Announcing the FutureBit Apollo BTC - A Full Node/Mining Platform for the Home!

[kano]

Nope - still don't see the reason why a toy miner requires a pre-order of months.
It's old mining chips with poor Hash/Joule.

Oh, you are going to design a better one then? Without pre-order, ready to ship in 24h? Where is it?
Or, alternatively, you will point us to a better home miner? No?
That's makes it best home mining box available, I'm right?
Seriously don't get your toxicity dude.

if the best available home miner is crap - it's still crap.

[sidehack]

Hey Kano - unless you start with a parts budget in the tens of thousands of dollars ON TOP OF what you had for R&D expenses, and don't take in orders until you've already paid for and assembled the first batch out of pocket on the hope that you'll be able to sell at least enough to make back your investment, you're gonna do a preorder first batch.

Also, making something with recent mining chips - I'm working on it. But that's not for jstefanop's thread.

[philipma1957]

Well I purchased jstefanop's full size all parts model.

And I will purchase sidehack's when it comes.

As for what is a better design a single s17pro board can do 13th at 325 watts.

So the idea of a small miner  being better than this one by jstefanop is possible.

The fact is right now jstefanop's is the best one.

So I grabbed one to support him.

I was stupidly successful using his Apollo LTC miners.
and his voltage tweak for L3+ saved me 50 x 22 x 24= 26.4 kwatts x 1096 days  = 28,934 kwatts which at a dime per k-watt is $2893.40 usd.

[jstefanop]

Nope - still don't see the reason why a toy miner requires a pre-order of months.
It's old mining chips with poor Hash/Joule.

I'd just wish sidehack would make something with recent mining chips.
All the major manufacturers are ignoring home mining, expecting 3kW and more per miner, so we end up with poor performance old hardware for home miners.

125 watts 2TH/s is 62.5W/TH ... = over 810W for 13TH/s ... if you wanna compare it to VERY OLD hardware.
(and that's assuming they're not doing the typical over hype stats also)

The node option is pretty poor also.
Firstly, there's no way you'd ever run your own solo mining with it, that would just be a major block loss waiting to happen for most people.

So to run a node yourself, you want an at least an i3 with at least 8GB ram and 1TB HDD, stick Ubuntu on it and add Bitcoin core.
A current full node needs over 360GB of disk space just for bitcoin.
500GB isn't expecting it to last for very long.

NVMe is faster than HDD, but makes no difference for the bitcoin network at all.
Space matters.

Bottom line is it says $600 for old mining technology and a poor spec node that will need upgrading in the not too distant future.

Edit: and with the upcoming taproot changes - using core bitcoin just means getting the next version from them
(see the link at the top of the page)
... especially if there's any bug fixes for taproot before/after it goes live.

You clearly dont get what im trying to do with this product. And its a bit disappointing coming from someone like you that has been in the space as long as you have. The product is not for people on this forum, its for new people coming into Bitcoin now that would never run a node and would never mine in the first place.

No one needs an a top end system to run a node, nor the latest ASICs to mine. The point is that we are getting more people involved in doing what they are supposed to be doing to decentralize the network.

Sure could I have gone with the latest asics? Yes, but it would have cost 3x more and then I would have the latest and greatest that prices out the people this is designed for.

HDD vs NVMe is not about network, its about sync time. We put a lot of time and effort to bring sync times from typical SBC hardware from a week + to under 48 hours with our system. Thats a huge leap and is comparable to the hardware you quoted for a fraction of the cost. Drive is also upgradable, we are not going to charge extra for a 1TB drive when people will be able to upgrade in 2 years to a 2 TB drive for the same price.

You should be happy with every node that comes on the network, and every miner that is not part of a centralized mine.

What outcome do you prefer? A Bitcoin network run by millions of devices like this "shitty" hardware as you describe it, or the current trajectory we are on where a few hundred people control a large % of the hashrate, and most of the nodes are run by centralized exchanges?


Funny thing is im working with a few pools to see who Im going to go with to solve the payout issue for small miners, and you were on my list to contact. Guess the 100PH worth of shitty miners I could bring to your pool and 10x your hashrate is not worth it then huh?

[whiteogre]

Funny thing is im working with a few pools to see who Im going to go with to solve the payout issue for small miners, and you were on my list to contact.

Assuming that payout issue is the same I found when searching for possible pools for the Apollo BTC before concluding not to participate in the pre-order, it really shouldn't be underestimated from new users point of view. I haven't been following BTC pools at all so it's likely I may have missed some (and I assumed KanoPool wasn't anymore even active due to the stats page not having anything recent), but the conclusion was that with one unit running at about 2.8 TH/s (based on the screenshot), the payout interval would end up being around 2-3 months with the current difficulty and the minimum payout threshold that pools are having. From a new user point of view, that's too long and the user will start to doubt things like settings being correct or the pool not being the right one. Especially when in comparison a single Apollo LTC unit still gives a payout interval of 2-4 days (litecoinpool with minimum payout threshold being my datapoint).

[jstefanop]

Yea most pools offer at least a .0005 min BTC payout, but that would still take nearly a year with one hashboard. Solution to get that down to .0001 or lower is pretty simple and already in some talks to make it happen. But yes the minimum time horizon anyone should expect a payout is at least month, which obviously halves with each hashboard you add.

[kano]

...
No one needs an a top end system to run a node, nor the latest ASICs to mine. The point is that we are getting more people involved in doing what they are supposed to be doing to decentralize the network.

How is an i3 with 16GB RAM a top end system?
On newegg and amazon I see computes with 16GB RAM for a few hundred $

Your arguments are full of misinformation.

Sure could I have gone with the latest asics? Yes, but it would have cost 3x more and then I would have the latest and greatest that prices out the people this is designed for.

So I take it that yaw saying it would be $1800 for a home miner with latest asic.
I see M30 chips on the Pangolin miner site for $17 ...
Anyway, you can buy a 60-100TH miner for twice that price, so yaw triple price home miner would have been around 30-50TH right?
i.e. 15 to 25 times the performance for only 3 times the price of what yaw selling. Not bad.
C'mon sidehack - where's these new miners you mentioned

HDD vs NVMe is not about network, its about sync time. We put a lot of time and effort to bring sync times from typical SBC hardware from a week + to under 48 hours with our system. Thats a huge leap and is comparable to the hardware you quoted for a fraction of the cost. Drive is also upgradable, we are not going to charge extra for a 1TB drive when people will be able to upgrade in 2 years to a 2 TB drive for the same price.

Deciding to use an NVMe instead of an HDD takes little time and effort.
If your base system design is slow and needs NVMe to make it reasonable - go from a "week +" to "48 hrs -" - then use a better base system.
The initial block download also depends HIGHLY on your internet, not just the computer, downloading that 360GB of data (see below)

You should be happy with every node that comes on the network, and every miner that is not part of a centralized mine.

Nope, yaw only happy with yaw one since it means $ in yaw pocket for what you will sell.
Most people are going to be asking why it uses so much network when they first get it, why it takes so long to download bitcoin (as you say "48 hrs -" but also certainly a lot longer if they don't have 100Mbit internet - 10MBit network will use 100% for over 4 days) and why most people are running at a loss mining with it when it's finally up and running.
Getting the ignorant to use something that isn't well suited for them is bad publicity for Bitcoin.
At least make sure you include this link: https://bitcoin.org/en/full-node

What outcome do you prefer? A Bitcoin network run by millions of devices like this "shitty" hardware as you describe it, or the current trajectory we are on where a few hundred people control a large % of the hashrate, and most of the nodes are run by centralized exchanges?

There wont be millions of these devices.
There will be thousands of unhappy people who shy away from Bitcoin because of them.

Funny thing is im working with a few pools to see who Im going to go with to solve the payout issue for small miners, and you were on my list to contact. Guess the 100PH worth of shitty miners I could bring to your pool and 10x your hashrate is not worth it then huh?

Sorry, I can't be bought
Anyway, I very much doubt you'll be anywhere near 100PH selling 2TH miners.
My pool fees are so low so that when people do mine there, although they've already been done in by whoever supplied them the mining hardware, that doesn't continue with their mining fees on the pool, and a 0.0001 payout limit

[DaveF]

Funny thing is im working with a few pools to see who Im going to go with to solve the payout issue for small miners, and you were on my list to contact. Guess the 100PH worth of shitty miners I could bring to your pool and 10x your hashrate is not worth it then huh?

Kano has the small miner payout solution, just don't pay out dust and keep telling people it will be done "soon".

Yea most pools offer at least a .0005 min BTC payout, but that would still take nearly a year with one hashboard. Solution to get that down to .0001 or lower is pretty simple and already in some talks to make it happen. But yes the minimum time horizon anyone should expect a payout is at least month, which obviously halves with each hashboard you add.

According to my math 2.7 TH with todays difficulty you are looking at about ~85 days to get to .001 which is the minimum payout of some pools BTC. There might be some that do .0005 but I have not looked in a while.

https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/btc?HashingPower=2.7&HashingUnit=TH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=250&CostPerkWh=0.12&MiningPoolFee=1

As for the cost, yet again just ignore Kano. Yeah, it's an inefficient miner. But you know what, it does not LOOK like a miner. That matters.

I took an old BFL Monarch, (the liquid cooled ones) put it in a PC mid-tower case with a 750W PS, added a RPi and have a 675 GH/s DEAD SILENT space heater. Is it as efficient as a 1 board S9 or S17 or an R4 or..... no it is not. But it also just looks like a PC in the corner of the room. Oh, and since the RPi has wifi there is no network cable just a power cable.

If you built something like that, no matter HOW inefficient it is, it would sell. Think about it, a black silent box about the size of mid sized PC doing about 10TH @ 750w just heating the room. In almost silence. If you can figure out a way to use off the shelf water blocks instead of an air-cooled heatsink all the better.

-Dave

[HagssFIN]

@M30 chips,
the Pangolinminer website (and maybe also the company) is dead.
So I could not check the price at there.

I think it is very unlikely to get the M30 chips for 17$ piece in this current market situation. I dunno if the chips are available at all for anyone outside the MicroBT, since they are overwhelmed with the Whatsminer orders.

[kano]

@M30 chips,
the Pangolinminer website (and maybe also the company) is dead.
So I could not check the price at there.

I think it is very unlikely to get the M30 chips for 17$ piece in this current market situation. I dunno if the chips are available at all for anyone outside the MicroBT, since they are overwhelmed with the Whatsminer orders.

https://whatsminer.net/product/asic-chips-for-m30-series/

[HagssFIN]

Ok it was DJ Miner / whatsminer.net.

By the way, if 30 Th/s would be the goal for a home miner with the M30 series ASIC chips, it would need about 166 of them.
166 * 17 = a whopping 2822 US Dollars.

If one could get a better deal, maybe half a price, then it would mean about 1411 US Dollars. For ASIC chips only.

Ref. M30S/88T has 444 of those ASIC chips.

[jstefanop]

Ok it was DJ Miner / whatsminer.net.

By the way, if 30 Th/s would be the goal for a home miner with the M30 series ASIC chips, it would need about 166 of them.
166 * 17 = a whopping 2822 US Dollars.

Ref. M30S/88T has 444 of those ASIC chips.

Yea im not really concerned, his opinion does not really matter in the grand scheme of things.  He's never manufactured anything or understand how economies of scale work, if he did he would realize that building a 3TH hashboard for $300 is almost a steal considering they build millions and im building thousands. Im barely making any profit of them since im trying to keep the price as low as possible for everyone.

Not to mention you cant compare the two since one needs industrial power and sounds like a jet engine, and the other is quieter than your desktop and you can actually run in your house.

Only I know the amount of engineering and work that went into this product over the past year, and im proud of what we have built, and thats clearly shown by how we have nearly sold out in our first weekend.

Again super thanks to everyone who placed an order, you guys are awesome.

FYI looks like we will be sold out in the next day or two, so if you still want to get in Batch 1 now is the time to place an order!

[kano]

Ok it was DJ Miner / whatsminer.net.

By the way, if 30 Th/s would be the goal for a home miner with the M30 series ASIC chips, it would need about 166 of them.
166 * 17 = a whopping 2822 US Dollars.

If one could get a better deal, maybe half a price, then it would mean about 1411 US Dollars. For ASIC chips only.

Ref. M30S/88T has 444 of those ASIC chips.

Well it does say M30, M31 and M32.
I'm not trying to get someone to make a 30TH/s miner for $300.

That was his statement saying that using current chips would cost 3 times as much - but that 3 times as much price he says, is about half the price of a current miner, so should be about half the performance of a current miner, otherwise if it's about a 5th to a 10th of the performance, it would be crap and overpriced.

He's here - listing this in the Mining section of the forum - listing a poor Hash/Joule performance miner due to using old chips.
Thus, being in the mining hardware section, and not the 'sell computers' section, comparing it to other miners, it's crap.

As for industrial power and jet engines, my A851 uses 900W and does 9TH/s and sits in the computer room at about 50dB
Yep it's crappy Hashes/Joule also, but not loud and not even 1kW.

[crypto_curious]

Funny thing is im working with a few pools to see who Im going to go with to solve the payout issue for small miners, and you were on my list to contact. Guess the 100PH worth of shitty miners I could bring to your pool and 10x your hashrate is not worth it then huh?

jstefanop, please forget about this clown and concentrate what you are doing best. We all value what you are doing. I bought plenty of Moonlanders and Apollo LTC miners in the past from you, to giveaway, teach and educate many of my friends. Results were amazing and thanks to all your work many people now know what crypto, Bitcoin, is and what power and freedom it give us. I bought Apollo BTC preorder first thing after you opened sales. I am happy to wait few months for it.  My friend also bought full desktop version after I told him about it. He always wanted to run full node. Well, now he will be able to!
Thanks for all you do. Keep it coming!

[kano]

...
jstefanop, please forget about this clown and concentrate what you are doing best. We all value what you are doing. I bought plenty of Moonlanders and Apollo LTC miners in the past from you, to giveaway, teach and educate many of my friends. Results were amazing and thanks to all your work many people now know what crypto, Bitcoin, is and what power and freedom it give us. I bought Apollo BTC preorder first thing after you opened sales. I am happy to wait few months for it.  My friend also bought full desktop version after I told him about it. He always wanted to run full node. Well, now he will be able to!
Thanks for all you do. Keep it coming!

That's not Bitcoin, that Litecoin, that Charlie created as a scam - which is typical of altcoins - and not even on topic with this part of the forum.
Charlie mined it with GPUs for the first year but claimed scrypt was GPU resistant or wouldn't improve performance.

I argued from the start that his scrypt setting in his previous coin were too low and should be possible to GPU mine it, here on the forum.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45667.msg545360#msg545360
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45849.msg548778#msg548778
That was ignored, Charlie started the LTC scam and continued for about a year until he released the GPU code he'd been using.

[crypto_curious]

That's not Bitcoin, that Litecoin, that Charlie created as a scam - which is typical of altcoins - and not even on topic with this part of the forum.
Charlie mined it with GPUs for the first year but claimed scrypt was GPU resistant or wouldn't improve performance.

I argued from the start that his scrypt setting in his previous coin were too low and should be possible to GPU mine it, here on the forum.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45667.msg545360#msg545360
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45849.msg548778#msg548778
That was ignored, Charlie started the LTC scam and continued for about a year until he released the GPU code he'd been using.

You are toxic troll. We all like hardware that jstefanop makes, even if it is for Litecoin. But we don't like you. You gave us nothing. Even your pool is dead: Last Block Pool: 196 days ago (lol). I don't care what else you have to say. Why would anyway?

[kano]

...
You are toxic troll. We all like hardware that jstefanop makes, even if it is for Litecoin. But we don't like you. You gave us nothing. Even your pool is dead: Last Block Pool: 196 days ago (lol). I don't care what else you have to say. Why would anyway?

Just make sure you don't use any BTC miners ok
Since I'm the second main developer of that free software
(FutureBit uses the 'other' clone of cgminer, though it is full of my code also)

[BobLawblaw]

Since I'm the second main developer of that free software

And the primary jack-ass, as far as the rest of Bitcoinlandia is concerned.

You really need to calm the fuck down.

Coming from me, that says a lot.

[heslo]

Wow, a bit heated here. Kano, appreciate that this is being marketed as a hobbyist solution. jstefanop has a good history here of delivering what he promises and his preorder seems both fair and transparent. So long as he delivers on his promise of the product and specs I don't see why you should take issue; he isn't forcing anyone to buy. Full disclosure, I've purchased one myself, not to turn a profit, but to run a node and to solo mine on the extremely off chance I'll hit a block, exactly the same as what I'm going with sidehacks R606 product

[reactor]

Jumping on this as well. I just miss being able to mine. :/