[Closed] Requesting 1200 btc loan for mining hardware (w/ collateral)

[amazingrando]

I have made a deal to purchase 30 x 6990 GPUs to add to my current 40Gh mining farm.  I'm looking for a 6-7 month loan of 1200 btc to buy motherboards, PSUs, etc., for rigs to run the GPUs.

I will put up the 6990's as collateral.  Willing to do split the amount into smaller loans with shorter timelines if needed.  Also open to any reasonable interest rate.


Past loans I've had and repaid:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56069.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57191.0

You can also see my rep on bitcoin-otc:

http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=amazingrando

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[amazingrando]

15 btc funded so far.  1185 to go

[Nefario]

Wondering why someone would lend you the funds as opposed to use them to start mining themselves. This would remove the risk of getting scammed while keeping the upside.

Also, why just get a loan? Why not sell shares on glbse.com like all the other mining companies there. From a quick look, something like 10% of all bitcoins hashing power is a result of GLBSE mining companies.

[ineededausername]

Wondering why someone would lend you the funds as opposed to use them to start mining themselves. This would remove the risk of getting scammed while keeping the upside.

Also, why just get a loan? Why not sell shares on glbse.com like all the other mining companies there. From a quick look, something like 10% of all bitcoins hashing power is a result of GLBSE mining companies.

Cost of labor/time investment for #1.  Investing in his mining operation is a click away.  Making your own mining farm takes a long time.

[jamesg]

Wondering why someone would lend you the funds as opposed to use them to start mining themselves. This would remove the risk of getting scammed while keeping the upside.

Also, why just get a loan? Why not sell shares on glbse.com like all the other mining companies there. From a quick look, something like 10% of all bitcoins hashing power is a result of GLBSE mining companies.

Cost of labor/time investment for #1.  Investing in his mining operation is a click away.  Making your own mining farm takes a long time.

You would not believe how much work it takes to get 30Gh up and running, let along running 24/7 without issues.

I have a HUGE amount of respect for anyone who takes on this challenge and succeeds.

[Kluge]

Wondering why someone would lend you the funds as opposed to use them to start mining themselves. This would remove the risk of getting scammed while keeping the upside.

Also, why just get a loan? Why not sell shares on glbse.com like all the other mining companies there. From a quick look, something like 10% of all bitcoins hashing power is a result of GLBSE mining companies.

I've gone both ways, GLBSE & lending for mining operations. GLBSE is very formal, the website's frequently non-functional or dysfunctional, but it's a great asset when it works, except shares are typically extremely thinly traded. I made an investment in both TyGrr and FPGA.contract, but had liquidity problems and needed to sell. I've pushed both stocks way, way down that way, and have totally eliminated all bids on TyGrr, and by user error, once sold the wrong stock at way lower a price than I intended. My fault, but not a possible fault in lending. In lending, there's typically no middle-man, just the lender and lendee who negotiate however they please. We can quickly and easily negotiate terms individual to what both our needs are, and the lendee can change his terms to suit what other lenders want instead of a one-size-fits-all solution.

I like them both. I like GLBSE for some of the liquidity it provides, and I could see why it'd be fantastic for ventures requiring many investors, but lending is much simpler and flexible, IMHO.

--

Loan I did to amazingrando before was fantastically smooth, and I'll try to re-lend to him this time if I ever have uncommitted Bitcoins again. 

[grue]

You would not believe how much work it takes to get 30Gh up and running, let along running 24/7 without issues.

I have a HUGE amount of respect for anyone who takes on this challenge and succeeds.

Sorry for my ignorance, but my PC hashes everyday without issue. What can be so hard about running a mining farm?

[jamesg]

You would not believe how much work it takes to get 30Gh up and running, let along running 24/7 without issues.

I have a HUGE amount of respect for anyone who takes on this challenge and succeeds.

Sorry for my ignorance, but my PC hashes everyday without issue. What can be so hard about running a mining farm?

Well, when you have 16.5Kw per hour running through 18 computers, I guess you'll find out.

[grue]

Well, when you have 16.5Kw per hour running through 18 computers, I guess you'll find out.

So do issues pop up on a daily basis?

[amazingrando]

Wondering why someone would lend you the funds as opposed to use them to start mining themselves. This would remove the risk of getting scammed while keeping the upside.

Also, why just get a loan? Why not sell shares on glbse.com like all the other mining companies there. From a quick look, something like 10% of all bitcoins hashing power is a result of GLBSE mining companies.

Giga and ineedausername are right, mining is a huge hassle.  When I first got involved with it last year I was told that uptime would become my biggest challenge.  I didn't believe that.  I thought the biggest challenge was going to be finding the maximum clock speed on my GPUs.  But that advice was right.  I'm always fighting to keep everything running.  Every day there is something.  Sometimes it's a dead fan or a flaky motherboard.  Other times it's a software or pool issue.  Recently I had an issue where my router couldn't handle all of the open connections, requiring me to set up a proxy and then upgrade hardware.  Even regular maintenance can be an issue.  On the hardware side it's putting lithium grease and graphite in the fans to keep them from dying (they are NOT designed to run as hard as miners use them).  On the software side CGminer is updated constantly, which is awesome but means a lot of updates across a lot of machines.  Beyond that it wasn't easy to find a facility for my equipment, have it wired for 208v, build out a cooling system, networking, etc.  It's definitely a labor of love.

I've considered GLBSE, but honestly have been advised against it.  It's not an easy process to get set up, there are often site issues, and there may not be enough money available.  That being said, I'll keep an open mind about it as an option.

As far as risk goes, I think I'm pretty low risk.  I have an existing 40GH farm with no loans on it plus these new 6990's, which I am offering up for collateral.  I'm happy to be transparent about everything and write up contracts or whatever makes people feel comfortable.  I take my rep very seriously.  Mining earnings will cover the loan, or in worst case I sell some of the 6990's to repay the loan.  For the lender it's a way to hold bitcoins while making additional money (interest) without the risk of something like bitcoinica margin trading or having to buy/sell shares.

[amazingrando]

So far, two loans.  One from an anonymous source.  the other from danieldaniel in the amount of 5 btc to be repaid by the end of august 2012 with 10% interest for a total of 5.5 btc.

 

[danieldaniel]

So far, two loans.  One from an anonymous source.  the other from danieldaniel in the amount of 5 btc to be repaid by the end of august 2012 with 10% interest for a total of 5.5 btc.

 

[PatrickHarnett]

You would not believe how much work it takes to get 30Gh up and running, let along running 24/7 without issues.

I have a HUGE amount of respect for anyone who takes on this challenge and succeeds.

Sorry for my ignorance, but my PC hashes everyday without issue. What can be so hard about running a mining farm?

Try running a few boxes at their sweet spot and you'll learn about hardware as a consumable.  PSUs, hard disks and other drives drop out frequently.  I almost did a HD today (dropped it while running, but salvaged it via another box), burned/flame-out on a DVD drive and two HDs this week.  Even had a mouse that decided it didn't want to work, so out it goes with a doubious keyboard.  I've been lucky with GPUs, and haven't dropped one for a month or two, but I have replaces a fan or two.  Last week it was some ram/hd/graphis card.  Reinstalling a RMA gpu and mobo with stuff lying around and updates. Waiting on some kvm cables to load balance some circuits (pulling 2400 watts through a circuit tips sometimes due to the +/-5%). blah etc blah.  I only have about 6Ghash so nothing large, but I spend time keeping things ticking along.

You would be surprised how a minimal install machine can throw problems.  One I have that runs weeks on end, another resets for no reason at random times.  Some just freeze and need a kick.  First thing in the morning, check what's running and what stopped.

Roll on winter, then I can run another box or two.

[Nefario]

Regarding issues with GLBSE, thats being addressed with the upcoming release.

In terms of liquidity, around the 1500BTC mark seems to be the average for IPO's, BTCSYN has brought in about 1200BTC in 2 days.

I get what you're saying on the work involved.

I just think it's easier to get little bits of funding from a lot of people as opposed to lots of funding from a few people, at least thats been my experience with GLBSE.

Good luck.

Nefario.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Sorry for my ignorance, but my PC hashes everyday without issue. What can be so hard about running a mining farm?

LOLZ.  A whole day?  Wow that is awesome.  Say you get to the point where GPU only crashes once every 15 days.  If you have 100 GPUs that is on average one every 3 hours.

Power & cooling becomes a lot more interesting. Cooling 1KW is pretty easy.  Cooling 5KW takes some thinking, cooling 20KW is a whole different game.  Same thing with power.  Then you have hardware failures which are rare but happen and the more nodes you have the more likely something will be breaking that week.  Replacing a fan on a 5970 is a nightmare.  Got to love variance.  I had 5 fans go in the same week.  Yeah that is a couple hours straight of replacing fans, something I wasn't planning on doing.  Then there is the always present risk of unprofitability.  When you got a rig which is also your home computer and gaming platform is Bitcoin goes south, no big deal just fire up a copy of Crysis (or whatever).  When you got $20K in semi-dedicated gear there is a little bit more risk invovled.  This means letting a rig stay down because you are tired, or sick of fixing them is not an option.  You need that revenue coming in continually to pay for the hardware and electricity.

BTW I only have 12GH/s (14GH/s soon) so I got real respect for anyone keeping 40GH/s up 24/7.

[AniceInovation]

16GH here. It isn't much of a hassle because i enjoy hardware and otherwise i would not be messing with top hardware like these 5850/5870/6950 and top notch PSUs 850/1200/1250w.
That's why i think FPGA will uncharacterize the whole mining process, less of a "geeky" option to a more mainstream, "plug-in" matter with no fun at all.

Anyway yes, managing a mining operation is time consuming, and i highly recommend it if you really enjoy computer hardware.

[amazingrando]

Thread got OT and I've figured out how to cover most of my need without a loan.  Opening a new thread to seek a smaller, shorter-term loan.