Starting a new FPGA mining farm/contract! Cognitive Resurrected on[Havelock]

[iCEBREAKER]

Fair enough.  According to TGB again, Cointerra's chips do 2TH/s on 1200W.  (1200W * ($0.02/1000W*h)) => $0.024/h,  $0.024/h / (2000GH/s * 60s/m * 60m/h) => $0.00000000333/GH.

Compared to the previous number, we have 5.299e-7 versus 3.33e-9, or ~160 times more efficient.

6 months out, 1678 mil diff, => 1678mil * 2**32 * $0.00000000333/GH * (1/1bil GH) => $23.999.

So at a difficulty of 1678 mil, doing the number of hashes needed to discover a block on 110nm chips will cost $3817 and doing it on 28nm chips will cost $24.  3817/24 => ~160, so our numbers match expectations.

Of course, this assumes cointerra hits their power/hash goals, etc, since we don't know if they have a working proof of concept yet, and we know from BFL companies have failed to reach predictions before.

EDIT: if we assume 60% growth over the next year - so 12 months out - we would be at 28147mil diff.  This is VERY unlikely - exponential growth cannot continue forever.  Nonetheless, if it happened, we'd have $402.56 per block.  Of course, as I argued above, discovering blocks would still be very very slow, but even at insane exponential growth, we wouldn't be turning our miners off even after 12 months from now (9months from getting them).

EDIT2: how slow?  at 1TH/s (for fair comparison) and 12-month diff (28147mil) we expect 0.000714 BTC/day, but a single cointerra device is 2TH/s, which would make 0.0014BTC/day, and if we get the full 1048TH/s garr has predicted, we'd be at 0.749BTC/day even 12 months from now.  You can do the math yourself to fill in the gaps if you want.

If exponential growth continues, isn't it a safe bet that the price of BTC will follow it up, up, up?

IOW, if the price of BTC levels off, what would incentivize/pay for continued exponential network expansion once negative marginal returns/diseconomies of scale kick in?

Goat, stop being stubborn and accept that you lost your bet on Avalon.  Be grateful that at least chip refunds are coming!

Get back on the horse and buy some Cog.F2.   

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[cw92]

I was under the impression that if Cognitive doesn't take the refund the chips still won't ship anytime soon, if at all.  Is that wrong? 

[theterabyte]

I agree, discussion is key.  Also, I agree generally with more-eggs-in-more-baskets.  I think the value of the avalon basket is pretty low even if it does come through, and if cointerra "pulls a BFL" there are still many other companies delivering hashing power to the network.

Garr seems to have put most of our eggs in the cointerra basket because we are getting "a very good price" with them (though exact numbers are still pretty hazy).  If the sense folks have is that we want COG.F to be "a different basket" than COG.F2, then maybe we should ask garr to try to get one of the cointerra competitors (like labcoin? I dunno, I'm not up on the options) with those funds.  Or even BFL monarchs?  I wouldn't be supprised if Garr doesn't ever want to buy from BFL again, but we're talking a small % of COG's funds, right?  Also, we might have chip discounts, etc.?

So what do you guys think, do you want to see a motion to diversify into more than just cointerra, even if it is just 10% of our funds or whatever?

[theterabyte]

Possibly relevant: http://thegenesisblock.com/avalon-refunds-22000-btc-2-9m-to-asic-miner-customers/

Maybe we could change our order to 2nd gen chips instead?  projected 10x higher hashrate, and almost assuredly lower power usage too (though still not quite as good as cointerra, should be a good hedge against cointerra failing).  Another possibility to raise a motion for?

[iCEBREAKER]

A goat being stubborn? Anyway asking for discussion is not exactly unproductive. That is what this thread is for.

Avalon is not going to be as productive as we wanted however, what happens if this new company fails more like BFL and not fail like avalon? I'd still rather have my eggs in more baskets and I'm still leaning towards voting no, but I'm only 5%.

Well of course goats are stubborn.  I was just kidding around with you!   

Cointerra's all-pro ASIC dream team is in no way comparable to BFL's or Avalon's motley crew of amateurs.

Just being associated with Avalon is bad for Cog's share price.  People want to boycott them now and forever.

[cw92]

You seem to be the only person who objects to the Avalon refund.  What disadvantage can you possibly see to an immediate refund vs. waiting an undetermined amount of time for an order of increasingly outdated chips? 

[cw92]

I understand your skepticism toward all the unproven companies, but Bitfury delivered its August orders on time and I believe October orders are still open.  Even if Avalon claims the order will be sent soon, no one knows when that is and waiting would keep us at the mercy of Avalon's incompetency. 

[theterabyte]

I understand your skepticism toward all the unproven companies, but Bitfury delivered its August orders on time and I believe October orders are still open.  Even if Avalon claims the order will be sent soon, no one knows when that is and waiting would keep us at the mercy of Avalon's incompetency. 

We stayed with BFL and we now have stuff in action.

The only thing that will change my vote is Garr saying that the status is not "pre-shipping" but sadly he can't find the status so really I don't know what is going on.


But yeah, lots of baskets is the way I like to play. If we keep doing this crazy stuff like this I will look for an opportunity to sell my shares rather than keep buying. I want stability in a company not something that will chase the weekly trend.

Cointerra isn't the weekly trend, Garr has been working on that deal for a long time, according to his posts.  He hinted at the existence of this deal a long time ago, when he originally proposed the first 100 shares of COG.F2.

Jumping on the "dump avalon" bandwagon, on the other hand, I agree, was a decision made much more quickly, I recognize your concerns there.

The thing is, math is math.  The best argument for dumping avalon at this point is "if cointerra fails, having ~1TH/s of avalons starting in a month or two aren't going to drasticaly change our outcome", because as my calculations show, we can't even run them for very long. at best we shut them off after just 4-5 months of running.  It'd literally be better to bank the BTC and invest in some other opportunity at that time - or just do it now (via labcoin, bitfury, whatever else we can get).

One can diversify by buying shares of different mining companies - so if you don't like the low-basket ratio of cog, sell just a few shares and buy some of something else as well.  I hope you would agree even if cog had nothing but cointerra orders, if Garr can support his claims in the near future, that alone makes cog an extremely valuable investment and thus a strong part of any well-balanced mining company portfolio.  If cog has the best deal with cointerra, far better than *any* other mining company (which again, Garr has implied but not yet provided solid evidence of) then cog absolutely should spend most if not all of their funds on cointerra because it is the best bang for their BTC.

[Garr255]

Hey all,

Soon I am going to place an order with CoinTerra for 10th/s solely for Cognitive I am going to try to finalize a special deal with them this week, so we can get current-generation hardware for the best price possible while locking in a deal for future hardware from CoinTerra. Unfortunately I cannot give details without their explicit permission due to the NDA I had to sign. After I have the go-ahead I'll surely be posting back with more info!

Regardless, this December/January we will be seeing a tremendous increase in haspower

Cheers,
Garrett


And for those who may have missed the exciting news:

Hey all, the 7 SC Sinlges arrived today and are currently hashing away at ~420gh/s. This puts our total hashrate at over 750gh/s!

And what would a hardware arrival be without pictures?!



Super beefy PSUs + cables.


And the full setup!


With regard to the avalon refund, it is definitely something that will be worth it to do, because we will be getting significantly more powerful hardware at a significantly lower price point. It just mathematically makes sense to collect the BTC from avalon and put the funds toward hardware that isn't obsolete.

No boards for the avalon chips have been manufactured yet, so there will be no loss for Cognitive there. I and numerous other investors in private mining projects have paid for the R&D costs of the Avalon boards ourselves and I will be eating Cognitive's share of that cost.

Again, I apologize for not being as active as I'd like to be on the forums. I have been quite busy for the past few weeks, but now I'm getting settled and into the swing of things. I'm studying electrical and computer engineering and business, and going to flight school, because aviation has always been a passion of mine So yes, I do have a lot on my plate, so I do prioritize accordingly. I've been working away at keeping Cognitive itself running smoothly in this transitional period, and haven't been keeping up on the PR side of things. You can expect more frequent updates from me from this day forward.

Cheers,
Garrett

Also, I will be updating btct.co and cognitivemining.com tomorrow!

[KCBitcoin]

Hi Garr,

Since BTCT does not send email notification to shareholders for new motions, I guess some of the shareholders don't even know about the new motions going on.

I think you have to either do an announcement on BTCT like

A new motion has been posted on COGNITIVE at: https://btct.co/security/COGNITIVE You should probably check it out. Don't waste your vote!

but just make it un-viewable to public, so that BTCT can send out an email to notify all the shareholder.

Or, you can just send everyone an email from your email distribution list.

[Garr255]

Hi Garr,

Since BTCT does not send email notification to shareholders for new motions, I guess some of the shareholders don't even know about the new motions going on.

I think you have to either do an announcement on BTCT like

A new motion has been posted on COGNITIVE at: https://btct.co/security/COGNITIVE You should probably check it out. Don't waste your vote!

but just make it un-viewable to public, so that BTCT can send out an email to notify all the shareholder.

Or, you can just send everyone an email from your email distribution list.

I will be posting a notification for the motions along with the hardware arrival notifications tomorrow. Hopefully that makes it go through.

[theterabyte]

Since the maths are annoying and helpful, I will run them for people.

Assumptions:

1. The minimum diff increase will be 50% per month from now until december.  The expected diff increase will be 65% per month from now until december.  The high-end (hopefully worst-case) diff increase will be 85% per month from now until december.
2. Cointerra will deliver 10TH/s to cog, all at once, which will begin hashing in december.
3. These will take the form of 5 2TH/s units which each draw 1200W (what I used for my maths earlier)

regardless of 1 and 2, using only assumption 3 we can analyze power draw:
5units * 1.2kW * $0.02/(kW*h) = $0.12/h = $2.88 per day to run the hardware.  That's pretty good.

Using all three assumptions now:

current difficulty is looking to be about 110mil by Sept 15th.  December 15th is 3 months away, yielding our three difficulty numbers:

(110mil*(X**3)) where X is 1.5, 1.65, and 1.85=> 371mil, 494mil, 696mil

The expected time to find a block is

difficulty to find block * 2**32 / hash rate(per second) / (60s/m * 60m/h * 24h/day) = X days

If diff were 110 mil (so, today), 10TH/s would produce:

expected coins per week = 24hours / day * (7days/week)  * (diff * 2**32 * / (10 * 1000000000000) / (60*60)) * 25BTC/block => 320BTC/week

at diff 371mil, 94.9 BTC/week
at diff 494mil, 71.3 BTC/week
at diff 696mil, 50.6 BTC/week

So even at the most pessimistic network estimates, COG would be making 50BTC/week in december if cointerra comes through for us - which, at ~26000 shares (say COG.F1 and COG.F2 both mature) is a dividend of 0.0019 per share per week, or an annualized return of 0.10 BTC/year (31% of current price).  Of course, that's just on the 10TH/s. 

Finally, we can make one more assumption, which is that given the risk of BTC and mining, most mining companies adjust to a share price such that annualized returns are between 10 and 20%.  IF we assume that, it implies a target price of 0.5 BTC/share (yielding 20% annualized return) on this 10TH/s purchase alone (and future hashing may raise that).

Of course, there are a lot of assumptions going on here.  This math is all just for demonstrative purposes.  Each investor needs to carefully consider all the assumptions, and the ways those assumptions could be wrong, before investing.

[Garr255]

Even if we get the chips in December it will take a month or so to get them all up and running correct?

The CoinTerra chips will be hashing the same day they arrive, because they are handling the board production as well as the chips fabrication, whereas Avalon was selling just chips.

--Garrett

[MilkyLep]

Well that certainly sounds like an upgrade with less hassle. It sounds and looks (from the maths) CoinTerra is the way to go!

I'm not sure how Bitsyncom works, regarding order updates, but is it possible to login and look up previous orders? That way everyone knows the exact status of Avalon chips?

P.S. I wonder if splitting the Avalon refund motion from CogF contracts combining with CogF2 would make things more clear? I guess its a moot point at this time.

[Garr255]

Even if we get the chips in December it will take a month or so to get them all up and running correct?

The CoinTerra chips will be hashing the same day they arrive, because they are handling the board production as well as the chips fabrication, whereas Avalon was selling just chips.

--Garrett

Okay that sounds pretty good. That is an important detail.  How firm is the december date? Also when is the last day we can order and still get in that first batch.

The reason I say December/January is because there is the potential to get the same chips for less money by waiting a month. We will have to calculate whether this will be worth it when the time comes. To more precisely answer your question though: CoinTerra is serious about delivering on time. They have promised that if they are 30 days late in delivering products they will give purchasers an additional 20% of the hashpower they ordered. I'll be speaking with the CEO of CT this weekend. There is no definitive cutoff date; still have a little while to place the order.

--Garrett

[Garr255]

Even if we get the chips in December it will take a month or so to get them all up and running correct?

The CoinTerra chips will be hashing the same day they arrive, because they are handling the board production as well as the chips fabrication, whereas Avalon was selling just chips.

--Garrett

Okay that sounds pretty good. That is an important detail.  How firm is the december date? Also when is the last day we can order and still get in that first batch.

The reason I say December/January is because there is the potential to get the same chips for less money by waiting a month. We will have to calculate whether this will be worth it when the time comes. To more precisely answer your question though: CoinTerra is serious about delivering on time. They have promised that if they are 30 days late in delivering products they will give purchasers an additional 20% of the hashpower they ordered. I'll be speaking with the CEO of CT this weekend. There is no definitive cutoff date; still have a little while to place the order.

--Garrett

The stuff that we have already ordered from them will be in the Dec batch?  And the new stuff might be either the Dec or Jan? Also can you find out how much money we will save by waiting? Unless it is a significant discount, like at least 30%, I would tend to lean towards faster being better.

Cognitive hasn't made any orders from CT yet, just a few others in private mining operations I'm running. I agree with you though; the increase in difficulty in that one month might not be worth the wait for a less than significant discount.

[theterabyte]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that something other than a strict majority is needed... am I smoking something?  What are the reqs for a motion to pass?

[stabs]

Does this mean we missed the first batch?  http://thegenesisblock.com/cointerra-and-hashfast-sell-17m-of-bitcoin-miners-open-second-batch-sales/

[Garr255]

Does this mean we missed the first batch?  http://thegenesisblock.com/cointerra-and-hashfast-sell-17m-of-bitcoin-miners-open-second-batch-sales/

Nope, we have the option to choose between the two, at different price points though. I'll be back with prices after my chat with CT this weekend.

And 50%+ approval is indeed what is required to pass a motion now.

Cheers,
Garrett

[theterabyte]

The waiting calculation is super straight forward.  Regardless of what the diff is at, the coins we earn is inversely proportional to the diff.

According to http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ the historical diff increase is:

Over the last 30 days: 125% (1.25 per month)
Over the last 60 days: 323% (1.8 per month)
Over the last 90 days: 457% (1.65 per month)

So the last 30 days have leveled off a bit, but last month it was crazy and it was pretty high even the month before that.

Presuming back-of-the-envelope 80% monthly growth (not unlikely due to cointerrra shitting a ton of hash power onto the network) we see:

First batch = 100 units
Second batch = 100 * (1/1.8 ) = 55 units

Using units to avoid talking about exactly how many coins, because it doesn't matter, we are making a comparison, the units are unimportant.

The lifetime sum of units made by the hardware for first batch are:

limit[x->0,inf] sum(100/(1.8**X)) => sum(100, 55.55, 30.86, 17.15, 9.53, 5.29, 2.94, 1.63, ...) which is approximately 225 units

The lifetime sum of units made by the same hardware starting one month later, with the same 80% monthly diff increase, is:

limit[x->1,inf] sum(100/(1.8**X)) => sum(55.55, 30.86, 17.15, 9.53, 5.29, 2.94, 1.63, ...) which is approximately 125 units

225 / 125 is exactly 1.8, of course, the very constant we used.  So, long story short, whatever the average difficulty increase is during that month, as long as the difficulty increase remains close to it in the future too, we can estimate waiting 1 month will cost us 1/(1+%) coins, or 55% for a difficulty increase of 80%

Diff increase during first month (assuming future difficulty increases are fairly consistent for at least some time):  % fewer coins gained during lifetime
95%: 49% fewer coins
80%: 45% fewer coins
65%: 39% fewer coins
55%: 35% fewer coins
45%: 31% fewer coins
30%: 23% fewer coins

In summary, if we get a 50% discount or more to wait, it is worth waiting, even if the difficulty *doubles* that month.  If we get a 20% discount or less, even the lowest difficulty increase we have seen in months would still make it worthwhile to pay the extra money (also, assuming our hardware makes enough coin to be profitable, which we hope will happen either way).  If it is somewhere in the middle, it comes down to what we expect the difficulty to be - and if CT delivers, I would bet it is going to be closer to the high side.

Thoughts?

EDIT: no sunglasses in my formulae!