If there was enough value to be had, then it would only be a matter of time before someone figured a way around no-asic mining.  Where there is a will there is a way, especially if there's a bunch of money to be made.

Big peak has backed way off and is trending back down again.

I'd be happy to make a small donation to keep them going.  If everyone running sent in like 0.1 btc we could keep the domains up for a while.

Did you think to try reading their site?  All the info is there, take a look.  For example, within 5 seconds I found this in the faq:

Well Frank always sang that luck be a lady, so I figured he knew what he was talking about.
https://youtu.be/ZJpGHR6ofus

Yup the big peak seems to have passed again, and the cycle continues.  Good news is the highest peak doesn't seem to be that far off the last few peaks pre-halving.  I'll guess we'll see the hash rate settle down to around even prior to another dip or peak starting up around the next adjustment.  Were the contest active, we'd be opening guesses soon... 1077 blocks to go this period as of this posting.

Seems the last couple solo solves have been 4PH+ rentals.  That's a lucky payoff for someone rolling the dice, I miss the days when the little guys solved 'em solo, and when we saw solo solves every couple days.

It is not a cloud mining site at all, it never has been.  First it was a saving/investment account type of set up, backed by their own mine.  The since expanded operation and now run their own pool, but the saving and investing accounts are still there.  I've been earning interest on my deposit since right after they launched and glad I put my coin there.

Aww damn well that's a bummer, is it operating cost for the domains that is making you guys want to stop?

These two runs are really the only reason I even run my R1 or the single gekko stick any more, if these fun runs go away I think my miners will, too.

Thanks for setting this up and keeping it going for as long as you did, maybe we can all pitch in to keep the domains up and running.

I've been running one stick at 350 mhz solid for months with just a simple usb fan on it to keep it cool, it's the stick I run in the gekkorun.de fun run.  It's super solid, HW errors are basically non-existent.  I think the hub you use has as much to do with these things running solid as anything else.

My other sticks run at 262 mhz, only because that is the most I could get out of them on the hub I have available to those three.

That's good to hear, though.  Congrats, the hard work and dedication pay off.  Well, pay even at least. 

The counter intuitive thing is that the more we talk about how bad it is, the rising diff and dropping price, the more hash that appears to be coming online.  Maybe it's not old gear, but rather new and not publicized gear.

Are you guys really renting out your gekko sticks on NiceHash?  I don't see how they can make any money, or why someone would rent such a small amount of hash. I mean I guess the stick would just get lumped in with other orders, but it seems strange to me to be setting up a little 20GH/s usb stick as a rental machine.

If you register a btc address with your node (via https://bitnodes.21.co/) you have a shot at a small cash prize every week, or at least they used to do that.  And you might just get a random donation from someone, but no you don't get paid as that is not the point of running a node.  You run a node to help the network and to have control over your coins.  With 10btc you surely want to have control over them.

Perspective is something everyone needs to pay more attention to, I'm glad you have your kitchen project to give you that other way to look.  I went through a recent bathroom remodel that was a nightmare, an endless cycle of mistakes and missed deadlines, and the house ended up getting sold and I never even used the remodel once.

The price seems to be making a push back, probably because a lot of people started buying once btc went under $500.  It's a shame this hack happened, but rest assured it will happen again still, all we can do is keep on keeping on.

And thanks for keeping this going for fun, maybe we can put the onus on each of us that when we post our guess, to post all the guesses before us so that it's no one person's job to maintain the list, just quote it from the last person who posted and add your guess in where it goes.

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

Bitcoin Difficulty:    201,893,210,853
Estimated Next Difficulty:    197,266,676,357 (-2.29%)
Adjust time:    After 1871 Blocks, About 12.4 days
Hashrate(?):    1,621,480,855 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):    
1 block: 9.5 minutes
3 blocks: 28.6 minutes
6 blocks: 57.2 minutes
   
Updated:    9:45 (1.5 minutes ago)

You said you have an S3, run that one instead of the S1.
Hope is awesome, but don't fool yourself, your chance of solving let alone 1 block is essentially 0.

Fingers crossed for your funds, Phil.

May I ask why you stored them in an exchange rather than a wallet under your control?

The impression I've got from Kano and his pool is that he doesn't particularly care to grow it.  I mean I'm sure he's stoked that it's where it is today, but I remember when it was a 1-3PH pool and it still had all the potential is does today but for whatever reason it was underutilized, and it didn't seem to me that he went out of his way to try to attract users by any other means than providing the most efficient pool software that he could.

Dang, Phil, I am sorry to hear that!  Not just for your monetary loss, but the loss to this forum and community of this speculation game should you no longer be able to continue it.  I don't know if it would be worth your effort, but even without the prize it would still be fun to guess and speculate and keep these threads going.  Just a thought, hope you get some good news.

There's no way you could earn more btc than you spend in electricity for the S1, you're better off just buying straight btc, unless like me you like to mine just for mining sake.  Throw away the S1 and use the S3, it uses the same amount of electricity and hashes more than twice as fast.  In reality, though, you'll never solve a block with either of them, so if you can afford the electricity they would just be fun lottery machines.