're not deducting any electricity expenses so I guess it's all profit for me and given he was trying to reuse the heat from an ice maker, which sounds backwards I know, this new arrangement works out better for us both. My old miners have a second home until they're sold and he get's a good room temperature for his beer kit as we go into winter. We're both tinkers too so we get along well discussing the best way to harness the S3 heat output.

A friend of mine borrowed 1 of my older S3's to ensure correct beer brewing temperatures, warm temps are needed so the yeast doesn't die I think. We're splitting btc profit over a beer at the end. 

I see lot's of people hashing at public solo pools, are any of you solo mining your own Bitcoin node?