Is there a chance that you can include phi2 in the list of supported algorithms for the next release?

Thanks.

It would take a seriously large number of miners being shut off to cause a huge difficulty drop. As long as a miner is profitable, or you believe that BTC exchange rate will rise enough soon to make your miner profitable, or you can afford to mine at a loss until BTC exchange rate "recovers", then you will continue to mine. There may also be a bit of FOMO on the next BTC moon.

Which is another way of saying that GPUs have been declared dead before, and yet GPUs are still here, and still relevant.

Profit is not my only motive here. My plan for stick miners is to learn and introduce others to cryptocurrencies. I do not, and have not had enough money to be a player in the crypto world, although I did get lucky when I mined LTC in late 2011/early 2012 and then just hodl it. The LTC profit I "discovered" in 2016 has funded my forays into other areas, like GPU mining, ASIC mining, and buy/hodl strategies with other altcoins. I have profited from the limited mining I do at home, but not earned a ton.

Besides, sidehacks USB stick miners have cool blinking lights. 

Ah yes, the good old bad old days. I remember the BFL scams, and heard about the paycoin scam. Missed the alpha tech scam, and who can forget the numerous cloud mining scams.

I guess that today the pickings are so easy that you don't have to have any pride in the scam. I guess that's what blockchain everywhere and BTC popping to US $20k/coin will get you. Oh, and FOMO. Can't forget FOMO.

FPGAs are not new, in fact in 2012/2013 FPGAs were the new hot thing that was going to kill GPU mining. 
Turns out that ASICs killed FPGA mining, and the GPUs soldiered on.

Unless something crazy happens, the next ASIC miner I buy will probably be from sidehack. Although with the price of BTC down, he is sitting on a sizable number of 2Pac miners that is slowing him down a bit. I'm hoping that he can get the 16nm usb stick miners done before too long, and then get to the 16nm pod miner he's been wanting to do for a while.

When I look at the prices of new ASIC miners and the value of any of the coins they mine, ROI is usually one or more years away with the current network hashrates and difficulty, and we all know how that works out.

Latest on the discord channel is late this month or early July. GPUHoarder's minions are benchmarking a bunch of mobos and GPUs, and I would imagine probably different algos, too. GPUHoarder has been quite adamant about not releasing data until it is all collected.

Thanks for the info. I'll check HomePower out.

At this point my preferred ASIC is a GPU. Thanks to Phil, I am now mining with current technology. I have a sidehack modded S7-LN that is nice and quiet, but is now losing money with the lower prices and higher diff. Not losing a lot, but for the ~450 Watts that it consumes, I can power another 2 x 1080TI rig, and that will at least be profitable today, flexible so it can adjust to algo changes with a miner software update, and have a chance at achieving ROI eventually with my US$0.10/kWh power at home.

Regarding investing in promising new coins, I have staked Motion(XMN) and MoonDEX(MDEX) master nodes, 1 each, to see how that goes. Each seem promising, and with the challenges that CryptoBridge is experiencing, I think that there is room for multiple players in the DEX space. Hopefully I have speculated wisely. For now I plan to hodl, but if the prices for each of the coins rise sufficiently, I am not averse to moving the earnings to BTC, ETH, or even on to some other speculative coin.

I also really like Phil's idea of solar-only mining, with no grid-tie backup. My current residence has a sizable southern exposure with little shade, and I'd be interested in setting up a small (two or three 250-300 Watt panels) system. It would be cool if adding the ability to scale up just by adding panels wouldn't require too much up-front cost to the small system install.

I'd be interested in adding a small(ish) battery backup for the system because I'd like to be able to gracefully shut down the miner(s) (I'm thinking of only GPU mining with a linux based system) when the output of the solar panels drops below that required to support the mining gear. I'm thinking that a raspberryPI could be used for the monitoring, with the ability to ssh into the miner to safely shut down, and managing a switched outlet(s) for the mining gear. The rPI would stay running and when the power output from the solar panels reached a sufficiently high level it would enable the switched outlet and the miner would boot. The rPI could also act as an ethernet to wifi router for connectivity to my home network.

Airdrop process was pretty easy, but that's because I met all the requirements.

I received the promised coins, bought some more, and now have a masternode waiting for the first payout (not online quite long enough yet).

All is good; now waiting for good to become better.

Here, let me check their website for you...

https://crypto-bridge.org/#support

I'll bet that if you send them an email, then you will be rewarded with a support ticket number.

Fair warning, you will probably want to white list their email address so your chosen mail reader does't send their response to the spam folder.

Bwhahahahahahahahahahaha

Getting into the pre-sale was pretty easy, and setting up the node worked well. One minor hiccup, and now I'm in the hard stage. Waiting.

Reminds me of the Heinz Ketchup TV adverts from the 1970s here in the USA. (search on youtube for heinz ketchup anticipation commercial if you are curious)

Now that's interesting news. From a recognizable chip producer, or a soon to be (in)famous one?

I've got a lone L3+ hashing away, and would like to at least try to get ahead of the coming wave, even if the wave soon overtakes me.

Worked like a charm. Thanks. Now I can work on obtaining enough coin for a MN.

Holy crap! 14.7%. Man my Gekko's never gonna ROI at this rate 

I've been thinking more on this...

What if you were able to store some of the necessary information on the blockchain itself? Whether that is just raw data, or a smart contract, or whatever, it wouldn't matter just as long as it is there and can be read. Also, as part of the protocol that data is refreshed periodically, either at regular intervals, or at algorithmically calculated, using the secret register(s), intervals based on some part of the block that is guaranteed to be in any valid block.

App installed and opens just fine, but never finds any nodes so it can not sync.

I have boost installed, and tried running the app from the terminal window but it still doesn't sync.

I wonder if these registers could be used with wallet addresses, locally generated OTP from a hardware based device (like a yubikey), and a token from the pool such that a new token was generated that is time or share count limited (i.e.: valid for a specific amount of time OR a fixed number shares)? When submitting a share, the miner would need to pass the share's hash plus the token through the register, and then submit that hash to the pool.

If the share submitted in that way exceeds either the time-limit or share count limit of the token, then the share is rejected.

When the time or share count of the current token is reached it triggers a "renegotiation" to obtain a new token. The new token would have potentially new limits that have been adjusted to the performance characteristics of the mining hardware.

Be that as it may, everyone is entitled to spend their money as they see fit, no? If the person purchasing understands the risks involved (at a minimum a 100% loss of funds) and is willing to assume that risk, why not?

When I purchase anything that is ONLY good for crypto mining, e.g.: a Bitmain L3+ or a Bitmain S7-LN, etc., I have assumed the risk that it becomes 100% worthless. I also ONLY spend what I am able to lose without impacting my ability to pay my regular bills, like mortgage/rent, electricity, internet access, etc.

If you can't afford to play the game today, watch from the sidelines and learn. When you can afford to play the game, start slowly, don't risk homelessness, don't rely on the coin you've chosen to moon as the odds of that happening to a small fish are incredibly long.

Running any number of L3+ noise makers and want to make them more efficient to extend it's useful life as a heater versus a doorstop? Heave a look at this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3546316.0