This is a witch hunt by the taxman, I believe this took place before the IRS declared bitcoins to be property retroactively which is illegal.

this type of tactics by the IRS is in part what has caused the price of bitcoin to temporarily go down since it makes it difficult to purchase bitcoins.

The way the news appears it looks like it was a clear case of entrapment, since the cop made a lot of small purchases will the goal to gain his trust so he could be entrapped.

Charles shrem was also a victim of this.

Remember guys bitcoin is a financial revolution, revolutions are not peaceful, there will be some that fall but fighting for financial freedom is worth it.

but do not take  unnecessary risks, if using localbitcoins find out the legal limits and play within those limits to reduce risk.

burtW was exercising his financial freedom that is not illegal based on the constitution, it is only made a crime because the taxman does not get his cut for something he did not help create, he did nothing to support, he did not contribute, nevertheless he wants his cut after all you are bypassing his inflation tax with bitcoins.

Also forcing people to pay the inflation tax is illegal under the constitution, that is why the constitution mentions gold and silver as money, it was to prevent the inflation tax that is currently payed under the US dollar and that tax is used mostly to fund wars. Since with bitcoin there is no inflation tax, the IRS is asking retroactively its users to pay the inflation tax which bitcoin by design was made to avoid, since it was designed to be a form of honest money and completely open. not closed like a typical fiat currency and inflated at will using qe (money printing).  

To those that say he knew what he was doing, yes he knew, he was participating in a financial revolution.

miners in general are not killing bitcoin. It is centralized miners that do not give a shit about bitcoin which are killing it, such as BFL, KnC, Cointerra, etc.

Independent miners are a different story, most of them believe in the bitcoin economy, as proof when the block reward was 50BTC this was never a problem, and now that it is 25 BTC we have a problem.

The reason for the problem is that bitcoin mining is becoming centralized, and that is a very bad thing, small independent miners need some hardware vendor that does not mine for himself, and that believes in the bitcoin economy to provide open source hardware to only independent miners at low cost, otherwise bitcoin mining  will continue to get centralized which is a terrible thing.

In the bitcoin world:
centralization is your best enemy.
decentralization is your best friend.

good luck with that, I do not think he has one.

A good idea never dies, crypto currencies are here to stay.

What is hurting bitcoin right now are regulations. yes, regulations that do not apply to currencies of other currencies and create unfair competition.

for example in the USA you can not buy/sell bitcoins anonymously, but you can for other currencies, for example in San Ysidro CA, you can buy/sell pesos/dollars in exchanges available to the public completely anonymous, for example if you converted to pesos and the peso gained value you would not be expected to pay capital gain taxes, and if you had pesos and the dollar lost value you would also not be expected to pay capital gains tax. why discriminate against bitcoin?

This has created an environment where is is very easy to sell bitcoins and hard to buy, most vendors that accept bitcoin just convert it to fiat, few are the ones that keep the bitcoins.

if it was not because of regulations there would be a bitcoin vending machine in every city.

I do not believe people should pay an inflation tax, that is like getting gipped, you paid your taxes, and then have to paid taxes on money that was already taxed, and then taxed again an again for the same money, at that rate taxes exceed the amount you are trying to save.

To makes things worse some countries that do not value economic freedom ban bitcoin altogether, the IRS make a ruling that is property, this was done in purpose to get easy money and to discourage bitcoin usage.

my prediction on bitcoin is that it will hit a bottom, and then bounce back.
in the years 2009,2010,2012,2012 the users of bitcoin were people that believed in bitcoin, the average guy.
in 2013 bitcoin got a lot of publicity, lots of regulations that kicked in on 2014, and even though a lot more people that believed in bitcoin, it also got in a lot of people trying to make easy money, that created the bitcoin buble.
2014 was the year of legislation, rules, bitcoin was banned in some countries, in some countries it was left free, on others it was heavily regulated.
2015 bitcoin will hit bottom and then bounce, it will not die.

things to learn decentralization is good, centralization is bad.
simplicity is good, making things complicated is not good.

once mining becomes decentralized again, it will help the bitcoin enocomy, once BFL and KNC go bankrupt it will help a lot to weed out the scammers.

my advice is to hold on to some bitcoins, since 5 years from now, they will either we worth a lot, or very little, if they are worth a lot it means bitcoins have succeeded and people on this planet who choose to have financial independence   can have the freedom to have financial independence.

For bitcoin to succeed we must concentrate on making easy to buy to the average person, and try to keep it free from regulations as much as possible, regulations only cripple bitcoin, and a cripple bitcoin will have a hard time competing against other currencies that have other set of laws.

The worst bitcoin crash was in 2011 when it lost 90% of its value, I had a prediction that in future bubbles that bottom would always be at a lesser percentage than previous bubbles, if we take the peak of 2013 at $1240, and apply 10%, thats $124, I strongly believe that bitcoin will not go below this amount.
I think we are near the bottom of the crash now.

All the alt coins are dying right now, if we join forces and all get bitcoins, it will help the bitcoin economy, and that is much better than having a fragmented digital economy in bad shape.

mining also has become a problem due to centralization, in the early years of bitcoin the block reward was 50 btc and it was not a problem, now it is only 25 btc and it is creating a big problem, the reason is simple when it was 50 btc most miners were independent using CPUs and then GPUS, most of them believed in the bitcoin economy and kept the coins, now it has become centralized by the greedy asic makers, like KNC who lied to their customers and now control a very large percentage of the mining network, this people do not believe in the bitcoin economy and immediately  as soon as the value of bitcoin goes up they sell all the coins making the value go down.

To solve this problem, we need more independent miners, but the problem is the hardware it has to be purchased by the very same guys that are creating the problem, we need someone with cash and that believes in the bitcoin economy to step in and build quality miners a low cost for the independent miners as long as this does not happen it will be very hard for the independent miners to compete against the big guys.

In brief this are the 3 main problems causing the price to go down:
1. regulations and laws, we have to lobby for less regulation not more, otherwise more guys like Charlie Shrem or Roger Ver will be picked on by the authorities to be used as examples with the goal to discredit bitcoin, so far the strategy has worked to some degree, we need a free bitcoin ( as in freedom). Remember it is people like them that helped jump start the bitcoin economy not the ones creating the regulations.
2. mining has to become more decentralized, and its becoming more centralized, someone that truly believes in the bitcoin economy needs to start making low cost hardware exclusively for the independent miners, this will cause the price of bitcoin to go up, since the only miners that hold on to the coins are the independent miners, and it will help protect against a 50% attack, otherwise it will be extremely difficult for the independent miners to compete against the big guys, and this will cause the price to go down like it is happening now.
3. buying needs to be made easy, just as easy as selling, normally every purchase is a sale this cause the price to go down, buying should be made easy, since buying is what causes the price to go up, maybe this is where decentralized exchanges will step in. if we manage to make buying bitcoins idiot proof the price will go to the moon, but creating a method for buying to be idiot proof will not be an easy task.

if we manage to improve in this 3 areas I am very confident that the bitcoin price will go up and help stabilize
bitcoin.

if it is a pre-order it is better to stay away, your dignity is more valuable.

I have been burnt really bad by the crooks at BFL  and the crooks at KNC.

Bitmain has been on the better side other than the miners at times barely ROI, and other times do not.

It is incredible but my best mining times were in the GPU days, which are well gone.

So far the best choices for mining looks like it is the S3, S4, S5?, and SP20.

If anyone knows of another good choice I would like to hear about it, remember when mining not only good hardware is needed but hardware that has potential for ROI.

It is best to stay away from low quality hardware like BFL, and KNC, I have not had experience with other vendors.

All my S1, and S3 have been very solid, with at most a drop in hashing of 10%, but some had a 5% better hashing, with KNC I had a 75% drop in hashing over a short period of time.

knc are crooks, they promised not to mine over 5% of the customers hash rate and they mine at about 10% of the total hash rate.
I requested a refund for my batch 1 titan and it was denied, even though according to Swedish law I am entitled to a refund, and the contract did not specify that refunds would not be honored.

I hope the same thing that happened to BFL happens to KNC, all crooks should be taken down.

Sam I would appreciate if you could give a refund for my Titan, since you are not respecting your end of the deal, otherwise I would expect you to mine only 5% of the customers hash rate.

Also it appears that the titan will be a fire hazard just like the neptune due to its design, any fire marshals reading this.

This guys were crooks, I requested a refund for the jalapeno I ordered since I was not getting anything, and the refund was awarded but did not get anything, until 8 months later I got a jalapeno when it was worthless, no one would answer the phone or reply to emails.

When someone else has better guns, then the backing of the dollar is lost, and its game over.
It will be a few decades.
If it is not BRICS then someone else it is a matter of time.

Of course the government could prevent that by stopping the printing presses, but they will not do that.

I think the dollar is coming to an end very slowly, it will take some more money printing and the government is doing a really good job at killing the dollar.

I think the dollar may have a few more decades to go, the thing with the dollar is that it is not based on market economics if it was it would already be dead, it is based on guns and oil, and thats the real reason the Dollar has survived for so long.

In future oil prices are going to skyrocket and that will put a dent in the dollar, and then if not BRICS someone else will step up with the guns to challenge the dollar.
As oil skyrockets expect a few more wars, as more wars take place the dollar get inflated to fund those wars, as the dollars gets inflated there will be incentives to get out of the dollar, but the dollar is backed by guns so no one gets out, until someone has better guns and then its game over.

A true economy can not be backed by guns, and soon as someone else has better guns the economy collapses.

When this happens expect Bitcoin to be over $10k, but it is going to get very ugly when the dollar collapses.

The reason the Zimbabwe dollar collapsed is that they did not have the guns or oil, only the printing presses.
 

Nonsense. if that was the case they would not accept dollars.

Dollars fund wars.
Bitcoins do not fund wars.

War is in general a criminal act, few if any wars are in self defense, most wars are theft by a larger country against a smaller one because they can get away it.

but not because it if theft by a country  it stops being theft, it may not be theft under the law because that same country that doing the theft is the one writing the law, but if we were to hear from the smaller country the one that is on the losing end they would say it is theft.

That is why in the world an international court with power it is highly needed, not a symbolical one with absolutely no power.

Going back to Bitcoin, Bitcoin is much more transparent than the dollar, the rules are precise and well known by everyone, there is even a public ledger which is the blockchain, on the other hand the Dollars operates in a very closed way with no transparency.

So if you are a crook your currency of choice should be the dollar, plus in comparison to Bitcoin they are easy to counterfeit.

Neither, this 2 parties are self serving, and basically a mirror of each other with very minor differences.
That does not mean that individual Democrats or Republicans may or may not embrace bitcoin, but as a party they will not, for one they want to have the control of the money through the banks, and be able to finance wars.

Any party that truly values individual freedom will support Bitcoin.

Any party that may support Bitcoin will have this characteristics:
Believe in individual freedom, and to have the right not to be babysitted by the state against your will, specially in the area pf money.
Believe that peace is best for all of us.
Peace and Freedom go together, since if you Believe other have the same right to the same freedom that you have.
If you truly believe in total freedom, then you believe that borders are evil since they restrict your freedom.
Laws in general go against freedom, and as such in general they are bad, specially when you have so many of them that the average person has no clue how many laws exists, I agree only with the existence of a very few basic laws it is best.
Laws have to be clear and precise to guarantee that your freedom is respected and that can only happen if there are few of them, otherwise it is caos.

I believe the founding fathers of the constitution were very much pro freedom, and since in the constitution of the USA the only legal money is gold or silver, I very much believe if they were alive today they would be pro bitcoin, too bad the reality today is far from what the constitution says, it is quite the opposite the government is always planning on ways to rape the constitution, I wish the government got raped and not the constitution, well it will get raped by the bitcoin revolution that it is taking place right now.

In brief:
Do not trust Democrats or Republicans, they will both want to steal your money to fund their wars.
The constitution is good but it is not respected by current politicians.
Not all government is bad, a very tiny government I believe it is good, since when you come to this world you are naked, and the government is needed for very basic tasks only such as hospitals and education and currently it sucks very badly at the basic tasks since it gets involved it other things it has no business.
The bitcoin revolution will be a success, and all political parties at such time in future will support bitcoin due to their self serving interests.

The only honest parties are the ones that support bitcoin now, during the revolution, not after the revolution.
 
I believe that both parties are actually trying to kill bitcoin by regulating  what does not need regulation and for preventing the average person from participating in the economy the same way the big guys do, the only reason they do not ban bitcoin is because such a law would be unenforceable and it would make them look like idiots and they know that, so instead they take the approach of regulation bitcoin to its death at its weak points, the weak points are the centralized points, all decentralization is good for the bitcoin economy.
 
bitcoin with regulation or without will succeed, regulation are like speed bumps on the road thats all, it will cause bitcoin adoption to slow down a little bit, but will completely fail at stopping the Bitcoin revolution.


 


 

 

with the 18% difficulty increase, maybe it is due to the sp30 being shipped, I do not think it is due to the S3 since they are on batch 7, and batch 6 did not sold out, so that means sales are slowing down.

With the huge difficulty increase coming 18%, lower bitcoin price which means the S3 is going up in bitcoins to compensate for the lower btc price in dollars and the fact that it is not sold from stock.

The S3 is no longer profitable even with free electricity, my previous 90 day ROI was based on a 10% difficulty increase, with 18% it changes everything.
Using the lower price of S3 taking bitcoin price at $565, the S3 will most likely go up in btc if btc goes down, ROI is taking 111 days with free electricity and free power supply, if we add any cost for electricity or ps there is no ROI.

Difficulty Day Week Month
Date    Difficulty    Revenue    Profit    Return
2014             -0.6613
8-13 – 8-19 (7 days)    19729 M    0.08772    0.08596    -0.5754
8-20 – 9-1 (20 days)    23280 M    0.1226    0.1202    -0.4552
9-2 – 9-14 (33 days)    27471 M    0.1039    0.1019    -0.3533
9-15 – 9-27 (46 days)    32416 M    0.08808    0.08632    -0.267
9-28 – 10-10 (59 days)    38251 M    0.07464    0.07315    -0.1939
10-11 – 10-23 (72 days)    45136 M    0.06326    0.06199    -0.1319
10-24 – 11-5 (85 days)    53261 M    0.05361    0.05253    -0.07936
11-6 – 11-18 (98 days)    62848 M    0.04543    0.04452    -0.03484
11-19 – 12-1 (111 days)    74160 M    0.0385    0.03773    0.002892
12-2 – 12-13 (123 days)    87509 M    0.03263    0.03197    0.03487
12-14 – 12-26 (136 days)    103 G    0.02765    0.0271    0.06196
12-27 – 1-8 (149 days)    121 G    0.02343    0.02296    0.08493
2015
1-9 – 1-21 (162 days)    143 G    0.01986    0.01946    0.1044
1-22 – 2-3 (175 days)    169 G    0.01683    0.01649    0.1209
2-4 – 2-16 (188 days)    200 G    0.01426    0.01398    0.1349
2-17 – 3-1 (201 days)    236 G    0.01209    0.01184    0.1467
3-2 – 3-14 (214 days)    278 G    0.01024    0.01004    0.1567
3-15 – 3-27 (227 days)    328 G    0.00868    0.008506    0.1652
3-28 – 4-9 (240 days)    388 G    0.007356    0.007209    0.1725
4-10 – 4-21 (252 days)    458 G    0.006234    0.006109    0.1786
4-22 – 5-4 (265 days)    540 G    0.005283    0.005177    0.1837
5-5 – 5-17 (278 days)    637 G    0.004477    0.004387    0.1881
5-18 – 5-30 (291 days)    752 G    0.003794    0.003718    0.1918
5-31 – 6-12 (304 days)    887 G    0.003215    0.003151    0.195
6-13 – 6-25 (317 days)    1047 G    0.002725    0.00267    0.1977
6-26 – 7-8 (330 days)    1236 G    0.002309    0.002263    0.1999
7-9 – 7-21 (343 days)    1458 G    0.001957    0.001918    0.2018
7-22 – 8-3 (356 days)    1721 G    0.001658    0.001625    0.2035
8-4 – 8-16 (369 days)    2031 G    0.001405    0.001377    0.2048
8-17 – 8-29 (382 days)    2397 G    0.001191    0.001167    0.206
8-30 – 9-10 (394 days)    2828 G    0.001009    0.0009892    0.207
9-11 – 9-23 (407 days)    3337 G    0.0008554    0.0008383    0.2078
9-24 – 10-6 (420 days)    3938 G    0.0007249    0.0007104    0.2086
10-7 – 10-19 (433 days)    4647 G    0.0006143    0.000602    0.2092
10-20 – 11-1 (446 days)    5484 G    0.0005206    0.0005102    0.2097
11-2 – 11-14 (459 days)    6471 G    0.0004412    0.0004324    0.2101
11-15 – 11-27 (472 days)    7636 G    0.0003739    0.0003664    0.2105
11-28 – 12-10 (485 days)    9010 G    0.0003169    0.0003105    0.2108
12-11 – 12-23 (498 days)    10632 G    0.0002685    0.0002632    0.211
12-24 – 1-4 (511 days)    12546 G    0.0002276    0.000223    0.2113
2016

It is taking almost 2 years to ROI 0.2 BTC with free energy and power supply.

At 10 cents the kilowatt there is no ROI, things are getting worse just a few weeks ago the point of no ROI was 25 cents per kilowatt with free power supply.

This means the S3 is dead unless the price is dropped bellow 0.5 BTC on the next batch, and most likely on the next batch it will stay at 0.66 or go up to 0.68 btc, and 0.65, 0.64 will not help since there have been already 3 batches in which the price has not dropped.

At this time I would suggest to wait, sales are slowing down, not everyone has free energy and a free power supply, sp30 sales are slow, the current batch has not sold out and current batch will not ROI one powerful reason to stay away from pre orders, once the sp30 stops selling they may start selling from stock and lower the price, if they do then the S3 will have to lower the price to stay competitive, otherwise it will go the way knc has gone. S3 sales are also slowing down, bath1 sold very quickly, so did batch 2, and 3, 4, batch 5 took a long time to sell out, and batch 6 did not sold out, I predict that batch 7 will not sell out at current price.

we will be lucky if the early S3 batch1 to batch 5 can ROI, batch 6 and up it looks very bad for ROI.

Well the GPL is a license that has to be respected in the benefit of all of us, that includes Bitmain, since it is thanks to the GPL that Bitmain can use the software just like all of us. The GPL is a very well designed license, it was created by Richard Stallman from the GNU foundation, Richard in the early 80's could visualize stuff we were completely blind at the time, my full respect for Richard Stallman this is a person we should all listen to.

The problem are not really the hardware geeks that purchase at no ROI, since eventually they would stop buying they are a finite number with finite money, the real problem is that Bitmain mines themselves so there is not a big motivation for them to make us ROI, as of now with free electricity it takes 92 days to ROI using a 10% difficulty increase which is very realistic.

I seen those geeks you talk about only a month or 2 ago, an S1 was sold for $3000 on ebay at absolutely no ROI.

There is a complete lack of competition in the hardware asic for Bitcoin.
I was hoping that with the difficulty increase the price for batch 7 would be lower, and instead it is higher since the beginning of batch 5 it was 0.64, and now it is 0.66 with a higher difficulty.

It seems that Bitmain's formula is to make us ROI under free electricity in 90 days, which is not very good, since depending how much you pay for electricity you could ROI in 6 months or never.

And the problem with spondoolies with the sp30 is that it is being sold on preorders with a month and a half in advance, Bitmain is only an 8 day preorder, so as far as preorders go Bitmain wins.

Eventually the market is going to saturate, and if the sp30 starts selling from stock which I think it might once sales slow down and sales are slowing down, and taking into consideration that spondoolies does not mine (someone correct me if I am wrong, since almost every hardware vendor mines for themselves), this could force a little bit of competition and force the s3 prices to go down or viewing things from a different point of view it could force the sp30 prices to go down.

The S3 is a very good product, but at the wrong price, since it does not ROI for most of us or barely ROI.
I would make a rough estimate that the cost of the S3 for Bitmain is probably $100, maybe a little more, so for each S3 sold there is currently a $280 profit, while if we break even we are lucky, we could maybe with luck in our favor make $50, the balance is all to one side, that is not good for us.
if the S3 where to be priced at $250 each, even at $280 it still be a fair price,  at the time of this writing, Bitmain and us would be making about equal profit which is fair and it would increase their sales tremendously, but Bitmain lacks the motivation to do that simply because the mine themselves.

An indication that sales are beginning to slow down is that batch 6 did not sold out, and spondoolies September batch also has not sold out.

I myself will need a lot of miners, since I am building a small data center, however my data center it is not ready and will not be ready for a few months, and when I buy I will aim if possible to ROI at most in 2 months, anything about that and it is very high risk.

Ironically the S3 was a better purchase when it was first released since lower price and lower difficulty, implied quicker ROI, the last good batch for some ROI was the beginning of batch 5.

Bitmain should consider that we ROI, as of now the S3 is the best one for the money but the lack of ROI ruins everything and that is a decision Bitmain has taken, but they take the risk that someone else delivers, that someone else now does not exist, but sooner than later it could exist, on the other hand Bitmain could realize the splitting the profits is actually something fair, lets see what happens, I for now will be monitoring prices for potencial ROI, but at current prices I am not buying, I am happy I was able to get 4 S3 when both difficulty and price where lower.

Bitmain was better, I am not sure whats happening, they used to sell from stock and every few days they would lower the price to compensate for the increased difficulty, hopefully they did not find a map from Sam where he shows them the path, at the last days of the S1 it was selling for $180 dollars ( in btc), and I am sure the S3 only costs a little bit more to produce that the S1.

KNC was good in 2013, and now they are terrible.
BFL was never good.
Avalon was only good in the first 2 batches, and then collapsed.
Spondoolies ?



 

Its called margin of safety, a pci-e connector is made for 150w at 12 volts, it is really the current that matters, so it is made for 12.5Amps, that amount can be pushed significantly for example the Neptune pushes over 30 Amps, but it is not reliable since there are many cases of burnt cables.
Also not all power supply cables are equal some at 18g, others are 16 g, the 16g you only find on premium power supplies, so most people use the cheaper 18g, if you have a lot of current go over an 18g cable it will get hot.
other factor are the ambient temperature and humidity.
So if you overclock and wish be play it safe use the 4 pci-e connectors, thats why it has 4.
if you are using a cheap power supply you should also use 4.
with 16g cables you can get away and use only 2.

an overclock s3 uses 200watt, which is at 16.7A, which is about 5 Amps above the standard, by using all 4 pci-connectors you are using about 8.3A per connector which is very safe.

you do not have to do what knc did, and it is to use a single pci-e connector and create a fire hazard, in this case an 18g cable burns.

The advantage is safety, you completely eliminate the risk of a fire, this is very important since miners most of the time run unattended.

bitcoin is a baby, and it is already killing the dollar.

give it at least 10 years, and things will most likely be priced in bitcoins directly, actually in 10 years it may be more accurate to say things will be priced in satoshis, since a bitcoin could probably buy a brand new car and  maybe  even a house.

The coolest part of all is that it will make making wars expensive, since bitcoiners do not have to pay the war tax by force unless if they voluntarily pay such tax.

To help the bitcoin economy we should buy in the following order:
1 max priority to vendors that accept bitcoins and keep the coins.
2. vendors that accept bitcoins and sell the coins for fiat.
3. fiat
4. credit cards.

 

Are you kidding? the s3 has been around a few weeks only, and ROI takes over 100 days, just use the following calculators:
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php

This question will be a proper question by the end of the year.

If Bitmain changes to their old selling model, and decides to go to sale from stock instead of pre orders it may help a little, since instead of having to wait 1 or 2 weeks, you will only wait 48 hours for shipping.

The pricing of the S3 is so that it barely ROI, most others do not ROI.

And if for some reason bitcoin price drops the S3 goes up in price and you will definitely not ROI, at the beginning of batch 5 the price was 0.64 then it went up to 0.68, now it is at 0.66, however difficulty has continuously gone up during this period.

I am waiting myself for the price to drop, the ones that buy independent of ROI will not ROI but will enjoy the fun of mining, the ones that wait will enjoy double fun ROI and mining, and who knows if during that time a better deals appears.

The next best deal seems to be the sp30, however that is a pre order of 1.5 months maybe 2 months until they change their model of sales it is a worse option, however if the start selling from stock it could change things a lot taking into consideration that the power supply it is already included, in such a case it is easy to compare just plugs numbers in the calculators and see which ROIs first.

please provide some instructions on how to buy the metallic trezor for $99, I could not find any links on the https://www.buytrezor.com/ site, also provide some info on how to get the promo code.
I been using slush a long time and found some blocks.

slush, I have been using your pool since ancient times.

do you have a good promo code for the purchase of the trezor?

if you do thats great.

I do not recommend buying the only reason but a powerful one, is that it is a pre order purchase.

In the bitcoin economy it is hard to predict the future, and that is exactly what you have to do with a pre-order, 90% of the time the miners get burned only on very rare occasions they win.

I recommend waiting until it sells from stock if it ever does, and then run a calculator such as

 http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php

or
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

and calculate if you ROI in 45 days, if you want to take some risk then 60 days, over 60 days the risk is very big and you could not ROI or only break even after several months/years of mining.


As of now none ROI below 60 days, and that includes the antminer S3, if in doubt use the calculator, the calculator will be your best friend.

Either of the above calculators should work and the results will be near identical.

As for mining pool use p2pool  best payout, however it takes longer for the payout and must leave your miners running 24/7, if lots of people use it the part where it takes longer for the payout may change.


Using a calculator on a pre order does not work well since you have to speculate on the difficulty increase and that is where most fail, also in the past BFL has been over a year late on deliveries, cointerra, knc and most of the other ones have been late with no compensations, some like avalon have failed all together, so any pre order is high risk.

Even on spondoolies it is high risk if you read the forum the SP30 was expected initially to be lower consumption and have a higher hash rate, it is my understanding that there was a compensation for the lower hash rate but not for the higher energy consumption, and of course refunds were out of the question.