Uh, so the picture you posted shows the continued climb of network difficulty, it doesn't do much to support your statement.  Difficulty is definitely not falling at all, let alone like a rock.

And with stuff like this happening we can continue to expect the rapid upward adjustment of difficulty:

The guy who wrote the Android app that notifies for Kano ckpool said (months ago) that he was going to add ckpool solo support as well, but he never did.  I seem to recall him posting that if anyone wanted to take over that aspect they were welcome to, but I do not have a link.

Well at least the price has climbed a little this past adjustment period, unlike the one previous.  We're starting this diff period with coins worth about $420, a good 10% bump from the start of last adjustment and almost on pace with difficulty.  I would like to see price continue to strengthen as the difficulty rises.  This is going to start getting really interesting here soon as we approach the halving.  Will manufacturers continue to push out hardware as fast as they can?  Will we reach a critical mass, or will the network continue to grow almost logarithmic fashion?  Only time will tell, but it is fun to speculate (and more-so when a 0.1btc reward is involved).  

Looking at a 2-month graph it does look like network hash rate is starting to plateau:



Although we just had 4 blocks solved in under 2 minutes, not good for difficulty:

Fixed your quote to better follow Bitmain's standard business operating procedures.

I know with certainty that they do not let any of this hardware just sit around, they mine (at great profit) with it from the moment the machines come off the assembly line.


Not sure what you're watching, but difficulty continues to rise at unprecedented rates as hardware manufacturers around the world scramble to get as much gear up and running before the halving.

That's why I specified retail cost, I'm sure you can shop around for the wholesale deals like you linked.  One thing you didn't factor in to your link and quoted price was the associated freight shipping cost, something you don't have to take into account with retail pricing.  It all comes out about the same in the end I think.

Even though I stated this is reasonable, it would still mean you are generating an excess of 620 watts every hour 24-hours a day.  Well we know you can't generate 24 hours a day unless you are above the arctic circle, so really even 475KW excess per month would be a stretch.

My bet is on 475 watts worth of panels.

The price I mentioned above is for panels only, it does not include batteries, conductors, conduit, controllers, etc.  I think batteries are still the most expensive component of a solar system.

But at least with the gekko sticks they are fun to tinker with!  They all respond the same, too, which isn't something you can say about the U3.

More smaller rentals over longer periods of time reduce variance compared to larger rentals over short time periods, that's why they appear to work better.

There's something wrong with the units you are reporting.  I sincerely doubt you have a solar farm producing 475 kilowatt-hours of power unless you've invested about $500,000 into an array farm and have it running on several acres of land.  I think you mean you have 475 watts worth of panels, that is much more reasonable (and not enough power for even a single S7.).  Maybe you mean you sell and average of 475KW back to the grid per month, also reasonable.  But I am confident you do not generate 475,000 watts of excess power per hour.

Retail solar panels cost roughly $1/watt, so you can estimate that a 60KW array will cost in excess of $60,000 and based on an average 100W panel size of 2'x4' cover roughly 5400 square feet.

Pages and pages and pages of problems with U3s and people are still buying them?  I don't get it.

Everyone, save yourself endless headaches and buy some gekko compac sticks!  Get 3 of them and they will equal a U3 in hash power but they don't "need" and R1 to control them and keep them running and they never zombie or have any other issues!

So basically you don't know anything about how to read a thread, you don't know anything about bitcoin, and you want people to tell you how to do everything?  How could you possibly expect to be a constructive poster with those credentials?

He probably bought the account and is now trying to trick Kano into divulging the associated mining credentials for the account.  Too bad Kano is too lazy to help him...

Man, I wish someone would build a hydro station in the mountains behind me so I could get some $0.01 power!  Even if just for a little while, it would be a sweet experiment...

Great, thanks for the explanations, makes sense.  I guess in my year here this was the soonest I had looked at the webpage after a block solve!

Why is the diff and diff % on this block reported with a tilde (~), is it approximate?  And if so, how come?  I don't see/haven't seen any other blocks like that.

Well at least price is still holding over $400, it was over $405 as I wrote this.  Hopefully it can stay above $400, there's something psychologically satisfying about seeing a $4xx price vs. a $3xx price.

Start reading these forums, every one of your questions is answered 1000 times here.  You won't learn by sitting back and waiting for everyone to tell you, you will learn by seeking out the knowledge yourself.  It's all here, start digging.

If the U3 actually worked as intended with no problems it would have been a fun little machine.  That's where the gekko pod comes in.  We all know it will work and we can surmise that, with today's better tech, it will work faster and more efficiently than the U3.  I really look forward to these pods being released.