Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com

[RenHoek]

The biggest problem I'm seeing with KNC - why only the Neptune?  I won't lend my thoughts to the sales technique of giving previous customers a better price and more lead time than a normal Joe off the street, but w[here]tf are the more reasonable units in regards to power consumption?  There are a lot of folks who simply can't handle the type of power requirements that a Neptune needs, so while I could run a Saturn in every room of the house I rent due to an ingenious power arrangement, Neptune, even if my group wanted one, is just not possible.

Alright, I lied, so about the pricing...  So early adopters pay $10k, newbies $13k.  So they profit at least $3k per machine, of course a lot more since they wouldn't sell the first batch at-cost.  Meaning KNC is making a mint off of people, but it seems like they (along with others) have forgotten that there is a fucking gigantic market that is drying up for the hobbyist community of miners who want to be "in the game" but can't get a custom electric line placed into their location.  This is why Bitmain is selling every unit they produce in their "auctions" - you can't find something in the 100-400GH range readily available and people are jumping at the bit to get these things.  A reasonably priced batch of Saturn/Mercury type units would sell out no problem at this point since KNC is 'proven', but all their store shows is the Neptune.  

I don't know, seems to be a losing proposition since anyone who looks at KNC now that didn't previously order is likely in the "f this" camp and looking for a different vendor.

Take a look at this Phrase then imagine and relax!:
Our first offering  at 20nm is called Neptune following the naming convention from our 28nm range.

Seems there will other machines announces follow.  

The next step is OBVIOUSLY a 10Th/s machine.

I hope so 

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[rocks]

I can not understand this either and KnC makes no sense in not offering Saturn/Mercury miners "in mass".

Any ASIC business usually develops a chip and then runs it for at least 1 year. Now that their first design is proven, bugs are worked out and NRE costs recouped, KnC could do large volume runs of the older line and price these things at levels that blow the competition away. Everyone will flock to them since they are proven. Or they could just offer the ASICs and let the 3rd party board developers run with it.

In the ASIC business the high-volume player always wins in the long run, it makes sense for any successful bitcoin ASIC vendor to take this route early to establish themselves. IMHO KnC is opening the door for Black Arrow or other similar ASICs to take a higher volume route with 3rd party board developers.

Doing that may kill the goose that lays the golden egg. I think the reason Knc is doing limiting batches is to avoid driving up the difficulty to the point where it is no longer cost effective for them to manufacture new ASIC devices.

Every machine Knc delivers effectively pushes down the value of their future devices, which is one of the great paradoxes of the zero sum bitcoin mining game.

Agreed that for a given BTC price, there is a hash rate limit that in the long-run limits sales. However, if KnC does not do this someone else will (and are).

You can think of it this way, if the total market for Hashrate is X, KnC could either: 1) fill a large percentage of that total market hashrate or 2) let others sell that hash rate. I'd argue all they are doing by delaying the inevitable is allowing other firms to supply a larger percentage of the market.

[reactor]

A reasonably priced batch of Saturn/Mercury type units would sell out no problem at this point since KNC is 'proven', but all their store shows is the Neptune.  

I can not understand this either and KnC makes no sense in not offering Saturn/Mercury miners "in mass".

Any ASIC business usually develops a chip and then runs it for at least 1 year. Now that their first design is proven, bugs are worked out and NRE costs recouped, KnC could do large volume runs of the older line and price these things at levels that blow the competition away. Everyone will flock to them since they are proven. Or they could just offer the ASICs and let the 3rd party board developers run with it.

In the ASIC business the high-volume player always wins in the long run, it makes sense for any successful bitcoin ASIC vendor to take this route early to establish themselves. IMHO KnC is opening the door for Black Arrow or other similar ASICs to take a higher volume route with 3rd party board developers.

Doing that may kill the goose that lays the golden egg. I think the reason Knc is doing limiting batches is to avoid driving up the difficulty to the point where it is no longer cost effective for them to manufacture new ASIC devices.

Every machine Knc delivers effectively pushes down the value of their future devices, which is one of the great paradoxes of the zero sum bitcoin mining game.

Yeah, but with that in mind...

KNC just sold X Neptune units to returning customers.  Lead time is 3-4 weeks before the (more expensive but same f'ing thing) Newbie Neptunes ship, per their site.  Newbie Neptunes will see 2-3 diff changes between the original N ship date and the NN ship date.

The later shipping units are more expensive, returning customer discount or not that is bullshit in the ASIC world.  Butterfly Labs raised prices for basically the same exact hardware and the community shit a thousand bricks at them.  KNC does it and it is "Fa la la, KNC loves their first customers that much!".  *head scratching*

So don't say KNC isn't in it for the money (tactical and ethical?), rather, they seem to have a good sense on how to maximize their profits while minimizing their own workload to avoid the scenario of "we sold more than we could make".  Tactical - yes.  Ethical - er, don't vendors generally lower prices in accordance with difficulty + later shipping window considerations?  Or am I missing something here?  

[RenHoek]

A reasonably priced batch of Saturn/Mercury type units would sell out no problem at this point since KNC is 'proven', but all their store shows is the Neptune.  

I can not understand this either and KnC makes no sense in not offering Saturn/Mercury miners "in mass".

Any ASIC business usually develops a chip and then runs it for at least 1 year. Now that their first design is proven, bugs are worked out and NRE costs recouped, KnC could do large volume runs of the older line and price these things at levels that blow the competition away. Everyone will flock to them since they are proven. Or they could just offer the ASICs and let the 3rd party board developers run with it.

In the ASIC business the high-volume player always wins in the long run, it makes sense for any successful bitcoin ASIC vendor to take this route early to establish themselves. IMHO KnC is opening the door for Black Arrow or other similar ASICs to take a higher volume route with 3rd party board developers.

Doing that may kill the goose that lays the golden egg. I think the reason Knc is doing limiting batches is to avoid driving up the difficulty to the point where it is no longer cost effective for them to manufacture new ASIC devices.

Every machine Knc delivers effectively pushes down the value of their future devices, which is one of the great paradoxes of the zero sum bitcoin mining game.

Yeah, but with that in mind...

KNC just sold X Neptune units to returning customers.  Lead time is 3-4 weeks before the (more expensive but same f'ing thing) Newbie Neptunes ship, per their site.  Newbie Neptunes will see 2-3 diff changes between the original N ship date and the NN ship date.

The later shipping units are more expensive, returning customer discount or not that is bullshit in the ASIC world.  Butterfly Labs raised prices for basically the same exact hardware and the community shit a thousand bricks at them.  KNC does it and it is "Fa la la, KNC loves their first customers that much!".  *head scratching*

So don't say KNC isn't in it for the money (tactical and ethical?), rather, they seem to have a good sense on how to maximize their profits while minimizing their own workload to avoid the scenario of "we sold more than we could make".  Tactical - yes.  Ethical - er, don't vendors generally lower prices in accordance with difficulty + later shipping window considerations?  Or am I missing something here?  

ethical... eg. they promissed to not flood the hashrate  and dont ship new machines till march/2014...

[Phoenix1969]

Oh man .....I just read the best article ever.......
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-reach-98500-say-wall-street-analysts/

[RenHoek]

Why is KNC not like Ticketmaster?    UUUuuuh....

<Pics Snipped>

One guy gets through, and hears a sexy swedish girl's voice...and you never get them off the phone!..

All they mentally see is this:


No wonder!

Ohhh, they have female reps?        LOL
ps. I've never called, (email worked fine for me)

seems as her shoulder burns  

[kendog77]

A reasonably priced batch of Saturn/Mercury type units would sell out no problem at this point since KNC is 'proven', but all their store shows is the Neptune.  

I can not understand this either and KnC makes no sense in not offering Saturn/Mercury miners "in mass".

Any ASIC business usually develops a chip and then runs it for at least 1 year. Now that their first design is proven, bugs are worked out and NRE costs recouped, KnC could do large volume runs of the older line and price these things at levels that blow the competition away. Everyone will flock to them since they are proven. Or they could just offer the ASICs and let the 3rd party board developers run with it.

In the ASIC business the high-volume player always wins in the long run, it makes sense for any successful bitcoin ASIC vendor to take this route early to establish themselves. IMHO KnC is opening the door for Black Arrow or other similar ASICs to take a higher volume route with 3rd party board developers.

Doing that may kill the goose that lays the golden egg. I think the reason Knc is doing limiting batches is to avoid driving up the difficulty to the point where it is no longer cost effective for them to manufacture new ASIC devices.

Every machine Knc delivers effectively pushes down the value of their future devices, which is one of the great paradoxes of the zero sum bitcoin mining game.

Yeah, but with that in mind...

KNC just sold X Neptune units to returning customers.  Lead time is 3-4 weeks before the (more expensive but same f'ing thing) Newbie Neptunes ship, per their site.  Newbie Neptunes will see 2-3 diff changes between the original N ship date and the NN ship date.

The later shipping units are more expensive, returning customer discount or not that is bullshit in the ASIC world.  Butterfly Labs raised prices for basically the same exact hardware and the community shit a thousand bricks at them.  KNC does it and it is "Fa la la, KNC loves their first customers that much!".  *head scratching*

So don't say KNC isn't in it for the money (tactical and ethical?), rather, they seem to have a good sense on how to maximize their profits while minimizing their own workload to avoid the scenario of "we sold more than we could make".  Tactical - yes.  Ethical - er, don't vendors generally lower prices in accordance with difficulty + later shipping window considerations?  Or am I missing something here?  

ethical... eg. they promissed to not flood the hashrate  and dont ship new machines till march/2014...

Agreed, they appear to be living by their miner protection statement:

https://www.kncminer.com/news/news-24

[reactor]

ethical... eg. they promissed to not flood the hashrate  and dont ship new machines till march/2014...

No insult to you RenHoek as I don't know you, but don't you think that is just idiotic logic?  

As someone said just above, between now and March/14 we're in another black hole of who ships what and when.  CoinTerra or HF ship?  Trouble for Neptunes.  BFL pulls one out and starts dropping Monarchs left and right?  More trouble.  AM delivers anything that isn't first gen crap?  More trouble.  Don't forget folks like BitFury who have no shame targeting another vendor (do we remember the BitFuryStrikesBack graphic? ).  

The only thing KNC ensures by not shipping is that people are going to point their paying power elsewhere because the mining market is both vicious and hungry for hardware, so this February HashFactoryOmega may start selling a kajillion 200GH units for a reasonable price and flooding the market, destroying any hopes of Neptunes being worth such a long-term pre-order phase.  

The market moves fast - heck, look at those BitMain folks, selling stuff like hotcakes in their auctions.  Nothing - nothing - is stopping someone just like them from saying whatev', let's make our retirement by totally killing the mining market and walking away.  All KNC is doing is giving themselves R&D and testing time.

[RenHoek]

ethical... eg. they promissed to not flood the hashrate  and dont ship new machines till march/2014...

No insult to you RenHoek as I don't know you, but don't you think that is just idiotic logic?  

As someone said just above, between now and March/14 we're in another black hole of who ships what and when.  CoinTerra or HF ship?  Trouble for Neptunes.  BFL pulls one out and starts dropping Monarchs left and right?  More trouble.  AM delivers anything that isn't first gen crap?  More trouble.  Don't forget folks like BitFury who have no shame targeting another vendor (do we remember the BitFuryStrikesBack graphic? ).  

The only thing KNC ensures by not shipping is that people are going to point their paying power elsewhere because the mining market is both vicious and hungry for hardware, so this February HashFactoryOmega may start selling a kajillion 200GH units for a reasonable price and flooding the market, destroying any hopes of Neptunes being worth such a long-term pre-order phase.  

The market moves fast - heck, look at those BitMain folks, selling stuff like hotcakes in their auctions.  Nothing - nothing - is stopping someone just like them from saying whatev', let's make our retirement by totally killing the mining market and walking away.  All KNC is doing is giving themselves R&D and testing time.

their protection statement has an exception clause
If other competitors dare to mess up the market, KNC reserves the right to protect its customers. And with dumping prices to protect their interests!

[reactor]

So tired of quoting.

True, but this is their protection clause in printed glory form:

"We would like to state that If any of our competitors continues to add large amounts of hashing power to the network during December, January or February. We will continue to release our devices as competitively priced as we can to protect our customers share of the network."

Now I'm not a lawyer and don't feel like bothering a friend who is, but that is a very, very vague statement.  

"Continue to release as competitively priced as we can" says nothing about upgrades, additional modules, partial refunds, etc. for people who are buying their pre-orders.  All it says is they can adjust their pricing. This is not a confidence builder, I may as well tell my kid that if life gets tough someone may help him out.  Or I'll take investor money and "do the best I can" to protect them and make good moves to not lose money.  

Summary => KNC is running another pre-order, pray to God nobody screws with the mining world between now and then.

[RenHoek]

So tired of quoting.

True, but this is their protection clause in printed glory form:

"We would like to state that If any of our competitors continues to add large amounts of hashing power to the network during December, January or February. We will continue to release our devices as competitively priced as we can to protect our customers share of the network."

Now I'm not a lawyer and don't feel like bothering a friend who is, but that is a very, very vague statement.  

"Continue to release as competitively priced as we can" says nothing about upgrades, additional modules, partial refunds, etc. for people who are buying their pre-orders.  All it says is they can adjust their pricing. This is not a confidence builder, I may as well tell my kid that if life gets tough someone may help him out.  Or I'll take investor money and "do the best I can" to protect them and make good moves to not lose money.  

Summary => KNC is running another pre-order, pray to God nobody screws with the mining world between now and then.

all we can do in this Business, is to trust or not and bet on the Company that we trust!
So i bet on KNC.*

*and I was very angry as they had so quickly closed the first batch and I had to buy for 13000 my second neptune!

[ninjaboon]

How much power is Neptune slated to pull?  Is it beyond anything a typical US household/apartment AC outlet could feed?

not stated on their site. why is that?

[kendog77]

How much power is Neptune slated to pull?  Is it beyond anything a typical US household/apartment AC outlet could feed?

not stated on their site. why is that?

I'm sure they don't know yet because the product doesn't exist.

Since a November Jupiter at ~670 GH consumes around 900 Watts, and a Neptune should equal ~5 Jupiters but be 30% more efficient, I'm guessing that the Neptune will consume ~3000 Watts.

[reactor]

How much power is Neptune slated to pull?  Is it beyond anything a typical US household/apartment AC outlet could feed?

not stated on their site. why is that?

Everything they put up is estimates right now:

"The stats and performance that we can release today are"

[elasticband]

Little bit of tweaking and got my 5 boards at almost 750gh/s

[Gyrsur]

Oh man .....I just read the best article ever.......
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-reach-98500-say-wall-street-analysts/

to less I assume arround 200,000 a coin at the end.

[RenHoek]

Oh man .....I just read the best article ever.......
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-reach-98500-say-wall-street-analysts/

to less I assume arround 200,000 a coin at the end.

Speculant! 

[Gyrsur]

Oh man .....I just read the best article ever.......
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-reach-98500-say-wall-street-analysts/

to less I assume arround 200,000 a coin at the end.

Speculant! 

[Nemo1024]

How much power is Neptune slated to pull?  Is it beyond anything a typical US household/apartment AC outlet could feed?

I think it will be like this:
If you connect the Neptune  to it's OWN 20amp circuit, with nothing else, you should be fine.
Whatever you do, don't put it on the same circuit as something like a microwave, or toaster, or anything that draws significant wattage. Make sure it's on a 20amp breaker minimum.

When you estimate a 20A circuit, you mean on a 110V line, yes? European 230V @ 16A would give 3680W, which should probably hold if kendog77's estimate of 3000W power draw is anywhere near what we will get.
I really hope that it will draw less than 3000W to be able to have it along other things on a slightly loaded circuit.

[Epoch]

How much power is Neptune slated to pull?  Is it beyond anything a typical US household/apartment AC outlet could feed?

I think it will be like this:
If you connect the Neptune  to it's OWN 20amp circuit, with nothing else, you should be fine.
Whatever you do, don't put it on the same circuit as something like a microwave, or toaster, or anything that draws significant wattage. Make sure it's on a 20amp breaker minimum.

When you estimate a 20A circuit, you mean on a 110V line, yes? European 230V @ 16A would give 3680W, which should probably hold if kendog77's estimate of 3000W power draw is anywhere near what we will get.
I really hope that it will draw less than 3000W to be able to have it along other things on a slightly loaded circuit.

Assuming it will be powered by ATX PSUs, the max spec for North America would be 1300W per PSU. Yes, there are 1500W supplies, but 120V/15A circuits must (electrical code) be derated by 20% for continuous use. So 120V x 15A x 80% is 1440W at the wall. A 90% efficient PSU supplying 1300W DC would be right at the limit. If we use 2 of these, we can supply 2600W DC at most.

So drawing less than 2600W DC would be ideal. Otherwise North American people without convenient access to 240V lines would be ... inconvenienced.