Any chance of you doing another one of these? Assuming, of course, enough people voice their interest.

On the site (drillbitsystems.com) and on this thread, the thumb drives are listed as stock "0" but are still for sale. Can I actually buy them or is this an oversight?

Cointerra, please address my concerns so I can put you on my list of companies to consider investing in. If my concerns are not alleviated, I will not consider investing.

• Water cooling. Why are you using it? --> introduces a level of complexity that makes NO sense in devices to be deployed in the manner of Bitcoin miners. No one wants to deal with issues of failing or leaking coolers, which WILL happen over time and if someone deploys a large number of devices. Not to mention the increased complexity and cost on your manufacturing side while not providing a significant advantage in cooling. Interestingly, KNC originally announced water cooling and has since silently removed it.
• Ravi Iyengar. Who are you, can you prove you are who you say you are? Please simply tell us the location you worked at and provide some more details. --> I cannot find any information on you besides those of news articles referencing your site. I am not the only one, see here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=271168.msg2905705#msg2905705 . I have been unable to confirm you ever worked for Samsung. In fact, It seems, from what I have read, Samsung uses "chief CPU architect" as the position name, not "Lead CPU architect."
• [suddenly added Sept. 14]Payment methods. Why do you only accept bankwire and BTC? --> clearly paypal and credit card are the dominating payment methods and provide people with security in the event of fraud. So why do you not accept either? Why is the only way for me, to pay to send you an irreversible transaction? This brings up the question of trust. Why bring trust into the equation?
• For my peace of mind, could you please provide your company registration information?
• Why did you decide to use copyrighted images by other companies (namely intel) to represent your products on your site in lieu of actual mockups or just a blank image saying "TBA" or similar?
• ---break---
• [suddenly added Sept. 14, cert valid from Aug. 28]Why is there no SSL on your site?
• Why does the phone number on your site not work? Why is it a VOIP number?

I am excited about your recent price drops and new products, bringing some of your mining devices into my price range. If my concerns could be put to rest, I would love to purchase a lower end unit or two.


Edit: After doing a bit more research, I have even more concerns, listed after the break in the list.

^at such a low hash rate, he will NEVER get accurate estimates.

Price needs to be:

Deliver by end of |	price per unit (BTC)
Sept	0.50
Oct	0.35
Nov	0.25
Dec	0.2

This is price before shipping, rounded up to the nearest 0.05th of a BTC and based on my current 6-month profitability projections. The more profit-oriented will order larger amounts, while those ordering a single unit will be happy with the chance to get their money back in the following 10-12 months after delivery charges are taken into account.

I like the USB port being staggered to one side because it will play nicely with half the USB ports, depending on your luck. Better than putting it in the middle and blocking both ports or blocking one port 100% of the time.. It also will play nicely with most USB hubs.

I like the idea and the initiative but if you cannot lower the prices to an acceptable level by lowering your costs, then obviously it may not turn out to be a good business for you.

It's been mentioned but I think a visual would better illustrate the point.

http://www.tweaktown.com/image.php?image=http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/content/4/6/4673_03_intel_core_i7_3770k_lga_1155_ivy_bridge_cpu_review_full.png

http://cointerra.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/chip-large.jpg

Isn't this image copyrighted? Why would cointerra choose to use the image of an ivy bridge intel processor as their own? This reflects poorly on the company. Many, such as myself, take this as an indicator to avoid them.

100,000,000 SA is one bitcoin
A coffee is 1,000,000 SA (significantly rounded)

This is too large for my taste but I can see SA becoming common when you can buy a coffee for 1,000 SA or less.

As stated above. Stop. Get yourself a cheap GPU or maybe a single ASICminer USB. Play with them. Learn about mining. Spend lots of time on these forums, reddit and the Bitcoin wiki. If you continue straight down this road without proper knowledge of how Bitcoin mining works, the technicalities of it and the history, you will be unable to make proper decisions with regards to investments.

If you decide to go ahead, I have the following advises:


-> Have a thorough, not just surface understand of difficulty re-targetting. When you can properly model your own estimates, you will realize that these "online calculators" are absolutely useless until the difficulty settles down to be consistent again. ie, after a significant number of ASIC companies are consistently shipping in bulk. Make your own models and trust yourself and your research, not others.

-> Further on the above point, understand even the small details of mining, such as understanding the average time between blocks is often less than 10 minutes when network difficulty is increasing rapidly and what that means. There are many small details you might want to make a mental note of with your estimates but not actually write down.

-> Have practiced mining small-time with GPUs or a block erupter and be able to deal with any issues that arise. Downtime. Miner failure. Miner issues. Software issues. Heat. Expansion. Maintenance. Etc. This is computer knowledge and technical knowledge. I don't recommend someone mine if all they can do is put together a plug-and-play solution.

-> Security: Keep your coins safe.

-> Because of "something to do with difficulty" combined with the fact that most ASIC orders that will make a return if received now are either backlogged or still pre-orders and non-existent, you will have to pay attention to the ASIC market and make mostly pre-purchases when A. They make sense based on the manufacturer's estimates and B. They fall within your risk limits financially and by the amount you trust the company.

-> Adding on to the above, diversify for this exact reason. To mitigate risk. The problem with that is diversifying will require significantly more capital due to the high cost of even the lower-end units from many companies.

-> Track everything. Track your financials. Track your balances. Track the market. Track the ASIC companies' progresses. Understand what you are potentially getting into.

As a sort of summary of the above, let me make it clear that mining is no longer a small-time game as it used to be. Mining for returns now requires capital and proper planning. The days of the hobby miner making a return after a few days on the forums and a digital trip to newegg, are gone. Serious miners are who are emerging now. If you intend to make money, you can no longer buy whatever and start mining like you could last year.


Now, that said, if you want to do this as a hobby, buy something you can get now or soon, such as ASICminer equipment and do not expect a return. My modelling indicates a 12 month return of 67% of your original investment. I personally don't like modelling more than 6 months though due to the unpredictability of everything Bitcoin. Besides, due to the difficulty, most of the return of that 67% will be within the first 4-6 months if you get the unit right now.

Which parts, specifically? I'm hoping to order parts for 20 USB units before the end of the month.

The GPU world is imploding on itself.  The more GPUs out there, the higher the difficulty, the less profit each unit makes, so people buy more GPUs, which raises the difficulty, so they again get less profit, etc.....


The CPU world is imploding on itself.  The more CPUs out there, the higher the difficulty, the less profit each unit makes, so people buy more CPUs, which raises the difficulty, so they again get less profit, etc.....

Ok, so essentially p2pool's share difficulty has been increased since I'd last used p2pool, making variance for small miners too large? And the only reason I was getting the payouts for my fee before was because of the recent good luck?

I'm not too concerned yet so I figured I would post here instead of making a new thread. I've finally gotten around to setting up my p2pool node again, this time in linux. Been running my SC (60GH/s) on it for a few days now and have a 1% fee.

So, as expected, I get the payout to my address that I choose with my SC and it takes off 1% and that payout goes to the default p2pool address. Everything's shiny, right?

Well, a bit over 24-hours ago, the payout to my default address suddenly went from something like 1.5mbtc to 0BTC and has stayed there ever since. The address I use with my SC is working fine - two payouts since. But zero payout for the default address. So the fee is not working? That doesn't seem to be the issue. 1 hour after the payout to default address dropped to 0BTC, my friend started mining at my pool. He's hitting it with about 800MH/s. It's been over 24 hours and two payouts later and his payout graph is still 0BTC and he's not received anything to his wallet. I threw my SC on his address an hour ago for about 60 seconds then took it off. It didn't change his payout from 0. His address doesn't show up under the active users section of p2pool.info at the moment.

I am using 13.2 on xubuntu in a VM with bitcoind on the same machine. Nice low getblock latency and my efficiency is over 100%. I've tried restarting both bitcoind and the p2pool node. No change.

If this doesn't change by tomorrow, I'm going to start worrying. What are your thoughts on this?

Not a Monopoly. Just one company. You are confusing ASIC devices with this company. There are currently 3 companies actively selling devices: BFL, Avalon and ASICminer. They all sell ASIC devices.

Unless you just don't know what the word monopoly means. In which case, you are correct in what they do. They sold shares in mid-2012 to fund the development of their devices (as said above).

Contacted Jul. 16
Item sent from BFL Jul. 19
Item received Jul. 27

Also, during the mismanagement and confusion at BFL with regards to their upgrade policy a couple months back, I was able to upgrade my mini-single (which I had upgraded from a jalapeneo) to a full single.

For anyone who is interested, my temps with the case on are 85*C and 76*C off. I have flipped the fans. I run it normally with the case off and use an Antec VP450 with an extra molex to pci-e adapter. I use CGminer. My reported hashrate fluctuates wildly from 38GH/s to 74GH/s but the average is an extremely consistent ~60.22GH/s and eligius reports just over 59GH/s. My hardware error rate is 15%. This is all after a 6 hour run.

What. Even the components that fit on the edge of a dime aren't that bad. I'm more worried about the tiny QFN48 package on the ASIC.

My response:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slnvTv1edmk

Interpret is as you will.

I count no more than ~80 people posting ripple codes before me.

If OP was ending giveway, OP should edit first post to say he is ending giveaway. Or at the very least add a reply saying so.

Seriously.

I really don't understand what seems so hard about just plugging everything in with longer cables...

I don't understand why you are even bringing virtualization into the mix. You don't need a separate session do you? You don't need someone to be in the other room using the computer at the same time as you, do you? You aren't looking to control more than that one machine from that single set of keyboard/mouse/monitor, are you?
If not, then you are looking at solutions for problems you don't have.

That seems like a budget that will allow you some flexibility. Diversify and wait for the right opportunities. I recently took a small risk in KNCminer and earlier this year ordered some BFL. I've taken some of my funds and invested in AMC, to be honest though, I have no idea where they will go so it was minimal. I'm keeping an eye out for mining companies and investments coming up. I've gotten together with some partners and we will watch and see what makes sense.

So diversify your investments and don't be in a hurry to spend it all at once. Wait for investments that make sense and have a return to pop up. I hesitated with terrashash and so far, it seems like I missed a good opportunity with them but that is yet to be determined.

I look at it this way: If I believe the hardware I am buying will net me more bitcoin than spending the same amount on bitcoins then I will invest, if they are within my risk comfort zone. I personally don't like to look past 6 months because the further in time I look, the less accurate my results could be.

As for mining stocks, I avoid the so called "bonds" with a static hashrate because of the risk. I want my investment to be expanding their hardware and increasing my dividend and share price along with it. My single share with asicminer has become more valuable than any of my other investments but I don't see the return when I consider investing more in their shares.

These are just my opinions. There is a lot to consider. It's not just a matter of "hardware or stocks" unless you are an enthusiast in either (for example, my majority is in mining because I am an enthusiast in that area).

My final bit of advice is to not take advice from me or anyone else on this forum. Do a shit-ton of your own research.