None in the US, Europe according to your local VAT.

The problem I see is as follows:

Lower hashrate (!and power efficiency) entitles to compensation. This could come in the form of:

- additional delivered hashpower (complicated due to leadtime, fractual compensation ie 1/4 sp30 impractical)
- additional hosted hashpower (leadtime, but higher flexibility ie 1/4 sp30 equivalent can be awarded)
- refund of an appropriate amount, alternatively discounts for additional units (choice of the customer)

aswell as hybrid solutions:
- hosted units could be billed the same 310$/ 6TH regardless of efficiency, compensation only needed for possible lower hashrate but not efficiency


Finding a good solution to this is obviously in spondoolies and their customers best interest, so let´s see how the final numbers will turn out.

Let´s wait for the exact performance numbers so we can work out the amount and form of appropriate compensation.

Atleast spondoolies has some decent IP and venture funding, so the risk of them actually defaulting should be quite low.


If die shrinks were such an easy business, Bitfury would have had a 0.4W/GH chip for half a year now.

Please spondoolies, if there is anything to be done within that compensation to keep the promised W/GH, it should have absolute priority.

Overclocking the chips and reaching a possibly even worse W/GH could turn this product from an excellent unit into catastrophic failure.

I think I speak for everyone when I say nobody will mind a higher used space per TH, if they still get around the same power consumption.


I am saying this (also) because with the promised stats, the sp30 had a 20% better energy efficiency than what the S4 should have.


Many customers also opted for the hosting groupbuy. Will the effective running cost per TH stay the same on that?


I would propose setting the chips to a low enough speed so the advertised W/GH is met, and shipping additional units to get to the total ordered hashrate as soon as possible.

@spondoolies

Does the lower performance corelate with a higher W/GH or will you be able to keep that as advertised?

You need to look at the efficiency of the PSU and whether it is multi rail or single rail (although most multi rail psus are quite okay for antminers).

Finally, most PSU manufactureres offer a warranty which would cover defects within a certain time.

Freight planes are often flying even though passengers are no longer transported. I do not know whether DHL flies from Ben Gurion though.

In any way, spondoolies should have the capacity to host the small number of July batch units in their datacenter until flights are possible again, so please everyone relax and look forward to the first sp30s.

No, but coupons force more batches of S3s.

They have previously announced they would build blades for the rackmount solution, using their new chips.

Bitmain announced the lowest estimated power consumption of their 28nm chip and will utilize this in a rackmountable design in order to be able to compete with spondoolies and bitfury next gen.
(Bitfury has rackmountable 0.75W/GH/s at the moment)


Once they have their high volume S3 production fully in place, they will announce S3 prices moving forward.

There will be a batch 4 and at some point an S4.

Batch 4 is needed to use the coupons from the first batches 

There are several guides and exchanges where you can get your bitcoin. The mining forum isn´t really the best place to start (although some mining companies do take $)

They are still very much on time, as it is still July

It is also understandable that they dont comment at this point, as they are probably pulling 24/7 working days to get everything running.

Even if DHL couldn´t ship, they would be able to locally host your units in their datacenter (atleast for the July batch, as it is very small).


I also find it highly disrespectful and inhumane to reduce an armed conflict to "I hope my stuff wil ship in time".

@spondoolies

Can you confirm that you took delivery of the chips?

...We can neither confirm nor deny that we took delivery of the first chips today...

Spondoolies is not a charity.

They have competitive pricing for their product, and that is it.

If you don´t like their pricing, go buy from some other company, but I doubt you will get the same quality anywhere at the moment.

Except the sheep that go back to BFL, they have it coming (although I don´t wish it to them).

July / early August.

And yes, I will only start the laughing once I receive them.

Spondoolies is a much jounger company than most competitors, with less funding.
All of those competitors either had high original funding or pre-orders, even Bitfury had preorders at around $1m to help with his NRE ($1m is the typical amount for 55-40nm NRE).

If you want to bitch about pre-orders, please go to the KNC thread and ask them why they had their Neptune pre-ordered while they were sitting on around $17m in profits from their first batches.
Even bitmain had around 3 weeks PREORDER on their recent S3 sales.

The fact that they did sell August preorders is proof that there was a market for it, and it was therefore the right decision to satisfy that demand.


When spondoolies is at the size of these competitors, I am sure that they will also sell units from stock (or with very short leadtime).

Until then, I will not comment on any more of these perpetual pre-payment vs in-stock discussions.

I will however laugh at you from the top of my fortress of sp30s.

This is contradictory.
If you make less, there is less revenue to reinvest.

In this fast paced environment, you need to grow fast to stay competitive.

Prepayment is the only option for them, as they didnt have funding for all pre-orders to be produced ( we are talking about money for ~3 months here).

It would be unwise to settle for lower profits, as spondoolies needs to grow in order to stay competitive.

As long as there is a pre-order market for this sort of product, it would be unwise to not use it to the advantage of your company.

To the traditional finance and even venture-capital industry, most things bitcoin related are very-high risk and it is therefore hard to find financing.

If you do find financing, the investors will want a very high percentage of the earnings, which would lead to even higher unit prices for customers.

Finally, certain contracts might be in place that hinder spondoolies from getting additional venture capital (from other sources), as this would decrease the profits from the original venture / angel investors.

The latter is pure speculation, but not too uncommon.


Let´s rather focus on the imminent production of sp30s and the impact on the mining community

As spondoolies becomes a bigger player in the mining space, I am sure they will have more freedom in financing and pricing of their units in the future.

This has been debated several times.

Spondoolies ("only") had around $4m in funding (before sp10).

Parts for sp30 production batches need to be ordered around 2 months in advance, chips more like 3.

Parts and manufacturing costs alone are around $2m per month (assuming 1000 units produced), and chip NRE is typically around $3-5M, which also needs to be gotten back.

Spondoolies already fronted the NRE, and cannot produce units without the parts (which they in turn had to pre-pay and pre-order).


Unless you can produce money from thin air, there really is no other option to have customers pre-pay some orders.

Later batches might be available with less pre-payment required, since spondoolies should soon recover the NRE and only needs to pay for parts in production.


Pre-payment or made-to-order also allows them to estimate their production volume much more accurately.

One thing I can say about technobit boards, they are definately "overengineered" in terms of cooling.

They will work in even the hottest environment, so that should give everyone some peace of mind. These arctic coolers can easily dissipate 150W+ with the stock fans, and each chip should be far below that.