people pretty much immediately after hashcash was released started observing that hashcash was like digital gold, and trying to work out how to control inflation. No one really figured it out until Satoshi. I think the difference is he didnt try to fix price inflation to zero (which seems to fail as it seems to require an outside data feed which becomes a point of centralisation or central rate setting policy) but rather controlled the supply inflation instead which is internally achievable without external reference.
I think many consider Bitcoin's main "innovation" to be the practical solution to BGP, but your notes are making clear to me that inflation-control was also a big unsolved issue. Seems obvious, thinking about it more, that it's a tough problem, but that hasn't been the narrative; at least not the one I've been mostly exposed to. So thanks again for the observations. Interesting that Satoshi's solution solves both issues in a somewhat atomic way. Well there were other known algorithms for BGP and the best of those required minimum 1/3 honest participants. The issue is that hidden in that is the assumption that participants can only participate once, and that assumes identity (or is-a-person credentials and a central trusted issuer). Identity is problematic on the internet, back when I published hashcash (1997) people were proposing identity centric ways to limit spam, and of course they were failing. Some people still are proposing such things. They start by assuming that the sender is reliably identifiable, and then design a protocol assuming that identifiable people would not spam, and/or plan to blacklist identified people who do spam. This does two things: firstly it erodes privacy, and secondly it doesnt even work because the spammers just create lots of identities or borrow or steal them or whatever. I view it as garbage in, garbage out: if you start with a false premise (that identity is a solved problem on the internet) you get garbage out: a protocol that doesnt work. Furthermore it is bad for privacy, so as well as not working it has very undesirable side-effects affecting everyones privacy. Hashcash was a rejection of identity, and tried to address the root-cause of the problem by adding sender cost in an anonymous/identityless, scalable way. I'd say bitcoin appears to make a similar rejection of identity approach. The bitcoin solution is one BGP vote per hashrate. ie rather than try to fight sybil, just go with it, and give people one vote per hash. That imposes maybe a lower inflation of votes than pure network/identity sybil, or at least its approximately fair in electrical cost and equipment investment. Its kind of curious that according to the selfish-mining paper, if that remains the conclusion, hashrate BGP is also assuming 1/3 honest hashrate (same ratio as previous BGP solutions, but just with "vote per hashrate" rather than "vote per participant". Secure the bitcoins, dont secure an identity. Security identity is hard, and if you try it anyway, then people can steal assets by identity theft, impersonation etc. Where is identity rooted? Its a human concept. So then you have TTPs and CAs, and those have never proven to be particularly secure; the RA processes are a source of identity theft. Adam |
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Expanding beyond Chaum's scheme, let me see if I've got the early attempts right:
eCash:
-- Pioneered digital signatures to do untraceable spending. "Good privacy".
-- Relied on a bank ("weak survivability"), and did not sufficiently solve double-spending
I think there are two things: online chaum ecash, has central double spending protection. that works very reliably right up until the central server goes offline (which it did when digicash went out of business). offline chaum ecash, the double spending protection is weak because its just a deterrent. all it does is identify who double spent (up to the limits of identification, which can be subject to identity fraud etc), following which presumably some sanction happens - person gets sued? conventional account frozen if assets in it to recoup losses or something. not really compatible with an identityless model. Hashcash:
-- Pioneered hashing-based proof-of-work. Built originally as an anti-DoS system that could be incorporated into a variety of projects.
-- Was not designed as a generalized digital-cash/monetary system
right so hashcash stamps are more like on-use stamps (for email postage, prevent server resource abuse etc). people pretty much immediately after hashcash was released started observing that hashcash was like digital gold, and trying to work out how to control inflation. No one really figured it out until Satoshi. I think the difference is he didnt try to fix price inflation to zero (which seems to fail as it seems to require an outside data feed which becomes a point of centralisation or central rate setting policy) but rather controlled the supply inflation instead which is internally achievable without external reference. b-money:
-- Used Hashcash to generate coins
-- The practical-to-implement version still relied on a collection of authoritative servers to do double-spend protection.
right. b-money was an idea only. probably other non-trivial things to work out to make it practical. Sander & Ta-Shma:
-- Auditable and anonymous cash
-- Still has a bank. From the paper's abstract: "The security of the system relies instead on the ability of the bank to maintain the integrity of a public database", which seems like a fatal survivability issue.
they proposed it in the context of audit of a bank. but because its keyless it is compatible with p2p use and people noticed that at the time as I recall. so if you figure out a way to do p2p ecash (which satoshi did) then you can combine it with Sander & Ta-Shma to get cryptographic privacy via ZK set-membership proof, and this is what zerocoin did - use (and optimize) sander & ta-shma with bitcoin. not fully implemented, but fully specified and practical if a bit inefficient. RPOW:
-- Used Hashcash (directly, or Hashcash "style"?) proofs-of-work and extended to be "reusable". Double-spend protection done via remote servers operating on trusted-computing platforms.
-- TCs can still have attack vectors pertaining to hardware manufacturers' original keys.
its pretty easy to implement hashcash - I am not sure if he used the reference library (it is quite optimised in assembler so he may have) probably the RPOW code is online. Hashcash is an algorithm (mathematical description) and there is a library/implementation focused at telnet protocols. Easy to use the algorithm for non-telnet encoding. Bit gold:
-- Used a proof-of-work (was it actually Hashcash?) in the definition of coins as a chain of proofs-of-work
-- Described the idea of using distributed secure time-stamping to log these proofs in a "title registry".
-- Never adequately described how the distributed secure time-stamping and title-registry-appending could actually work in practice.
Yes bit-gold proposed to use hashcash (I was unsure, but a while back found a clear reference on one of Nick Szabo's pages about it from a decade plus ago). And do you have a link to your variant of Brand's work?
no not really. There is a footnote in the thesis but I was unable to find the manuscript as its a masters thesis. I could write it up a bit better some time, but for someone familiar with the protocol details they could probably make it work from what was said in OP. The brands protocol itself is implemented eg http://cypherspace.org/credlib/ and links to papers there, and microsoft (who released the patents under a very open license) has an implementation also. Adam |
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How much did David Chaum have solved at Digicash/eCash? Some of the notes on the relevant wikipedia pages suggest he had double-spending solved: ... Depending on the payment transactions, one distinguishes between on-line and off-line electronic cash: If the payee has to contact a third party (e.g., the bank or the credit-card company acting as an acquirer) before accepting a payment, the system is called an on-line system.[2] In 1990, Chaum together with Naor proposed the first off-line e-cash system, which was also based on blind signatures.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcashAnyone have any more info on this? Was eCash's remaining problem merely initial-coin distribution, or was BGP actually not (practically) 'solved' despite the above? I moved the question and my comments on it into another thread in dev/tech section https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=856069.msg9526439#msg9526439 as its not really to do with speculation nor gold, though an interesting question! Adam |
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Moving this question into a new thread: How much did David Chaum have solved at Digicash/eCash? Some of the notes on the relevant wikipedia pages suggest he had double-spending solved: ... Depending on the payment transactions, one distinguishes between on-line and off-line electronic cash: If the payee has to contact a third party (e.g., the bank or the credit-card company acting as an acquirer) before accepting a payment, the system is called an on-line system.[2] In 1990, Chaum together with Naor proposed the first off-line e-cash system, which was also based on blind signatures.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcashAnyone have any more info on this? Was eCash's remaining problem merely initial-coin distribution, or was BGP actually not (practically) 'solved' despite the above? not solved at that time, it was only online double spend protection that was robust with Chaums scheme, and that was with respect to a central server that was the authority on which coins were spent. Good privacy, but weak survivability as very centralised. The offline double spending protection of Chaum was kind of weak because what it boils down to is you could actually double spend, but if you did that eventually someone would learn your identity, which they hoped would be sufficient deterrent. (Eventually the double spent coins would get deposited at the bank and a simultaneous equation in the double-spenders identity revealed). How it works is the coin has embedded in it your identity in a way the bank can verify, but which is kept private so long as you do not double spend. Chaums offline double spend is a bit space inefficient as it involves cut-and-choose a generic proof mechanism, also used by zerocoin and which is the primary cause of the zerocoin bloat. Hal Finney did a write up on this Chaum cut-and-choose scheme for more detail: https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Digital_money/?f=double_spending.articles.txtStefan Brands ecash system has more space efficient offline double spend protection because the coins support (without cut-and-choose) multiple attributes directly. However the default scheme is just delayed deposit (not offline respendable). Actually I guess Chaums offline scheme has that property also. I reinvented an offline respendable variant of Brands around 2000/2001 but when I asked him about it he pointed me at a footnote in his thesis / book referring to someone's masters thesis. How that works is people have multiple spare 0-denomination coins, so when you accept a coin you use this 0-denomination coin as the initial witness (random value chosen by recipient as part of the ZKP). In this way if someone downstream offline respends and does a double spend, its their 0-denomination coin with their identity in it that gets identified as the first double-spend. A downside of this is the coins grow on each respend. Its a bit like bitcoin as the respends are also pseudonymous but linked in their spend history (which I viewed as a not ideal limitation of the approach) where as the online coins are anonymous but more vulnerable to traffic analysis as you had to race to deposit to be guaranteed to receive. The other paper from 1999 was Sander & Ta-Shma's auditable anonymous electronic cash which is extended by zerocoin (its zero knowledge proof of set membership based - the list of unspent coins is public but to spend you prove in zero knowledge that your coin is one of the unspent ones, but not which one). Its kind of interesting as the "bank" doesnt have a private key, so its clearly p2p compatible. So kind of a zerocoin precursor existed before bitcoin, zerocoin refers to this paper. I think the main missing bits from Chaum/Brands/Sander & Ta-Shma/b-money/bitgold were how to do inflation control without reference to any central party or network external information and sybil resistant solution to byzantine generals problem (double spend problem - which spend of many comes first). Plus a bunch of implementation level detail. You can see that Wei Dai's b-money & Nick Szabo's bitgold both 1998 offered some directions on ideas to vote on or have a market effect setting inflation, and both included hashcash mining as bitcoin does, but they did not connect a p2p (no enrolment/no identity) solution to sybil attack on byzantine generals problem (double spending, which spend comes first) with mining, nor arrive at the elegant solution of having an engineered supply function that can be measured internal to the network that bitcoin introduces. Adam |
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But if you want to do a sidechain BTC transaction faster, you swap it for a small premium with someone who already has BTC on the sidechain and is planning to long term hold, or swap with someone trying to go the other direction. What you pay them will be small due to the mechanics of arbitrage. They'll just look for some small fee because to them if they're already long term BTC holders its basically free money, like interest on BTC to move funds back and forth and provide liquidity service for sidechains. The $ exchange rate is immaterial, the best candidate for sidechain liquidity provider is someone who is anyway holding their own or other peoples BTC for long term storage.
The longer the time-preference, the bigger the possible spread because of the increased risk of volatility over time. Your SC can offer varied time-preference risk for fee rates desired by different trading strategies. Like Certificates of Deposit offering different interest rates depending on deposit length. There isnt BTC denominated volatility because you're comparing BTC to BTC, unless the arbitrageur is not anyway a long term BTC holder, and so looking at BTCUSD volatility, in which case you would be right; however BTCUSD volatility is sufficiently high that holders of BTC could undercut non-holders taking BTCUSD exposure solely to gain the arbitrage profit. As I said the best candidate for sidechain liquidity provider is someone who is anyway holding their own or other peoples BTC for long term storage.Note also re your CoD rate comparison, you can buy forex forward contracts for below the interest cost of borrowing the money to exchange now. This is because the market maker can discount by using interest to move in the other direction. The same thing would take place in a mature arbitrage environment between sidechain and bitcoin, the arbitrageur can do it below the amortised 2wp fee cost, because he can hold positions in both chains and cancel out the flows in opposite directions, just as the forex forward contracts. If you're willing to wait for p2p trade you may even do it at bitcoin tx fee cost only using cross-chain atomic swaps (faster than 2wp but slower than via arbitrage agent). Or do the 2wp yourself direct if you're willing to wait. The interesting thing is the arbitrage can be both faster and cheaper than the 2wp, and trustless via smart-contracts. And because its a p2p blockchain on a technical* level anyone can do arbitrage without permission from anyone. (*Technical because there is also regulation: regulations may apply to arbitrage service; though I do think an interesting future potential is that regulators in more forward-looking jurisdictions will exempt zero-trust operations from regulation.) Adam |
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There seems to be some confusion about floating rates, sidechains are algorithmically pegged not floating.
Lets try a thought experiment. Say you can directly move a bitcoin to a sidechain or move it back to the mainchain with either direction taking 10minutes and normal bitcoin fees.
Clearly given that this is the best case confirmation time for bitcoins, and the peg protocol is algorithmic there will be effectively ZERO spread, because the algorithmic peg is an unlimited standing offer at parity (plus per KB fees) and is in direct competition to any market offer, and rational actors take the lowest offer.
Now we introduce the concept of time-preference. For security reasons (rather similar to coinbase maturity which sees you unable to spend freshly mined coins for 100 blocks) the algorithmic peg has a time-delay.
Now if you planned to hold anyway for that period or longer, then you dont care and the situation is unchanged.
But if you want to do a sidechain BTC transaction faster, you swap it for a small premium with someone who already has BTC on the sidechain and is planning to long term hold, or swap with someone trying to go the other direction. What you pay them will be small due to the mechanics of arbitrage. They'll just look for some small fee because to them if they're already long term BTC holders its basically free money, like interest on BTC to move funds back and forth and provide liquidity service for sidechains. The $ exchange rate is immaterial, the best candidate for sidechain liquidity provider is someone who is anyway holding their own or other peoples BTC for long term storage.
Anyone who tried to sell BTC on one chain for a lower than time-preference cost on another chain would just lose money.
I think the above logic and economic concept & precedent is extremely simple. It seems like some people misunderstood Konrad Graf's comments, he's just talking about the mechanics of the low arbitrage spread.
One can look to other bitcoin arbitrage scenarios for a hint at how it works. Look at the spread between btc-e & bitstamp now that multiple people are systematically arbitraging it. That is a far riskier arbitrage because you are relying on governance and security management of bitstamp & btc-e in the face of 50% failure rate of bitcoin exchanges. Ok these ones are survivors and better than full history average no doubt but still there is non zero risk there and yet the spread is basically 0, this is because of competition amongst arbitrators. Compare to a 2wp, where there is an algorithmic arbitrage. A bot can take that all-day long at zero risk (using smart-contracts).
The remaining non-imaginary risk is side-chain implementation defect, but the point of side-chains is to allow experimentation on new features to occur outside of bitcoin core. This is actually a good thing for bitcoin core's risk because it doesnt have to take as much new development risk itself. Sidechain development will also be rigorous like bitcoin, and you should look at the reputation of the authors of the sidechain you are considering using and have others review it or certify it before you dump your lifesavings into it. You can still do long term holding on bitcoin if you prefer, and benefit from the even lower than current mainchain risk.
The current pattern in bitcoin infrastructure is most transactions are offchain (in exchanges and other offchain accounting). Much of that code is not open, or inexpertly written or relying on firewalls and host security and hot wallet ratios plus you're vulnerable to governance failures, operator theft and or blackmail. Most bitcoin lost to date has been for these reasons. If, using sidechains, we get more innovation and more onchain transactions, its better to be onchain in a sidechain than offchain from bitcoin. You dont even own bitcoins offchain, you have an IOU for a bitcoin from a human who typically has no banking governance nor operational security experience, though with better capitalization and management things are improving.
I would think more transactions, more transaction types and more uses for bitcoin, and faster innovation on bitcoin and more onchain transactions and zerotrust/smart-contract based infrastructure are all positive things for bitcoin, and it seems to be that most people with a technical understanding hold the same view.
Its not that a sidechain displaces bitcoin hypothetically and that this is bad; a sidechain is bitcoin, its the mechanism to internetwork bitcoin, to build on it. Sidechains no more displace bitcoin than HTTP displaces the TCP and IP protocol it is transported on. Alt-coins and alt-shares are in nominal competition with bitcoin, though it seems highly unlikely they would catchup with bitcoin's network effect nor reach an appreciable real-life usage; but sidechains are not in competition.
Bitcoin has one advantage over sidechains - it has the subsidy, and full node security, so I'm sure it'll be able to defend itself against abandonment or insecurity, and sidechains depend on bitcoin anyway so all bitcoin users on which ever chains have a meta-incentive to see bitcoin main remain secure. We have decades of subsidy ahead to deal with fee-only security for bitcoin, and sidechains may move forward the ways to do that because the sidechain by default has only fee security from the start.
Anyway one potential use for a sidechain is to host a beta for a major new bitcoin version. If that version after say $1b value running in it for a year, gets upgraded into bitcoin, that hasnt displaced bitcoin, its facilitated its feature and performance upgrade, which is a good thing for everyone.
The exciting thing about the internet wasnt just the ability to send IP packets, but all the applications and permissionless innovation that could be built using that transport. Same for bitcoin.
Adam
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I read it but I feel like I'm missing something: its a 2 way peg, so both BTC and scBTC can move freely back and forth. Can you elaborate? How are the both to be pegged? How is the peg rate determined, and does it float? Since you are free to move coins between BTC and scBTC, the price will be the same. You don't sell scBTC for a lower price when you can transfer it back to BTC and sell it for the full price. Correct. I think its worth clarifying that the peg is algorithmic, because its seems from the thread that some people may not understand that. You, personally, can ask the network automatically to swap unlimited quantities of BTC on the sidechain for BTC on the main bitcoin chain. The only reason to swap with users using atomic swaps or trades is to do that faster. No one is going to take anything other than a negligible price difference because they can click a button and move the coins between chains themselves. Further because that 2wp backstop is there, and anyone and his dog can do arbitrage, with full confidence that they'll be able to exercise the 2wp and capitalise on the small time-preference, the will be small. It seems just as likely that the sidechain coins sell at a small premium for the time-preference access to side-chain features. (Time-preference means someones preference to gain access to something sooner rather than waiting eg 24hrs, and they'll sometimes be willing to pay a small fee to get it earlier, eg check advances or such things). I dont think it realistic that we would see anyone willing to sell sidechain BTC at anything significantly below par in either direction, to do so is to burn money needlessly. People will arbitrage it and its open to anyone to arbitrage. So unless someone wants to burn money (and bitcoin already supports proof of burn or pay to miners if you're into burning money or donating to miners), no one will be offering to swap sidechain BTC for BTC at anything far below or above $350 (assuming current market price of $350). eg $349.50 to $350.50 might be an example which is 15 basis points, that'd give someone a 15% return on an annual basis with steady arbitrage for a 2 day clearance time on the peg. They can maybe get a higher return (and hence be willing to offer even lower margins) by holding a float on both sides and cancelling some trades against others as those happen faster so they get more than one arbitrage fee per exercise of the 2wp. Obviously no one is encouraging anyone to put real money into untested or buggy sidechains. I dont think there will be lots of sidechains and the main sidechains will be extremely well tested and coded to the same rigor as bitcoin itself. Adam |
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Beautiful well built hardware is great but it does no good if btc price keeps falling and difficulty keeps going up. How good is a miner if BTC goes sub $100 and it costs more to power the thing than it earns.  Miners need to shut down but as long as people speculate that BTC will rise in the future they will continue to mine at a loss today. I am not sure they will continue to mine. It is more profitable to switch off older equipment and buy bitcoin than spend electricity at loss making J/BTC cost basis. Its normal at any given time that people will be switching off previous gen equipment as newer more electrically efficient equipment pushes old hardware below electrical breakeven with sunk cost economics (ie even losing money based on electrical cost, ignoring purchase cost). Same thing happened to CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs... now its the turn of old gen ASICs. Once they adapt difficulty will flatten or even fall, sell pressure will relieve and price will rise. Flatter difficulty will help also because it extends equipment life-time which makes planning easier. Thats what I think anyway. Adam |
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It does not matter. There's no global warming  by far, the cheapest reliable source of electricity is nuclear .. until someone invents something to collect it from thin air .. Isnt hydro power heat neutral? The potential energy has to go somewhere whether they open the bypass sluice gate full or feed to the turbines/generator full, and as we know the miners output is also all heat. Adam |
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- So when the item arrives in London I don't have to pay duty to DHL?
- If i'm paying VAT do I pay that to DHL or my local accountant.
As someone who used to live in the UK and did the odd bit of ebay buying internationally: I dont think there's duty on UK import. You do get charged VAT by DHL. I have found some of the shipping companies charge you a fiver on top for the "service" of collecting the VAT fee off you. - In regards to hosting. Does this mean that when I purchase the item they will not send it to me.. They will run it from their own site and mine for me?
Right. I have some SP10 I bought and they are hosted I think in Israel. I think they have multiple hosting locations in different countries. I think also if you pick out your own 3rd party hosting they presumably will ship it direct to your hosting co. For US and some other places there is no import nor sales tax/VAT hit on import of computer equipment, so it can be worth it just for that if you live in europe with the dreaded VAT. Or maybe in UK you can voluntarily register for VAT, claim the VAT back, and sell the bitcoins without charging VAT (because they are now VAT exempt). You'd have to research that one a bit Adam |
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although I am somewhat disappointed you paid 'mucho" for the sp30...I was under the impression you were 'SuperMan"
getting equipment for free from your hardware guides and reviews
Even the guy who writes the software that almost all mining equipment in existence uses and depends on hardly ever gets free hardware, even though he returns the favour with ongoing driver support, though he did get an SP10 which he was grateful for. The community would be screwed if you jumped ship, arguably one of the most important people in the BTC community. Thank you for your efforts. There are both cgminer & bfgminer co-exist and are feature for feature with relative strengths. No particular claim as to which is better or what the relative strengths, just to point out there are two maintained asic & gpu mining code-bases and apparently have been since close to the beginning of gpu & fpga mining where those code bases forked. Adam |
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ex0du5, the point is that the bitcoin validators can do full validation of the side chain via a constant-time SNARK validation, even one whose rules they don't know.
Thanks. I thought there was some greater guarantee being implied (with later mentions of moon math). I see this doesn't actually prevent all ways of taking coins from others, and others have expressed the same possibility. This is an area I'm trying to get a better understanding of, as I've been analyzing other algorithms, and I keep seeing these discussions pop up. Wanted to clarify: the point in my view is the snark proof proves that the validation program was run on the sidechain and the rules were followed. Then the bitcoin chain can validate the proof without needing to understand the validation program. Other than the risks coming from bleeding edge crypto, it thereby allows the sidechain to offer the same security properties as the main bitcoin blockchain. gmaxwell wrote about this concept first here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=277389.0I still don't see what this solves that altcoin exchanges don't.
alt-coins as usually defined have floating market prices, pegged coins do not. Sidechains give a way to extend the parent chain (eg a bitcoin sidechain allows you to experiment with and deploy new features like scripting, issued assets, different block intervals etc). You have an entity that takes value into it's store and gives out value in an alternate blockchain that may or may not follow similar rules (some altcoin, maybe a Bitcoin clone or maybe something quite different). The exchange can hold onto that value until the altcoin work is done and exchange back the value. Validation is done in whatever currency is chosen for the transfer, which can obviously have any of a variety of zero-knowledge transaction and block validation schemes.
that sounds rather centralised? Dont forget MtGox also operated like that - they exchanged your bitcoins for gox iou entries in their database. Then some stuff happened (you trade etc) and finally you ask for repayment of the iou. If its central there is a central point of failure that can lose or steal the backing funds. You can think of a sidechain as a decentralised escrow agent where the sidechain economic majority (hashrate etc) controls and fairly administers the backing. Adam |
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I think it's pretty suspicious that they already claim to have sold >10 million ether, which is thousands of BTC worth. That number could easily be manipulated to drive hype.
It did not occur to me but someone told me they suspected this happened with mastercoin: they may buy their own alt coins for their own bitcoin. Consider: if they own bitcoin they can buy their own ethers/foocoins/whatevers and to them its not a loss because they get their own bitcoins back. So if it helps prime a pump & give the illusion of demand, yes they really could be doing that. Maybe they are, I'd say thats unethical but then so is the whole thing IMO; and if it was happening it might not be widely known even amongst the ethereum "team" of paid advisors etc. Presumably that might even be illegal in terms of stock or asset price manipulation, IPO manipulation etc. Clearly its being heavily marketed by 2nd or 3rd generation repeat pump & dumpers and quite a bit of effort went into marketing. (Ex bitshares guy Charles Hoskinson is the ethereum CEO, some ex mastercoin people etc). The maidsafe thing and its relationship to mastercoin dump was pretty dodgy also IMO. Adam |
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Europe has 220v single phase, usa has 240v split phase. Not a simple cable to have 240v outlet in usa. Minimum of a new breaker. Usually requires new breaker and new wire to new outlet.
Maybe it depends which part of europe but trust me I have put a voltmeter on the supply and it is 240v not 220v. You can also get three phase with 415V which relates to sqrt(3)*240=415. Adam |
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Speaking for myself: compensation plan based on a decrease in performance from 5.4 TH when Guy advertised 6 - 6.5TH is disingenuous.
I dunno. 5.4TH was the stated target. The 6TH figure was a burst objective the way I read it - something like it might even go as fast as, but no promises. Obviously there is some margin that cant be 100% simulated with the overclock to the limit and then step back model. assert that substandard performance at 110 volts is not a problem because customers can always host in a datacenter
thats a canard, if you were paying attention on the thread, it was long discussed and advertised that you do not get full performance on 110v. Now I live in europe where 240v is standard, but apparently even in the US/Canada you do actually have 220v just split in two parts and its a matter of getting a little y-cable and you can do it in a home also. So buy the cable already, sure it cant cost more than $5 on ebay. A compensation plan that doesn't consider customer losses due to decreased power efficiency is disingenuous.
If I read it right you are not actually a customer right? I presume people who are customers are asking privately. I am not sure if they are open to compensating more than the hashrate, but you'd have to realise that people dont negotiate bulk discounts, comp plans related to their location etc on public list. Guy hinted at this multiple times in the past. ST need to directly and openly acknowledge these issues and address them fairly and promptly if they want to regain the trust of this community.
I think its fair to say they've been more open than any other mining manufacturer, throughout the process and more responsive to technical issues, bug fixes in firmware etc. Feel free to buy S3 if thats what you want. Without reference to any particular mining outfit, SP have pledged to not self-mine / compete with their customers and decentralise the hash rate. That means they have to make a profit by selling hardware to grow. If you want to support that ethical stance, it means you want to support spondoolies if you care about bitcoin decentralisation. Maybe go complain to the competitors who are mining like fury in huge data centers and selling used equipment "without preorder" after they've mined 90% of the profit out of it. I have some SP10s and am personally considering buying some SP30. I would be happy to do that at break-even to support decentralisation and thereby financially support a company that is trying to do the right thing with hashrate decentralisation. It'd be nice to make a small profit on top, but I am not focussed on it. Adam [Disclaimer I do some crypto consulting for SP, speaking for myself with no inside info above] |
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DO THE MATH.. its gotta be like $20m or something. Have $20m to lend them? Maybe get some bitcoin bazillionaire could front it? [...] Even with huge funds like that its work and time to ramp up production pipeline. Minimum order time.
Up to here, is doesn't matter whether you are a pre-order company or not. This is just what needs to be done to get off the ground. However, its impossible to do any of this part if you don't have VC, those companies have to do pre-orders to raise the capital to do this part of the business process. Spondoolies didn't, they had enough VC not to do pre-orders. Now maybe they ran out of cash, maybe they didn't, its just as shame they couldn't take that extra step and sell from stock. continuing the do the math thread $5.5m < $20m and they already spent money they said: $5.5m - burnrate x 9 months - SP10,SP30 pre-payments to TSMC < $20m however many they make, they'll probably SELL OUT immediately they get any stock
This here is irrelevant to whether they do pre-orders or build up supply and sell from stock. Once the initial supply of units is in stock you start selling, then once you start selling you start making more units to restock your product ready for new sales. Once you get going you have a constant stream of manufacturing, a minimum level of stock to supply your customers, and a stream of sales that most probably will grow exponentially IMHO. But Spondoolies-Tech already explained to that these $20m order pipelines that they have to pay up-front are like 3months deep. Not just TSMC, the other parts. If they do what you say, their pipeline will be very low capacity. (You need lots, like > $10m up front cash to build a high capacity pipeline). So either they raise $20m (or some large amount of cash) or if they follow your advice and fund with sales, there is a 3month delay in pipeline capacity increases, they produce a trickle of hardware and ramp up really slowly. At least thats what I took from reading what was said here - I'm a crypto guy, no manufacturing pipeline experience at all! Adam (Disclaimer I'm a crypto consultant to Spondoolies) |
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Pre-orders that aren't even due for 4 months are a huge risk to the customer. Why are you putting all that risk on the customer for the SP30? That's not how you did the SP10.
Spondoolies-Tech has more than enough money in their various coffers of various concerns to not need to take pre-orders. They are in a unique position to end this pre-order bullshit once and for all. You did see Spondoolies-Tech account specifically say 5000s of SP30s and "do the math". You also saw they publicly disclosed they had $5.5m in venture capital. BUT they have been running for 9months (employees, equipment, travel, rent etc), they funded the NRE dev costs for SP10 and SP30. They pre-paid fabrication costs for SP10 (and maybe some SP30 also?) When they say do the math... DO THE MATH.. its gotta be like $20m or something. Have $20m to lend them? Maybe get some bitcoin bazillionaire could front it? You cant just materalize $20m to give to TSMC. Even with huge funds like that its work and time to ramp up production pipeline. Minimum order time. The other thing is like Spondoolies-Tech said: however many they make, they'll probably SELL OUT immediately they get any stock, if they delayed sale and stock-piled. At any production rate there is a rate of fabrication/assembly per day. Suggest you make suggestions. What would you do: run a daily auction for those assembled on the day? Disclaimer I am a crypto consultant to Spondoolies, BUT I do not have knowledge of the finance specifics, the above is from public information they intentionally posted to this list to enable readers to do the math, I just got impatient and did the math for you. Adam |
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Aha I get it. Guy at bottom, photo & username matches someone on this thread Personally I am out about $5k to butterfly for the monarch, which started as an order for 2x 25GH asics, and upgraded when they blew past that delivery date. Adam (disclaimer I am a crypto consultant to spondoolies) |
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http://www.coindesk.com/bankrupt-bitcoin-mining-company-alydian-sell-218ths-mining-power/bankrupt cloud mining company Alydian attempting to offload 218TH of mining equipment. Alydian's equipment efficiency and pricing is significantly worse than spondoolies for comparison. Watch: $5k/TH vs $5k for 1.4TH. Secondly 6kW per 1TH unit vs 1.25kW for 1.4TH (6.7x worse W/GH). And 42U (whole rack??) vs 1.25U (47x worse density TH/rack?). Me thinks alydian will have to reduce their price or no one will buy them. 6kW at $0.15/kWh is $650/mo plus 6kW worth of heat to disipate via cooling vs $97/mo (power per TH). They would have to sell them at a significant discount for that to make sense in a mining calculator. (Less bad if your power is cheaper). (Of course its easy to show poor results for several generations old equipment, but if Alydian actually want to sell them...) Adam (disclaimer I am a crypto consultant to spondoolies).
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This looks promising, hopefully it's legit, as I would probably be interested in a hosted 5th/s box.
Thanks, and yes - we are 100% legit. We now arranging further public proof for the community, plus trusted members reviews will be incoming in the next few days. I can confirm they are legit - have been to their office (my first trip to Israel). Its definitely not a scam if thats what pdawg means. (Caution is understood as there have been a few outright scams from others in the past, plus aggressive/loose preorder promises which have left the customers to fund the "can this team ship anything at all or in a useful timeframe" risk). As others have noted spondoolies have running/shipping hardware, and unlike other mining companies did not fund their company by preorders. (They are VC funded by Genesis Partners, you can see in one of the videos in OP). Their team has a lot of years of combined chip experience (take a look at the team page on spminer.io). Contrast with the level of detail, and putting their reputation on the line vs other companies. If you look on their CEO Guy Corem's linkedin page you can see they have been in business 8months. 8months from start to selling hardware is fast. Adam (disclaimer I am a crypto consultant to spondoolies). |
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