Bitmain introduces the Antminer S17 Pro, Antminer S17, and the Antminer T17

[philipma1957]

... not sure if production is slowing down or they are just fucking around.

Hashrate is low compared to Oct 4

so lets pretend there are tons and tons of new gear in the hands of the big farms.

big farms run at 5 cents or better.

So I would say so far not that much gear is out there.

since 5 cent power turns a profit for any gear under 85 watts a th

that means the s9 set to lowest settings turns a profit of 59 to 66 cents a day at 5 cents
the m10 on high turns a profit of  2.40 a day
the s15 on high turns a profit of 2.64 a day
the t3 on high  turns a profit  of 4.17 a day

so 5 cent power still works  for even the s9  my guess is  there are not a lot of m10's s15's t3's out there.

or  a lot of s9's are fully shut down at higher cost locations.

[mikeywith]

I strongly agree phill, i did make a rough estimation on how many s15 are out there based on coupons circulation, someone said it was way off and far from accurate, tho i dare anyone to show me say 500 s15 coupons , while there are hundreds of thousands of s9 coupons out there, i have yet to find a single chinese supplier with say 1000 s15 for sale, everything points out to the fact that all the 7nm gears from bitmain did not have any high sales value, be it a production issue or economical limitation , that is something i do not know.   

Long story short, major farms have either left the game or still run profitable on old gears, the new gen miners are being sold in small quantities to people with super high power rate and very small scale business.

[philipma1957]

I have 20 s9's doing about 250th and around 22kwatts  set to medium and to low

if they were all s17 I could do  15 x 44 = 660th and around 24kwatts

So I do think  the gear has not been sold in high amounts yet.  and yet means a lot.

[fanatic26_]

Hmm, so If specs are true. S15 and T15 buyers are fucked up again. Huge different on same 7nm chip. I hope Bitmain will release some good firmware for S15/T15 which will increase performance.

I mean I remember I bought my 2015 Corvette...and every year since then Chevy has had the gall to produce a newer one. I hope i get an ECU patch that gives me free upgrades too!

P.S. The S17 uses a different chip than the S15

S15 = BM1391
S17 = BM1397

Direct blog quote from Bitmain:

The new BM1397 chip requires lower power and can offer an energy consumption to computing ratio as low as 30J/TH. This is a 28.6 percent improvement in power efficiency in comparison with Bitmain’s previous 7nm chip, the BM1391.

[mikeywith]

I have 20 s9's doing about 250th and around 22kwatts  set to medium and to low
if they were all s17 I could do  15 x 44 = 660th and around 24kwatts

yup but you know those 15*s17 would cost you something close to 25k if not more , with that amount you can get about 90 s9s brand new 1290th ( almost double the hashrate) of course this excludes electricity factor.

that's why it's different for everyone, for someone like me who has free but limited power it makes no sense to be paying a fortune for S17, not even S11 justifies the cost, but the math will be totally different for someone who pays 10 cents per kwh and planning to have 5 gears in the basement.

i think in a few years when btc market become pretty stable and these mining giants get very close to fully utilizing the chips, and
when a 5% improvements is spoken of for a month, only then it will make sense to stay as close to the latest gear as possible, as for now to me it's always about getting your investment back ASAP and not worry much about what could happen afterwards.

not sure how others make their mining plans, would love to hear thoughts.

[philipma1957]

but I am power capped and that is what makes new gear attractive to me.

of course I turn a profit on those 20 s9's and I do not have to rush to buy 15 s17's  just one for evaluation works for me.

[gmaxwell]

I hope everyone who gives a darn about Bitcoin avoids doing business with Bitmain in the future. Bitmain has been a long standing bad actor in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. We shouldn't forget this just because they replaced their CEO.  As far as I know they have done nothing to undo the damage they've caused or otherwise make amends.  We can see by their continued open source license violations in their products that they haven't changed.

I will award merit to every post that makes a compelling statement against buying from bitmain.

[philipma1957]

I hope everyone who gives a darn about Bitcoin avoids doing business with Bitmain in the future. Bitmain has been a long standing bad actor in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. We shouldn't forget this just because they replaced their CEO.  As far as I know they have done nothing to undo the damage they've caused or otherwise make amends.  We can see by their continued open source license violations in their products that they haven't changed.

I will award merit to every post that makes a compelling statement against buying from bitmain.

Interesting offer.
I prefer my eight m10's over my 1 s15.
I just spent 2048 usd to preorder the M20 V1 72th 3312 watts.
Having opened and examined s15 pcb board  and M10 pcb board the m10's are built better.
That is why I pushed buying M10's over s15's.

Bitmain runs bitdeer and bitdeer is wrong.  it is terrible worse then hashnest which was also terrible.  I have a degree in accounting and my single biggest issue is no one audits bitdeer.  It is not that it is a ponzi it is that  no one gets to know which machine  is mining for you and that smacks of fraud.

How would you like to pay  for the s15  and its  60 watts a th cost  when in fact they are using a s17 with firmware mods  spending only 40 watts a th.  They simply don't address this.

so why help them by buying gear from them

the price for

s17 power is  6.68 cents a th or 6.45  reads two ways on the site or changed while I typed
s15 power is   9.70 cents a th   so there is zero audit done and an easy 3 cents a th a day to be stolen that is more then 3000 usd a day for 100ph of contracts

this is the single biggest reason to not support them.
as they do it right in front of your eyes with no shame  ie  what do they do behind the scenes when they  do this right in your face

[aswithin]

So once all the March coupons expire tonight, then there will be miners again for sale on Bitmain's site, is that the deal?  Everything but the DR5 is sold out still, only hours until all those coupons expire.

[HagssFIN]

So once all the March coupons expire tonight, then there will be miners again for sale on Bitmain's site, is that the deal?  Everything but the DR5 is sold out still, only hours until all those coupons expire.

Most likely, yeah.

Those coupon notification e-mails are really pissing me off.

I say Fuck their coupon policy.

[Artemis3]

I hope everyone who gives a darn about Bitcoin avoids doing business with Bitmain in the future. Bitmain has been a long standing bad actor in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. We shouldn't forget this just because they replaced their CEO.  As far as I know they have done nothing to undo the damage they've caused or otherwise make amends.  We can see by their continued open source license violations in their products that they haven't changed.

I will award merit to every post that makes a compelling statement against buying from bitmain.

They tried (and failed) to block access to the S11/S15 (if i recall correctly) via SSH, i think they didn't like someone making a full open source firmware replacement for the S9, that uses actual cgminer instead of bmminer...

I have also been following the products released by MicroBT, and have been rooting for them. Their 16nm part (the M10) was already nearly as efficient as Bitmain's 7nm part. Now they have a 12nm product, the M20, which is looking seriously efficient already. Can you imagine what they can do at 7nm?

Lets not forget about Jihan Wu's attempt to seize Bitcoin, by rejecting Segwit and promoting giant blocks which ended in the creation of two altcoins nobody wanted, but hurt the market (and ironically his company)...

And then there are the pools. It was bad already that they had one large pool, but why 3? or is it 4? Antpool, btc.com, viabtc... when you use those pools you are benefiting Bitmain one way or the other, yet there is way too much people who don't seem to care. Could it be because its the default in their miners?

Does anyone remember the covert asicboost drama? and the rumors of them using it indoors? They always denied it, until overt asicboost became real, somehow their S9 models could do it, but not their previous models. So the rumor was proven correct after months of denial...

Of course there are several reasons not to pick a Bitmain product, more importantly the Asic market is weakened by that behemoth. I understand that a former Bitmain employee went to MicroBT, the Asic designer? Somehow i think both Bitmain and Canaan copied the PSU driving things at 20v with metal rails directly attached to the boards from MicroBT, but that's just my speculation...

For me, MicroBT should be the preferred choice, but keep an eye to Canaan Creative, which needs to lower prices to be more attractive.

Many people are now angry with Bitmain for the sudden release of slightly improved versions, and then removing the "old" ones from their shop, making their investment sound pointless. Ie: the S11, the S15, now the S17. Is there a slightly improved S19 lurking around the corner? Will you commit 2k or more USD just to find out you bought an already obsolete model? Well we should be nearing the peak efficiency for 7nm parts, but i think MicroBT will win once they release something at 7nm.

Bitmain also has a strange business with those coupons. Not happy with making an alt (or two), they also instigated a parallel market of coupons. Why are they issuing those coupons in such quantities, that people are now more interested in trading than using?

I also remember their ability to disable miners remotely, there was a little scandal about this "feature", which was later "removed" (upgraded?).

Another one is the fact that the miners are set to mine to a Bitmain Antpool account by default, so any "tests" give extra profit for them. Wasn't there a class suit action going on because of it? Of course if you reset the settings, this returns.

In the end its just like the pools. If you keep using (their) large pools, you are weakening the whole thing. So by buying their products you also weaken their competitors. If competition disappears, and they consolidate a monopoly, we are going to be in trouble. They would ask outrageous prices, and give very poor customer satisfaction, because once you are the last one standing you can dictate your terms to others.

Oh almost forgot, why the heck does Bitmain owns not one, but TWO cloud mining services? I don't think i need to talk here about cloud mining, they are pure money waste, if not outright scam. Stay away from them...

[fccs]

So far I have gotten mixed information.  One contact says one version "assuming pro" is 67th.  Another s17 is 50th, and another is 45th.  So... no clue what the hell to think lol

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Does anyone remember the covert asicboost drama? and the rumors of them using it indoors? They always denied it, until overt asicboost became real, somehow their S9 models could do it, but not their previous models. So the rumor was proven correct after months of denial...

Wrong. Bitmains covert AB was never used on the main BTC network. That is a very different thing than the chips having the circuits in them but never turned on. BM never said anything about if the chips have AB circuits in them, they just said it was never ran outside of TestNet.

When any sort of AB is used it changes the block version number and NO blocks ever show that change before Dragonmints came online.

[sarcheer]

Why do I remember the whole covert AB drama being that the covert piece was that their AB allowed them to do so without a different version number? And that SegWit would make this covert version incompatible and thus their vehement opposition to that prop?

[frodocooper]

Wrong. Bitmains covert AB was never used on the main BTC network. That is a very different thing than the chips having the circuits in them but never turned on. BM never said anything about if the chips have AB circuits in them, they just said it was never ran outside of TestNet.

When any sort of AB is used it changes the block version number and NO blocks ever show that change before Dragonmints came online.

That is incorrect. Covert AsicBoost does not use version rolling, but instead uses a method called "merkle grinding." Merkle grinding does not produce different block version numbers like version rolling does, hence its "covert" label. Gregory Maxwell described this method in much greater detail here.

We do not know with absolute certainty whether Bitmain used covert AsicBoost on Bitcoin's mainnet. There are signs that suggest they did. For example, merkle grinding tends to produce empty blocks, and Bitmain's pools do have a notorious history of mining empty blocks. Also, covert AsicBoost is incompatible with segwit, and we know that Bitmain did everything they could to prevent segwit's activation on Bitcoin. But beyond those signs, currently the only way to conclude that Bitmain did not use covert AsicBoost on Bitcoin's mainnet is by taking their word for it.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

That is incorrect. Covert AsicBoost does not use version rolling, but instead uses a method called "merkle grinding." Merkle grinding does not produce different block version numbers like version rolling does, hence its "covert" label. Gregory Maxwell described this method in much greater detail here.

Then I stand corrected. Maxwell's doc bookmarked for future reference.

[philipma1957]

Much like hashnest and bitdeer their covert asic boost allowed for the action to happen.

So add hashnest bitdeer covert asic boost all may have been acts of fraud with no proof they were not doing it and the ability to do it.

Lastly if you read my thread that is stickied in pools I have certain proof that the high tx fee issue being done in 2017 was intentionally and that bitmain had the ability to do it and turn a profit.

Someone did it just not sure that bitmain did it. The proof of it being done was clearly shown in that thread.

[kano]

That is incorrect. Covert AsicBoost does not use version rolling, but instead uses a method called "merkle grinding." Merkle grinding does not produce different block version numbers like version rolling does, hence its "covert" label. Gregory Maxwell described this method in much greater detail here.

Then I stand corrected. Maxwell's doc bookmarked for future reference.

With 'merkle grinding' no one will use it.

Odd how gmaxwell in his "Wed Apr 5 21:37:45 UTC 2017" message goes on about:

Reverse engineering of a particular mining chip has demonstrated
conclusively that ASICBOOST has been implemented
in hardware.

The odd part being that I posted about the S9 having asicboost in July 2016 in the S9 hardware thread.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493601.msg15634328#msg15634328

I guess he lives in his own little world and doesn't take note of what's going on.
Like segwit ... the great solution to Bitcoin ... that has yet again failed in the last 24 hours to do what it should with transactions ...

They should have implemented BIP100 like over 70% of miners voted for with their coinbases.

[fccs]

So I assume no one has any info on these s17's yet?

[philipma1957]

So I assume no one has any info on these s17's yet?

No  rumor is April 9th   with more then one set of numbers  a normal model and  a pro model.