Yeah agreed on all points.  Of course it has all been stated upthread but certain people are just here to troll.  


crumbs was under the belief that using warmed cased air would somehow cause power supplies to fail.  It was pointed out they are DESIGNED to be used that way but facts tend to not work when people don't want to know.

Regarding the orientation of the PSU.  It is possible they can be flipped.  For non-rackmount conditions (or single open side rack) as pictured is optimal.   In datacenter environment flipping the PSU 180 deg would intake from the case and exhaust out the back (to hot aisle).

Like you I see nothing "wrong" with HashFast design.   It is a compromise between optimal design and speed of poduction.   Could one use high density server PSU (straight through airflow vs 90 deg in ATX style), a very high capacity back mounted radiator, custom pump, custom reservoir, custom wiring harness which results in perfect front to back airflow?  Of course they could.  It also quintupled the number of suppliers, the number of assembly steps and the number of potential places which can cause delays or failures.

Sometimes "realistically good" design using off the shelf components beats ridiculously optimized custom solution especially when production time is so sensitive.


Still it would be nice if HashFast can comment/clarify on the PSU orientation.  Despite what was stated off thread I highly doubt that the PSU are custom designed for reverse airflow.   It would be pointless, expensive, and time consuming.  Hashfast went out their way to use off the shelf components for everything else.  To then use some pointlessly expensive reverse airflow PSU makes absolutely no sense.   It has never been stated by Hashfast, it is almost certainly not correct but it explicitly clarified I am sure a certain troll will spam another 100 posts about it.

Well the only thing known is the FBI siezed the hotwallet. It only had a few days worth of revenue and because it is a hot wallet it wasn't encrypted.  If convinced those coins will be the property of the DOJ.

The rest of SR "profit" coins there would be no reason for the wallet to be on the server.   We don't even know if the FBI has the wallet, if they do and it has a strong passphrase then there is no decrypting it.   If it was a weak passphrase then they likely will be able to decrypt the wallet eventually.

Also just because the SR profited x BTC over the past 3 years doesn't mean they have a giant wallet sitting there with every BTC in profit.   Who knows how much of it has been spent.  Most people do spend money.   

Still none of this has anything to do with the Bitcoin protocol being broken, anymore than a bank robbery means cash has been hacked.

Congratulations you just invented banking.  When 3 or 4 clearing houses handle 90% of transactions it will be no different than banks today.   Bank fees don't HAVE to be high.  Credit Cards don't HAVE to cost 3%.  They are high because the banks WANT to profit on the backs of their users. 

Bitcoin isn't encrypted.   So that is the first clue your mate has no clue what he is talking about.

ITT.  OP believes any investment that doesn't turn $200 into millions in a few years = "not worth it".

That is a good point but difficulty follows price so if you are the marginal miner (product of cost per kWh and rig efficiency) you are going to get squeezed out regardless.   If price quadruples so will difficulty eventually.   

I estimated some break even difficulties (electrical cost = value of BTC mined) in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=281279.0


The break even difficulty is based on $100 exchange rate and $0.10 per kWh.  To adjust to other prices simply multiply or divide (i.e. for $200 exchange rate the break even difficulty would be doubled, for $0.20 per kWh power rate the break even difficulty would be halved).

Assuming price remains ~$200 the first interesting point is ~10B difficulty.  At 10B difficulty even with $200 exchange rate and $0.05 per kWh Avalon and ASICMiner gear is negative operating margin.  While miners might cling on for a while as difficulty moves higher and higher month after month even those "slowest" miners will get the picture.  Burning $100 in cash to produce $50 in value isn't particularly "fun".

At around 8B difficulty BFL rigs in high cost areas (>=$0.10 per kWh) will be unprofitable but we may see some secondary sales (high cost miners selling to low cost miners).  However by 20B or so no BFL rig will make sense without "free" power.  

Many ASICs don't play nice with p2pool. As an example KNC refresh work function is borked.  When new work comes in it is very slow to react and continues to hash on producing useless hashes.  Now on "normal" bitcoin when there is a work change every 600 seconds it results in a good 1% to 2% lost work.  p2pool essentially is causing a work change every 20 seconds so you are looking at 30% to 60% lost work.   Another way to look at it is for a KNC miner p2pool has a 30%+ fee.  Would you mine on a pool with a 30% fee?

It doesn't HAVE to be that way but until ASIC designers put some thought into latency p2pool is going to be a non-starter.  Beyond the ASIC incompatibility issue, even under GPU era p2pool "struggled" simply because it requires a little more thought, effort, and education.  Many miners are simply lazy.  They want a 1 button "free moniez" machine.  Hell some kept using the broken GUI Miners because learning cgminer was "too hard".  Learning to use p2pool?  Might as well ask them to learn Latin.

FYPFY but no I don't think  Bitcoin will be a high priority

Please at least try to read.  The OP isn't a sovereign nation, he doesn't have a seat on the UN security counsel, and he doesn't have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the human race.  So comparing him to Russian oil reserves is kinda silly right?  

As a I linked to the Poker Black Friday entry it is involved non-US companies with non-US employees, operating on non-US servers with funds in non-US banks.  The DOJ working with 87 different host nations simultaneously froze nearly half a billion US dollars in more than 200 hundred bank accounts.  Not a single cent was in a US bank.  

No the US directly isn't going to go to war with a sovereign nation over assets (well sometimes they do that too) but:
a) the OP isn't a sovereign nation
b) the "long arm of the law" in the US is very long as they have agreements with more than half the nations on earth.

Makes a note to never do business with tmk225.

Well KNC said "end of Sept".  HashFast said "end of Oct"  Cointerra said "end of Dec"  that is just SHA-2 industry talk for the next month so:

KNC - Oct
HashFast - Nov
Cointerra - Jan

The rest of it is on point.  Cointerra was/is simply too far out.   Trying to predict hashrate 30-60 days out if tough, trying to do it when 4 competitors will deliver product after you buy and before you receive is essentially impossible.

The bolded part is the fatal flaw of your logic.  Fabrication price per wafer @ 20nm is about 5x the cost as 28nm right now and it will be years before it hits cost parity.  The industry rule of thumb has been 2 years but (see NVidia slide at bottom) that has been slipping and the time before a new node reaches parity is taking longer and longer.  

However today lets assume all the fab marketing brochure-ware and give you the theoretical max of 30% higher speed and 1.9x density.   1.3 * 1.9 = 2.47.  So each wafer has 2.5x the hashing capacity which sounds great until you realize the nominal cost per wafer is 5x higher.   As a result you end up with 2x the cost per GH.   In reality you likely are going to get less, at more cost and with more potential delays, complications and risk.  When you consider lower yields, and the new higher NRE costs which have to be ammortized, the lack of preorder apetite and the fact that your product will be unattractive from day 1 conservatively you are looking at triple the cost per GH/s when comparing your state of the art 20nm tech to your 28nm competitors.   They can just set prices below your marginal cost and force you to sell at a loss or end up with mountains of expensive chips that nobody wants.

There will be no die shrink below 28nm in 2014.  It will be 2016 (maybe late 2015 and that is optimistic) before 20nm is cost competitive with 28nm.   Heres a hint.  AMD and NVidia have no 20nm plans yet.  That is how uneconomical it is.  These are companies which move MILLIONS of wafer starts a year, command the lowest marginal price, and an in a never ending battle to eke out a performance gain over the other.   They likely will extend another half product cycle at 28nm.   Don't point out Intel.  Intel owns their own fabs and plays their cards close to their chest.   Intel isn't a good benchmark for the rest of the industry.   For example 2012 was the first year TSMC had high volume cost competitive 28nm wafers ... Intel went full scale production on 22nm in 2011.  


Sure .... eventually.   14nm high cost product will likely ramp up in 2016.  If it takes 3 years to achieve cost parity well you are looking at 2019(ish).  Given the need to offset NRE, and the sluggishness TSMC and other have had in getting new tech up to speed lets just call it an even 2020.

No.  There is a perfect linear relationship between difficulty and hashrate.

If 50% of hashpower shut off (for whatever reason) then the time between blocks would rise to ~20 minutes and 0-4 weeks later the network would adjust and the time between blocks would fall back to 10 minutes.

If 75% of hashpower shut off (for whatever reason) then the time between blocks would rise to ~40 minutes and 0-16 weeks later the network would adjust and the time between blocks would fall back to 10 minutes.

If 90% of hashpower shut off (for whatever reason) then the time between blocks would rise to ~ 100 minutes and 0-20 weeks later the network would adjust and the time between blocks would fall to 25 minutes* and then 16 weeks later it would adjust again back to 10 minutes.

If 99% of hashpower shut off (for whatever reason) then the time between blocks would rise to ~1000 minutes and 0-200 weeks later the network would adjust and the time between blocks would fall to 250 minutes* and then 50 weeks later it would adjust again to ~60 minutes and then 12 weeks later it would adjust again to ~15 minutes ....

On edit: * network difficulty adjustment capped at 1/4 and 4x.  Of course rules can be changed and is Bitcoin is "stuck" there will be significant consenus to adjust the difficulty either as a one time change or a more adaptive difficulty algorithm.


There is no probable scenario where even a malicious removal of hashpower would result in block time taking a year or more.   1 year = 87,600 minutes.  10 minute target = 8,760x larger.  1/8,760 = 0.014%.  It would require 99.986% of the network to shutdown overnight.   Since no single entity owns 99.986% of the network, hell no contininent has that much we likely are talking an extinction level event (i.e. 99.986% of nodes go offline because they no longer exist due to an asteroid impact).

There will be no die shrink in 2014 and probably not in 2015. 

Nerd life insurance policy?

Probably true (although I don't like blanket statements on complex law).  Still you are missing the point.  It isn't what can an individual state do.  Non compliance with a state makes you non compliant with the federal statute as well.  So you don't get an auto immunity from federal action.  

As for what can the federal government do to foreign entities with absolutely no assets in the US .... as much as they want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg

For the record I am not saying DOJ will came after you or that they will even know you exist.  However it is dangerous to assume you are compliant when you aren't.  If you intend to operate non-compliant you should at least internally be aware of the risk.

More like a century but who is counting?

The min mandatory fee has gone down four times as the value of BTC has risen.  Today (in BTC terms) is is 1/1000th of what it was originally.

Many miners will include "free" transactions.  The client however enforces a min mandatory fee on LOW PRIORITY tx.  There is no min mandatory fee on HIGH PRIORITY tx.  This rule is important as an anti denial of service mechanism.  It limits the amount that a malicious user is able to bloat the blockchain at no cost.  Without it one could simply send a tiny amount of BTC from one address to another and ensure all blocks are "full" continually.  Higher paying tx would get through but the attacker at negligible cost could ensure all blocks are "max" size.  Even with the 1MB "limit" that would still make the blockchain to date excessive large.