HashFast launches sales of the Baby Jet

[Puppet]

yes, i still maintain that the HR will stabilize or even drop at some point; probably sometime early next year after Cointerra ships (if they do at all).

How much do you want to bet? Im willing to bet just about anything you want that we will not see a single difficulty decrease before March 2014 (and thats playing it safe).

As for being too early to tell who is less unlucky; it isnt. Next difficulty will be 420M or more and is due in just 3 days. And almost certainly *all* HF customers will have to stomach at least one more difficulty adjustment around November 2 or 3 before they can unpack their miner, and more than likely many or most of them will have to stomach 2 more difficulty adjustments. At that point, we are looking at a difficulty close to 1B before you mined your first satoshi.

[RoadStress]

it's too early to tell who's more "lucky".  

don't forget KNC had a head start so it's expected you're mining right now.  yes, it appears HF will be late.  don't know how late but i still prefer the apparent high quality parts they are using along with the cutting edge 28 nm tech.  you're right though; it could be useless if they're too late.

yes, i still maintain that the HR will stabilize or even drop at some point; probably sometime early next year after Cointerra ships (if they do at all).

i've actually had good luck with my Batch 2 Avalons as well.

Pure gold!

[mgio]

yes, i still maintain that the HR will stabilize or even drop at some point; probably sometime early next year after Cointerra ships (if they do at all).

How much do you want to bet? Im willing to bet just about anything you want that we will not see a single difficulty decrease before March 2014 (and thats playing it safe).

As for being too early to tell who is less unlucky; it isnt. Next difficulty will be 420M or more and is due in just 3 days. And almost certainly *all* HF customers will have to stomach at least one more difficulty adjustment around November 2 or 3 before they can unpack their miner, and more than likely many or most of them will have to stomach 2 more difficulty adjustments. At that point, we are looking at a difficulty close to 1B before you mined your first satoshi.

Yes, hashrate will not drop until we hit 30 billion difficulty or so. The only thing that could cause it to drop is a huge drop in BTC. Like down to $50 or below. As long as it stays above 100 we won't see difficulty drop for a long time.

[Puppet]

Yes, hashrate will not drop until we hit 30 billion difficulty or so. The only thing that could cause it to drop is a huge drop in BTC. Like down to $50 or below. As long as it stays above 100 we won't see difficulty drop for a long time.

I do see it happen earlier than 30 billion; at that point growth will be slow enough that statistical variation might cause a small drop in difficulty. I guess a massive DDoS could also help. But in general, yeah hashrate isnt going to go down for the foreseeable future. I dont even think a BTC price drop to $50 will do that any time soon, very few people will turn off their expensive asics just because BTC rate imploded "temporarily". Particularly since most of them would still be operationally profitable for quite some time, even at that price.

[mgio]

Yes, hashrate will not drop until we hit 30 billion difficulty or so. The only thing that could cause it to drop is a huge drop in BTC. Like down to $50 or below. As long as it stays above 100 we won't see difficulty drop for a long time.

I do see it happen earlier than 30 billion; at that point growth will be slow enough that statistical variation might cause a small drop in difficulty. I guess a massive DDoS could also help. But in general, yeah hashrate isnt going to go down for the foreseeable future. I dont even think a BTC price drop to $50 will do that any time soon, very few people will turn off their expensive asics just because BTC rate imploded "temporarily". Particularly since most of them would still be operationally profitable for quite some time, even at that price.

I would definitely turn off my ASICs if the electricity costing to run them was less than the value of the BTC they were returning. I would take that electricity money I saved and buy BTC with it.

I'd end up with more BTC and the same money spent. The choice is simple.

[cypherdoc]

Yes, hashrate will not drop until we hit 30 billion difficulty or so. The only thing that could cause it to drop is a huge drop in BTC. Like down to $50 or below. As long as it stays above 100 we won't see difficulty drop for a long time.

I do see it happen earlier than 30 billion; at that point growth will be slow enough that statistical variation might cause a small drop in difficulty. I guess a massive DDoS could also help. But in general, yeah hashrate isnt going to go down for the foreseeable future. I dont even think a BTC price drop to $50 will do that any time soon, very few people will turn off their expensive asics just because BTC rate imploded "temporarily". Particularly since most of them would still be operationally profitable for quite some time, even at that price.

I would definitely turn off my ASICs if the electricity costing to run them was less than the value of the BTC they were returning. I would take that electricity money I saved and buy BTC with it.

I'd end up with more BTC and the same money spent. The choice is simple.

THIS is what i'm talking about.

others will make the same choice as you; after all this is about making money in the end.

the most efficient machines are the ones that will make it thru the gauntlet over time.  what will be interesting is just how fast sub 28nm machines will come online.

[Puppet]

I would definitely turn off my ASICs if the electricity costing to run them was less than the value of the BTC they were returning. I would take that electricity money I saved and buy BTC with it.

I'd end up with more BTC and the same money spent. The choice is simple.

You give miners too much credit for being rational .
Thing is, even a 65nm BFL rig is still operationally profitable at a difficulty of 4 billion and their hashrate will be statistical noise next year. A KnC rig will be profitable until ~25B and a hashfast/cointerra/bitmine/monarch, if they meet their goals, until ~50B.
 
OF course, all assuming todays BTC rate and depending on electricity cost, which many will value near zero in winter due to the heating.

Point being, not a lot is going to be turned off anytime soon, even if miners would suddenly start acting rationally.

[Minor Miner]

I would definitely turn off my ASICs if the electricity costing to run them was less than the value of the BTC they were returning. I would take that electricity money I saved and buy BTC with it.
I'd end up with more BTC and the same money spent. The choice is simple.

You give miners too much credit for being rational .
Thing is, even a 65nm BFL rig is still operationally profitable at a difficulty of 4 billion and their hashrate will be statistical noise next year. A KnC rig will be profitable until ~25B and a hashfast/cointerra/bitmine/monarch, if they meet their goals, until ~50B.
OF course, all assuming todays BTC rate and depending on electricity cost, which many will value near zero in winter due to the heating.
Point being, not a lot is going to be turned off anytime soon, even if miners would suddenly start acting rationally.

I would have to agree.  You are counting on people acting completely rationally.   Electric bills come "later", ie. not today.    How many people buy things they cannot afford because they do not have to pay up front?
It will be the same, you are getting "free" bitcoins because you do not really see money coming out of your wallet as electricity flows to the machines.
I thought HF was going to say something today?   Guess not, day is over. 

[mgio]

I would definitely turn off my ASICs if the electricity costing to run them was less than the value of the BTC they were returning. I would take that electricity money I saved and buy BTC with it.

I'd end up with more BTC and the same money spent. The choice is simple.

You give miners too much credit for being rational .
Thing is, even a 65nm BFL rig is still operationally profitable at a difficulty of 4 billion and their hashrate will be statistical noise next year. A KnC rig will be profitable until ~25B and a hashfast/cointerra/bitmine/monarch, if they meet their goals, until ~50B.
 
OF course, all assuming todays BTC rate and depending on electricity cost, which many will value near zero in winter due to the heating.

Point being, not a lot is going to be turned off anytime soon, even if miners would suddenly start acting rationally.

I agree, we have a long way to go until todays mining rigs are unprofitable.

For me, my BFL rigs will be profitable until about 5 million, KNC until 22.5 million, and HashFast until 30 million+ (depending on what their hashrate and power usage actually is). My Avalon will be the first to be shutoff at 2.5 million (although I might try underclocking it).

"Soon" is relative, though. We will hit those difficulties early next year, and I consider 4 months from now to be "soon".

When ASIC manufacturers can sell enough machines to satisfy demand there will be nothing to stop the market to saturate to the break-even point. That will happen very quickly. The only thing that is keeping difficulty from rising faster now is the speed at which mining devices are being produced.

[Minor Miner]

I agree, we have a long way to go until todays mining rigs are unprofitable.
For me, my BFL rigs will be profitable until about 5 million, KNC until 22.5 million, and HashFast until 30 million+ (depending on what their hashrate and power usage actually is). My Avalon will be the first to be shutoff at 2.5 million (although I might try underclocking it).
"Soon" is relative, though. We will hit those difficulties early next year, and I consider 4 months from now to be "soon".
When ASIC manufacturers can sell enough machines to satisfy demand there will be nothing to stop the market to saturate to the break-even point. That will happen very quickly. The only thing that is keeping difficulty from rising faster now is the speed at which mining devices are being produced.

Sorry but you cannot use one variable to decide when these machines shut off.   Difficulty is important, but so is price.   At my electric rates, each TH/s of Avalons running are only using $218 of electricity per month.  My decision is very different at $50 btc than at $200 btc.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Sorry but you cannot use one variable to decide when these machines shut off.   Difficulty is important, but so is price.   At my electric rates, each TH/s of Avalons running are only using $218 of electricity per month.  My decision is very different at $50 btc than at $200 btc.

That is a good point but difficulty follows price so if you are the marginal miner (product of cost per kWh and rig efficiency) you are going to get squeezed out regardless.   If price quadruples so will difficulty eventually.   

I estimated some break even difficulties (electrical cost = value of BTC mined) in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=281279.0

Code:

Device        Process  Break Even Diff (mil)
-----------------------------------------------
GPU           various            60             
FPGA          various           400             
Avalon          110nm         2,400                  
ASICMiner       130nm         2,700                
BFL (SC)         65nm         4,200               
KNC              28nm        18,250               
Bitfury          55nm        23,300              
Hashfast *       28nm        25,100            
Cointerra *      28nm        25,100            
BFL (Monarch) *  28nm        25,100            
* Indicates devices has not shipped and efficiency based on projected specs

The break even difficulty is based on $100 exchange rate and $0.10 per kWh.  To adjust to other prices simply multiply or divide (i.e. for $200 exchange rate the break even difficulty would be doubled, for $0.20 per kWh power rate the break even difficulty would be halved).

Assuming price remains ~$200 the first interesting point is ~10B difficulty.  At 10B difficulty even with $200 exchange rate and $0.05 per kWh Avalon and ASICMiner gear is negative operating margin.  While miners might cling on for a while as difficulty moves higher and higher month after month even those "slowest" miners will get the picture.  Burning $100 in cash to produce $50 in value isn't particularly "fun".

At around 8B difficulty BFL rigs in high cost areas (>=$0.10 per kWh) will be unprofitable but we may see some secondary sales (high cost miners selling to low cost miners).  However by 20B or so no BFL rig will make sense without "free" power.  

[mgio]

I agree, we have a long way to go until todays mining rigs are unprofitable.
For me, my BFL rigs will be profitable until about 5 million, KNC until 22.5 million, and HashFast until 30 million+ (depending on what their hashrate and power usage actually is). My Avalon will be the first to be shutoff at 2.5 million (although I might try underclocking it).
"Soon" is relative, though. We will hit those difficulties early next year, and I consider 4 months from now to be "soon".
When ASIC manufacturers can sell enough machines to satisfy demand there will be nothing to stop the market to saturate to the break-even point. That will happen very quickly. The only thing that is keeping difficulty from rising faster now is the speed at which mining devices are being produced.

Sorry but you cannot use one variable to decide when these machines shut off.   Difficulty is important, but so is price.   At my electric rates, each TH/s of Avalons running are only using $218 of electricity per month.  My decision is very different at $50 btc than at $200 btc.

I was using the current price of $192. You can't predict price as easily as you can with difficulty.

Reaardless of price, it will come in the next 4-6 months.

[arorts]

C'mon Hashfast!! Some updates please! You have been worryingly quiet! What's the deal? How many weeks late are we talking about?

Your suspicious silence tells me you are starting to ship on Nov 4th the earliest. :-/

[canth]

Sorry but you cannot use one variable to decide when these machines shut off.   Difficulty is important, but so is price.   At my electric rates, each TH/s of Avalons running are only using $218 of electricity per month.  My decision is very different at $50 btc than at $200 btc.

I think that the decision process on whether to shut off miners is simpler than we're making it out to be. Sure, my KNC Jupiter will be profitable at a difficulty of 18bn (assuming $100/coin and the $.10/kwh) however I'll have shut it off some time before then unless BTC rises dramatically. If it costs me $36 per month in electricity and makes me $40 in BTC then the profit of $4/month isn't worth the risk of needing it to be 100% reliable in order to generate a profit. A network outage, component failure, pool problems, etc would eat into profits while possibly not reduciung electricity costs. Even though it's a minimal amount of time and risk, I would not feel compensated well enough at a profit of $4/month.

For the small operation (1-3 miners), I'd say that any 28nm miner that can't generate 1BTC per month is going to get turned off. Larger operators will use different criteria because their risk parameters are different and they're probably more willing to invest the time it requires to ensure near 100% operational capacity.

Using DeathandTaxes calculations from above, I'd estimate that I'd shut off my miners at perhaps half the difficulties listed. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=270384.msg3390286#msg3390286

[FeedbackLoop]

Sorry but you cannot use one variable to decide when these machines shut off.   Difficulty is important, but so is price.   At my electric rates, each TH/s of Avalons running are only using $218 of electricity per month.  My decision is very different at $50 btc than at $200 btc.

I think that the decision process on whether to shut off miners is simpler than we're making it out to be. Sure, my KNC Jupiter will be profitable at a difficulty of 18bn (assuming $100/coin and the $.10/kwh) however I'll have shut it off some time before then unless BTC rises dramatically. If it costs me $36 per month in electricity and makes me $40 in BTC then the profit of $4/month isn't worth the risk of needing it to be 100% reliable in order to generate a profit. A network outage, component failure, pool problems, etc would eat into profits while possibly not reduciung electricity costs. Even though it's a minimal amount of time and risk, I would not feel compensated well enough at a profit of $4/month.

For the small operation (1-3 miners), I'd say that any 28nm miner that can't generate 1BTC per month is going to get turned off. Larger operators will use different criteria because their risk parameters are different and they're probably more willing to invest the time it requires to ensure near 100% operational capacity.

Using DeathandTaxes calculations from above, I'd estimate that I'd shut off my miners at perhaps half the difficulties listed. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=270384.msg3390286#msg3390286

I'll buy your Jupiter then and run it for heat with my low cost electricity.

[greenbtc]

Yes, hashrate will not drop until we hit 30 billion difficulty or so. The only thing that could cause it to drop is a huge drop in BTC. Like down to $50 or below. As long as it stays above 100 we won't see difficulty drop for a long time.

I do see it happen earlier than 30 billion; at that point growth will be slow enough that statistical variation might cause a small drop in difficulty. I guess a massive DDoS could also help. But in general, yeah hashrate isnt going to go down for the foreseeable future. I dont even think a BTC price drop to $50 will do that any time soon, very few people will turn off their expensive asics just because BTC rate imploded "temporarily". Particularly since most of them would still be operationally profitable for quite some time, even at that price.

I would definitely turn off my ASICs if the electricity costing to run them was less than the value of the BTC they were returning. I would take that electricity money I saved and buy BTC with it.

I'd end up with more BTC and the same money spent. The choice is simple.

THIS is what i'm talking about.

others will make the same choice as you; after all this is about making money in the end.

the most efficient machines are the ones that will make it thru the gauntlet over time.  what will be interesting is just how fast sub 28nm machines will come online.

I think you're going to see people with cheap electricity running them and people with expensive electricity paying for hosting or stop mining and buy BTC like you said, but I've got access to .02kwh electricity and I don't see myself turning off the Jupiter for a long, long, long time.

[HashFast]

Hi all,

We have just posted a new blog with updated shipping information: https://hashfast.com/?p=2445&preview=true.

Cheers,

HashFast Team

[Puppet]

TL;DR hashhast batch 1 customers will probably have to endure 3 more difficulty adjustments before mining a single satoshi, and are officially screwed.

[dropt]

Hi all,

We have just posted a new blog with updated shipping information: https://hashfast.com/?p=2445&preview=true.

Cheers,

HashFast Team

Mid-November then, eh?  So how's that looking for your other customers... say, the November Sierra's?  Since I imagine those are going to get shifted now, what about your December sales?  

Truth be told, I'm not surprised.  I did read an article some time back where a HF spokesperson said they wouldn't have their silicon until November.  I've since tried to find that specific article, but have come up empty handed.

[SolarSilver]

If it costs me $36 per month in electricity and makes me $40 in BTC then the profit of $4/month isn't worth the risk of needing it to be 100% reliable in order to generate a profit. A network outage, component failure, pool problems, etc would eat into profits while possibly not reduciung electricity costs. Even though it's a minimal amount of time and risk, I would not feel compensated well enough at a profit of $4/month.

If you have an idle miner, you'll see the power consumption drops to the bare minimum.

For example the Avalon ASIC pulls about 750 Watts when hashing but I can see on the PDU the power consumption drop to about 60 Watts if it's idle due to network issues



Sure, 60 Watts consumption and BTC 0 revenu is a bad deal but it's not such an issue unless you are looking at 50% downtime