Over 60% of all coins have already been mined.
Daily minting rate is down to 0.03% of total supply (and falling).
The amount of coins traded daily is a magnitude more than minting.

Simply put newly minted coins are a small and shrinking portion of the total supply.

Um computers/servers have an internal PSU. Somehow that works.

Really you think that a ATX PSU which exhausts heat OUTSIDE the case somehow would be impossible and the only purpose would be for it to "be cool".  Really?  

So just to make sure I got it straight.

Smart idea.  Current case with PSU sitting beside it on the right connected to ASICs and control boards via external cables.
Stupid idea.  Similar case which is 3" wider with PSU sitting in the same spot except it is now inside the case and connected to ASICS and control boards via internal cables.

Want to explain that to me?  Please provide details.

I like my hardware wallet.  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=277583.msg2964099#msg2964099

Just kidding. 

Trezors and the like will be great but even so unless you are planning on spending/transfering coins it is best to have them offline.

Taking it a step further I would love if the company would consider future sales as a "kit only".  Maybe just shipping the ASICs, control board, and maybe the waterblock (as they will need some form of cooling to test them before shipment).  With places like newegg and amazon most people can get PSU, cases, and fans easily and it means the company has less to build.  Even watercooling gear can be acquired off the shelf rather easily. You could even see hobbyist threads on different setups (i.e. multi chips loops, best third party radiator, good low noise fan, etc).  Not saying change existing orders but consider it for the future.


The MMP covers just the chip for "free".  I would assume that they would offer to sell you a board populated with your free chip (i.e. price is board price minus ASIC cost).  There has also been some vague statements about open source boards that means you could (my idle speculation) see third party board builders like you do now for Avalon.   However getting some detailed answers would be helpful when deciding to buy or not. I hope HF realizes that simply shipping some chips with no method for end user to convert them into boards is utterly useless and would kill any rep they have overnight.  I have no problem with the MMP being "chips only" it is better than anyone else is offering and I understand to use the MMP would require some additional cost but SPECIFIC DETAILS would be nice.

Don't take this as "you should buy it today" but ASIC companies offering "free" hashing power as I don't think $8/GH in Dec/Jan is viable and eventually bitfury & KNC will be looked to add later dated sales too.  The Q1-2014 price wars have just started.

Still compensation in the form of additional hashpower really isn't that unbelievable.  The economics of ASICs mean the seller has a huge amount of NRE (not just the masks but the design and testing) and very low per unit cost (~$1 per GH/s).  They (or any other ASIC manufacturer) have (excluding NRE) 90%+ gross margins so while they would prefer not to give you more hashing power for "free" the markup on the base hashing power is more than enough to cover it. On the other hand with that huge fixed upfront cost if they don't sell enough units they (and any other ASIC manufacturer) will never be profitable.

The prices aren't higher on a $/GH basis than anyone else.  It is tied with BFL @ $8/GH.  It is the lowest cost miner announced to date but with December (or later) delivery it remains to be seen if it is discounted enough.

Yes I would like an update on this.

This.  If you look through your entire thread most of it is long multi-page derails dealing with trolls.  You will never convince crumbs (et all) that this a good deal, not even after delivery, not even if the buyers end up +100% ROI.  They aren't looking for information or answers to their questions.  They are just looking to "win".  Every possible answer you can give they will find a reason why that is bad, every rebuttal has another rebuttal.  Fighting every nuance of their troll arguments defeats your entire goal to advocate and get information out on the product.  

As for crumbs allegation that sales in BTC sales "don't count" unless the entire supply chain is in BTC well that is just silly.  There are many countries where the supply chain can't be completed without the use of FOREX.   Obviously the longer the supply chain is in BTC the better but ANY place to use BTC increases its utility.  A goal of only using BTC when none of it is converted to another currency by the counter-party to cover non-BTC costs is a pointless standard anyways.  Every merchants, every service accepting BTC improves its utility.  The bitcoin economy won't just jump from nobody accepting it, to entire supplies chains being 100% BTC overnight. 

Merchants accepting BTC is good for the utility of Bitcoin.  If he doesn't get it, it simply is because he doesn't want to get it.  He is just looking to prove your wrong and more you go down the stupid rabbit hole with him the more rope you give him.  You could go another 500 pages and it doesn't really matter what you say they will just bounce around and look for another angle where you are wrong and drag you down into that minutiae.  Either ignore them or put them on ignore so you are goaded into responding.  You are doing exactly what they want.  Plus most people have crumbs and his like on ignore anyways.  All you quoted responses just give him an audience to people who were already ignoring him.

If attacker has gained access to your computer he would have access to the backup file and could keylog your passphrase the last time you used it (anywhere you typed it not necessarily just blockchain.info).  
Password + backup file is all that is needed.  blockchain.info 2FA only prevents attacker from using the site not from decrypting a backup.

That is the most likely attack scenario however since you reused passwords on multiple sites it is possible (although less likely) the password was compromised from another site.  NEVER reuse passwords.  If you are going to ignore that advice at a minimum use unique strong passwords for financial sites (banks, paypal, bitcoin exchanges, wallets, etc) as well as any method of resetting password for those sites (i.e. email).  Someone hacking your twitter account is much less of a loss than hacking your money.

In review you are correct.  I fixed the post.  Thanks.

If the attacker is watching you just gave him more accounts to attack.  
1) Delete or modify your post above  ^
2) Change those passwords ASAP.

NEVER reuse passwords at least not for any account which has monetary value.

The signatures are not the same.  The bolded portions is the public key and it will remain the same for all tx from the same address.
What is commonly (and incorrectly) referred to as the "signature" is actually the "ScriptSig & PubKey".  
The portion beginning with 0x30 is the actual signature.  The portion of the signature that is the unique random number is underlined (thank for correction: M4v3R).
The portion  beginning with 0x04 is the pubkey.

This diagram might help it shows a breakdown of the TxIn structure.
https://en.bitcoin.it/w/images/en/e/e1/TxBinaryMap.png

For secure ECDSA signatures one must use a nonce (number used once) which hasn't already been used in a prior signatures.  Although it doesn't need to be random (just unique) large random numbers are normally used to simplify nonce selection.  If the nonce is reused then the private key can be reconstructed from the other information.  The android flaw is that it duplicated random numbers however the OP indicated he doesn't use an android phone.

On edit: r value can be "eyeballed" but it is the portion underlined not the bolded portion.  Thanks M4v3R

or just insane.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein

I think you will see $20.  Excluding NRE I can't really see production cost being more than $10 in high volume.  Sell 100K unit @ 0.2 BTC ea, spend 0.1 BTC ea to build em collect an easy 10,000 BTC.  With a low price as long as they have the chance of breaking even in two years I could see people buying them if for nothing other than the novelty of it.

It is all about supply and demand.  The tough thing is you can be firm on $20 and if other people are willing to pay $40 and they sell out, well there is no reason for them to cut the price (and profit) when they are selling out regardless.   The best price for ASICMiner is the highest possible price that still sells out before the next batch is ready.  So far they have done a good job holding to that equation (BE are accessible but you don't see lots of inventory just sitting around). 

Agreed on this point.  However even if KNC does ship in Oct if someone hasn't already ordered and did so today they would be lucky to get theirs by November. Even a small delay and it could easily be December.

So for those who ALREADY have a KNC order well there is absolutely no reason to cancel and buy one from Cointerra.  Those who don't already have a unit?  Neither look particularly attractive.
Now if KNC drops the price for future sales and gives a firm commitment for Nov delivery well that might be different.  It will be interesting to see how the different players try to maneuver around.  Only so much capacity can be sold before we hit break even on electrical cost so there is some strategy on how companies will handle sales.  You can keep your prices high but if another player sells units then the difficulty is going up regardless and your units just become even less attractive.  On the other hand since only so much capacity can be sold you don't want to cut margins to the bone.



Not sure on this point.  If units were shipping in volume with no/short backorders I would agree but I wonder how much hashing power has already been preordered?
500TH/s? 1 PH/s? 5 PH/s?

In other words lets pretend that every single unit people have paid for is delivered tomorrow.  What will the network hashrate be?  Ironically long delays to delivery are good for those selling ASICs and bad for those buying them because the committed but not yet deployed hashing power WILL eventually raise difficulty but it isn't visible in the current difficulty.  That makes units look cheaper than they already are.

You could structure it as a single owner business and then deduct the resulting net business loss on your tax return.  Businesses which continually lose money are still businesses, the IRS just looks for a profit potential. 

Fire resistant high security storage for paper and digital backup of encrypted keys.  pywallet makes the export easy and secure.



Yes folks despite what "sentry safe" may want you to believe that is what a real (TL rated) safe looks like.

Most delta fans (except the highest CFM ones) aren't that expensive they just aren't flashy.  Delta is never going to make colored fans, ones with LEDs on them, or use leet names.  They are boring black fans that spin and have a reputation of high quality.

I would imagine he means datacenter grade, just take a look at the chassis for an $8K server.  Lets start with the easy stuff.  First they all have internal power supplies and are 19" wide so they will fit in a datacenter rack without the need for shelves. 

Normally CPUs and GPUs are just passive (fanless) heatsinks which use the case air flow to cool them.  The "case" fans provide the forced air across all components using multiple high CFM (noisy) fans.  Nobody uses "gamer brand" gear.* Air flow is an optimal front to back design (cold aisle to hot aisle).  Cooling is forced flow across the entire width of the chassis (multiple fans in a "line") for simplicity and reliability. On higher end servers cooling is redundant, two fans stacked together to prevent overheat in a fan failure.  Redundant power supplies are also common for the same reason.

I understand time is critical but what happens when your fan or PSU dies in the datacenter?  Ask anyone with colocated servers, "remote hands" time is expensive and so is downtime.  There is a reason why $8K servers are built this way and lets face it a $8K mining rig is pretty much an expensive mission critical server.  

Note I am not saying KNC should make "professional grade" rigs at this time, it is more a thought exercise. Come on people you should be enthusiasts.  Don't you ever just brainstorm about how things can be done better?  I mean Satoshi did and that is why we have Bitcoin.  Still it shouldn't be taken as a bash on KNC, it has taken the server industry a couple decades to come up with optimal configurations.  It just is to show what people in the IT hardware world would consider "professional grade" today.  To their credit KNC has already designed a better cooling system them BFL.  The mere fact that their heatsinks and fans all face the same direction is a significant improvement.  Everytime I look at a photo of a BFL minirig I just cringe.  The IT geek in me wants to rip out all those stupid fans and do it right.




This goes beyond KNC but most "consumer" branded cooling gear is just garbage for gamers to waste money on.  The CFM ratings tend to be inflated and they are often more expensive then "professional grade" equipment.  Delta and the like is the real deal.  Boring, black, ugly, and very effective.

Bitcoin mining is essentially a problem which is almost perfectly parallelized, there are no significant global restrictions, and the barrier to entry is non-existent.  What you are seeing today is the gold rush phase but it will fade.  Hardware will become more available, and as NRE get paid off and inventories build the price per GH/s will only fall.   This means that there is no realistic scenario where a small miner can't compete on with big miners (especially when you consider those with reduced or so called "free" power).

For example say a 1 PH/s miner someday costs $1000x well a 1 TH/s miner would probably be ~$x. Yes larger units are marginally cheaper per GH/s but not to a point that it would make smaller units unviable.  Sure if you have 1/1000th the hashing power of a big entity, then your reward is only 1/1000th but your capital and electrical costs are ~1/1000th as well.  People look at the USB Block Eruptors says it is a "bad" deal and assume that means small units will cost too much.  The reality is the price of miners right now has little to do with cost and more to due with demand.  Friedcat sells out of every batch of BE.  As a merchant the best possible price is the highest price where you still continually sell out.  Any higher and you are stuck with inventory, any lower and you still run out you just makes less.  As demand falls so will the price (it already has to some extent from 2 BTC to 0.3 BTC).  Eventually the margins on these small miners will be very low and they will be produced in hundred thousand lot units.  I could see entities like ASICMiner getting out of the retail business all together instead they mass produce chips and sell them to OEM who build the end product (the AMD/NVidia model).  USB Miners will lose their "premium" relative to larger units as they become more available and there is more competitions.

Mining isn't really that attractive for corporations, most wouldn't want to touch Bitcoin mining with a 10 foot pole.  Bitcoin mining is a somewhat unique industry where your profitability matters less on what you do but on what other people (you can't control) do.  For example a lot (maybe the majority) of early ASIC miners (orders in 2012 and 2013) will have negative net profits.   This is because you can do everything "right" (order when difficulty is low, pick the right supplier, have low electrical costs, buy the most efficient gear, etc) and still lose due to tens of thousands of clueless noobs who combined deploy so much hashing power that the revenue for everyone falls.  You can't stop them from doing that which means a big entity can't protect their margins.  Sure they can optimize cost but price spikes, a bunch of noobs think they will become millionaires in a month buy a 100 PH/s and then price falls.  Everyone is stuck in the same low/no profitability boat.  That scenario is a nightmare for any CEO.  Period.  It isn't something anyone with a lot of capital will be dreaming about.

Maybe I am an optimistic but I don't see it being an issue.  Mining will eventually be a very boring, low profit business.  Many hobyist will mine hoping to break even as an alternative way to acquire coins (essentially buying them from the power company). I would be far more worried about centralization in the financial services space to a tiny handful of massive global players.  By financial services I mean bitcoin dealers, brokers, exchanges, merchant processors, etc.  This is more of a risk because government will put up barriers to entry and those that can afford those costs will have a vested interest to see those costs become larger to kill off any future competitors.  This has already started to happen in the sense of nonsensical high cost regulation and one should only expect it to accelerate as Bitcoin becomes a bigger deal.  Luckily that isn't a core aspect of Bitcoin itself but it is something to closely watch.