Antminer S3 - Profit is Impossible

[Bitcoin++]

A good calculator for mining:
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

Play with these inputs and you'll realize that it's almost impossible ever to break even.

I managed to make a profit of 0.65 BTC only by using some very strong assumptions:

Price = 0.75 BTC (I.e. no VAT/customs, free PSU)
Electricity only $0.10/kWh
Only 10% difficulty increment

It implies that no EU resident will ever be able to make a profit. If you live in some parts of the US, you might profit marginally, but not worthwhile given the risk of hardware failure.

May someone explain their rationale for investing in Antminer S3? Maybe something I missed?

[1714859380]

1714859380

[1714859380]

1714859380

[1714859380]

1714859380

[1714859380]

1714859380

[mikerbiker6]

the reason these miners are sold so quickly is because of new miners. Every new miner heard of the succes of the s1 and when they hear the new s3 is announced they immediately jump in. As you said, no rational miner will buy this.

[cloverme]

I think partially you have to take into consideration that miners might be upgrading their equipment (swapping out S1's for S3's) as part of a larger farm contributing to more TH/s to maintain the increase in difficulty and driving down GH/s per watt for a farm.  I would agree that a single S3 is not going to get you to profitability unless you have a farm that already paid for itself mining in contribution for ROI towards the purchase price for it.

The miners today aren't powerful enough to get ahead of the difficulty at a low enough price per gh/s to make a return. You need like 6TH/s at 1000w for around $1200, which I don't see happening anytime soon.

[brian_23452]

That....doesn't make sense.  478Gh/s at 360 watts is either profitable for you or it isn't.    Having other devices mining as well doesn't contribute to the ROI of THIS device anymore than finding a hundred dollar bill laying on the ground does.

[philipma1957]

That....doesn't make sense.  478Gh/s at 360 watts is either profitable for you or it isn't.    Having other devices mining as well doesn't contribute to the ROI of THIS device anymore than finding a hundred dollar bill laying on the ground does.

so i have 3 s-1's   i made about 100 usd on them.  they are undervolted-clocked   420 gh  560 watts.


if i sell them on ebay  for 500 as a set of three . it is the best price anyone sells a 3 pack for.

some buyer grabs them and is happy for the good price. as he has free power.

i  take the 500 usd and buy an s-3..  win win for all

[iglasses]

It isn't and every one of you posting this is wrong.

I have bought batch one S3's
I will profit with them
If you can't I don't really know what to say.

[DrG]

It isn't and every one of you posting this is wrong.

I have bought batch one S3's
I will profit with them
If you can't I don't really know what to say.

S1 owners like phillip (see above) took a chance and got lucky due to KNC, BFL, BA and others delivering late.  I have free electricity and I was still skeptical about ROI.  Considering all that late stuff is now delivering, I'll make a 1BTC bet with you that your S3 won't ROI it's BTC costs.  With the 25% jump this last period it's going to get nasty pretty quick.

[rograz]

May someone explain their rationale for investing in Antminer S3? Maybe something I missed?

Building up a hoard of aluminum, as long as I break even I will become a billionaire from all this aluminum, just watch me!

[mikerbiker6]

@DrG, KNC was just on time actually (Q1 or Q2).

[philipma1957]

It isn't and every one of you posting this is wrong.

I have bought batch one S3's
I will profit with them
If you can't I don't really know what to say.

S1 owners like phillip (see above) took a chance and got lucky due to KNC, BFL, BA and others delivering late.  I have free electricity and I was still skeptical about ROI.  Considering all that late stuff is now delivering, I'll make a 1BTC bet with you that your S3 won't ROI it's BTC costs.  With the 25% jump this last period it's going to get nasty pretty quick.

Btc roi is really soooo hard to do.  I no longer make bets   but I would think that   to get a s-3 to return its cost of .75btc is not going to happen for most of us.

 USD roi is always possible.  Now many say but if you purchased the 0.75btc and held it   1 year later that was a better profit. 

Yes it is true that buying low and selling high may make more money.  But I am a USA guy I follow USA rules.
 Buying coins and holding them is passive investing as per USA tax law.
 Buying a miner mining with it and then selling it on ebay  involves up to three types of tax rules.

 1) mining which is an active business
2) resale on ebay I have an active ebay store
3) holding the mined coins  .  which is about the same as buy and hold tax law wise.

Many forum members are fully underground.  So they have different condtitions to consider then me.

[bitcoinbelieve]

In long terms, it will pay off. I'm not saying that each BTC will be worth $1 million but it could be more than  couple grand.

[navigator]

It isn't and every one of you posting this is wrong.

I have bought batch one S3's
I will profit with them
If you can't I don't really know what to say.

S1 owners like phillip (see above) took a chance and got lucky due to KNC, BFL, BA and others delivering late.  I have free electricity and I was still skeptical about ROI.  Considering all that late stuff is now delivering, I'll make a 1BTC bet with you that your S3 won't ROI it's BTC costs.  With the 25% jump this last period it's going to get nasty pretty quick.

Last difficulty increase was an overshoot. Manufacturers producing new hardware that was added to the network. All those miners are getting ready to ship out now. The miners will stay in transit or about 5- 7days so hashrate will sort of drop from that. When that hashrate is sold, it only changes hands and the network difficulty is unaffected. We are currently at a 0% increase for this cycle and there will be many more less than 10% increases coming soon.

Anyone who tries to predict difficulty outside of 3 months is always way off. If you used one of those mining calculators earlier this year it would have said we should be over 100 billion difficulty by now. Do I really need to screenshot one of these predictions so we can come back to it later?

[Biodom]

How is this for a reason: If you don't mine, than your bitcoin is potentially worth nothing because someone might vote to change it in a way that you don't like.

everyone who has bitcoin should mine, but how much?

Easy to calculate:

M (minimal mining in Th/s)=F X P
where F is a a fraction that your bitcoin represents in 21000000
P-is the power of network in Th (currently ~120000)

F=Y/B
Y-bitcoins that you have
B=21000000

So, if you have 100 BTC, you need to mine (or hire someone to mine for you) at M=100/21000000 X 120000=0.57Th/s=570Gh/s
I is probably better to be ahead (mine more than minimal)
Essentially, if you have less than 30BTC, one antminer S1 or equivalent is OK
at 100BTC-3-4 antminers S1 or one antminer S1 and one antminer S3 is enough

[DrG]

@DrG, KNC was just on time actually (Q1 or Q2).

Shipping 5 days before the end of Q2 is not really what most Neptune users were expecting.  They were expecting KNC's own farm to exceed 5%.  When they said Q1/Q2, most were thinking March, April, possibly May if bad, June worst case scenario.

It appears also that they didn't complete out their Batch 1 deliveries as promised.

[DrG]

It isn't and every one of you posting this is wrong.

I have bought batch one S3's
I will profit with them
If you can't I don't really know what to say.

S1 owners like phillip (see above) took a chance and got lucky due to KNC, BFL, BA and others delivering late.  I have free electricity and I was still skeptical about ROI.  Considering all that late stuff is now delivering, I'll make a 1BTC bet with you that your S3 won't ROI it's BTC costs.  With the 25% jump this last period it's going to get nasty pretty quick.

Last difficulty increase was an overshoot. Manufacturers producing new hardware that was added to the network. All those miners are getting ready to ship out now. The miners will stay in transit or about 5- 7days so hashrate will sort of drop from that. When that hashrate is sold, it only changes hands and the network difficulty is unaffected. We are currently at a 0% increase for this cycle and there will be many more less than 10% increases coming soon.

Anyone who tries to predict difficulty outside of 3 months is always way off. If you used one of those mining calculators earlier this year it would have said we should be over 100 billion difficulty by now. Do I really need to screenshot one of these predictions so we can come back to it later?

Agreed that projections beyond 3 months are meaningless.  Because nobody knows the true pipeline and capabilities of the whole ASIC scene.  If people are ordering stuff more than 3 months ahead of time they are brave.

S3 and Neptune owners are being given a gift right now.  It looks right now like there will be minimal increase.  Then again BTCG, Bitminter and GHash have all had below average luck for the last few days.  I don't know about DF.  The thing I wonder is when those AM chips start getting put into use.

1.5 years ago I predicted that the difficulty would not pass 1 billion.  Obviously I did not see BTC going to $1200 and didn't think people would preorder so much that they would lose money.  I thought everybody buying miners would be able to work a calculator.   How people still manage to place orders with BFL is mindblowing.  So I was way off.  People will do things that I cannot understand.  So now, given people's current fervor and the recent rise in the price, I can see more orders being placed.  People have just thrown caution to the wind.

[philipma1957]

...

Agreed that projections beyond 3 months are meaningless.  Because nobody knows the true pipeline and capabilities of the whole ASIC scene.  If people are ordering stuff more than 3 months ahead of time they are brave.

S3 and Neptune owners are being given a gift right now.  It looks right now like there will be minimal increase.  Then again BTCG, Bitminter and GHash have all had below average luck for the last few days.  I don't know about DF.  The thing I wonder is when those AM chips start getting put into use.

1.5 years ago I predicted that the difficulty would not pass 1 billion.  Obviously I did not see BTC going to $1200 and didn't think people would preorder so much that they would lose money.  I thought everybody buying miners would be able to work a calculator.  How people still manage to place orders with BFL is mindblowing.  So I was way off.  People will do things that I cannot understand.  So now, given people's current fervor and the recent rise in the price, I can see more orders being placed.  People have just thrown caution to the wind.

Many people can work calculators..

 They saw big run ups  feb 2013- Apr 2013.. Then Sept 2013 - Dec 2013…

  SO they say  640 now will go to 2000 or 3000 maybe 5000.

I think even some  asic builders fall into that type thinking.

 

[mikerbiker6]

they are selling crazy, batch 3 already!

[ThomasCrowne]

A good calculator for mining:
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

Play with these inputs and you'll realize that it's almost impossible ever to break even.

I managed to make a profit of 0.65 BTC only by using some very strong assumptions:

Price = 0.75 BTC (I.e. no VAT/customs, free PSU)
Electricity only $0.10/kWh
Only 10% difficulty increment

It implies that no EU resident will ever be able to make a profit. If you live in some parts of the US, you might profit marginally, but not worthwhile given the risk of hardware failure.

May someone explain their rationale for investing in Antminer S3? Maybe something I missed?

Nope...you pretty much hit the nail on the head.  Even here in the states the likelihood of recovering your initial investment in hardware is slim to none.  Plus, your also assuming 100% uptime.  Rig's quit unexpectedly for a variety of reasons:
1.) Hardware issue(s) (failed fans, etc.)
2.) Internet connection lost
3.) Pool(s) going down (this can be largely mitigated by having secondary and tertiary pools but you still lose some hash power switching pools)

All and all mining isn't even a 0 sum game at this point.  It's a guaranteed loss!

[CoinsCoinsEverywhere]

As long as BTC goes up, you can certainly make a profit.  You just have to buy with fiat (i.e., either convert fiat to BTC and buy antminers, or buy antminers and then buy back the BTC with fiat).  If you just buy with BTC you already have, it will be difficult.

[silvestar]

In long terms, it will pay off. I'm not saying that each BTC will be worth $1 million but it could be more than  couple grand.

You should consider the profit in btc instead of USD, as you could simply buy bitcoin now with your USD, expecting bitcoin price to be much higher.