Cryptocoin Mining?

[Zargon]

I think they don't plan on SELLING any more current-generation ASICs, which is an entirely different thing than saying they don't plan on making any more ASICs. They could make batches for their own use and profit, which as many people have pointed out, is more profitable right now than selling the ASICs. So if they are secretly making a fourth batch just for their own use, don't be surprised... it makes good business sense.

True.

 

[Zargon]

this is the most epic dumbest business model ever in history.

if these asic machine are soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo profitable. why sell them? seriously. just mine them all in house as soon as it is made. then sell the bitcoins instead.

reality is - it is not a dumb business model at all. these manufactuer obviously have inside info regarding bitcoin's future viability. hence it is more profitable to sell these asic machine.

what does that tell you ???

The Avalon dude is a true believer in bit coin. (Supposedly).

 

[blastingcap]

This thread is making my head hurt with all the banter about whether it's worth it or not. Putting this debate aside for a moment I have a few questions for those in favor:

1) Solo or pool? Which is better? Recommended Pools?
2) Preferred client? Why?
3) Main rig currently has one 7970@1100. Was planning to add another for gaming anyway. I also have a 4890 lying around collecting dust. Can it generate enough to make it worth setting up as a 24/7 miner in an older box. Assume the electricity rate is approximately .15/kwh. Using a linux distro to run the older box would save a Windows license. Does the CPU play any role in this?

I apologize if these questions are already answered, but it's hard sifting through all the arguments.

1) Pool because at these insanely high difficulties it would take weeks, months, or even years to get a block. Better to join up with thousands of other people so that if one finds a block, the proceeds are shared with everyone else in the pool. The pool operator typically takes a small cut of the profits as well.

2) Guiminer has the easiest interface. But any of the majors like diablominer, cgminer, etc. are fine. Any of the big pools (slush, BTCGuild, etc.) are fine. The easiest one to use is eligius.st imho because you don't need to set up a password or anything, just use your BTC wallet address as your username. Thus it's also the most anonymous pool.

3) 4890 eats wattage like candy and doesn't even produce that much hash by today's standards, so I wouldn't mine with it... especially if it has to go into another box, which means the CPU, RAM, mobo, casefans, etc. are all eating energy as well. 7970 is fine. CPU doesn't affect anything.

 

[Accord99]

I also have a 4890 lying around collecting dust. Can it generate enough to make it worth setting up as a 24/7 miner in an older box. Assume the electricity rate is approximately .15/kwh.

A 4890 only get something like 120 Mhash/s. Basically not worth it unless someone else pays the electricity.

 

[markyh]

From the website:
Avalon batch 1: 300*60 Gh/s, Shipping Time: March 3st, 2013
Avalon batch 2: 600*60 Gh/s, Shipping Time: April 15th, 2013
Avalon batch 3: 600*60 Gh/s, Shipping Time: May 5st, 2013

If this is true that means 90 Th/s of Avalon only ASIC in operation within a month. That is more than twice the total hash rate of today. If they can keep up 600 units every 20 days that means an increase of 54 Th/s a month. And what if they expand business and increase production capability? Add to that BFL and other manufacturers coming online to join the party.

Just checking the maths here.

Batch 1 = 300 x 60,000 m/hash = 18,000,000 m/hash = 18 Terahash.

I assume these are all with customers now mining. As stated Since feb BTC network hashrate has doubled from 33 T/hash to 65.73 Terrahash.

So where has the other 14.73 Terrahash come from? More GPU miners and some other ASICS i guess ( but not BFL).

Batch 2, double 1 so 36 Terahash but not shipped yet, or we would see them on the network rate. will take network to 102 Terrahash.

Batch 3 will they ship on time? Again just another 36 Terrahash. Network will be 138 Terrahash. Maybe by July/ August?

So it's going to take 3-4 months to double the difficultly. But this does not account for several low effeciency AMD GPU giving up and pulling out because BTC mined is worth less than electricity.

I just cant see it risiing 100% a month. I estimate after the summer it will rise at 20% a month and double every 5 months.

M

 

[blastingcap]

Just checking the maths here.

Batch 1 = 300 x 60,000 m/hash = 18,000,000 m/hash = 18 Terahash.

I assume these are all with customers now mining. As stated Since feb BTC network hashrate has doubled from 33 T/hash to 65.73 Terrahash.

So where has the other 14.73 Terrahash come from? More GPU miners and some other ASICS i guess ( but not BFL).

Batch 2, double 1 so 36 Terahash but not shipped yet, or we would see them on the network rate. will take network to 102 Terrahash.

Batch 3 will they ship on time? Again just another 36 Terrahash. Network will be 138 Terrahash. Maybe by July/ August?

So it's going to take 3-4 months to double the difficultly. But this does not account for several low effeciency AMD GPU giving up and pulling out because BTC mined is worth less than electricity.

I just cant see it risiing 100% a month. I estimate after the summer it will rise at 20% a month and double every 5 months.

M

Look how many starry-eyed people are buying up GPUs to mine with, not really running the numbers. There was an article I read last year about many people with huge GPU farms running at a loss. That will keep adding to difficulty, far outstripping any of the weaker GPUs that get pushed out. Avalon ASIC batch 2 and 3 and new GPUs/FPGAs should push difficulty up by well over 100 TH/s, Avalon ASICs can also be overclocked. Not sure when BFL and other ASICs will ship but if they do, that's game over right there, hundreds of TH/s.

Also, keep in mind that a doubling of difficulty doesn't mean a halving profits--it means a halving of REVENUE. Profit will fall by more than revenue. As an example, say you have a GPU mining farm that makes $10/day and eats $4/day power costs. That's $6/day profit. If revenue halves to $5/day, then you are down to $1/day profit. So revenue dropped by 50%, but profit dropped by 83%.

It's not like litecoin would be a safe place to run either, because if it gets bad enough GPUs will flock there; in fact you already saw it happen when the BTC/LTC ratio got too far out of whack, it didn't take long before a bunch of hashing power went over to LTC, so today it's about equally profitable to mine either one.

In other words, yes you can still make a few bucks on GPU mining but even if prices stayed constant, difficulty will more than double by mid-year, and thus profits will fall by more than 50%. If prices fall, or if BFL ships ASICs (or uses their own ASICs instead of shipping them), then the difficulty/price ratio will get even worse. Personally I'm just waiting for the next big correction before buying BTC directly; at this point I don't want to deal with the heat and noise of mining.

 

[willomz]

The thing I don't get is why these BTC miners are so desperate to convince others to join them?

Don't they want all the money for themselves?

Why not just wait until they are millionaires and then they can find better things to do than arguing on the internet.

 

[thilanliyan]

Also, keep in mind that a doubling of difficulty doesn't mean a halving profits--it means a halving of REVENUE. Profit will fall by more than revenue. As an example, say you have a GPU mining farm that makes $10/day and eats $4/day power costs. That's $6/day profit. If revenue halves to $5/day, then you are down to $1/day profit. So revenue dropped by 50%, but profit dropped by 83%.

This is assuming price stays constant, which is not always the case. Could go up, could go down.

 

[markyh]

This is assuming price stays constant, which is not always the case. Could go up, could go down.

True. I'm sure when BTC was $25 usd many said the difficulty and ASICs will kill it. But the price is now over $100, has already broken $200 once and could easily be $400 in 6 months.

Then a x4 difficulty from now means nowt.

M

 

[Chiropteran]

The Avalon dude is a true believer in bit coin. (Supposedly).

Any one entity controlling close to 50% of the total hashing power sets of some major alarms among the bitcoin community. It's not really good business sense to hog all the hashing power for yourself and hit that point and cause a scare that may tank the value of bitcoin, especially if you can sell the ASIC devices for incredible profit.

Even if you are just in it for the money, it makes more sense to go for the long term income rather than building enough tot take over the network and risk triggering a collapse of the value of bitcoin and thus a loss of your entire investment (without bitcoin to mine, the ASIC are worthless).

 

[philipma1957]

Look how many starry-eyed people are buying up GPUs to mine with, not really running the numbers. There was an article I read last year about many people with huge GPU farms running at a loss. That will keep adding to difficulty, far outstripping any of the weaker GPUs that get pushed out. Avalon ASIC batch 2 and 3 and new GPUs/FPGAs should push difficulty up by well over 100 TH/s, Avalon ASICs can also be overclocked. Not sure when BFL and other ASICs will ship but if they do, that's game over right there, hundreds of TH/s.

Also, keep in mind that a doubling of difficulty doesn't mean a halving profits--it means a halving of REVENUE. Profit will fall by more than revenue. As an example, say you have a GPU mining farm that makes $10/day and eats $4/day power costs. That's $6/day profit. If revenue halves to $5/day, then you are down to $1/day profit. So revenue dropped by 50%, but profit dropped by 83%.

It's not like litecoin would be a safe place to run either, because if it gets bad enough GPUs will flock there; in fact you already saw it happen when the BTC/LTC ratio got too far out of whack, it didn't take long before a bunch of hashing power went over to LTC, so today it's about equally profitable to mine either one.

In other words, yes you can still make a few bucks on GPU mining but even if prices stayed constant, difficulty will more than double by mid-year, and thus profits will fall by more than 50%. If prices fall, or if BFL ships ASICs (or uses their own ASICs instead of shipping them), then the difficulty/price ratio will get even worse. Personally I'm just waiting for the next big correction before buying BTC directly; at this point I don't want to deal with the heat and noise of mining.

I get a dozen people a day asking me how to setup a gpu miner.. I spend time with them all the numbers are explained and most do not do it.

Simple enough Gpu mining will not get you rich but it will discount your gamer/ miner.

10 % to 30 % In the first 3 months.


Here are three machines all top of the line gamers cost to build 1200 to 1500

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2268192&highlight=

after 3 months cost is 900 to 1050. Now after 7 months cost is under 500 for these machines.

These are high-end 1 gpu gamers not great miners good miners all have hd7970's .


Building a good gpu miner that is a lousy gamer/pc

means a low cost cpu, a low cost but 3 or 4 card mobo..., cheap ram, no case , cheap windows. best priced psu that is good with power.

the hardest thing for a good miner is finding a good cheap mobo. I got lucky and found 3 closeouts 2 evgas and 1 gigabyte.

they can run 3x 7970's or 4 hd 77790's .. they should have been close to 900 for the 3 mobos in total.

I paid under 500 for them. I hash 4400Mh with them at 1400 watts.

I use only 2 psu's
I use 3 g645 cpus. these are open frame in my garage . I have a long work bench. I built these three machines for under 2000. they are the money makers. I also use 8 pcs on one monitor with and hdmi switch and a 2 usb switches with 2 keyboard/mice.

8 mice ,8 keyboard, 8 monitors would be too much. 1000 plus

2 mice, 2 keyboards , 2 usb switches, 2 hdmi switches and 1 monitor = 250 or so.

Remember , I get to test just about any and all the gear I want funded by ebay and bitcoin mining.

I always have a couple of high end pcs and mac minis on hand. Quite frankly the mining is easier to do then ebay.

 

[NoStateofMind]

this is the most epic dumbest business model ever in history.

if these asic machine are soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo profitable. why sell them? seriously. just mine them all in house as soon as it is made. then sell the bitcoins instead.

reality is - it is not a dumb business model at all. these manufactuer obviously have inside info regarding bitcoin's future viability. hence it is more profitable to sell these asic machine.

what does that tell you ???

I wouldnt be surprised if they had been running these things for months just to build up the coins to dump when they hit a certain point. After that you order better ASIC's and sell the old ones as new and keep the cycle going. Always staying ahead like you're the mother F'n FED.

 

[x3sphere]

I wouldnt be surprised if they had been running these things for months just to build up the coins to dump when they hit a certain point. After that you order better ASIC's and sell the old ones as new and keep the cycle going. Always staying ahead like you're the mother F'n FED.

They weren't. The gradual rise in network hash power proves that, there would have been a sudden spike if they were using the machines themselves.

 

[Chiropteran]

I wouldnt be surprised if they had been running these things for months just to build up the coins to dump when they hit a certain point. After that you order better ASIC's and sell the old ones as new and keep the cycle going. Always staying ahead like you're the mother F'n FED.

I doubt it. Their competitors are selling ASICS for about 5-10X as much or more and selling product fast. An auction for 10 separate 10GH/sec asic devices ended with the lowest bids at 74 bitcoin. That is about $10000 for a device that is only twice as a fast as a 5gh/sec BFL device, which is sold for $275. The avalon devices were selling for 70+ BTC as well, while they were a better value (sicne they are 60GH/sec each) they don't even ship immediately, it might be 4-5 months before the 3rd batch ships.

BFL needs to start shipping asap to kill off these competitors, or at least prevent them from making such insane profit. Every dollar given to asicminer or avalon is a dollar BFL won't get.

 

[Rikard]

this is the most epic dumbest business model ever in history.

if these asic machine are soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo profitable. why sell them? seriously. just mine them all in house as soon as it is made. then sell the bitcoins instead.

reality is - it is not a dumb business model at all. these manufactuer obviously have inside info regarding bitcoin's future viability. hence it is more profitable to sell these asic machine.

what does that tell you ???

I think you are reading too much into it tbh. I do not know this particular company's history, and have zero insight in their finances, but it sounds a lot like they financed the start up by accepting early pre orders. They probably would make more money by using the first batches of Avalons to mine with than to sell them, but they are bound to give their paying customers what they paid for. I think it would be very bad PR for them if they were caught mining on hardware that was ready to be shipped, instead of shipping them as promised. There is nothing stopping them to produce a batch 4 and run in in house however, if they think that is more profitable than selling them to consumers/companies.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I've been running my TF3 for over 24 hours straight now, at 1225/1700 and vrms peaked today at 101C, core peaked at 75C.

Should I assume this is too much for 24/7 use?

Also grabbed another TF3 7950 so I know my temps are going to go up, what is the most I should be willing to run these temp wise, and which is most concerning, core or vrms?

 

[Chiropteran]

I've been running my TF3 for over 24 hours straight now, at 1225/1700 and vrms peaked today at 101C, core peaked at 75C.

Should I assume this is too much for 24/7 use?

Also grabbed another TF3 7950 so I know my temps are going to go up, what is the most I should be willing to run these temp wise, and which is most concerning, core or vrms?

75C core is fine, I run my 5830s (admittedly I care less if they die) at as high as 81C 24/7 and they have all been fine.

101C for VRM seems high, but I don't usually monitor them so for all I know my mining machines might be even higher, if I can remember I'll check what they are running at after work.

For me, a greater concern is the FAN. If your fan is running at 100% constantly to keep temperatures where they are, it will probably be the first part to fail. I try to set my settings up such that the fan can do it's job at 60% or less.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

The TF3s fan doesn't really go any higher than 80%, which is just a tad above 4000 rpm. After 80% any increased fan yields no increase in RPM.

I just doubled checked, peak core was actually 80C, I think it's a bit too much for it.. Kill-A-Watt is showing 400w at those settings, I dropped it to 1175/1700 and vrms came down to 82C~ and core is down to 71C. Power dropped about 45w, 355w at the wall now.

Power isn't a major concern, our rates are very low it seems.

 

[f1sherman]

The TF3s fan doesn't really go any higher than 80%, which is just a tad above 4000 rpm. After 80% any increased fan yields no increase in RPM.

Twin Frozr is sheit; sink itself is aight, but unless held in vacuum, those fans tend to lose rpm pretty fast

4500 RPM is what you should be getting

 

[BallaTheFeared]

No complaints here, I'm running with the assumption that at those clocks and with the slight tweak to get over 700 khash it's drawing over 300w on the card itself. It's doing a decent job for on air, wouldn't hold a candle to water but I imagine reference air would be either impossible or deafening.

Unless you're saying my fans are degrading already >.<

 

[MrK6]

Wait, I thought mining wasn't profitable?

 

[thilanliyan]

Wait, I thought mining wasn't profitable?

Lol seriously...what about your carbon footprint and the extra "strain" on your hardware Balla? Surely your conscience would get the better of you in you mine!!

 

[hokies83]

Anyone selling Biy coins anywhere else other then Ebay?

Any other auction type sites these are popular?

 

[TheUnk]

Anyone selling Biy coins anywhere else other then Ebay?

Any other auction type sites these are popular?

Only place I've used is fastcash4bitcoins. Worked fine, only sold 1 though.

 

[philipma1957]

Anyone selling Biy coins anywhere else other then Ebay?

Any other auction type sites these are popular?

very difficult to sell them other then ebay .

By this I mean on auction sites. I sold .2 coin on ebay as a test sale.

I am not sure I would want to do a lot of sales via ebay. I use fastcash


https://fastcash4bitcoins.com/

to sell. I used to get amazon cards from this site but it shut down.



http://www.btcbuy.info/Offline.cshtml

how many coins do you want to buy?

I do not think I can post an ebay link even to a dead sale.

but if you pm me I can show you the ebay link to the sale I made.