Mini Rig announcement by Butterfly Labs - 25gh/s

[JWU42]

Take a look at the wait list.  Everyone who gets one is going to be screwed.  Right now it pays for itself in 6.6 months not counting electricity.  When that many people have one, the difficulty will go up like 5x and they'll all be getting next to nothing.  I wouldn't get one if they were free because it won't even pay for electricity as soon as too many people have one.  He should have just built one and kept it

Most uneducated and uninformed post I have ever encountered on this forum.

Yeah right. The guy is stating the obvious but you all BFL fanboys are failing to see it.

Good luck with your big boxes !

Is the Raspberry Pi included with the Mini rigs ?

Any news on that EU VAT avoidance plan you guys had ? EU reseller ?

"like 5x difficulty increase" -- assuming over 6-9 months (he doesn't say).

I'll take that bet all day long

[ice_chill]

He is talking about difficulty increasing ? at some point in Bitcoin history the difficulty was so low that you could profitably mine with 200Kilohash (0.2Mhash) since then the difficulty has increased exponentially, much more than 5 times! but it's still profitable. That guy is stupid and ignorant as he does not understand basic maths.
I don't even know why I bothered replying to this.

[JWU42]

He is talking about difficulty increasing ? at some point in Bitcoin history the difficulty was so low that you could profitably mine with 200Kilohash (0.2Mhash) since then the difficulty has increased exponentially, much more than 5 times! but it's still profitable. That guy is stupid and ignorant as he does not understand basic maths.
I don't even know why I bothered replying to this.

IC...

I am taking to absolute numbers.  I do not foresee the difficulty being > 7.5M by years end.  Agreed it has increased a huge amount since inception but is about unchanged since last May...

[DiabloD3]

His strategy" depends on many IFs

- if the price of BTC goes up
- if BFL delivers before August
- if the Mini Rig does what was promised and just works
- if the gold wouldn't have done better
- if the BTC goes up after block reward is halved

Classic rule of three, any scheme that requires more than 3 different things to happen will never work in real life.

That said, kudos for considering it anyway. I'd probably take a shot if I had that sort of cash lying around.

I thought that was the rule of two?

[ice_chill]

His strategy" depends on many IFs

- if the price of BTC goes up
- if BFL delivers before August
- if the Mini Rig does what was promised and just works
- if the gold wouldn't have done better
- if the BTC goes up after block reward is halved

Classic rule of three, any scheme that requires more than 3 different things to happen will never work in real life.

That said, kudos for considering it anyway. I'd probably take a shot if I had that sort of cash lying around.

I thought that was the rule of two?

- If you need oxygen to breathe
- If you need food to feed yourself
- If you need clothes to not freeze
- If you need shelter to not be eaten by wild animals

Nah it will never work, better be just dead

[DILLIGAF]

He is talking about difficulty increasing ? at some point in Bitcoin history the difficulty was so low that you could profitably mine with 200Kilohash (0.2Mhash) since then the difficulty has increased exponentially, much more than 5 times! but it's still profitable. That guy is stupid and ignorant as he does not understand basic maths.
I don't even know why I bothered replying to this.

IC...

I am taking to absolute numbers.  I do not foresee the difficulty being > 7.5M by years end.  Agreed it has increased a huge amount since inception but is about unchanged since last May...

That would be last June/July for the diff being this high right after the price explosion to ~$30 when the diff changes were coming at a 4x increase every 4 days, this time last year the difficulty was well under a million. In fact it was at 157k on May 9, 2011 I just threw a few block numbers in the block explorer and block number 123,000 has that for a difficulty on that day.

http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000000069b73594b10aaa38beaeadc6d3f28cab8d76c4a6ac182694fd41

[ice_chill]

We can see difficulty drop considerably when block reward halves as GPU miners exit the game.

[JWU42]

He is talking about difficulty increasing ? at some point in Bitcoin history the difficulty was so low that you could profitably mine with 200Kilohash (0.2Mhash) since then the difficulty has increased exponentially, much more than 5 times! but it's still profitable. That guy is stupid and ignorant as he does not understand basic maths.
I don't even know why I bothered replying to this.

IC...

I am taking to absolute numbers.  I do not foresee the difficulty being > 7.5M by years end.  Agreed it has increased a huge amount since inception but is about unchanged since last May...

That would be last June/July for the diff being this high right after the price explosion to ~$30 when the diff changes were coming at a 4x increase every 4 days, this time last year the difficulty was well under a million. In fact it was at 157k on May 9, 2011 I just threw a few block numbers in the block explorer and block number 123,000 has that for a difficulty on that day.

http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000000069b73594b10aaa38beaeadc6d3f28cab8d76c4a6ac182694fd41

Quite right dilligaf- I was off by several weeks...

[nokkieny]

If bitcoins completely disappeared would these machines have any resale value? I don't understand why everyone argues that they will not pay off even if it takes 2 years to break even, you still have the machine, say it is worth $5k after two years thats a 16% return. I may not completely understand the risks but sounds solid to me.

[ice_chill]

Well they do SHA256 processing, so anything else that uses SHA256 can probably be run on these if BFL released the development tool kit.

[jddebug]

I'm wondering about the noise this will make. Considering all the power and heat it will take/produce, I'd want to place one in each room of the house/office during the winter at least. Would lower the natural gas usage considerably. Problem is if it sounds like a jet taking off, it would prevent one from having the fringe benefits of the heat.

[ice_chill]

People don't buy this based on it's heating capacity, and people don't run it in the winter, they run it 24/7.

[DiabloD3]

People don't buy this based on it's heating capacity, and people don't run it in the winter, they run it 24/7.

I dunno, I know people who are running GPUs even though they're now losing money just because winter fuel costs more per BTU adjusted for mining profit.

[jddebug]

People don't buy this based on it's heating capacity, and people don't run it in the winter, they run it 24/7.

Well, its a massive increase in profits for those of us in the north. (Alaska for me) If I had 6 mini rigs for instance @ 7200 watts I could save a LOT on heating costs while also mining. Put one in each area of the house.

Summers here never get over about 72° F so as long as I can keep the air exchanging from inside to outside I could keep things cool enough in the summer too.

This is all even more beneficial because power costs here are about $0.14 a kilowatt.

Just saying, its a nice fringe benefit for some of us.

[DiabloD3]

People don't buy this based on it's heating capacity, and people don't run it in the winter, they run it 24/7.

Well, its a massive increase in profits for those of us in the north. (Alaska for me) If I had 6 mini rigs for instance @ 7200 watts I could save a LOT on heating costs while also mining. Put one in each area of the house.

Summers here never get over about 72° F so as long as I can keep the air exchanging from inside to outside I could keep things cool enough in the summer too.

This is all even more beneficial because power costs here are about $0.14 a kilowatt.

Just saying, its a nice fringe benefit for some of us.

Yeah, see, this is the argument I had with Diablo Mining Company haters.

Them: MOVE TO ARIZONA/TEXAS/BUMFUCKED EGYPT, MORE SUN
Me: More power and money wasted for active cooling.
Them: BUT BUT BUT MAINE IS COLD
Me: Thats the idea.

Seriously, I will never understand some people.

[BFL-Engineer]

If bitcoins completely disappeared would these machines have any resale value? I don't understand why everyone argues that they will not pay off even if it takes 2 years to break even, you still have the machine, say it is worth $5k after two years thats a 16% return. I may not completely understand the risks but sounds solid to me.

We would like to let all our clients know that, in case of Bitcoin failure, we will make all our units OpenSource,
and thus making it possible for the clients to sell their units to various industries at almost certainly higher price
than they purchased it in the first place.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[bitcoindaddy]

If bitcoins completely disappeared would these machines have any resale value? I don't understand why everyone argues that they will not pay off even if it takes 2 years to break even, you still have the machine, say it is worth $5k after two years thats a 16% return. I may not completely understand the risks but sounds solid to me.

We would like to let all our clients know that, in case of Bitcoin failure, we will make all our units OpenSource,
and thus making it possible for the clients to sell their units to various industries at almost certainly higher price
than they purchased it in the first place.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

This makes no sense. Why would you not open-source now and make more money (according to you)?

[ice_chill]

Lol I knew this would be the first question to come up. Anyway the fact that they are willing to open source it and we know now the chip is an FPGA are both very good news.

Also it is more likely the hashing power of the Single or Mini-rig will not be profitable long before Bitcoin goes down, remember you used to be able to mine with "KILOhashes"

[dirtycat]

If bitcoins completely disappeared would these machines have any resale value? I don't understand why everyone argues that they will not pay off even if it takes 2 years to break even, you still have the machine, say it is worth $5k after two years thats a 16% return. I may not completely understand the risks but sounds solid to me.

We would like to let all our clients know that, in case of Bitcoin failure, we will make all our units OpenSource,
and thus making it possible for the clients to sell their units to various industries at almost certainly higher price
than they purchased it in the first place.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Why would these "various industries" buy our molested units at a higher price when you could sell them "new" units cheaper and keep making money?

[bulanula]

If bitcoins completely disappeared would these machines have any resale value? I don't understand why everyone argues that they will not pay off even if it takes 2 years to break even, you still have the machine, say it is worth $5k after two years thats a 16% return. I may not completely understand the risks but sounds solid to me.

We would like to let all our clients know that, in case of Bitcoin failure, we will make all our units OpenSource,
and thus making it possible for the clients to sell their units to various industries at almost certainly higher price
than they purchased it in the first place.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Why would these "various industries" buy our molested units at a higher price when you could sell them "new" units cheaper and keep making money?

Keep on dreaming. Nobody will buy your used BFLs :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=79825.0

Hint : nobody wants these chips new in the first place !