Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com

[soy]

Anyone looking at the mining dashboard estimates before buying ANY rigs now...that's got to be a cooler. You struggle to find anything that will reach break even on there now, except the Jupiter delivered in Sept/ Oct and the price is the november discount one not the price anyone actually likely to get one in those months paid.

Even if it's not accurate it's bound to make people think twice unlike 2 or 3 months back when it looked a lot rosier if not exactly bright.

I think it's possible that miners will become much harder to sell, and even moreso on pre-order given the near future losses they are likely to make. Some serious price cuts would be required to improve that.

Even at 5k, would you buy a Jupiter today knowing it would arrive in mid November and never break even? That's looking likely now. So who is going to be buying them?  

Perhaps users who figure getting bitcoin to spend on the slik road is safer via mining then legal tender.

[Puppet]

hm, I'm wondering whether selling the miners under this term to private persons without VAT-ID prevents them from sticking to eu customer laws ?
  'The Products are sold for business use only and Purchaser hereby accepts that it has purchased the Products in order to conduct a business.'

I cannot imagine that. Remember Rpi trouble with EU consumer protection laws ?
Another reason is otherwise everything would be sold as 'business use only' in the EU in order to get rid of those consumer protection, no ?


So one might enforce a refund anytime.
  see chapter 5, http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/cons_info/10principles/en.pdf

As well as sending back the miner after 7days of mining.
 http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/shopping/shopping-abroad/returning-unwanted-goods/index_en.htm

Interesting point. That would be a huge worry for me if I were selling mining hardware. But arguably there is a provision for this in the legislation.

Unless the parties have agreed otherwise, the consumer may not
exercise the right of withdrawal provided for in paragraph 1 in respect
of contracts:
— for the provision of services if performance has begun, with the
consumer's agreement, before the end of the seven working day
period referred to in paragraph 1,
— for the supply of goods or services the price of which is dependent
on fluctuations in the financial market which cannot be controlled
by the supplier

Thats from the EU directive:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:1997L0007:20071225:EN:PDF

If that were to come to court, I think it could swing either way.

[Carlton Banks]

Anyone looking at the mining dashboard estimates before buying ANY rigs now...that's got to be a cooler. You struggle to find anything that will reach break even on there now, except the Jupiter delivered in Sept/ Oct and the price is the november discount one not the price anyone actually likely to get one in those months paid.

Even if it's not accurate it's bound to make people think twice unlike 2 or 3 months back when it looked a lot rosier if not exactly bright.

I think it's possible that miners will become much harder to sell, and even moreso on pre-order given the near future losses they are likely to make. Some serious price cuts would be required to improve that.

Even at 5k, would you buy a Jupiter today knowing it would arrive in mid November and never break even? That's looking likely now. So who is going to be buying them?  

Exactly.

I keep investigating all the possibilities (and the new ones when they appear) and I am seeing no good opportunities, just potential wrenching heartbreak. I keep thinking "what's the best opportunity of all?" and I keep concluding "do nothing for now".

[DeathAndTaxes]

Anyone looking at the mining dashboard estimates before buying ANY rigs now...that's got to be a cooler. You struggle to find anything that will reach break even on there now, except the Jupiter delivered in Sept/ Oct and the price is the november discount one not the price anyone actually likely to get one in those months paid.

Even if it's not accurate it's bound to make people think twice unlike 2 or 3 months back when it looked a lot rosier if not exactly bright.

I think it's possible that miners will become much harder to sell, and even moreso on pre-order given the near future losses they are likely to make. Some serious price cuts would be required to improve that.

Even at 5k, would you buy a Jupiter today knowing it would arrive in mid November and never break even? That's looking likely now. So who is going to be buying them? 

Exactly.

I keep investigating all the possibilities (and the new ones when they appear) and I am seeing no good opportunities, just potential wrenching heartbreak. I keep thinking "what's the best opportunity of all?" and I keep concluding "do nothing for now".

Sometimes the hardest and most profitable option is to simply wait.   The other thing to consider is what is your electrical and cooling costs.   Someone paying $0.04 per kWh with a PEU of 1.02 (Montana using foced air cooling with cold winters and mild summers) has a lot more slack then someone paying $0.12 per kWh with a PUE of 1.8+ (Florida using AC year round). 

[frankenmint]

I'm am of the Jurassic park school of thought (Life finds a way and adapts to seek advantages with the resources available)  - With the amount of dollars thrown into mining hardware - the participants of the system will find substitute methods to realize a return on investment wether it be through mining an alt-coin or through a different mechansim where Asics could be utilized for something else that generates virtual or real revenue.  There will be incentives to foster the creation of these mechansims so that "new" pool operators, "new" services providers, and "new" opportunities to realize a potential ROI are necessary...this incentive remains true both for small time fish like us individuals as well as for someone like bitfountain or ICEdrill who has the ability to have large amounts of hashpower that would be electrically not cost effective if they were to continue to mine as they currently do.  

I could be totally wrong here....but if I'm not, then all of us who bought in early, all those who bought in onto the block erupters, all those who got their bfl hardware very late or their avalon K16 hella late will be able to recover their initial investment and who knows perhaps see a gain.  I PROMISE you guys that who acted as naysayers to those who still took the risk will feel like an idiot for doing such.  

Gotta love the internet, it amazes me to see the posts from back in 2010 and 2011 of people speculating to want to dump a quick 300 bucks on BTC and those who said don't bother its just a fad and you'll just lose like any otc stock...those naysayers also happen to be "these naysayers"  albeit moreso reasonable with all the mining calculators and leigons of hardware vendors and diy folks comming around.

If history were to repeat itself and we were to see the same linear rate of growth as a function of percentage, wouldn't it be reasonable by BTC track record to expect a price to break the 1000 USD barrier?  Would that change the argument of buy and hold vs buy a miner, HELL NO (you still lost your ass if you bought a miner with BTC or cash in hand that could be used to buy/hold btc).

Finally, I'd be willing to bet that many of you, like me, used a line of credit, something that couldn't be used to secure btc to hold, to be able to pay for mining hardware.  I don't know about you, but a line of credit is much easier to use than to have built up cash in hand that you would be willing to invest onto buying BTC and holding.  

When someone says ROI, ask yourself, if I put in 100 dollars onto a bet and I won 100 dollars, did I see a return on my gamble?  NO I just got my money back!  

[Biomech]

Has someone already asked for a refund at this late stage of developement?

Boom! Another one bites the dust.

Those who ask for a refund now at least get their investment back, those who don't will be most likely looking at a negative ROI. Gonna be interesting to watch.

Boom! Another one bites the dust.

Refund = 100% ROI within days
Mining = 100% ROI in 4 - infinity months

what econ class did you take?  that's not ROI that's simply getting your money, back, breaking even.  There is no ROI in term of BTC gained unless you are mining lower difficulty alts and selling them for a good price on the exchange.

+1000

THANK YOU! I keep saying this. ROI does NOT equal breakeven. If it mines, AT ALL, you've "made ROI". Negative to be sure, but still a return on investment. Refund doesn't even equal breakeven necessarily, depending on exchange rates.

I'm going to suggest something here, and perhaps start a separate thread a little later. I think it would be a good idea for miners to invest their BTC in off grid power solutions. There are literally hundreds of ways to generate power. And as an added bonus, you could take your whole living space off grid if you do it right, or big enough. It's not truly "free" energy, as there are equipment and sometimes fuel costs, but it can be done where your non recurring costs will make you money vs. the grid in fairly short order. I don't know about other countries, but in the US if you produce more than you use, you can feed it into the grid and the power companies have to buy it by law. Even without the law, they still would as their generation capacity is always under pressure.

Something to think about...

[Biomech]

what econ class did you take?  that's not ROI that's simply getting your money, back, breaking even.

Breaking even means 100% ROI, no? Enlighten me.

depends on who's telling it. Normally yes, though some would call 100 percent ROI a doubling of your investment.

The term itself merely means that you get an income from your investment.

[Biomech]

What on earth is that?

Horten Ho 229
(dont ask me why its posted there)

It's a Baby Jet 

[Miz4r]

Negative ROI is the same as no ROI, since no ROI means you're getting no 'Return on your Investment' which could both mean 0 or negative ROI. So if you have 'made ROI', it's the same as saying you have broken even already and started to make a profit on your investment.

[frankenmint]

what econ class did you take?  that's not ROI that's simply getting your money, back, breaking even.

Breaking even means 100% ROI, no? Enlighten me.

depends on who's telling it. Normally yes, though some would call 100 percent ROI a doubling of your investment.

The term itself merely means that you get an income from your investment.

Logic dictates that any ROI less than 1 % is essentially taking a loss (even on the investment of your time into evaluating wether the investment is worthwhile or not)  Some would disagree with me that the sweat equity from learning and refining your research would be a sort of intrinsic return as you've gained general knowledge.  

[Biomech]

what econ class did you take?  that's not ROI that's simply getting your money, back, breaking even.

Breaking even means 100% ROI, no? Enlighten me.

depends on who's telling it. Normally yes, though some would call 100 percent ROI a doubling of your investment.

The term itself merely means that you get an income from your investment.

Logic dictates that any ROI less than 1 % is essentially taking a loss (even on the investment of your time into evaluating wether the investment is worthwhile or not)  Some would disagree with me that the sweat equity from learning and refining your research would be a sort of intrinsic return as you've gained general knowledge.  

Logic and finance don't seem to have much in common. Cynicism aside, I agree with that argument, as education is impossible to calculate.

However, the reason ROI calculation involves both the negative and positive side of the equation is because of time preference. ROI is usually calculated using a time factor, and that is what's scaring people right now. They see their machines becoming unprofitable (no continuing ROI) due to electrical costs. I think there are ways around this. No, I know there are ways around this, and they have multiple vectors.

That, and I have a fairly long time frame in mind. I am betting on the long term viability of bitcoin, rather than the short term viability of mining machines.

disclaimer, even though previously stated, I do NOT currently have any skin in the game other than time and learning. Wasn't for lack of trying, though. If I could have raised the money in time, I would have gone with a first day pre-order for KNC. Now I'm in the "watch and wait" category. I still think that long term, mining is a good investment for a number of reasons. The main one is that I believe bitcoin is still very young, and very undervalued. But to make it rise, there needs to be a lot more development towards mainstream adoption. And for that to work well, there need to be a lot of miners keeping the network large enough to prevent somebody from hijacking the blockchain. Which brings it full circle to mining being a good LONG TERM investment, with some ugly short term hurdles.

[Micky25]

wether it be through mining an alt-coin or through a different mechansim where Asics could be utilized for something else that generates virtual or real revenue.  

https://www.aoterra.de/

[The Avenger]

wether it be through mining an alt-coin or through a different mechansim where Asics could be utilized for something else that generates virtual or real revenue.  

https://www.aoterra.de/

The old box heater joke - in german.

Nicht komisch

[AussieHash]

In the meantime, everyone should get used to the new number: 148.819.199

Difficulty and network hashrate, how do they differ?  If one were to look at at the return on a fixed hashrate, say 10GH/s, and the network hashrate doubles, would the BTC returned per week on that 10GH/s halve?  Or does it take a doubling of the difficulty to halve the return on that 10GH/s - understanding we're talking probability not absolutes.

Difficulty and hashrate and perfectly linear.   If network hash rate doubles, then difficulty doubles (eventually), and the GROSS return on x GH/s is cut perfectly in half.  The net return is reduced by more than 50% because the electrical cost remains fixed.

Based on existing (not future) pre-orders we are looking at 6 PH/s min by end of Dec.  If you want to be more conservative you should consider 8 PH/s.  

1 PH/s ~= 140 mil difficulty
1 billion difficulty ~= 7 PH/s

If you want the exact formulas

hashrate = (2^32 * difficulty) / 600
difficulty = (600 * hashrate) / 2^32

Remember the network/protocol has no way on "knowing" the hashrate (and neither do any sites which chart it).  We can only estimate the hashrate based on the frequency that blocks are found.

I believe the above is only an approximation of the target calculation, see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty

Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>
 
inline float fast_log(float val)
{
   int * const exp_ptr = reinterpret_cast <int *>(&val);
   int x = *exp_ptr;
   const int log_2 = ((x >> 23) & 255) - 128;
   x &= ~(255 << 23);
   x += 127 << 23;
   *exp_ptr = x;
 
   val = ((-1.0f/3) * val + 2) * val - 2.0f/3;
   return ((val + log_2) * 0.69314718f);
} 
 
float difficulty(unsigned int bits)
{
    static double max_body = fast_log(0x00ffff), scaland = fast_log(256);
    return exp(max_body - fast_log(bits & 0x00ffffff) + scaland * (0x1d - ((bits & 0xff000000) >> 24)));
}
 
int main()
{
    std::cout << difficulty(0x1b0404cb) << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

[frankenmint]

by the way...people do calculations with preorders and will state preorders as a linear function of the order number...obviously this is wrong because there are duplicated orders, abandoned orders, and cancelled orders.  I would also be willing to venture that around April/May 2014 we will see an exodus of hashingpower leaving bitcoin as the sub 400 GH/s folks are switching to alt-chains because of the diminished BTC return from mining efforts.

[DPoS]

Anyone looking at the mining dashboard estimates before buying ANY rigs now...that's got to be a cooler. You struggle to find anything that will reach break even on there now, except the Jupiter delivered in Sept/ Oct and the price is the november discount one not the price anyone actually likely to get one in those months paid.

Even if it's not accurate it's bound to make people think twice unlike 2 or 3 months back when it looked a lot rosier if not exactly bright.

I think it's possible that miners will become much harder to sell, and even moreso on pre-order given the near future losses they are likely to make. Some serious price cuts would be required to improve that.

Even at 5k, would you buy a Jupiter today knowing it would arrive in mid November and never break even? That's looking likely now. So who is going to be buying them?  

Perhaps users who figure getting bitcoin to spend on the slik road is safer via mining then legal tender.

at least someone sees that there are other 'returns' considered than just the 'basic ROI' that I tried to spell out...   there's a couple others if you sit back and think for a while

but no..  most people here think that their situation is the only one, and everyone who ignores it is a 'dumb investor'.   Yes there are some dumb ones, and others who get duped into groupbuys with outright lies, etc but it is laughable to think that all miners are just in it for the strict 'if no ROI than better to just buy BTC' mentality.. but keep yer' blinders on and keep complaining, it's all good 

[kingcoin]

Yeah. I don't know why they chose not to do testing. I guess they figured they'd get the chips a day or two earlier without it. 

As I've mentioned before the test just takes a second to run. The infrastructure for running the tests are already in the fab. My reply to the question was that they could spend some time generating the STIL file and hire somebody else to do the rack assembly for a few hours.

[xstr8guy]

This thread is becoming tedious.

[Micky25]

[-Redacted-]

This thread is becoming tedious.

Yes, everyone seems to think that they know how things should be done better than the experts that are actually doing those things.  It's beyond tedious.  If everyone is such a fucking expert about everything, why haven't you started your own companies?  

I have never, ever seen so many incredibly lame, completely ignorant armchair jockies posting in one thread before.