[NEW] Bitmain Announces Antminer A3

[jstefanop]

So, does everyone think the boat has passed on this one?  Is it still smart to grab one on the next batch?  Even it difficulty jumps 5x, you'd still be making $100 a day or so...

Ok, I know there are a lot of new people here these days, and most people don't understand the math of mining so here is crash course before you get burned.

Currently SIA has a combined hashrate of ~500TH...this is the combined hashrate of all GPUs currently mining on the network (most GPUs do 1-2GH if your mining SIA direct). All it would take is JUST 600 A3 units to just DOUBLE the current hashrate/diff.

Once the 6k chinese units get turned on next week before any of you have your A3's the network hashrate will spike to 4,800 TH, thats a 10x increase from today, so that nice little calculator you use that tells you you will get rich in 10 days will go from $600 a day to $60 a day before you even get it.

Now double that again once everyone else gets theirs, and your down to $30 a day the first day you start mining.

[Marvell2]

Did they end up releasing more yesterday / last night??

seems not, i work nights and i was up
checking the page till 5 am and no batches were released

[bitcoinexplorer]

Did they end up releasing more yesterday / last night??

seems not, i work nights and i was up
checking the page till 5 am and no batches were released

Its sold out,

Obelisk threaten soft fork
The announcement of the Antminer A3 launch came out of the blue and has already caused a stir in the mining community due to its focus on the Blake(2b) hashing algorithm.

As it stands, Blockchain cloud storage service Sia uses Siacoin as it’s cryptocurrency, which is mined using the Blake(2b) algorithm.

Nebulous Labs, the studio behind Sia, launched its own ASIC cryptocurrency miners Obelisk which has been in presale since 2017. Two miners are available, the Decred cryptocurrency miner DC1 and the Siacoin miner SC1. The first batch has already sold out and is expected to ship in June this year.

Bitmain’s surprise announcement effectively muscles in on the market before Obelisk has shipped its new SC1 miners. The Chinese mining company has promised delivery within 10 days after full payment has been made.

This has not gone unnoticed, and Obelisk founder David Vorick posted a stern warning to Bitmain on the Obelisk Reddit forum, hinting at a soft fork that would disable the Bitmain A3 units from being able to mine the coin.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/obelisk-threaten-soft-fork-in-reaction-to-bitmain-antminer-a3-launch

[Marvell2]

So, does everyone think the boat has passed on this one?  Is it still smart to grab one on the next batch?  Even it difficulty jumps 5x, you'd still be making $100 a day or so...

Ok, I know there are a lot of new people here these days, and most people don't understand the math of mining so here is crash course before you get burned.

Currently SIA has a combined hashrate of ~500TH...this is the combined hashrate of all GPUs currently mining on the network (most GPUs do 1-2GH if your mining SIA direct). All it would take is JUST 600 A3 units to just DOUBLE the current hashrate/diff.

Once the 6k chinese units get turned on next week before any of you have your A3's the network hashrate will spike to 4,800 TH, thats a 10x increase from today, so that nice little calculator you use that tells you you will get rich in 10 days will go from $600 a day to $60 a day before you even get it.

Now double that again once everyone else gets theirs, and your down to $30 a day the first day you start mining.

the 600 a day speculators are laughable , still $60 to $100 days
which is what i told my friends and brother who also ordered will most likely bet
geting is a very good payout , even for only a month.

on top of that siacoin is down in value a bit from two weeks ago.

but yeah this aint no get quick rich scheme but $60 a day is very good in the current environment.

add in the fact that gpus and other asics are being stupidly price gouged or totally unavailable
batch 1 is still a good investment.  I would not but any further batches though

[nsummy]

Obelisk strikes back 

We prepared for something like this by adding an extra feature to the SC1. We can do a soft-fork that slightly changes the PoW algorithm which would invalidate the bitmain ASICs, but allow the SC1 units to continue working.

And yet the SIA devs don't see the irony in criticizing Bitmain (Bitmain's pool actually) for mining empty blocks and being a threat to the community, while they are implementing some sort of kill switch in their ASIC.  Its almost like they knew this scenario would happen.  What a bunch of scum bags.

[Jijothomas]

Completely sold out

[kenji]

So, does everyone think the boat has passed on this one?  Is it still smart to grab one on the next batch?  Even it difficulty jumps 5x, you'd still be making $100 a day or so...

Ok, I know there are a lot of new people here these days, and most people don't understand the math of mining so here is crash course before you get burned.

Currently SIA has a combined hashrate of ~500TH...this is the combined hashrate of all GPUs currently mining on the network (most GPUs do 1-2GH if your mining SIA direct). All it would take is JUST 600 A3 units to just DOUBLE the current hashrate/diff.

Once the 6k chinese units get turned on next week before any of you have your A3's the network hashrate will spike to 4,800 TH, thats a 10x increase from today, so that nice little calculator you use that tells you you will get rich in 10 days will go from $600 a day to $60 a day before you even get it.

Now double that again once everyone else gets theirs, and your down to $30 a day the first day you start mining.

the 600 a day speculators are laughable , still $60 to $100 days
which is what i told my friends and brother who also ordered will most likely bet
geting is a very good payout , even for only a month.

on top of that siacoin is down in value a bit from two weeks ago.

but yeah this aint no get quick rich scheme but $60 a day is very good in the current environment.

add in the fact that gpus and other asics are being stupidly price gouged or totally unavailable
batch 1 is still a good investment.  I would not but any further batches though

While batch 1 may bring in a good amount of money, it will hopefully be enough to also cover the cost of the machine, remembering with other miners like the L3+ and S9 you can sell them down the road for much of what you paid for them. If these will be worthless in the near future, you won't get that same money back. If they turn out to be good though of course you will be able to sell them and get your money back!

[rummy]

Stay away from NiceHash unless you like making the lowest daily amount possible and don't mind getting ripped off - literally

[DrG]

Obelisk strikes back 

We prepared for something like this by adding an extra feature to the SC1. We can do a soft-fork that slightly changes the PoW algorithm which would invalidate the bitmain ASICs, but allow the SC1 units to continue working.

And yet the SIA devs don't see the irony in criticizing Bitmain (Bitmain's pool actually) for mining empty blocks and being a threat to the community, while they are implementing some sort of kill switch in their ASIC.  Its almost like they knew this scenario would happen.  What a bunch of scum bags.

They knew this was coming. I knew this was coming. People in the Obelisk thread guessed this would happen.

Devs can do what they want - they are called developers. Sia community can give them the middle finger and stick to Bitmain's fork or they can give Bitmain the finger and stick to Dev's fork.

I'm waiting for Sia Cash to appear on the exchanges now, and soon Litecoin cash, Dash cash.... 

[Xenomole]

Halong Mining / DragonMint are now coming out with their own Blake(2b) ASIC.

No price nor date yet, BUT 3.5TH  THAT'S ~4.5X BITMAIN'S A3 and Obelisk's SC1 !!!!!!

https://halongmining.com/shop/dragonmint-b52-blake2b-miner

Sad to say, but Blake(2b) is now screwed....it's gonna be much worse than X11...at least that has several coins to spread the X11 hashing across, whereas afaik Blake(2b) is only Sia

EDIT: started as new thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2786066.0

[retlaw04]

Obelisk strikes back  

We prepared for something like this by adding an extra feature to the SC1. We can do a soft-fork that slightly changes the PoW algorithm which would invalidate the bitmain ASICs, but allow the SC1 units to continue working.

And yet the SIA devs don't see the irony in criticizing Bitmain (Bitmain's pool actually) for mining empty blocks and being a threat to the community, while they are implementing some sort of kill switch in their ASIC.  Its almost like they knew this scenario would happen.  What a bunch of scum bags.

They knew this was coming. I knew this was coming. People in the Obelisk thread guessed this would happen.

Devs can do what they want - they are called developers. Sia community can give them the middle finger and stick to Bitmain's fork or they can give Bitmain the finger and stick to Dev's fork.

I'm waiting for Sia Cash to appear on the exchanges now, and soon Litecoin cash, Dash cash....  

That's not a question the "real" community and supporters of SIA ask. They are clearly stand behind SIA and team. And the same is true for Obelisk team.

On the contrary - the voices for a fork are loud in the community and not in the SIA team.

The question that comes up much more - are the buyers of antminers real members of the SIA community? Do you have to take them into consideration?

Or should bitmain continue to eat on the longtime work of others?

[stugots2]

any of these companies could have dropped with Bitmain is doing, they have no, in fact are taking pre orders for August for god sakes....

Bitmain was first to the punch, now they wanna take their ball and go home??? come on

[lunobird]

Bitmain is too invasive.  I like bitmain for delivering on good products, I  got an L3+ and pre ordered a decred Obelisk.    

I am also willing to preorder a bitmain Decred miner if they offered it because I know they will deliver.


But what Bitmain is doing is just not right and pretty jacked up to the community.  The Sia team worked hard and should fork off and reject the bitmain asics.  Bitmain can go mine some other blake2b coin but they should not over take the Sia network due to greed.

That's why Im a big fan of bitcoin gold and not letting Bitmain have all the centralized control.  

This community keeps saying we're decentralized yet I see miners buying up all the bitmain A3 and going against decentralization.

[nadeaup]

If more A3's come out, there is no way anyone should buy one at this point. If you did not get one in the first day or 2, by the time they arrive they will be completely "D3'd" or screwed... Too bad only SIA uses blake(2b), no other coins out there to share the new tasing power....

[nsummy]

Bitmain is too invasive.  I like bitmain for delivering on good products, I  got an L3+ and pre ordered a decred Obelisk.    

I am also willing to preorder a bitmain Decred miner if they offered it because I know they will deliver.


But what Bitmain is doing is just not right and pretty jacked up to the community.  The Sia team worked hard and should fork off and reject the bitmain asics.  Bitmain can go mine some other blake2b coin but they should not over take the Sia network due to greed.

That's why Im a big fan of bitcoin gold and not letting Bitmain have all the centralized control.  

This community keeps saying we're decentralized yet I see miners buying up all the bitmain A3 and going against decentralization.

So let me get this straight, you think Bitmain is greedy but you support the developers of Bitcoin Gold?!  What an upside down world we live in.

[DrG]

Obelisk strikes back  

We prepared for something like this by adding an extra feature to the SC1. We can do a soft-fork that slightly changes the PoW algorithm which would invalidate the bitmain ASICs, but allow the SC1 units to continue working.

And yet the SIA devs don't see the irony in criticizing Bitmain (Bitmain's pool actually) for mining empty blocks and being a threat to the community, while they are implementing some sort of kill switch in their ASIC.  Its almost like they knew this scenario would happen.  What a bunch of scum bags.

They knew this was coming. I knew this was coming. People in the Obelisk thread guessed this would happen.

Devs can do what they want - they are called developers. Sia community can give them the middle finger and stick to Bitmain's fork or they can give Bitmain the finger and stick to Dev's fork.

I'm waiting for Sia Cash to appear on the exchanges now, and soon Litecoin cash, Dash cash....  

That's not a question the "real" community and supporters of SIA ask. They are clearly stand behind SIA and team. And the same is true for Obelisk team.

On the contrary - the voices for a fork are loud in the community and not in the SIA team.

The question that comes up much more - are the buyers of antminers real members of the SIA community? Do you have to take them into consideration?

Or should bitmain continue to eat on the longtime work of others?

This is not the first time a possible fork has rocked the boat and it wont be the last. The possibility of a fork can be viewed with the benefit of hindsight vision when looking at the other notable forks: BTC/BCH, ETH/ETC, ZEC/ZCL.

In each case everybody is going to claim the other side is a fringe and not part of the "community". Are people who buy pantloads of A3 miners to secure their vision part of the Sia community? Well they are mining the algo and supporting it, but they're unlikely to be adding to the development of the coin. Can you see Jihan talking with the Sia devs... probably not.

I think you can already see both sides with users venting in the last 30 posts:
SIDE A) Bitmain is screwing over the Sia community and those who supported the Sia devs by making miners for their own personal greed.
SIDE B) Sia devs are being childish and centralizing Sia by offering a fork that the penalized buyers of A3s who wanted to secure the SIA network.

I wish I could sell popcorn on the forums  

[BenRickert]

@ DRG      I'll buy some....but will you take escrow?? LOL

[nsummy]

Obelisk strikes back  

We prepared for something like this by adding an extra feature to the SC1. We can do a soft-fork that slightly changes the PoW algorithm which would invalidate the bitmain ASICs, but allow the SC1 units to continue working.

And yet the SIA devs don't see the irony in criticizing Bitmain (Bitmain's pool actually) for mining empty blocks and being a threat to the community, while they are implementing some sort of kill switch in their ASIC.  Its almost like they knew this scenario would happen.  What a bunch of scum bags.

They knew this was coming. I knew this was coming. People in the Obelisk thread guessed this would happen.

Devs can do what they want - they are called developers. Sia community can give them the middle finger and stick to Bitmain's fork or they can give Bitmain the finger and stick to Dev's fork.

I'm waiting for Sia Cash to appear on the exchanges now, and soon Litecoin cash, Dash cash....  

That's not a question the "real" community and supporters of SIA ask. They are clearly stand behind SIA and team. And the same is true for Obelisk team.

On the contrary - the voices for a fork are loud in the community and not in the SIA team.

The question that comes up much more - are the buyers of antminers real members of the SIA community? Do you have to take them into consideration?

Or should bitmain continue to eat on the longtime work of others?

I mean I'll be honest, I'm not in the SIA discord or anything, but when the developer posts a long winded, vindictive statement, it leads me to believe its the developer and not the "community" who is upset.  It was a very poor idea for the developers to get involved in the ASIC business.  It detracts from their focus and calls into question their fairness.  And to be quite frank, the fact that it takes them a year from pre-sale to bring this to market shows they really are clueless in the ASIC business.  And lets not forget, Nebulous is a private, for-profit company.  Its not like this is some big community effort where everyone is a volunteer.

You shouldn't have to be "a member of the community" to mine or use Siacoin.   The miners move the blockchain plain and simple.  They are rewarded for their efforts.  And how does Bitmain continue to eat the longtime work of others?  They focus on one thing:  Hardware.  They make the fastest and most efficient miners.  Sia didn't invent the blockchain, Sia didn't invent the Blake hash, Sia didn't invent decentralized storage.  Are they eating the long term work of others?

[rummy]

I'm planing on taking some profits from the A3 and get a NAS storage device and set it up on the Sia Network, similar to this article describes.

https://mtlynch.io/sia-via-docker/

There are various NAS manufactures on the market and I don't think they are infighting like the makers of mining equipment like to do...lol

[nsummy]

Obelisk strikes back  

We prepared for something like this by adding an extra feature to the SC1. We can do a soft-fork that slightly changes the PoW algorithm which would invalidate the bitmain ASICs, but allow the SC1 units to continue working.

And yet the SIA devs don't see the irony in criticizing Bitmain (Bitmain's pool actually) for mining empty blocks and being a threat to the community, while they are implementing some sort of kill switch in their ASIC.  Its almost like they knew this scenario would happen.  What a bunch of scum bags.

They knew this was coming. I knew this was coming. People in the Obelisk thread guessed this would happen.

Devs can do what they want - they are called developers. Sia community can give them the middle finger and stick to Bitmain's fork or they can give Bitmain the finger and stick to Dev's fork.

I'm waiting for Sia Cash to appear on the exchanges now, and soon Litecoin cash, Dash cash....  

That's not a question the "real" community and supporters of SIA ask. They are clearly stand behind SIA and team. And the same is true for Obelisk team.

On the contrary - the voices for a fork are loud in the community and not in the SIA team.

The question that comes up much more - are the buyers of antminers real members of the SIA community? Do you have to take them into consideration?

Or should bitmain continue to eat on the longtime work of others?

This is not the first time a possible fork has rocked the boat and it wont be the last. The possibility of a fork can be viewed with the benefit of hindsight vision when looking at the other notable forks: BTC/BCH, ETH/ETC, ZEC/ZCL.

In each case everybody is going to claim the other side is a fringe and not part of the "community". Are people who buy pantloads of A3 miners to secure their vision part of the Sia community? Well they are mining the algo and supporting it, but they're unlikely to be adding to the development of the coin. Can you see Jihan talking with the Sia devs... probably not.

I think you can already see both sides with users venting in the last 30 posts:
SIDE A) Bitmain is screwing over the Sia community and those who supported the Sia devs by making miners for their own personal greed.
SIDE B) Sia devs are being childish and centralizing Sia by offering a fork that the penalized buyers of A3s who wanted to secure the SIA network.

I wish I could sell popcorn on the forums  

The big difference in the examples you mention and this case is that in those cases they are still using the same algorithms, and the forks occurred due to major differences in the vision of the future.  The SIA developers get paid by taking a cut of every transaction.  Unless Sia is run by the Corleone family, a hardware developer who makes a device to hash an algorithm shouldn't need to get the developer's blessing.  Someone who mines the coin shouldn't have to be active in the community.