[NEW] Bitmain Announces Antminer A3

[KerLaeda]

For someone, who got Bitcoin Cash from fork ( for free) that could be good purchase, instead of spending bitcoins or other coins...
just few cents.

[1714628026]

1714628026

[1714628026]

1714628026

[1714628026]

1714628026

[1714628026]

1714628026

[r01k]

About 7800 units already sold. This is looking like D3 Part 2.

[Marvell2]

About 7800 units already sold. This is looking like D3 Part 2.

bitmain has no chill lol

[boyno]

$4k-$18k already on ebay.

[Tssar]

Official response from the SIA [SC] Dev Team

"Bitmain has announced an ASIC miner for Sia. This has made a lot of people uneasy, especially those who preordered Obelisk units. So I'll first address the Obelisk units in isolation. Though we don't have the full chips back yet, the chips are in production and we have our final simulations. We can confidently state that the bitmain unit is far less energy efficient, costs more money, and is an objectively worse miner than the SC1. So people who ordered Obelisk units will still be receiving hardware of substantial value.

As a developer, Bitmain moving into the Sia space makes me uneasy. Bitmain has historically been extremely greedy, and very willing to sacrifice the well being of the community, of their customers, and of the ecosystem if it means they can make a couple of extra dollars. The biggest way this has manifested for altcoins is that they will over-sell hardware. When a ton of miners suddenly join the network, the difficulty adjusts. If too many miners join the network, nobody is able to make any money, and everyone eats a loss on their hardware purchase.

Bitmain has no qualms about overselling their units to buyers. They take massive margins on their hardware (>50%) and make more money than the total block reward at the expense of their customers. They over-saturate the mining market in a way that hurts their buyers. I think we will see this with Sia. Bitmain will sell more units than the Sia ecosystem can sustain, and many people end up with large losses. Bitmain will not end up with losses, because they were paid up-front with non-refundable money.

Bitmain also has a history of doing things like mining empty blocks, and like refusing to activate soft-forks that are beneficial to the network. They were openly hostile to the Bhttps://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2769785.120itcoin-core developers, and actively blocked the activation of a very valuable network feature (Segwit).

We, the dev team, are not happy that Bitmain has made an ASIC for Sia. We are not happy that many Sia supporters are at risk of losing money by buying these miners (from over-saturation), and we are not happy that Bitmain may choose to interfere with our network. This is not a commentary on general ASIC companies, this is a commentary on Bitmain specifically.

We did add an extra feature to the SC1 unit that would allow us to invalidate the Bitmain hardware without invalidating the SC1. The community would need to choose to adopt a soft-fork (it's not something we could just magically activate, we have to change the hashing algorithm slightly), and then we could get rid of this cycle of Bitmain hardware. Of course, they could just create another round of hardware (likely taking ~3 months). And, it would hurt Bitmain customers more than it would hurt Bitmain. Bitmain has already sold around $20 million of non-refundable hardware. They have made their profit, and a soft-fork wouldn't change that.

As much as I would like to punch Bitmain in the nose, I don't think a soft-fork achieves what we want. If the hardware is used to harm the Sia network, either by doing double spends, rejecting soft forks, mining empty blocks, we will invalidate it without hesitation. But for the time being, I think the best thing to do is to advise people not to buy the Bitmain hardware (to protect yourself from the oversaturation that Bitmain tries to create), and then to watch and wait, and respond more if it appears that the network is under attack. Overall though, I do not think Sia is in trouble.

I am looking forward to the thoughts from the community."

I love this response to the above letter
costa1717 • Jan 17, 2018, 2:49 PM
As long as they don't overflood and centralize the market its OK. After all that is what you guys wanted isn't it? A decentralized ASIC network.

You wanted to sell 10k units in batch 1 and would have launched batch 2 with a similar amount soon afterwards. I do not believe Bitmain will sell such a high quantity, so as long as there is a quantity restriction on their orders its all good for the network.

P.S. Activating such a soft fork would do HUGE harm on the SIA community and this harm will last. Like you said this will hurt the customers, not the corporation and will have a negative effect on the adoption of the network.

[kenji]

Official response from the SIA [SC] Dev Team

"Bitmain has announced an ASIC miner for Sia. This has made a lot of people uneasy, especially those who preordered Obelisk units. So I'll first address the Obelisk units in isolation. Though we don't have the full chips back yet, the chips are in production and we have our final simulations. We can confidently state that the bitmain unit is far less energy efficient, costs more money, and is an objectively worse miner than the SC1. So people who ordered Obelisk units will still be receiving hardware of substantial value.

As a developer, Bitmain moving into the Sia space makes me uneasy. Bitmain has historically been extremely greedy, and very willing to sacrifice the well being of the community, of their customers, and of the ecosystem if it means they can make a couple of extra dollars. The biggest way this has manifested for altcoins is that they will over-sell hardware. When a ton of miners suddenly join the network, the difficulty adjusts. If too many miners join the network, nobody is able to make any money, and everyone eats a loss on their hardware purchase.

Bitmain has no qualms about overselling their units to buyers. They take massive margins on their hardware (>50%) and make more money than the total block reward at the expense of their customers. They over-saturate the mining market in a way that hurts their buyers. I think we will see this with Sia. Bitmain will sell more units than the Sia ecosystem can sustain, and many people end up with large losses. Bitmain will not end up with losses, because they were paid up-front with non-refundable money.

Bitmain also has a history of doing things like mining empty blocks, and like refusing to activate soft-forks that are beneficial to the network. They were openly hostile to the Bhttps://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2769785.120itcoin-core developers, and actively blocked the activation of a very valuable network feature (Segwit).

We, the dev team, are not happy that Bitmain has made an ASIC for Sia. We are not happy that many Sia supporters are at risk of losing money by buying these miners (from over-saturation), and we are not happy that Bitmain may choose to interfere with our network. This is not a commentary on general ASIC companies, this is a commentary on Bitmain specifically.

We did add an extra feature to the SC1 unit that would allow us to invalidate the Bitmain hardware without invalidating the SC1. The community would need to choose to adopt a soft-fork (it's not something we could just magically activate, we have to change the hashing algorithm slightly), and then we could get rid of this cycle of Bitmain hardware. Of course, they could just create another round of hardware (likely taking ~3 months). And, it would hurt Bitmain customers more than it would hurt Bitmain. Bitmain has already sold around $20 million of non-refundable hardware. They have made their profit, and a soft-fork wouldn't change that.

As much as I would like to punch Bitmain in the nose, I don't think a soft-fork achieves what we want. If the hardware is used to harm the Sia network, either by doing double spends, rejecting soft forks, mining empty blocks, we will invalidate it without hesitation. But for the time being, I think the best thing to do is to advise people not to buy the Bitmain hardware (to protect yourself from the oversaturation that Bitmain tries to create), and then to watch and wait, and respond more if it appears that the network is under attack. Overall though, I do not think Sia is in trouble.

I am looking forward to the thoughts from the community."

I love this response to the above letter
costa1717 • Jan 17, 2018, 2:49 PM
As long as they don't overflood and centralize the market its OK. After all that is what you guys wanted isn't it? A decentralized ASIC network.

You wanted to sell 10k units in batch 1 and would have launched batch 2 with a similar amount soon afterwards. I do not believe Bitmain will sell such a high quantity, so as long as there is a quantity restriction on their orders its all good for the network.

P.S. Activating such a soft fork would do HUGE harm on the SIA community and this harm will last. Like you said this will hurt the customers, not the corporation and will have a negative effect on the adoption of the network.

Not to mention it wouldn't hurt Bitmain either. Sure they could cut off sales of their miners by forking, but by that point Bitmain wouldn't even care because they've sold so many of these units which is what they're doing right now.

[Tssar]

Do you still think it is profitable investment on an A3?

[MiningDoc]

I think those who will make the most money off these are the people selling them on ebay for $7500 each at the moment.  I truly can't believe people are that ignorant to pay $7500 for a miner that in all likely hood will not make 2/3 of that back.

[ruptan]

Official response from the SIA [SC] Dev Team

"Bitmain has announced an ASIC miner for Sia. This has made a lot of people uneasy, especially those who preordered Obelisk units. So I'll first address the Obelisk units in isolation. Though we don't have the full chips back yet, the chips are in production and we have our final simulations. We can confidently state that the bitmain unit is far less energy efficient, costs more money, and is an objectively worse miner than the SC1. So people who ordered Obelisk units will still be receiving hardware of substantial value.

As a developer, Bitmain moving into the Sia space makes me uneasy. Bitmain has historically been extremely greedy, and very willing to sacrifice the well being of the community, of their customers, and of the ecosystem if it means they can make a couple of extra dollars. The biggest way this has manifested for altcoins is that they will over-sell hardware. When a ton of miners suddenly join the network, the difficulty adjusts. If too many miners join the network, nobody is able to make any money, and everyone eats a loss on their hardware purchase.

Bitmain has no qualms about overselling their units to buyers. They take massive margins on their hardware (>50%) and make more money than the total block reward at the expense of their customers. They over-saturate the mining market in a way that hurts their buyers. I think we will see this with Sia. Bitmain will sell more units than the Sia ecosystem can sustain, and many people end up with large losses. Bitmain will not end up with losses, because they were paid up-front with non-refundable money.

Bitmain also has a history of doing things like mining empty blocks, and like refusing to activate soft-forks that are beneficial to the network. They were openly hostile to the Bhttps://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2769785.120itcoin-core developers, and actively blocked the activation of a very valuable network feature (Segwit).

We, the dev team, are not happy that Bitmain has made an ASIC for Sia. We are not happy that many Sia supporters are at risk of losing money by buying these miners (from over-saturation), and we are not happy that Bitmain may choose to interfere with our network. This is not a commentary on general ASIC companies, this is a commentary on Bitmain specifically.

We did add an extra feature to the SC1 unit that would allow us to invalidate the Bitmain hardware without invalidating the SC1. The community would need to choose to adopt a soft-fork (it's not something we could just magically activate, we have to change the hashing algorithm slightly), and then we could get rid of this cycle of Bitmain hardware. Of course, they could just create another round of hardware (likely taking ~3 months). And, it would hurt Bitmain customers more than it would hurt Bitmain. Bitmain has already sold around $20 million of non-refundable hardware. They have made their profit, and a soft-fork wouldn't change that.

As much as I would like to punch Bitmain in the nose, I don't think a soft-fork achieves what we want. If the hardware is used to harm the Sia network, either by doing double spends, rejecting soft forks, mining empty blocks, we will invalidate it without hesitation. But for the time being, I think the best thing to do is to advise people not to buy the Bitmain hardware (to protect yourself from the oversaturation that Bitmain tries to create), and then to watch and wait, and respond more if it appears that the network is under attack. Overall though, I do not think Sia is in trouble.

I am looking forward to the thoughts from the community."

I would prefer Obelisk than Bitmain as Bitmain is shady and greedy and is trying to flood the market to make their greedy profit. Not to mention, China is closing their mining place and they are moving to Switzerland to start their new mining business. So I guess its a quick and dirty way to make some quick money or unsuspecting customers. Please beware.
In the mean time, when you are suppose to get the Obelist miners? In a month or two? Thanks

[ruptan]

Do you still think it is profitable investment on an A3?

Not really. Try this...Dont forget there is at least 500 machines running like this..So profitability will be divided between 500 people more.

https://whattomine.com/coins/161-sc-blake-2b?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr=815000.0&d_enabled=true&d=9.21496163362753e%2B18&p=1300.0&fee=0.0&cost=0.15&hcost=2500.0&commit=Calculate

[kryptolarz]

Official response from the SIA [SC] Dev Team

"Bitmain has announced an ASIC miner for Sia. This has made a lot of people uneasy, especially those who preordered Obelisk units. So I'll first address the Obelisk units in isolation. Though we don't have the full chips back yet, the chips are in production and we have our final simulations. We can confidently state that the bitmain unit is far less energy efficient, costs more money, and is an objectively worse miner than the SC1. So people who ordered Obelisk units will still be receiving hardware of substantial value.

As a developer, Bitmain moving into the Sia space makes me uneasy. Bitmain has historically been extremely greedy, and very willing to sacrifice the well being of the community, of their customers, and of the ecosystem if it means they can make a couple of extra dollars. The biggest way this has manifested for altcoins is that they will over-sell hardware. When a ton of miners suddenly join the network, the difficulty adjusts. If too many miners join the network, nobody is able to make any money, and everyone eats a loss on their hardware purchase.

Bitmain has no qualms about overselling their units to buyers. They take massive margins on their hardware (>50%) and make more money than the total block reward at the expense of their customers. They over-saturate the mining market in a way that hurts their buyers. I think we will see this with Sia. Bitmain will sell more units than the Sia ecosystem can sustain, and many people end up with large losses. Bitmain will not end up with losses, because they were paid up-front with non-refundable money.

Bitmain also has a history of doing things like mining empty blocks, and like refusing to activate soft-forks that are beneficial to the network. They were openly hostile to the Bhttps://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2769785.120itcoin-core developers, and actively blocked the activation of a very valuable network feature (Segwit).

We, the dev team, are not happy that Bitmain has made an ASIC for Sia. We are not happy that many Sia supporters are at risk of losing money by buying these miners (from over-saturation), and we are not happy that Bitmain may choose to interfere with our network. This is not a commentary on general ASIC companies, this is a commentary on Bitmain specifically.

We did add an extra feature to the SC1 unit that would allow us to invalidate the Bitmain hardware without invalidating the SC1. The community would need to choose to adopt a soft-fork (it's not something we could just magically activate, we have to change the hashing algorithm slightly), and then we could get rid of this cycle of Bitmain hardware. Of course, they could just create another round of hardware (likely taking ~3 months). And, it would hurt Bitmain customers more than it would hurt Bitmain. Bitmain has already sold around $20 million of non-refundable hardware. They have made their profit, and a soft-fork wouldn't change that.

As much as I would like to punch Bitmain in the nose, I don't think a soft-fork achieves what we want. If the hardware is used to harm the Sia network, either by doing double spends, rejecting soft forks, mining empty blocks, we will invalidate it without hesitation. But for the time being, I think the best thing to do is to advise people not to buy the Bitmain hardware (to protect yourself from the oversaturation that Bitmain tries to create), and then to watch and wait, and respond more if it appears that the network is under attack. Overall though, I do not think Sia is in trouble.

I am looking forward to the thoughts from the community."

I would prefer Obelisk than Bitmain as Bitmain is shady and greedy and is trying to flood the market to make their greedy profit. Not to mention, China is closing their mining place and they are moving to Switzerland to start their new mining business. So I guess its a quick and dirty way to make some quick money or unsuspecting customers. Please beware.
In the mean time, when you are suppose to get the Obelist miners? In a month or two? Thanks

Obelisk shipping is due in July/August, so make that 6+ months.

[gurugarzah]

LOL!!!

https://twitter.com/halongmining/status/953844178529628160

[nsummy]

I think those who will make the most money off these are the people selling them on ebay for $7500 each at the moment.  I truly can't believe people are that ignorant to pay $7500 for a miner that in all likely hood will not make 2/3 of that back.

The trick is to get the machine, list it as a 7 day auction, let it mine for 7 days before sending it off, profit!

[MiningDoc]

I think those who will make the most money off these are the people selling them on ebay for $7500 each at the moment.  I truly can't believe people are that ignorant to pay $7500 for a miner that in all likely hood will not make 2/3 of that back.

The trick is to get the machine, list it as a 7 day auction, let it mine for 7 days before sending it off, profit!

Yes, but in the time it takes to get miners here in the US how many of those 6000 Chinese units will be online in the next 5-7 days and destroying the current diff of the coin.  What will it be in 3 weeks when the miner is received   What will the prices on ebay be going for then...  3k? 

[shaninium]

LOL!!!

https://twitter.com/halongmining/status/953844178529628160

Those guys arent proven yet, their btc miner have dubious specs too.

[nsummy]

It is is good question.  WHY would they make a miner for blake2b?

I asked that a few pages back... seems kind of random. Someone else here suggested maybe its to f--k with the team behind Sia, who is also making miners? Seems petty to spend so much money on miners just to funk with a competitor... but with only ONE coin to mine on this machine, who knows? At least with D3's one could play an Altcoin game and mine a few other random things with it. This is literally a brick once profitability dies, and you don't even get to play with anything else. Just seems weird.

Oh well... they still make $10M selling them.

Its simple really.  First off Obelisk kind of fucked themselves by posting the numbers of pre-orders.  It doesn't take much for Bitmain to look and see that if a few thousand people are willing to pay $1600 to a new company that won't even bring a product to market for 6+ months, then even more people will pay $600 more to get the same performance in 10 days.  Bitmain also has  economies of scale.  All of their miners are essentially the same with different circuit boards in them.  They already have manufacturing and infrastructure in place.  I imagine they could make ASIC miners for most altcoins relatively easily and cheaply, but why bother?  They have been selling the same S9 for what seems like forever, and its going up in price instead of down.

[kryptolarz]

LOL!!!

https://twitter.com/halongmining/status/953844178529628160

Those guys arent proven yet, their btc miner have dubious specs too.

Not only aren't they proved, but it it is real, they won't be shipping for a couple of months probably

[jstefanop]

I think those who will make the most money off these are the people selling them on ebay for $7500 each at the moment.  I truly can't believe people are that ignorant to pay $7500 for a miner that in all likely hood will not make 2/3 of that back.

The trick is to get the machine, list it as a 7 day auction, let it mine for 7 days before sending it off, profit!

Yes, but in the time it takes to get miners here in the US how many of those 6000 Chinese units will be online in the next 5-7 days and destroying the current diff of the coin.  What will it be in 3 weeks when the miner is received   What will the prices on ebay be going for then...  3k? 

If anyone believes they are going to be making more than ~30 a day after these ship out, you are quite delusional. Its going to be fun watching the diff charts on this over the next week 

[caymanguy]

sc blake 2b not like dash or btc it will loose difficulty faster
roi will be 20 $ in a weak

[MiningDoc]

I wonder how many they have sold by now