Quote from: liquidcryptos on December 18, 2017, 01:12:50 AM

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.

Hey there. I would agree about getting a statement from them about how exactly they are getting them, that would be nice. I asked them and they said they have connections but cant release the exact info because it would help competitors. There was a previous post from one of their advisors that i read that said they had their miners already secured. I went back and found the post, it is here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2348435.msg24716291;topicseen#msg24716291 I find it does give some information, but it specifically says GPU now that im reading it. GPU's i dont think there are a shortage of. I just bought about 15 of them on black friday at a good price. I think a few key statements from them would be good. My hope is that they will announce something during the ico (probably when the coin cost is 1.00 not .70 cents because they want to maximize $ per coin), to boost sales. For instance they just announced the partnership with the royal family of Dubai. ENVION, we would appreciate any comments you could provide on specifically if you have secured ASIC miners specifically. (If they are actually reading this post)

-FOLLOW UP - so the company wont comment on wether they have ASIC miners, but do comment that they have GPU miners secured.. so that means they probably do not have them. Or they are waiting for token price to be $1 to announce to maximize profit.

I asked the same thing on their Medium page and received no response, which put me off them somewhat. Access to miners is a a major hurdle. I still invested a little though yesterday just to see what may come of it. But usually organisations or people with shitload of capital have direct access to bulk orders. They will have flown to china, met with, held hands and whispered sweet nothings into the ears of the big manufacturers to strike up good relationships, and so by-pass much of the crap us low lives have to deal with to buy miners independently on small scale. But it's all speculation and gambling, hardly investing at this point. See how the cards fall...