I am curious what is the total cost of one unit of deployable S9 including one unit of official APW3+ PSU, shipping cost, tax charges, power cable and whatnot in your area.

Take me for example, being located in Sichuan, the price I pay is
RMB 11,100 (recently dropped from previous 11300 ) for S9 13TH plus one official APW3+ PSU bundled together.
200 per unit shipping
15 for cable

Total cost RMB 11,315

Over the past years, the Chinese seem to have displayed great competence in hardware design and manufacturing, evidenced by the fast rise of companies such as avalon and to a greater degree, bitmain, contrasted by the fall of their overseas competitors. But the club of increasingly small number is seeing a newcomer - a previously unknown brand called Yibite.

Last week an invitation email found its way into my email inbox. I was invited by the company to attend their new product launch event in Chengdu, Sichuan tmr. For uninitiated, the province of Sichuan has become a hotbed for bitcoin mining due to abundant hydropower; it is also the place where yours truly chose to locate his moderate SinoHash farm.

I am not sure if I will attend, as I am expecting to receive a new shipment of S9 over the next three days and want to put them online asap. Just post this here thinking that it may interest some of you.

Some key points after a brief review of the email:
The company is publicly listed (at least claim to be - I haven't looked it up), which may give it some legitimacy
The company promise to give 6-month warranty, whilst Bitmain gives you a meager 3 months.
The company claims to have power efficiency of 140W/T, which doesn't seem to be especially impressive.
The company claims that they will release 5,000 units at the launch event.

Anyway, I think this is an interesting development.

Disclaimer: I am not in anyway associated with the company (Yibite) or compensated by it to post this

I recently built my own mining farm and decided to make it available for hosting. To me, the problem with cloud mining is quite clear -  they can sell whatever amount of hashrate that they claim they have, and investors have no reliable ways to verify. Hosted mining is much easier to hold accountable in this regard as users are able to see the status of each individual miner through a third party mining pool. It is just beyond me why people still go to these cloud mining services to purchase these "contracts", shares or hashrates or whatnots. Are there any benefits that I am not aware of?

[Bitmain has released a new batch of S9s for the Chinese market. The model is priced at RMB11,500 per unit (USD 1,672.119). This is your chance to get some of the best miners available for the best price available and have them hosted in the world's cheapest hosting service provider SinoHash, you will more than likely to ROI within a year.Contact eric.mu@sinohash.com for more details.]

Bitmain has released a new batch of S9s for the Chinese market. The model is priced at RMB11,500 per unit  (USD 1,672.119).

This is your chance to get some of the best miners available for the best price available and have them hosted in the world's cheapest hosting service provider SinoHash, you will more than likely to ROI within a year.

Contact eric.mu@sinohash.com for more details.

I constantly get told that it makes more sense to buy and hold than mine yourself - wondering what is your experience as miners.

I constantly hear people arguing for mining as opposed to buying and holding or vice versa as better investment strategy - is there any reliable source of information that compares the two over an extended period of time?

I am aware that cloudmining scene is ridden with scams and ponzis. But I am interested to learn what hosting services are there that offer reliable and cost-effective services and with good track record. Thanks!

[PREMIUM TURNKEY HOSTING FROM CHINA]

Update 1: SinoHash's one-megawatt facility has been completed and will be fully operational tomorrow (2016-12-2).  

Update 2: The headline has been modified from the original "Near-complete China-based Mining Facility Opens Up Pre-orders" to reflect on the progress of the project

PREMIUM TURNKEY HOSTING FROM CHINA

★★★ 0.045/kWh (LOWEST IN THE WORLD!) ★★★

These prices include the costs of electricity, ventilation, cooling, networking and:

24/7/365 security staff
Pool configuration
Dedicated webcam

★★★ Capacity: 1 MW; 25% Full ★★★

Background:

SinoHash is a new bitcoin mining hosting service operating from China. Its one megawatt facility which has been under construction for a month is now near completion and expected to be operational by the end of next week tommorrow (2016-12-2).
This facility, located in Sichuan province of China, is capable of hosting 700 to 800 units of bitcoin miners depending on specific models.
Once completed, the SinoHash facility will be offering hosting service to the global mining community for a competitive price of USD 0.045 or RMB0.30 per kWh. So far, this low price is second to none in mining hosting world.
Given the amount of interest this service has already received and limited capacity, we decide to open up preorders to allow early users to reserve space when there still is.

Method:
Interested parties please send a deposit of 0.05 BTC per unit to the following address:
17sJZCctrh8wiVy18CYRu8o6jKjBiXb28F.
This deposit is non-refundable but will be deducted from your mining cost once the service starts.
Anyone who has completed the transaction please post your transition ID on this thread or PM OP as a way of notification.
We encourage each user to reserve no more than 20 units of space as it is in our interest to have as many customers as we can.
Once the 700 units limit is met, OP will update this post and return the fund of the unsuccessful applicants back to their wallet addresses.  
For a detailed agreement please refer to this page.
Had you have further enquiries, please refer to the company website or contact OP, founder and owner of SinoHash at eric.mu@sinohash.com.

Terms:

SinoHash Miner Hosting Agreement

SinoHash undertakes to be production-ready by the time the miners arrive. In case the hardware arrive whilst SinoHash fails to deliver the Service, SinoHash undertakes to compensate the Customer the amount of bitcoins or other crypto coins mined per day minus the hosting cost that both sides agreed to or its fiat value of the specific day. In case the delay exceeds 10 days, the Customer has at is sole discretion to demand all its hardware to be returned with all associated shipping cost borne by SinoHash.

SinoHash undertakes to pick up the hardware at the delivery point and deploy them within three business days after their arrival.

SinoHash undertakes to ensure safety of the Customer’s hardware from risks including fire, and theft.

Customer undertakes to ensure that the hardware is in good condition and functional when they reach SinoHash. SinoHash will use best effort to meet all requirements necessary for sustained optimal performance but have no liabilities if the hardware fail to operate due to manufacturing, design defects or shipping accidents; however, it undertake return the hardware to the manufacturer had their warranty still been valid and use best effort to repair the hardware either by themselves or using third party services.

SinoHash undertakes to ensure stable power supply and Internet connection during the service term except in extreme cases when its partner hydropower station fails to supply power or unpreventable Internet outage, then it undertakes to make best effort to find a alternative hosting place as a temporary solution and at a cost no higher than the SinoHash Hosting Rate.

The Customer has in its discretion the option to relocate Hardware but undertake to notify SinoHash with three months of notice. In case the Customer fails to give three months’ notice, he is liable for a penalty charge equivalent of three months of hosting cost to SinoHash for immediate release of the Hardware.

SinoHash will charge a fixed Hosting Rate of RMB 0.3 or USD 0.045 per kWh. This includes the electricity and all costs associated with the service. SinoHash undertake not to change the rate during the service term.

Some background: I am an owner of a currently under-development megawatt mining farm in China. I intend to make the facility available for hosting and to serve a global user base. Now the farm is near-ready, and naturally, I need to decide on the prices quickly. A common dilemma that is perhaps faced by many in similar situation: Too high, you won't get customers, at least, happy ones; too low, you may have to cut corners thus hard to make your business sustainable.

In total, I invested about USD 20,000 for the infrastructure (http://imgur.com/a/zQAY2 ) and will pay RMB0.26 per kWh for electricity - I know that this is not the lowest in industry and are not smug about it. In terms of hosting price, I am thinking RMB0.30 per kWh (or 4.4 USD cents).

To ensure security, I will hire a security guard (RMB 3000 per month ). I also have a local partner who will take care of the technical issues.

After some market research, I think that 4.4 USD cents per kWh is likely to be very competitive for now - this site (https://bitmainwarranty.com/ ) for example is one of the services I compared mine with.

My question is intended to be directed to people who are already using this kind of services:

Do you think 4.4 USD cents per kWh is a good price? - There may never been good enough price and I'm aware of that even with this price, you won't be able to ROI within a year assuming coin price will stay more or less the same and difficulty level will grow a moderate 3% per adjustment.

If you are using any services, I would like to know what is the price that you are paying. And what are some other considerations that went into your final decision.

Thanks.

[HaoBTC:]

HaoBTC:
Launched in Sep, 2014, HaoBTC is a leading miner, exchange and wallet service in China. We built the world's first Bitcoin-denominated interest-bearing wallet and have paid over 2400BTC to our users in interest. We operate mining DCs across China and has a hashrate in excess of 80PH to date.

HaoBTC Pool:
We have been running our own mining pool in early June. After a month and half of intensive testing and fine-tuning, we are confident enough that we decide to make it available for the mining community.

Why?
Join HaoBTC Pool now for lower fees (1.5%), high uptime, low orphan rate and high DDOS-resistence. Also, mining at a new pool increases decentralization, trust and value of Bitcoin.

Reward type:
PPS - Pay Per Share. Each submitted share is worth a certain amount of Bitcoin.


For any feedback, please contact me directly or posting on this thread.

My name is Eric Mu and recently I filmed HaoBTC's Bitcoin mine here in Kangding, China. I uploaded the video to Youtube and it was posted by someone else on Reddit. Then someone that goes by the alias 3xploit on Reddit (later confirmed to be Marshall Long, CEO of Final Hash, one of the world’s largest bitcoin mines in USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zKuoqZLyKg&feature=youtu.be) claims that I was lying and that the mine in the video was owned by a man named 李木. This is serious accusation for 3xploit was suggesting that I was lying and that HaoBTC had been engaged in fraud - neither is true. I thus decided to accept 3xploit's challenge - I will prove that I have been honest and that the mine is owned by HaoBTC, my legal employer. If 3xploit can prove otherwise is the case, then I am willing to pay him 100BTC; if he can't then, he is liable to pay me the same amount.

(This post has been edited to add extra information )

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4nmo0c/a_closeup_look_at_the_haobtc_mining_farm_in_china/

So the company that I work for is interested in getting someone to perform an independent security audit - which has been demanded by our users for a long time. Today, I contacted someone I met briefly at a Bitcoin conference back in 2014. And he sent his quote within a couple hours (see the screenshot ) - I am curious as to if there are any industry standards in this area and if this service is overpriced or reasonable enough.

Over a year ago, I helped this Chinese BTC forum called Bikeji launch. The site, whose name means "Coin Technology", had since then gained traction steadily and shows some healthy statistics. As of today, the forum has accumulated over 2,000 registered users and has a daily UV exceeding 2,000 (over 3,000 during peak time).

This led us to think there may be a way to monetize (moderately) and generate a small profit to pay our developer to improve the service's functionality and user experience.
 
So recently we started sales and was honored to have BitFury, an industry leader, as the first customer. Now we are wondering if other overseas Bitcoin services have such need to reach the Chinese Bitcoiners.

Since we just started sales, we decided to give our early customers the greatest value for their money. Basically, for a moderate amount of money (PM me if you want to know the prices), we grant you a special sponsorship. This will entitle you a half-year banner the same size as the BitFury one currently on the front page. In addition, we will help you create a dedicated "node" (the concept is similar to subreddit) for discussion dedicated to your company, translate and write your press releases on demand and answer questions that readers may have, etc.

P.S. The site is also the first crowd-funded BTC forum in China. During its IPO, about 100 BTC was raised from over 100 shareholders. Because we rely mostly on volunteers, we still have more than half left. If you want to own a share, you can register and post and wait for someone to come up and sell one to you.

I have been investing some money in Chinese P2P lending for over three years. Compared with Bitcoin, it has some advantages (and of course disadvantages too). My experience is that it is fairly safe and has yielded 15% APR. However, it is not available to most overseas users cuz Chinese bank account and ID are required. I am thinking if there a need for such a service using BTC as a payment rail and allow people around the world to invest in Chinese P2P lending. Does this sound like a good idea to you guys?

I ask because this is the question that we have been asking ourselves a lot recently.
We are a Chinese BTC company that has invested a lot in mining and also runs an off-chain wallet service. So we have a vested interest in Bitcoin not failing. Like many Chinese miners, we believe that a simple and conservative solution to the block size question would be the best, but it seems that neither Core or Classic is willing to offer. I would very much like to hear your views.

[HaoBTC will continue to increase hashrate, support Bitcoin and support block size increase.]

HaoBTC will continue to increase hashrate, support Bitcoin and support block size increase.
By Wu Gang

The Bticoin blockchain is a proof-of-work blockchain. In the past, it has been one chain and in the future, will continue to stay one. However, the consensus mechanism means that those who own 51% of the hash rate of the entire network will determine the future of the chain.
Everyone is free to decide how much hash power they want to hold. Those who have greater faith in the technology express such faith by holding more. Thus it is a matter of faith how much hash rate one choose to own.
The reason that China “own” over 50% of the total hash rate is because that we have great faith in the prospects of the Bitcoin. This has motivated us to devote great amount of labor, money and other resources. The fact that we own over 50% hash rate is a natural consequence of the faith rather than seeking to dominate Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin supporters outside China are also free to increase as much hash rate they like. We are pleased to see them owning more. The proof-of-work mechanism has been proven to be the fairest among all alternatives, thus the current situation should be seen as a manifestation of faith.
The Chinese mining pools accounts for over half of the entire network’s total hash rate, but the hash rate is not controlled by one entity, but many ones and in a distributed fashion. Every party has its own interest and agenda; most of them are well aware of the fact that the long-term prosperity of Bitcoin represents the greater interest.
We support block size increase. The most ideal would be that the increase will be realised via the Bitcoin-core. We will also support Bitcoin-classic, if it proves to be the most agreed-upon. As long as a proposal is reasonable and reliable, we will give it our support.

Source: https://www.bikeji.com/t/3114#reply10

We are a Chinese BTC company that already allow Chinese users rapid fiat deposit and withdrawal. We have been constantly asked by overseas users about when we will do the same for them. Would like to know what options are there.

Contact me by email if you prefer.

When HaoBTC launched its first BTC mining investment instrument, which is probably best known for the slightly quirky feature of hourly interest, it soon became enormously popular among users for having no lock-up period allowing users to make withdrawals anytime.
Bearing that in mind, when we designed our next product, named Finance, we decided to retain the popular feature of flexible withdrawal but offering the chance for investors to earn a higher interest rate.
The downside?
Hardly any, except:
1. A minimum deposit requirement of 10BTC. If you have less than that amount of BTC, you are still welcome to use the older product, which will continue to be available and pays an interest of 8% p.a.
2. If the user decide to redeem his or her fund prematurely, that is to say, before the time of investment reaches a full month or a number of months, the person will have to forgo the interest payment of the month or the last month if he or she has invested more than one month.

Best regards,
Eric Mu

For further inquiries, PM me or contact me by:
E: eric.mu@haobtc.com
T: @muxiaoliang
S: ericmuxl

The price of bitcoin has stabilized in recent months. This improves the perspectives of Chinese miners who construct new mines in the region with cheap energy.

A specialist on Chinese digital economy and the author of three books, Tim Swanson published photos of the new farm in his twitter:

The miners build their station in the place where energy is really cheap – and they pay just 0.3 USD per 1 kWh. This makes Sichuan a fertile ground for miners.

Swanson does not name the firm which is in charge of “bitcoin farm”, but a short search shows that the company in question is HaoBTC.

“HaoBTC is an interest-bearing multi-funciton wallet service. We provide interest-bearing wallet service as well as onchain multisig vault service.”
Presently the company promises a dividend rate at about 10% on any bitcoin deposit. It claims that their clients can take the money out of the wallet like fiat coins out of the pocket.

Now the company has invested in bitcoin mining. One of the creators of the new “bitcoin mine” and Forbes columnist, Eric Mu even promises to spend three months working at a new mine.

As CoinFox reported earlier, Chinese bitcoin companies continue to build mines all over the country. In the beginning of 2015 Motherboard site published a video about Chinese “bitcoin mine” place in one of the northern provinces of the country. The mining complex occupies several floors in the industrial building. Four people working in shifts supervise long lines of computers that produced bitcoins every hour. Owners of the business claim that despite all the difficulties with the status of bitcoin in China the business is profitable – and the new bitcoin mine in Sichuan confirms that this is a trend.

Source: http://www.coinfox.info/index.php/en/allnews/25-company/2066-chinese-wallet-service-builds-new-bitcoin-mining-station-near-tibet

One of the things we don’t often encounter in the world of Bitcoin and digital currency is the chance to crowdfund a brand new gambling platform. As you may have noticed in the past, Bitcoin and gambling seem to go hand in hand these days, and there is a huge market to conquer. OKDice is looking to become a major player in the Bitcoin gambling space, and they need funding in order to do so.

Rather than looking for one or more investors for funding, OKDice is trying their hand at a crowdfunding campaign. And that crowdfunding campaign is hosted by the OKDice website itself, with over 369 BTC being raised to date. As you would come to expect from any crowdfunding campaign, becoming a backer will entitle you to a reward.

In the case of OKDice’s crowdfunding campaign, anyone backing the project will automatically become a dividend-earning shareholder. That being said, the details regarding the crowdfunding campaign are a bit vague, as there is only a deposit address. Make sure to do your own research if you decide to invest money in this company.

 
HaoBTC’s Enterprise Vault

 

At the start of April, HaoBTC launched a new security feature in terms of Bitcoin wallet technology. Enterprise Vault is an “m-of-n multi-signature wallet”, ensuring that no single party can be in control of the funds raised during the crowdfunding campaign. And with over 360 Bitcoin raised so far, extra wallet security is more than welcome.

An OKDice spokersperson told BTC.com:

    “By using the HaoBTC Vault,permissions from multiple individuals each controlling one co-signing key will be required. Furthermore, I strongly believe that HaoBTC’s Enterprise Vault will be invaluable in regards to greatly enhanced security and increased users’ confidence in the OKDice website.”

What makes ‘m-of-n multi-signature’ wallet technology so interesting is the fact that multiple users are required to give permission through their co-signing key. Failure to do so will ensure that any funds stored in the Bitcoin wallet will remain un-spendable. This new implementation of multi-signature Bitcoin wallet security is a great tool to reassure customers their funds are completely safe.

When talking about the benefits of m-of-n multi-signature technology, HaoBTC CEO Wu Gang said:

    “There are many benefits, and one of the biggest is letting users have up to 10 co-signers for a single wallet address. It effectively mitigates counterparty risk. Our aim is to make Enterprise Vault an industry standard. As awareness grows, companies will see how beneficial it is.”

Other Services To Implement Enterprise Vault Security?

HaoBTC SmallCrowdfunding with Bitcoin is a great way for a company to not just raise the necessary funds, but also gauge whether or not there is a legitimate interest in their service. However, there has always been one major problem up until now: every Bitcoin address only required one key to spend the funds. Not the most secure solution, as you can undoubtedly imagine.

As a result of that lackluster wallet security of the past, several fundraising efforts have gone awry, both in China and the rest of the world. The most notorious example of such malpractice is ASICMiner, a mining hardware manufacturer. Investors were left in the cold once the company’s CEO decided to take all the funds with him and never be heard from again.

By developing a new layer of Bitcoin Wallet security, HaoBTC wants to show the world that China-based digital currency companies can be secure. Furthermore, the long-term goal is to restore trust among investors, regardless of where they live.