Just scoping some options out there & speaking with a few of mates on possibilities Currently looking at: 1. Butterfly 28Nm hosted card 600 Gh/S, outright purchase AUD5100 + 6, 12, 24 mth hosting - Weekly payout - Located Central USA 2. Butterfly 100 Gh/S solo contract for 12 months with 5-10 Gh/S signup bonus, due to start Feb 2014, AUD540 - Weekly payout - Located UK 3. Trading GHS or chip futures thru Cex.Io rather than mining or buying BTC - ie: selling the shovels to miners Any thoughts/suggestions v much appreciated, ta
1 and 2: Not unless you enjoy losing money, is the short answer. But run the numbers in case: http://btc.re/miningcalc This calculator adds in a rising difficulty level, which most do not. Difficulty keeps going up and your boxes will mine less and less until one day they use more in power than they return in btc. https://blockchain.info/charts/difficulty 3: Be very careful. Investing in btc denominated securities can be devastating and lose you far more money than 1 and 2 will. The problem is that if a company floats 100 shares at 1 btc, they have a market cap of $87,200. If BTC then doubles in price, the company is still essentially worth $87,200, only the shares are worth half as much in BTC as you paid for them. There was a devastating downward trend across the board for btc securities the last few months this year, and then some big exchanges closed down, and then BTC rose like mad. Total bloodbath. Be very careful. Look for the very few that won't be influenced by the btc exchange rate imo (or if you can find them, ones that may react positively to an increase. If you are bullish for btc, that is.) http://www.investmenthacker.com/how-to-lose-money-investing-in-bitcoin/
Thx v much for input guys - we've gone for 2x 1yr 100 Gh/S contracts running concurrently - the numbers pan out, difficulty increasing @ 30% using the miningcalc comes in at just under 5 btc per week ongoing, so figure we can shoulder that kind of risk/reward over the term. BTW beeteecee Cex.Io does blocks of processing farmed out on contract to Ghash.io, not direct investment in equities or btc denominated stocks - they also do futures on physical chip supply/price.
Hope to god you haven't sent any money bfl's way. If your lucky you'll be waiting 6 months to a year for what you paid for if you get it at all. Read up on them on bitcointalk or their own forums if you can beat the mods that delete the posts. Your best bet is buy bitcoin and hold until the 2nd generation stuff comes out early next year, kncminer are already working on something.
Oops I hadn't checked out cex.io just heard about it. Sorry about that. I do hope we can convince you to hold off on mining. It's not with cloudhashing.com is it? Because I know I perused their thread and they are dishonest people. The catch in that particular case was that everyone had run the calcs, deemed it to be a wise investment, but then cloudhashing delayed and delayed giving them their hashing power, while the difficulty rate rose, and so those people will never make any profit. Nobody at all in the bitcoin world will give you a free lunch. Why would they not just mine with it themselves? Important question to ask.
That was the conclusion I came to when I investigated mining contracts - you're getting a reduced return over just buying the HW yourself (the providers have to make money), and at the time buying a mining rig was a break-even proposition (although latest price action may have changed that if there hasn't been a corresponding flood of next-generation miners trying to rush the digital Klondike). Could not find any mining contract offers that passed the sniff test - they all seemed a bit backyard.
Nope, and Cointerra are doing the hardware (scalable 2Th/s machines) - beats the crap out of usb array mining - Bfl are swamped aren't they - hardware delivered when in 2014?(!) The reason the one we've chosen aren't mining themselves is that they want their hardware paid for I presume, just like everyone else? Whatever, outlay isn't enormous, return given volatility/unknowns isn't exactly quantifiable, so if it all goes tatas-up I'll report back here.
check the difficulty changes before that miner is even delivered (is it march?). there will be a lot of terra hashes on the network between now and then, what is your roi time calculation?
one of the best mining calculators - http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ p.s. @ dozerz are you selling pm's on bitcointalk? will be in touch shortly for some 1kg bars
Economies of scale is the idea behind the benefit of a contract (for all parties involved). I haven't looked into any specifics however.
And history also shows that as more gold was taken out of the ground in the 1849 gold rush and prospects/tenement yields reduced the people still making consistent money from start to finish were those who sold the picks & shovels
Working on 30% difficulty, block turnaround 11 days-ish, but it's not an exact science is it. Delivery is in 16wks so I think first wk March from Cterra. On that calc and at current Btc value with the 1yr 200gh/s contract it works out at a few weeks, however your point on huge increase in ths numbers onboard by March could double, triple, quadruple that at a guess. Also dependent on BTC value of course - so many variables, but after looking at a lot of offers out there between us we reckoned it's fair risk for the possible reward, and it's not like we're putting huge amounts up - only a foot in the door and on the basis that tech is changing so fast & the landscape will change with that. It's a considered punt. http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ld-peer-to-peer-cryptocurrency-virtual-wallet
One of the scariest, hockey-stick-looking charts I have seen, is that of bitcoin mining difficulty http://bitcoindifficulty.com/
good luck with the punt then, my recommendation would be to check litecoin rig which is protected from asic mining technology. as for that article the best part is this comment: Ooh - a Bitcoin article, let's play Bitcoin Article bingo: Tulips, Bingo! Beanie babies, Bingo! Drugs, Bingo! Ponzi, Bingo! Bubble, Bingo! Another ignorant Bitcoin article, Bingo!
You should see a slowdown in the mining speed escalation with the latest 28nm chips. Bfls first product was 65nm which is several years out of date. 28nm is a current process, Intel is doing 22 but they are always one step ahead of the rest of the industry. I had a pre-order on a 65nm thing with bfl and I swapped it out for a hosted hashing contact because it is basically c useless now before had even shipped
Yup, I guess they're everywhere - does remind me of the dotcom years a bit lot for sure... (Not sure where the drugs figure in that list though, unless they're on about paying 4 mollies with millies - Don't forget the Grauniad is the bastion of British soft lefty social politics - so the dippy spin on the story is perfect for the audience. I haven't read anything on btc in Murdoch's rags yet, interestingly enough - must go look...)
