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

[theterabyte]

...
Raise COG.F3 if we need more funds for hardware purchase later
...

I seriously doubt that, in it's current state, Cognitive could raise any funding whatsoever. Quite a lot of people got burned on COG.F and COG.F2. They were sold at 5 BTC each for 20 ordinary shares. That's 0.25 BTC per share. Cognitive is currently circling the drain at 0.0251 BTC. Nobody in their right mind would touch this clusterfuck until it starts performing. I'm talking about actual performance not promises, not "next week", not "in the future" but actual mining income from all the hardware we supposedly bought distributed as dividends with 50% held back for reinvestment as per the contract.

That's fair =|

[robitnik]

If this operation can't mine it is as good as dead.

Agreed.

All we need are two things.

• Cabinets in a data center
• Our hardware

Then we hook up power, network and configure. Then we've got clean power, adequate cooling and a reliable connection to a pool.

I'm assuming that most of the problems with our current hardware (apart from a couple of bad boards) are related to either
insufficient cooling or unreliable power supply.

Of course, we have two questions.
We need to know what the hold up is with the data center and why Cointerra haven't delivered the rest of our hardware yet.

Guybrush01 says his data center can provision 5 cabinets in 3 days for $5,000. If we had all 10 current TerraMiners running, that's just 5 days income and we have 16 BTC in the reserve fund to cover it in the mean time.

Datacenter delays are causing these problems. Typically, real estate of this large-scale nature is prepared months if not a year in advance and we are doing this in weeks. Everything will be operational within the coming week, but until then we have to do our best with our current resources. I will post the miners on ebay for 10 days and cancel if the 7 day motion does not pass.

If the motion to sell the units does not pass, we will be in a top-class tier-3 datacenter piggybacking on a larger operation, getting the cheapest power in the nation.

Best,
Garrett

Honestly, as a shareholder who was hacked, and then re-acquired almost all of his original position, I wish you the best.  But I have to ask, what data center are you working with?  Are they new?

I talked to our data center and they could provision 2 - 5 cabinets, each with 4 30A 208v circuits, in 3 days if I paid about $1k per cab expedite fee.

And no, this isn't Bob's house of chicken waffles & data centers.  It's kind of the 3rd largest data center in the United States.

[Lloydimiller4]

I personally doubt Cointerra is going to give us much bonus equipment after the point of Garret obtaining a single rig from them. They can say that at that point they are no longer late, and only owe us hash-rate until that point in time. The contract does not specify that the hardware needs to be shipped in full. I believe they will give us some hardware in compensation, but not anything close to 2x or whatever, we might get maybe 3-4 more rigs than were purchased. They know that we aren't going to spend a fortune fighting their agreement too.

[robitnik]

I personally doubt Cointerra is going to give us much bonus equipment after the point of Garret obtaining a single rig from them. They can say that at that point they are no longer late, and only owe us hash-rate until that point in time. The contract does not specify that the hardware needs to be shipped in full. I believe they will give us some hardware in compensation, but not anything close to 2x or whatever, we might get maybe 3-4 more rigs than were purchased. They know that we aren't going to spend a fortune fighting their agreement too.

That really depends on what their jurisdiction considers "delivery". I'd imagine that "delivery" is probably read as "delivery in full" but I could be wrong. In the worst case scenario, the first units arrived on the 18th of February so CoinTerra would owe us 33 TH/s. If Texas says that "delivery" on a purchase agreement means "delivery in full", then they'd owe us 41 TH/s and counting.

Also, we seem to be up to 9 TH/s on Eligius.

[HashFast_CL]

If this operation can't mine it is as good as dead.

I think ditching the Clownterra trash and selling 700+ GH/s HashFast boards is a good, perhaps even great, alternative.

[jimmothy]

If this operation can't mine it is as good as dead.

I think ditching the Clownterra trash and selling 700+ GH/s HashFast boards is a good, perhaps even great, alternative.

I can't think of a better way to run a company in to the ground than to partner with the asic manufacturer with the worst reputation in bitcoin.

Seems like a great idea to sell all your hardware mining at 1w/gh for hashlast next generation 1w/gh miners which will be released about the same time everyone else switches to less than 0.5w/gh miners.

[HashFast_CL]

If this operation can't mine it is as good as dead.

I think ditching the Clownterra trash and selling 700+ GH/s HashFast boards is a good, perhaps even great, alternative.

I will never buy CT stuff again (cuz Ravi wont let me) but I would never buy your crap ever. I would buy BFL and send Pirate BTC before sending you BTC.

You are a new low in this world full of scammers.

Fine, next time order from Black Arrow, AMT, or Bitmine.ch.  I heard they will ship to customers Soon^TM (perhaps even In Two Weeks).   

[Cognitive-PR]

Seems like a motion is appropriate, but I can see this working a few different ways:

1. Sell hardware, use proceeds to pay 100% div.  Raise COG.F3 if we need more funds for hardware purchase later
2. Sell hardware, use 50% of proceeds to pay div, keep 50% for reinvestment fund
3. Sell hardware, put it all in reinvestment fund

I think 3 is only reasonable if we have some other hardware to buy that we can have in-hand very soon (like, < 1 month).  Otherwise, I'd prefer 1 or 2.  Would 1 mean "the end of cog", or would there still be plenty of money left over for reinvestment in the next big thing?  Maybe to answer these questions, we need to see just how many CT machines we sell, and how much profit we can make from them.  Also, if some of the CT machines do work, or if we are able to run a smaller number of them reliably, maybe we don't sell them all - just a few.

Also, maybe before we are able to sell them, the data center comes through and magically fixes everything.  Who knows.  I'm still in favor of keeping our options open, so long as movement happens to keep as many options open as possible in the meantime.

Garrett has decided that all of the hardware that is sold (old hardware and CT hardware) will go to the reinvestment fund. Of course, we will start by seeing how many of the CT units we can sell. The plan right now is to start by selling the first 8 CT units, one at a time, on eBay. We will place the starting bid at $8,000 and see how much people are willing to pay. If the new facility in WA is ready when the remainder of the CT units arrive, it may be most profitable to keep them. In a facility with cheap/reliable power, adequate cooling, and 24/7 supervision they should be far less problematic. If all goes as planned, this facility should be housing new hardware by the first week in April.
 
Our priorities are as follows:
1.) Sell the first few CoinTerra units
2.) Secure the new space
3.) Purchase new hardware
4.) Documentation and transparency: Financial reports, irc interview, google hangout… anything people want to increase transparency. Of course, we will be working on these things whenever there is time to do so in-between the tasks listed above, and transparency is something we will be continuously working on.

Meanwhile, Garrett plans to set up a better way of paying dividends: The plan is to place a 4 BTC buffer in the Cognitive account on Havelock, so that within about 5 hours, funds from the cog mining address can transfer to Havelcok, Havelock can pay dividends, and the balance should always go back to 4 BTC. This way Garrett doesn't have to continue paying dividends from his own Havelock account.

Maybe Asicminer will have gen3 units in-hand and ready to sell in the next couple of months?  Has anyone been following them?  Their hardware has always been expensive, but they (AFAIK) have always only sold units in hand, shipped quickly, and delivered exactly as promised meaning the ROI calculation is straightforward, reliable, and low-risk.  Of course, on the other hand, (at least based upon their share price), gen3 might be vaporware itself and not something to rely upon...

Agreed, but Asicminer's hardware is overpriced.

FWIW, with the slowdown in network size increases, I have been running my 65nm BFL hardware longer than I anticipated and I think COG's BFL hardware will be economical to run for a while longer (the returns are small, but they more than offset cost to run still I believe).

Garrett believes that selling them now will be more profitable in the long run. They have been up for sale on the forum but haven't sold so the plan is to put them on eBay either tonight or tomorrow.


We will keep you updated, and give you links to the eBay auctions.

- Samuel

[jimmothy]

Serious question:

Is this operation run by a bunch of 16 year olds?

[jimmothy]

Agreed, but Asicminer's hardware is overpriced.

How so? AM Gen3 at the chip level is supposed to be $0.5-$1/gh at 0.2w/gh

Compare that to hashlast evo boards which are about $3/gh at 1w/gh.

Anyways good luck selling hardware that is 3 times more expensive and 5 times less efficient than the competition.

[Cognitive-PR]

Agreed, but Asicminer's hardware is overpriced.

How so? AM Gen3 at the chip level is supposed to be $0.5-$1/gh at 0.2w/gh

Compare that to hashlast evo boards which are about $3/gh at 1w/gh.

Anyways good luck selling hardware that is 3 times more expensive and 5 times less efficient than the competition.

Compared to the price we can get from HashFast, BitMain (makers of AntMiner), and CoinTerra, yes - it's overpriced.


Also, we will not purchase any hardware from HashFast unless it is either in stock or delivered first. No more pre-ordering.

The first CT unit is now on eBay:  http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=131145403391


- Samuel

[MilkyLep]

Since there are no motions and no dividends this has pretty much turned into a scam...

I havent posted in this thread for awhile, so I just wanted to go ahead and quote this for posterity and humor.

It was too good to pass up. I would love to add to the chaos, but watching this mayhem unfold has been entertaining enough.

Do the staunch believers realize yet why myself and others kept pushing for answers and accountability? I mean seriously...there isnt even a proper mining center for hardware that was/is 3 months late.

I take it kako's seizures from fervent laughter prevents him from boasting currently. Cmon I know you can't help yourself.

[zero3112]

Since when did HashFast come into the picture. We are not seriously going to buy from them are we? Why has their been no motions for shareholders to vote on what we should do?

[elasticband]

Since when did HashFast come into the picture. We are not seriously going to buy from them are we? Why has their been no motions for shareholders to vote on what we should do?

Scamlast are not worth considering, ignore their trolling. Garr, don't you dare buy any of thier crap.

I don't think we are going to have much luck selling none functional miners........ i know what i would be doing if i bought a miner from you via ebay and it did not work well.......

My advice would b e do not deal with ebay or paypal

[robitnik]

Since when did HashFast come into the picture. We are not seriously going to buy from them are we? Why has their been no motions for shareholders to vote on what we should do?

They didn't. Hashfast_CL just showed up to start stirring up shit and to try to sell their crap. No one is buying it. Goat just immediately freaked out at the mere presence of hashfast.

I'm with you on the motions. The problem is we'd need to weight the votes by shareholding. It's really something that should be integrated into Havelock.

I think selling this hardware is a mistake. If, by some miracle, we sell our current CoinTerra gear, what guarantees do we have that we'll have the rest of our CT hardware within three weeks? Will we have our new data center space with no hardware to put in it? For that matter, I'd also like to know the name of the data center we're moving to. I'd like to ask them why it took so long to get it sorted.

I would also like an answer to the 1% per day question. Are we looking at 33 TH/s or 40+?

[elasticband]

I think selling this hardware is a mistake. If, by some miracle, we sell our current CoinTerra gear, what guarantees do we have that we'll have the rest of out CT hardware within three weeks. Will we have our new data center space with no hardware to put in it? For that matter, I'd also like to know the name of the data center we're moving to. I'd like to ask them why it took so long to get it sorted.

I happen to agree with this.

sadly we are not running the miners during their most profitable weeks though.

the future will not be based on the past though, difficulty changes are already dropping, adding 20% to 33,720,959 GH/s every 14 days is becoming harder and harder.

[robitnik]

... difficulty changes are already dropping, adding 20% to 33,720,959 GH/s every 14 days is becoming harder and harder.

This is true, but ASICMiner's gen3 worries me. They may give us a large difficulty spike in the very near future. I'm not too worried about the other manufacturers but Friedcat could be a problem. He's very good at what he does. The only mistake he made was underestimating how quickly the competition would catch up to him. That will likely be the last of the large difficulty increases though. I'm fairly certain that growth rates will drop off and become linear by mid-summer.

[elasticband]

... difficulty changes are already dropping, adding 20% to 33,720,959 GH/s every 14 days is becoming harder and harder.

This is true, but ASICMiner's gen3 worries me. They may give us a large difficulty spike in the very near future. I'm not too worried about the other manufacturers but Friedcat could be a problem. He's very good at what he does. The only mistake he made was underestimating how quickly the competition would catch up to him. That will likely be the last of the large difficulty increases though. I'm fairly certain that growth rates will drop off and become linear by mid-summer.

Again i would have to agree with you, FC does not do things by halfs or on the small scale, gen3 deployment is going to be big.
Their objective has always been to protect the network while turning a profit, after having several dealings with FC regarding distribution of hardware, i have to say i respect him a lot.

[CMMPro]

So, to recap....a pair of 18 year old students ran a scam where they convinced us they could run 30TH of mining equipment out of their house...the equipment was late delivered and when it came they couldn't keep the breakers on for more than 10% of the equipment 10% of the time ensuring a huge loss in expected mining revenue....a friend from electrical shop class finally told them that the house didn't have enough power supply to run that many units as well as cool them.  

They ran around in circles trying to arrange a data center colo that by anyone with even meager planning skills would know should have been arranged months in advance...then decided it was all too much effort and unilaterally decide to sell all the equipment killing not only all chance of profit but guarantying the investors a loss. Add to that a unilateral decision now to add the money to the "reinvestment fund" regardless that many people just want it issued as a dividend now to recoup the massive losses they were hit with.

All along they were mining to undisclosed addresses, bouncing coins through several personal addresses, had almost zero transparency to the shareholders, and couldn't even seem to be able to put a simple spreadsheet together and ignoring the motions brought forth by it's shareholders. Yeah I'd say a scam intermingled with total incompetence that cost everyone who invested a lot of money.

Oh and I forgot to add they did this all on US soil and allowed/marketed the investment to US citizens...cue the SEC complaints in 5,4,3,2,1.

[trek27]

So, to recap....a pair of 18 year old students ran a scam where they convinced us they could run 30TH of mining equipment out of their house...the equipment was late delivered and when it came they couldn't keep the breakers on for more than 10% of the equipment 10% of the time ensuring a huge loss in expected mining revenue....a friend from electrical shop class finally told them that the house didn't have enough power supply to run that many units as well as cool them. 

They ran around in circles trying to arrange a data center colo that by anyone with even meager planning skills would know should have been arranged months in advance...then decided it was all too much effort and unilaterally decide to sell all the equipment killing not only all chance of profit but guarantying the investors a loss. Add to that a unilateral decision now to add the money to the "reinvestment fund" regardless that many people just want it issued as a dividend now to recoup the massive losses they were hit with.

All along they were mining to undisclosed addresses, bouncing coins through several personal addresses, had almost zero transparency to the shareholders, and couldn't even seem to be able to put a simple spreadsheet together and ignoring the motions brought forth by it's shareholders. Yeah I'd say a scam intermingled with total incompetence that cost everyone who invested a lot of money.

Oh and I forgot to add they did this all on US soil and allowed/marketed the investment to US citizens...cue the SEC complaints in 5,4,3,2,1.

Overall a sad story so far ...