Re: [ANN] LeaseRig.net Rent & Hire SHA/SCRYPT/DARK/QUARK HashPower!
I'm really not trying to be a troll here, but have concerns with a couple of the new ownership's statements:
1) "The goal has always been to provide customers leased or hosted hardware for less than their anticipated mining profits. GPU rigs are often leased for 50-70% of expected revenue to ensure customers ROI. Our plans for leaserig are no different."
This statement gives me the feeling that the new owner has a bias towards the renter, and also a bias against GPU rigs. Not that there is anything wrong with putting the customer first, but the previous owner seemed neutral. At least I never saw them call out particular type of mining rig should only be rented at X%, or state that the service's main goal was to benefit the renter vs the owner or vice-versa. I like how the market determines the price and am leery of what actions will they take to "ensure" their main goal? Why would I rent my rig for 50% what I could mine with it? It seems in almost all cases it costs more to rent something than to own. Why? From what I have read in other threads, most rig owners expect a premium since they made the hardware investment, provide the space, power, cooling, network, monitoring, etc. I can't imagine many real estate owners taking their capital or a loan to purchase a home, then rent it for less than the mortgage, or less than they could earn in simple interest on the capital. So if I get a sense of the new owners doing anything to manipulate the market, I'm out.
2) "Migrate all unicorn hasher customers to the LeaseRig Platform for management and monitoring."
This statement gives me the feeling that they made this acquisition mainly to provide a ready made front-end for their ASIC datacenters, and therefore this migration will take priority above anything else. Again, not that there is anything wrong with this, it is what I would do too if I had such resources. However, I am leery that they will have much concern for the impact to pre-existing rig owners during and after this migration. This one doesn't concern me as much since my rig is configured for Scrypt-N, but wonder what this will do for the Scrypt market? I was hoping the new owner would be more into what they could do for the site and not what the site was going to do for them. I understand that they do plan to add features, but it all seems to be geared for larger providers and I feel like a small time lessor like myself won't be able to compete.
1) "The goal has always been to provide customers leased or hosted hardware for less than their anticipated mining profits. GPU rigs are often leased for 50-70% of expected revenue to ensure customers ROI. Our plans for leaserig are no different."
This statement gives me the feeling that the new owner has a bias towards the renter, and also a bias against GPU rigs. Not that there is anything wrong with putting the customer first, but the previous owner seemed neutral. At least I never saw them call out particular type of mining rig should only be rented at X%, or state that the service's main goal was to benefit the renter vs the owner or vice-versa. I like how the market determines the price and am leery of what actions will they take to "ensure" their main goal? Why would I rent my rig for 50% what I could mine with it? It seems in almost all cases it costs more to rent something than to own. Why? From what I have read in other threads, most rig owners expect a premium since they made the hardware investment, provide the space, power, cooling, network, monitoring, etc. I can't imagine many real estate owners taking their capital or a loan to purchase a home, then rent it for less than the mortgage, or less than they could earn in simple interest on the capital. So if I get a sense of the new owners doing anything to manipulate the market, I'm out.
2) "Migrate all unicorn hasher customers to the LeaseRig Platform for management and monitoring."
This statement gives me the feeling that they made this acquisition mainly to provide a ready made front-end for their ASIC datacenters, and therefore this migration will take priority above anything else. Again, not that there is anything wrong with this, it is what I would do too if I had such resources. However, I am leery that they will have much concern for the impact to pre-existing rig owners during and after this migration. This one doesn't concern me as much since my rig is configured for Scrypt-N, but wonder what this will do for the Scrypt market? I was hoping the new owner would be more into what they could do for the site and not what the site was going to do for them. I understand that they do plan to add features, but it all seems to be geared for larger providers and I feel like a small time lessor like myself won't be able to compete.
I'm going to have to go point by point here:
I wouldn't consider bringing up concerns with an ownership change trolling. Extremely helpful would be more accurate. Unless you are trying to troll
"the new owner has a bias towards the renter"
My operation "Unicorn Hasher" is renter focused and always will be. The pricing algorithm used interestingly enough does not "call out particular type of mining rig should only be rented at X%" In fact for leases between 1 Hour and 7 Days my prices have always been 110-150% higher than the baseline price. Renters for these short periods are generally testing out coins or learning about crypto and are actually saving a lot of money by renting short term vs dropping $100s to $1,000s of dollars on equipment just to test or try out a crypto or new coin/pool.
"and also a bias against GPU rigs"
I've been mining on GPU rigs since 2011 and I have a lot of GPU's running around the US right now. My actual opinion based on the Bitcoin trend followed by the Scrypt trend is that GPU's are going to be worth way more than SHA or Scrypt ASICS and I've been collecting more GPU's as Scrypt returns fall. Currently I primarily provide hosting for SHA/Scrypt Asics and build to lease GPU rigs.
"I like how the market determines the price and am leery of what actions will they take to "ensure" their main goal"
LeaseRig will remain a market determined price. Again I will clear this up in the OP. Long term rentals and leases IE 56-180 days should not be priced the same as short term rentals would you agree?
"From what I have read in other threads, most rig owners expect a premium since they made the hardware investment, provide the space, power, cooling, network, monitoring, etc."
This is true for short term rentals anywhere you go from tractors to cars to women/men. A lot of companies make their money collecting capital up front to reinvest. IE if I build a rig using spare or recycled parts and purchase only $500 in new GPU's and then turn around and lease that rig for 90 days (at 75% of my anticipated profits) I can turn around and build another rig with the same out of pocket cost of one rig, I got two rigs. Makes sense?
So you should know that XMK3 has zero leases and DjeZo is not and never was involved in the UH operations. DjeZo is maintaining a stake in LeaseRig and although he will be moving on to new primary projects his ideals are not being replaced.
"they made this acquisition mainly to provide a ready made front-end for their ASIC datacenters, and therefore this migration will take priority above anything else."
Half truth. The reason I announced a merger of all Unicorn Hasher operations into LeaseRig was actually the opposite of what you are saying. Yes the main reason was to get a ready made front end which allows my team to stop development on the old front-end. This merger (which is a priority for my side, and of no consequence to the other stakeholders) will free up all of the time I spend managing, selling, pool changing, auditing, etc. etc. etc. Dealing with a lot of leases basically. So if I merge my own operations into leaserig I have time to dedicate to leaserig. Basically the migration is a priority so that unicorn hashers can be automated and lease rig can be my full time priority.
I think I'll just quote this in the OP.