LargeCoin Pricing Announced; Taking Pre-Orders

[antirack]

I am not sure under which laws you are married, but in many countries half of those 12 singles belong to your wife and half of your LargeCoin box too (in case of a divorce). And I am no divorce lawyer, but you don't need to have a very creative imagination to see your wife and her divorce lawyer taking away half of your income derived from those BFL and LC investments if the sh*t hits the fan.

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[drakahn]

ITT : only men make money and get hurt by divorce

[sgravina]

... strong motivation for me is the prospect of a portable, anonymous and potentially even unaccountable and untraceable income stream. ...

I suspect you are joking.  Otherwise you have just given public evidence of your intent to hide income from the IRS, your wife and your son.  If you eventually do this then your stated intent will be incriminating.

The guy would be one medical issue, one car accident, one layoff away from living on the streets. ...

You already have this risk even without the divorce.

I personally plan on using my LargeCoins to take over the world.  I anticipate the world being less expensive in 2014.

Sam

[julz]

...
An equally strong motivation for me is the prospect of a portable, anonymous and potentially even unaccountable and untraceable income stream
...

I also see that as desirable.. but I wonder if the 'stream' will be in the order of a few cents(ie those trashy 'fiat' cents) per month by the time the unit has paid for itself.

If I were to buy one of these - I'd actually be content if it paid itself off by the end of 2013 even if it was making negligible amounts after that.
The motivation in that case for me would simply be the satisfaction of supporting the security of the Bitcoin network with 20GH.

The counterpoint to that is that I also worry that before it's even recovered 50% of the cost price, it could be as obsolete for Bitcoin mining as CPUs are today.
I'm still tempted as a gamble.. but it's a pretty big gamble, with an obvious downside, and a not so obvious upside.

For this to actually be 'exciting' - wouldn't we need to see a massive and extended crash in network hash power (and also presumably price), followed by a recovery?

[Raize]

The last time this happened people warned about dropping $10-15k on mining farms but people did it anyway. Those of us that were smart just bought coin instead. It went from $.65 to $31 in less than four months. I remember the price was falling at the time, and people thought I was stupid spending money on coin, but I was looking at the difficulty increases and I knew there'd be people upset they spent several $K on mining equipment when they could have just bought coin.

I hate to say it, but investing US dollars in something like this, if true, is probably one of the stupidest things you could do right now. Your money may be better spent investing in coin. I guess it depends on if you think Bitcoin is going to get more popular or less popular. If less, and you still want to do it, then mine. If more, then you have to at least be considering the fact that the price might increase, in which case you'll want to consider buying now and purchasing miners maybe later.

[JWU42]

The last time this happened people warned about dropping $10-15k on mining farms but people did it anyway. Those of us that were smart just bought coin instead. It went from $.65 to $31 in less than four months. I remember the price was falling at the time, and people thought I was stupid spending money on coin, but I was looking at the difficulty increases and I knew there'd be people upset they spent several $K on mining equipment when they could have just bought coin.

I hate to say it, but investing US dollars in something like this, if true, is probably one of the stupidest things you could do right now. Your money may be better spent investing in coin. I guess it depends on if you think Bitcoin is going to get more popular or less popular. If less, and you still want to do it, then mine. If more, then you have to at least be considering the fact that the price might increase, in which case you'll want to consider buying now and purchasing miners maybe later.

Appreciate the other side of the equation.

Previosuly the invest decision was offset a bit by the fact that you were buying GPUs and there was a fairly high salvage value.  Now with these monster machines it is questionable if the salvage value is any more than pennies on the dollar (which scares me a tad).  

PS - If I thought another 46,000% rise in price was possible I'd be buying coins now and not hardware.

[Syke]

I hate to say it, but investing US dollars in something like this, if true, is probably one of the stupidest things you could do right now. Your money may be better spent investing in coin.

While the profit from mining is nice, it's not the only reason to mine. Buying coins does nothing to increase the network security. Mining does. So rather than calling miners stupid, you should be thanking them for making the network stronger.

[antirack]

And with more people making big cash ($) investments for larger FPGA and ASIC mining equipment, I believe there will be more downwards pressure on the Bitcoin.

My thinking is that a lot of relative small scale miners that only spent a few hundreds or a thousand dollars for their equipment are perfectly happy to keep their income in Bitcoin. While the ones that spent up to $15k or even more, have an urgent need to put those Bitcoin back on an exchange in order to sell them for $$$ to pay the bills.

In other words, while more large scale miners won't mean more Bitcoin on the market, we will have more people that put their Bitcoin up for sale for $$$.

[JWU42]

Or another way to look at it...

The 30 Gh/s farm that was GPU powered was paying almost $900 a month on electric.

Assuming 2.5 Mh/J (hard to get much better) = 12,000 Watts @ $.10/Kwh = $876/month

Now same miner can achieve similar for 1/10th (using BFL) or 1/20th (using other FPGA) the power.  Now, the question of paying off the hardware ASAP is another issue and varies by individual.

[antirack]

Assuming 12kWh, is this even possible on a domestic electricity circuit under normal circumstances? (is 100 Amps @ 110V about right??)

If not, then those 30 GH/s GPU farms are only fictional or very rare.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Assuming 12kWh, is this even possible on a domestic electricity circuit under normal circumstances? (is 100 Amps @ 110V about right??)

If not, then those 30 GH/s GPU farms are only fictional or very rare.

US mains are 240V (120V split phase).  Dropping in 240V outlets isn't that tough.  I made a DIY article a while back.   Also 2.5 MH/J is pretty crappy.  Optimized rigs can get closer to 3MH/J.  Still 12 KW on 240V mains is 50A but you would want to derate that 20% so you need about 60A of capacity.  A pair of NEMA L6-30R outlets will do the trick.

Still I would say non-botnet 30GH/s farms are pretty rare.  Antecdotally (and looking at pool stats) I would say even >10GH/s farms are relatively rare.

[julz]

Assuming 12kWh, is this even possible on a domestic electricity circuit under normal circumstances? (100 Amps @ 110V)

If not, then those 30 GH/s GPU farms are only fictional or very rare.

According to my household power monitor... our instantaneous water heater alone uses around 15kW.   
That thing is on a 3-phase 240V supply (Australia). 

I've seen household usage spike up to near 20kW - so I guess an electrician could put in circuits to supply a nice big GPU farm.

Not sure how well that would go *on top of* the already heavy usage of some households like this one though!

[DeathAndTaxes]

You can check your breaker panel.  If you have a "mains" breaker (some panels don't) it should be rated below the current limit for wiring from your panel to power grid.  In US most homes have at least 100A, sometimes 200A, even older homes that haven't been upgraded should be good for 60A or so.

[JWU42]

Ours is 200A...

D&T - 3 Mh/J - seriously?  Mine are all above 2.5 and one at 2.7 - but barely.  That said, they all have 20-30W worth of 120x38mm Delta screamers on them...

[DeathAndTaxes]

D&T - 3 Mh/J - seriously?

It isn't easy but it is doable.  

Every little watt helps especially that last few tenths of a MH/J.
* 80Plus-Gold PSU
* 240V circuit (about 3% lower W than 120V)
* 4x5970s rig (high MH/S relative to host overhead)
* Underclocked and undervolted sempron
* Turn off what is not needed in BIOS
* Memclock down to 150
* Linux on USB key (no 100% CPU bug)
* Supplemental fans but not going to crazy (I dropped it back to 2x UltraKaze pulling instead of pushing)

Undervolting and underclocking the GPU you can get up to 4 MH/J but currently it is more profitable to run it at full voltage.  Still as those FPGA start to drive down price/difficulty it is nice to have the option to crank up the efficiency to squeeze that last little bit out of old old GPUs.


Still 2.5+ MH/J is solid.  I remember a thread some time back after the price crash when I got into arguments because some people thought getting >2.0 MH/J was just unrealistic.   Today 2.0 MH/J is just downright bad.

[JWU42]

Yeah - agreed with that you can get down to some very good numbers but it doesn't make sense yet...

Seasonic PSU X-Gold PSUs  - Check
Underclocked Sempron - Check
Bios - Will review further
Memclock - 180-300 (some cards aren't happy with 180)
USB Key - Check (BAMT)

[JWU42]

And back on topic -- sent an e-mail yesterday and no response as of yet  

EDIT - Got an e-mail early this morning (29 March) that they are finalizing details on the escrow details and engineering work continues...

[organofcorti]

And with more people making big cash ($) investments for larger FPGA and ASIC mining equipment, I believe there will be more downwards pressure on the Bitcoin.

My thinking is that a lot of relative small scale miners that only spent a few hundreds or a thousand dollars for their equipment are perfectly happy to keep their income in Bitcoin. While the ones that spent up to $15k or even more, have an urgent need to put those Bitcoin back on an exchange in order to sell them for $$$ to pay the bills.

In other words, while more large scale miners won't mean more Bitcoin on the market, we will have more people that put their Bitcoin up for sale for $$$.

It might also increase the profitability of services that pay bills for bitcoin. I can pay my electricity bill in bitcoin, for example. If LargeCoin creates a large number of new farmboys out there they'll be keen to spend coin paying for things *without* using an exchange.

[ice_chill]

And with more people making big cash ($) investments for larger FPGA and ASIC mining equipment, I believe there will be more downwards pressure on the Bitcoin.

My thinking is that a lot of relative small scale miners that only spent a few hundreds or a thousand dollars for their equipment are perfectly happy to keep their income in Bitcoin. While the ones that spent up to $15k or even more, have an urgent need to put those Bitcoin back on an exchange in order to sell them for $$$ to pay the bills.

In other words, while more large scale miners won't mean more Bitcoin on the market, we will have more people that put their Bitcoin up for sale for $$$.

I don't think there is a difference between small investor and large investor cashing out to pay bills, mainly because a small investor will have GPUs which actually cost more to run, while mine less bitcoins, a larger investor has better power efficiency so he has less bills to pay and mines more bitcoins.

And TBH I don't think miners make up the major economy of Bitcoin.

[deepceleron]

The impact of all 25 20Ghash/s ASIC rigs would be both significant but still small. In addition, the cost is too high for all but the very-long term risk-takers.

The current difficulty indicates a network hashrate of 10799 GHash/s.
You would be adding 500 GHash/s to that when all these rigs turn on.

Each 20GHash rig will increase the difficulty by 2793.
The current difficulty is 1508590. Each rig is still a drop in the bucket...

It would take $1,800,000 worth of LargeCoin rigs (60 of them) to mine 10% of the Bitcoins (5040 BTC a week, currently valued at $25200), while consuming 50A @ 120V doing it. The difficulty going up just 11.1% from such a purchase won't completely destroy the existing mining economy... You would have to hope that many miners will quit when the reward goes down.

It would take 143 weeks (2.7 years) of 25BTC/block mining to break even on your investment with free electricity, if the hashrate of the rest of the network and the exchange rate stayed the same (you could also get rich, or the Bitcoin economy could completely collapse). This is a risky investment unless you think value is going up up up. If you do, $30,000 will buy you 6125 BTC off MtGox right now; your Largecoin miner would only make that much after 145+ weeks of mining if nobody else turns on a mining rig.