I've never seen a 1lb PSU.  Corsair 750 weighs at least 4lb.

OK, so that will make it 30lb.  Still well over 1.1lb.  My point that this cannot be the X-3.  Perhaps the 1.1lb is the letter by which BA informs Bogart that he's not getting his box... ever.  They just figured to get him excited first by sending via DHL.

This cannot possibly be the X-3.  It's only 1.1lbs.  X-3 will be at least 45lbs.  What did you order that only weighs 1lb?

July 31 came and went, despite BA's promise that all X-3 orders would "be completed by the end of the month". 

The worst part is not the delay, it's that I've never seen a company, not only blatantly lie, but then with a completely straight face tell the world that

Unbelievable.  In my so many years, I've never seen a company lie like this.  I get that sometimes things get screwed up and shit happens.  But ... when you blatantly lie, your credibility is 100% out of the window.  Noone will ever believe you again.  Ever.  Is it that in China when parents raise children they teach them that lying is ok?  Or is it just the parent's of the owners of BA never taught them about lying?  Are the parents of BA owners totally and utterly ashamed of themselves for raising such losers in life?

U.n.b.e.l.i.e.v.a.b.l.e.... 

Basically ... yes.  In all my dealings with SP-Tech, I found them to be 100% up-and-up and both Guy and Zvi rock.  Because of my history with them, I'm giving them the full benefit of the doubt that perhaps it was me who misunderstood compensation.

I have a question on compensation for SP30's.

Per note announcing the SP30: http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/blogs/news/14979953-introducing-the-sp30:


The hash rate spec dropped from 5.4TH/s to 4.5TH/s -- a reduction of 16.7%.  Based on this, those of us who paid $5095 are due for a compensation of $5095 * 16.7% = ~$850 -- with the final adjusted price being $5095 - $850 = $4244.

Yet, new customers are now charged $3895 for the same product -- which is a significantly higher discount than the one paid by those of us who pre-ordered a while back.

So, the question for Spondoolies is:  Is 16.7% the final compensation that is coming in October?

Dear BlackArrow -- I have a very simple question.

You said the following on your most recent update:


Today is July 29 and my "shipment information" on my Black Arrow account is blank.  I'm assuming that this means you haven't yet shipped my X-3.  

The question is:  Do you promise based on your communication above that my X-3 will be shipped within 2 days, by July 31?

Thank you.

I'm so proud of the Spondoolies team! 

What a challenge it must be to come to work each day, create a product that has little margin for error as every day slip makes such a difference.  At the same time, you have to probably run to the bomb shelters from the constant rocket barrage from Gaza.  I hope a lot of your competitors learn from you on what it takes to survive and thrive.

I support you and I'm sure a LOT of your customers here on the forum support you too.  While I cannot wait to get my SP30 ... most importantly, please be sure to stay safe!!! 

Could this be the surprise they were referring to all along ?!?! 

Oh wait, that's no surprise. 

Maybe the surprise is that BA owns both, GHash.io and BTCGuild and they will issue a new blockchain which effectively refunds all of us who spent in BTC by wiping out those transactions? 

Too bad I sent them the wire....

Rock53 -- please take the time to do a bit more research.  Much of what you said may be your experience but is not based on sound understanding of mining.

The perfect storm you mentioned, difficulty increased and hashing power more than doubled isn't a perfect storm....  Difficulty increased happened *because* hashing power increased.  The two are not independent of each other.  The only thing you should pay attention to is difficulty increasing.  It represents the bitcoin protocol trying to adjust so that blocks don't get solved more often than about every 10 minutes, no matter how much hashing power there is.

If Slush's made you twice as much as GHash or BTC Guild, then you were simply getting lucky for a short period of time.  If you waited a bit more with Slush's you'd see it all equalize.  The only reason to choose one pool over the other is their reporting tools and their consistency in paying out.  Other than that, you will see the exact same payout over time (perhaps more for a day or two then less for a day or two).  The smaller the pool, the greater the variance and length of high days vs. low days.  But over time, they will all be the same.

As to you selling S1's .... great idea... their value is approaching 0 due to their electric inefficiency so good time to bail. 

The problem is not with GHASH.  It is not relevant whether they are or aren't "evil".  The problem is with bitcoin itself if neither protocol nor the community are able to address one "evil" actor. 

If people are to invest their life savings into bitcoin, they need to be guaranteed there is no inherent problems with the protocol.  There clearly is.  The whole point of bitcoin is that we don't trust the government to do the right thing.  Yet we put trust in some random pool with no built-in mechanisms to automatically prevent it from being able to do something evil?

I've been following this thread and one thing becomes more and more clear by the day: 51% attack is truly the doomsday scenario for bitcoin.  There is no solution.

I've read Satoshi Nakamoto's paper and the assumption he makes at the outset is that in the world of bitcoin, a dishonest miner can never and will never obtain more hashing power than a group of honest miners.  He never prepared for the scenario of a 50+% miner on whose honesty we must all depend.  He alludes to the fact that should that happen, bitcoin is doomed.

Let's look at possible solutions:

1.  Let's "convince" all the fellow miners to abandon the pool that is proven to be dishonest....

This goes against human nature.  If you build any system, economic or political where the "greater good" is at conflict with what an individual perceives to be in their immediate interest, the individual's interest will win out.  This is why communism and socialism have failed.  History is full of examples where any attempts to "shame" greedy actors into behaving in socially-centric manner have not had any success.  Humans will only act in socially-centric manner if and only if that action benefits them individually.  Why do you think the US government is borrowing from our children $0.40 for each $1 they spend?  Because our children can't vote them out.

2. Let's provide a technical solution that penalizes pooling. 

So, this will only put the casual miner (like myself) out of business.  We will all be forced to sell our hardware on pennies on the dollar to the "organized miners" who all mine individually but share the same wallet between their 20,000 S1 miners.  Net effect is exactly the same.  There's going to be several such actors and it would be very easy for, say the government of China, to just buy out enough of them to get the 51% control of hashing power.  And, they proceed to destroy the Bitcoin.  I should not single out China here... the US government would do the same in a heartbeat.

3.  There is no 3rd solution.  The miners must follow the longest chain.  If they don't, there will be multiple chains and no one will ever know if their transaction is confirmed.  Longest chain is controlled by anyone who controls 50.1% hashing power.  That actor must be "trusted" to not double-spend.  Regardless of whether destroying bitcoin is or isn't in the best interest of the controller of 50.1% hashing power, the fact we have to trust such an actor is categorically and fundamentally contradictory to the entire premise of bitcoin, whose motto is "trust no one". 

Perhaps smarter people can figure out a solution here, but I just don't see it. 

You are technically correct.  However, would someone want to put their life savings in a network where you have to trust that miners would simply leave.  What if the "unknown" pool gets to be 50+% and it's really controlled by the China government? 

The entire point for Bitcoin is that you "trust not a single party" but the entire network.  However, in the world where it is so likely that 51% of the networking power could possibly be controlled by a party who we all have to trust... well, that breaks the bitcoin promise.

This is a serious, serious issue and the Bitcoin Foundation better be issuing a statement as to what they will do to remedy.  Them staying quiet is also worrisome.

That is not the problem.  The problem is that for the bitcoin to get to $100,000 per btc, you need to have blind trust in the network.  And that includes trusting that there isn't a shred of possibility that there is someone crazy enough to do something stupid.  And we know there are a lot of crazy people.  

Scenario for you: China pays GHASH $1Billion to purchase the pool for the purpose of destroying bitcoin.  $1B is nothing to China -- far less that the threat bitcoin poses.

I'm guessing he meant BTU ... LOL

I have 2 SP10's + 1 S2 running in my garage.  You are 100% right in that I had to re-seat each S2 hashing board before plugging it in.  But now, it works like a charm.  The S2 does draw 50% more power than do SP10's.

HOWEVER, the S2's are super-quiet.  SP10's are so loud that even if I really really wanted to, I could not add one to my collection.  Which basically, leaves me with the S2 as the only option on the market.  You cannot underestimate the value of quiet.  I can overcome the rattley stuff inside.  Noise is very difficult to overcome.

I ordered Black Arrow X-3 on December 17 and paid $6,100 at the time which included shipping and wire transfer fees.  X-3 called for a Feb shipping for 2 TH/s. 

We all know what happened to that date.  They weren't even close.  The missed it by such a big mile that it's obvious they were never going to make that date.  The reason given to us was that the power that the early unit was drawing was 1.5W per GH/s and that was going to be uncompetitive.  Seriously?!  The only competitor at the time was the AntMiner S1 and it was drawing 2W per GH/s.  They could have shipped the X-3 in Feb and we would have all been thrilled.  And they would have had extra months to get X-3A out with a better power draw.

So, now we are mid-May with a promise that one day we'll get a 3 TH/s for the cost of an additional power supply.  I ordered the power supply about 2 weeks ago from MineSource for an additional $255 putting the entire cost about $6,400 for 3TH/s with no idea when I'd get it.

YESTERDAY, I decided to also order 2 units of Spondoolies SP-10 with a promised hash rate of 3TH/s.  I reached out to Guy Corem, the CEO of Spondoolies who offered me a deal to purchase 2 SP-10's for $6,000 including shipping.  I paid something like 13.5 BTC ... and to my surprise, I already got a DHL tracking number for my order!  GREAT WORK, Spondoolies -- wow, what a great company.

So, I'm out $6,400 with BA since December for a 3TH/s product with an unknown ship date and another $6,000 for 3TH/s which I paid yesterday and will receive in the next couple of days.

I am not asking for a BA refund because I really want to know how this story turns out.  Even if I get a better deal from BA, I'm not even sure I'll have enough electricity to run it.

BA -- please take some lessons from your competition.  Spondoolies rock!

From my experience, it seems that overclocking the S2 just makes little sense.

Replacing the PSU (and paying an extra $350) + increasing load by 0.5amps just to get an extra 50 GH/s seems more risky than the value it will bring.

Would love to see what other people think.

I removed half the modules and unhooked the power cables to the motherboard.  The new cables from the Corsair fit perfectly ... so your suggestion worked.  Thank you!

Tried overclocking to 212 and getting 2-3% reject rate, despite the better PSU.  Going to try to scale down a bit to see if it makes a difference.

Thanks for the suggestion!  I was hoping to just disconnect the S2 cables from the Enermax and plug them into the Corsair.  No go on that -- S2 cables don't fit into the Corsair plugs.  Bummer.

Based on your suggestion, I'm assuming that the Corsair cables will plug into the S2 -- haven't tried it yet but will do so and report back.  Need to take all the modules out of the S2 again to pull this off since the cables do go under the modules.