Quote from: DawnofCrypto on December 17, 2017, 03:35:36 PM

Here's another competitor I uncovered in my research.

Giga-Watt is a mining operation based in Washington state where there is access to cheap hydro-electric power. A big advantage of hydroelectric power is that it is a green energy source with 24/7 availability. As discussed earlier, other green energy sources like solar and wind will need to be supplemented with grid or diesel power, at least until battery technology comes down in cost.

In envion's whitepaper, they claim an average energy cost of $0.03 kWh. That's pretty cheap, but interestingly, Giga-Watt's energy cost is actually slightly less at $0.028 kWh (per page 9 of their whitepaper: https://wtt.cryptonomos.com/white-paper.pdf). Both these companies have essentially the same power costs, but Giga-Watt has all their facilities at one location. This is a huge advantage as it makes building, management, and maintenance of the miners vastly easier and more efficient. One of envion's supposed competitive advantages is that with their MMU pods, they can go anywhere in the world to where energy is cheapest. But why go through the risk and expense of chasing cheap energy costs around the world when you can just set up in one place and have an ultimately lower energy cost?

Giga-Watt also has a huge head start as they are already operational and continue to expand. They also seem to be much more transparent with investor communication - between their website and YouTube, there are literally dozens of photos and videos of their existing facility as well as expansion progress.

One of their biggest problems is... securing access to miners. They simply can't get enough of them. The lack of mining equipment supply is definitely a recurring theme and I don't see how envion will be able to overcome this.

I was originally planning to put a relatively large (for me) investment into the envion ICO. I was all prepared and ready to go (MetaMask set up, sufficient ETH secured, required documents in place including having to pay to get investor accreditation since I am in the US). Last night I went to bed with enough doubt that I decided I was willing to let the initial $0.70 window pass. Now with the additional info I'm finding this morning, I feel delaying my decision was the right thing to do. Unless someone (ideally directly from envion) can address what I feel are serious concerns (specifically, how does envion expect to gain priority access to a large volume of mining components?), then I will likely pass on this ICO.

Look, your point is exactly what I was writing about and why a dude couple of posts back went all bazooka on me. There is not enough equipment made on this planet to suffice both miners and gamers alike, there is crazy insufficiency in ASIC miners (reason why their prices skyrocketed from $1750 to $5k) and even more and more companies are trying to solve this so-called "energy cost problem", which doesn't exist in the first place. I make more money mining with retail equipment prices than they claim in their whitepapers and unlike them I'm not buying underwhelmed rx 460s and rest like.