Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com

[Phoenix1969]

You guys have been spoilt by the era of easy money in bitcoin mining and have lost the faith.
Time to turn it over to the next generation !

Hah! No amount of "Faith" is going to get the "Bitcoin Mining Train" to stop, and reverse all the way back to the station for late arrivals... but I love your enthusiasm, and... gladly hand you "the torch".   Happy Mining.   

[1714802404]

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[padrino]

So what has to happen for mining to remain profitable in 2015 ?

Much of the hash power is being consolidated more and more, that trend will continue as the big boys can still make a return when smaller operations can no longer continue.. That doesn't mean the hashrate will flatten or go down, rather continue to climb at 10-20% each diff jump as many of the larger miners continue to invest, time is money at that scale in a way the home miner can't fathom..

[s1gs3gv]

One good SHA-256 exploit and the world is mine !

[samsonn25]

So what has to happen for mining to remain profitable in 2015 ?

Much of the hash power is being consolidated more and more, that trend will continue as the big boys can still make a return when smaller operations can no longer continue.. That doesn't mean the hashrate will flatten or go down, rather continue to climb at 10-20% each diff jump as many of the larger miners continue to invest, time is money at that scale in a way the home miner can't fathom..

Thats another good point.  Even the manufacturers have a limit at which they can build, either for themselves or for investors at which it makes more financial sense to buy the btc rather than to build the machines to mine.

Probably now is about $500 per TH?  manufactuer cost, minus some r and d

At about 25 Billion diff and if they can build at .5 watt/GH and $.50/GH they are at the limit, unless some magical technology or pricing happens.

[Phoenix1969]

IMHO the Only chance of ROI is in fiat IF the BTC price rises exponentially...
because you will never ROI in BTC the way the difficulty is rising now.
Then, you can add add the new tax laws, pool attacks, wallet viruses, bloated blockchain, exchange closings and hacks, equipment scams, false advertising, bank delays...
It takes a "special breed" of "Glutton for punishment" imho to stay in mining at this point.
I'm happy trading early profits, and holding the coin myself, yet have machines coming still from earlier decisions.
If I had to do it all over again... "turn back the clock"... I would never have mined at all, but bought coin.
I'm guessing this will be amplified in the future.

[xstr8guy]

One good SHA-256 exploit and the world is mine !

"One good SHA-256 exploit" would kill bitcoin and make it worthless. So I'm not sure what you're crowing about.

Funny how us "oldtimers" are starting to sound just like the people we despised not too long ago, lol. Time is accelerated in this business and nothing makes sense anymore.

[s1gs3gv]

One good SHA-256 exploit and the world is mine !

"One good SHA-256 exploit" would kill bitcoin and make it worthless. So I'm not sure what you're crowing about.

#1 I am not crowing
#2 It would make it worthless ONLY if it were published

In fact, some view the bitcoin protocol as the product of a sophisticated wager between two cryptologists.
The protocol might have been designed to provide the maximum motivation for the creation of an SHA-256 exploit.
We all are just pawns in that experiment.

Lighten Up

[xstr8guy]

One good SHA-256 exploit and the world is mine !

"One good SHA-256 exploit" would kill bitcoin and make it worthless. So I'm not sure what you're crowing about.

#1 I am not crowing
#2 It would make it worthless ONLY if it were published

Lighten Up

The exclamation point made it appear to be crowing. 

[Tehfiend]

One good SHA-256 exploit and the world is mine !

"One good SHA-256 exploit" would kill bitcoin and make it worthless. So I'm not sure what you're crowing about.

Not if used properly. If I found an exploit I would simply use it to "steal" the millions of untouched block-rewards that are collecting dust in the early blocks and are most likely lost. Sure it would raise some eyebrows but it should be easy to sell them long before anybody realized SHA-256 was exploited causing the markets to crash.

[s1gs3gv]

I would use it to improve my luck but not enough to attract attention. It would act as a TH multiplier.

[elasticband]

knc took funding for a 20nm project.

they figured out it was more beneficial to mine now with 28nm rather than later with 20nm.

they took the funding, delayed the project, built a massive hashing center, at max over 11% of found blocks one difficulty change.

they delayed the project enough.that most 20nm customers would refund as the cost was just not effective anymore, apart from for KnC, who the chip cost a fraction of the price.

they mined enough with the 28nm data center to pay all customers a refund who asked and keep their mining center alive.

the remainder of 28nm will be offloaded to make way for the large portion of 20nm they have bought back from customers.

to all you sp30 pre order people, past performance is no reflection of future performance.

[RoadStress]

....
to all you sp30 pre order people, past performance is no reflection of future performance.

Lesson learned from the KnC experience and applied towards my SP30 pre-order!

[elasticband]

....
to all you sp30 pre order people, past performance is no reflection of future performance.

Lesson learned from the KnC experience and applied towards my SP30 pre-order!

its nice to see someone with a sp10 advert in their sig say that!

its interesting to see SP come out with semi instock sp10 units and definitely have enough chips paid and bought to build these machines, but with sp30 it buy now receive later.

surely they can fund the project like the did the first whats the catch? why take pre order s now based on quick past performance

[Biodom]

knc took funding for a 20nm project.

they figured out it was more beneficial to mine now with 28nm rather than later with 20nm.

they took the funding, delayed the project, built a massive hashing center, at max over 11% of found blocks one difficulty change.

they delayed the project enough.that most 20nm customers would refund as the cost was just not effective anymore, apart from for KnC, who the chip cost a fraction of the price.

they mined enough with the 28nm data center to pay all customers a refund who asked and keep their mining center alive.

the remainder of 28nm will be offloaded to make way for the large portion of 20nm they have bought back from customers.

to all you sp30 pre order people, past performance is no reflection of future performance.

Pretty accurate description. Do you think that KnC will ever try to make a competitive standalone bitcoin miner or they pretty much conceded to spond and bitmain?
I thought that mini-Neptune could be competitive, but not at current prices, of course, more like $2500-2900 right now or much less later on.

[elasticband]

I am a quasi October hosting owner. just before the 28nm data centre came online, about 10 days before the media announcement my miners went offline. when they came back they spiked on guild around 700gh. at the time my home miners which were October  batch were running 665gh max.

I almost thought knc were over clocking the hosted miners. many offline/online notifications later on my mobile app, I slept.
in the morning the miners were online but always with a much larger rate of fluctuations.

it's my thought, the hosting miners from Octobe, which knc are now shipping out, were actually given November boards(end feb) (700+gh) and these were ran on a load balance since the hashing centre opened, the fluctuations I experience d were nothing like my home miners when mining one pool, only a load balance/balance.

thing what you will, dig into my pm history and you will see my posting regarding spikes and delight at thoughts of them over clocking hosted miners post around 20th feb or something,  maybe onward, but not long before the dat centre became public/media knowledge.

[s1gs3gv]

So what has to happen for mining to remain profitable in 2015 ?

Much of the hash power is being consolidated more and more, that trend will continue as the big boys can still make a return when smaller operations can no longer continue.. That doesn't mean the hashrate will flatten or go down, rather continue to climb at 10-20% each diff jump as many of the larger miners continue to invest, time is money at that scale in a way the home miner can't fathom..

I'm sure the capital cost of miners for 'the big boys' is cheaper than those of us who buy retail, and by quite a bit. I am not so sure that their overall cost structure is that much better when you consider the cost of building, equipping and staffing data centers and all the other overheads they have. Sure, maybe less per TH than you or me, but not that much less.

So they are in pretty much the same position with respect to earning ROI as we are, and subject to the same market forces.
As a result, if mining is profitable for anyone, it will be profitable for us as well. And if bitcoin is to survive, mining must survive.
Ergo mining will remain profitable, probably as a result of increasing BTC prices.

[5craziest]

So what has to happen for mining to remain profitable in 2015 ?

Much of the hash power is being consolidated more and more, that trend will continue as the big boys can still make a return when smaller operations can no longer continue.. That doesn't mean the hashrate will flatten or go down, rather continue to climb at 10-20% each diff jump as many of the larger miners continue to invest, time is money at that scale in a way the home miner can't fathom..

I'm sure the capital cost of miners for 'the big boys' is cheaper than those of us who buy retail, and by quite a bit. I am not so sure that their overall cost structure is that much better when you consider the cost of building, equipping and staffing data centers and all the other overheads they have. Sure, maybe less per TH than you or me, but not that much less.

So they are in pretty much the same position with respect to earning ROI as we are, and subject to the same market forces.
As a result, if mining is profitable for anyone, it will be profitable for us as well. And if bitcoin is to survive, mining must survive.
Ergo mining will remain profitable, probably as a result of increasing BTC prices.

All the 'big boys' are showin' signs of a cash squeeze.  BA, Cointerra, KnC all seem to be getting worse with refunds.  Companies are laying people off.  Someone on the Cointerra forum even claims his refund check bounced

[samsonn25]

I hope the big boys crash and burn.

[faetos]

Big boys meaning vendors that treat customers like trash are suffering. Good. Karma kicking in early. However, companies that produce reliable goods and treat their customers like human beings are doing well. Hooray! Capitalism works!

[smoothrunnings]

There is no long term in btc mining land.  Usefullness of products are now 90 days or less.  We are less than 60 days away from when manufacturers cant even make machines that are profitable to use minus electricity, mining will be a hobby by then.

^^ This ^^

I'm continually stunned when I read things like this (paraphrased for emphasis)... "Oh but KNC are the best! I may have to wait 3 more months for the same amount of THs at a higher price. But my machine will run for 10 years."

And when that machine does finally arrive, it won't even pay for the electricity it uses after the previous 8 or 9 difficulty jumps.

Well at least by then the weather will have started to cool down and you can use your Neptunes as supplemental heat while I struggle to keep my house below 85f during the summer months.  

When people get their FREE Neptune in Sept and diff is 30 B it will ROI $500

Remember the FREE Neptune's for the B1 and B2 owners are going to be from the 3rd batch. And just like KNC has said from day one with all their Neptune batches.

"Minimum 3000GH/s of hashing speed that 3TH Over 5 times the speed of our first Jupiter release (we reserve the right to increase this as we get closer to shipment)"