I didn't say anything about Bitcoin itself - I said the mining numbers don't work.

I don't see anybody disputing me with some actual numbers.

What I see are people acting just like all the people I talk to on other forums - who think that because Mt. Gox was a disaster - that all of Bitcoin is a disaster.

It's the same mentality just coming from a different direction.

What I see are people who act just like the "investors" I've dealt with over the years who think that Apple stock , or Google stock, or Pets Online whatever stock - will go to $1000 a share,  or the people who think that gold will go to $10,000 an ounce.

Their numbers only work when  you apply a very high bullshit hope and change factor. And that shit doesn't work in the real world.

I said mining doesn't seem to be worth it - if YOU actually have to absorb ALL of the costs - unless the machine pays itself off in 30 or maybe 45 days - tops.  If it goes longer than that - the difficulty increase and NOW - the IRS coming in and wanting to take capital gains taxes - is going to make it a money loser.

Every single miner asic company I've seen - is pricing their machines so high that the buyers will pretty much never get ROI on them.

Prove me wrong - show me the numbers.  I'm fully willing to admit I'm wrong on this - but you're going to have to prove it.

BTC - in the US at least (and China for that matter) - is not going to get treated as "currency" - because the IRS is going to take a cut every single time you do an exchange where you make a gain.  This means that to deal in BTC at all - you're going to have to keep copious records of all of your transactions if you ever enter 'the system' with BTC.

Bitcoin is more like a stock - that can be more freely traded - than it is a currency.  And the government takes a cut out of stock transactions.

If you want to justify doing it on the basis that it's fun - that's fine.  But I've yet to see anybody lately coming out with any math that proves that the mining thing is profitable - unless their doing what I proposed previously - and just pushing off all the costs onto somebody else.

To answer  your question: no I don't see BTC at $1500 for sure.  It might go there - but then again Apple stock *might* go there too.   But what you're proposing here as a justification is just a unicorn dream.  Not a sound basis for "investing" in mining machinery.

If I spend $3000 on a new welder - I can put it out in my garage and build stuff with it.  If I'm in the business of making things - I can make stuff and sell it - or even if I just use it to fix broken stuff, I can justify the cost by how much money I saved fixing things myself over some number of years.  Plus the welder WILL hold residual value over time.  So figuring out it's payback time is pretty easy.  Applying the same methodology to mining machinery - the payback just isn't there, UNLESS - you start plugging in fictional numbers - like $1500 BTC prices by the end of the year.

But then you're not talking about "investing" - you're talking about gambling.  Lots of people gamble - only a very few ever make anything from it.  But the "house" - always wins.

When I start seeing mining machinery go down into price range where they can pay themselves off in 30 days - based on an estimated difficulty level of 30 days out - then I'll start thinking the miner manufacturers are serious.

Right now - I think what they do is come out with new machines, run them for a period of time and then sell them off just as they're getting towards their payoff period.  That's why you see a number of people mentioning here in this thread that their S2's are coming thru with dust sucked into the power supplies.

If you're just looking to piss thru money - there's an awful lot of things in the world  you can do that with - that are a lot more "fun" than BTC mining.

Exactly.

Once you add in all of those things you mentioned - AND , if you're in the US you're now going to have to factor in capital gains taxes - I don't see the math in it.

I don't see BTC mining as a "long term" game - if the hardware doesn't pay itself back in a relatively short period of time - what you're looking at is potentially an ever extending payout period.

Quite honestly I think one of the only ways the mining starts to make any sort of "sense" ( if you want to call it that) - is if you're some sort of IT guy who has access to a budget and a lab infrastructure - and can buy the machines on the company's dime, put them in the company's lab (where they pay for electricity and cooling) - and then direct the BTC output to your own wallet.

That way you basically have no upfront costs and you get all the profit - so it's spectacularly profitable FOR YOU. And if you're in one of those companies that brings in equipment by the pallet load and ships out old equipment by the pallet load - they're likely not even going to notice the miners showing up on the budget.

If you're stuck with all of the costs - I don't see the mining working. 

As for this being off topic to this thread - I think it relates directly - because even though Bitmain is sending out one of the better products at a decent price (at least compared to others) - for the mining to "work" IMHO - their prices need to be less than half of where they are now.

Yeah - I don't get where the ROI is coming from on some of these units. Given the difficulty level - and constant increases,  the market price of BTC, the cost of the mining rigs - and the upcoming boning from the tax man,  I just don't see it.

Must be that new math I've been hearing about.

I'm sort of wondering how anybody is making ANY of the mining work.  I've been running my S1's for a few months now - and no matter which way I run the numbers - it just doesn't work.  The only way I can see to get mining to be profitable is for the machine prices to be like HALF of what they are.

The only other way I see that mining "works" - is if you've got situations where IT guys are basically buying machines on the company dime, putting them in data centers (again on the company dime) - and then pointing the mining output to their own wallets.

Then it's hugely profitable to the person with the wallet - because they haven't paid a cent.

I've noticed that nobody seemingly wants to touch this question with a  ten foot pole.

I've got to say, I'd be really interested in knowing what kind of math people are using to try and make the mining thing work.

Looking at the prices of the 1 and 2 TH units that are coming out - and running that thru one of the mining calculators - I'm really at a loss to see where anybody is ever going to make the money back on those units.

Even looking at another example:  the cost of an S1 right now - which is ~ $446.50  ( ~$500 per BTC X .893BTC on Bitmain) - and then plug that into one of the calculators - and what I get at the current difficulty level - is 54 days to pay the machine off.

If I plug in the estimated next difficulty level of 6,085,479,004 - that goes up to 69 days, and even that is not bringing into account subsequent difficulty level increases.

Just throw in 8,085,479,004 (because I don't feel like trying to calculate where the higher difficulty levels will actually come out) - and you're talking 100 days to pay the machine off.

I gotta say I'm beginning to see the viewpoint of all the people who are saying that the mining thing is just a losing game.  The numbers simply don't work.

Granted - all the above numbers are based on the current BTC price.

But even if I bump the BTC price up to $700 - that last calc of 100 days only goes back down to 65 days (all other factors being equal)

Keep in mind - this is just my opinion, (and I'm probably biased because I have a bunch of the Dell 2950 supplies):

If I search on Ebay for DPS-800 power supply I come up with about 113 hits.  If I search on Ebay for Dell 2950 power supply - I get about 300 hits.

So the amount of Dell 2950 supplies out there available seems to roughly be double the amount of the DPS-800 supplies.

Now I've already bought a bunch of your existing boards for the Dell supplies - and my original plan was to use the supplies in "clusters" - so that I'd have multiple supplies powering multiple S1 Antminers.  I was going to do like 4 or 5 supplies - to power 3 Antminers.  I figured that would allow me redundancy - AND still be able to keep the fans turning very low on the PSU's to keep the noise down.

So from my perspective at least - a more "full featured" product - where the load balancing is built in - and where the fan speed control works properly across all the different rev numbers of the Dell 2950 supplies - is more important than coming out with a board to support another different power supply.

So the predicament you're in now is the classic one that pretty much everybody who builds a product comes into:  make the existing product better and add features - or - make another product to serve a different market.

Everybody only has so much time and energy - you've just got to decide where to spend  yours.

The other thing to bear in mind is:  what's your market?  Right now  you're selling these to people who are powering Bitcoin miners.  The days of the independently powered Bitcoin miner seem to be numbered , seeing as how a lot of the high hash rate units that are coming out are now coming with their own supplies.  Combine that with the recent IRS ruling - and the dump in the Bitcoin price today, and I'd even start to wonder about Bitcoin mining itself.

There's probably other markets for these boards: test labs, battery chargers? - I don't know.  So you might want to think about what would sell better,  a more fully featured Dell 2950 board - or a board for a different supply.

Just my .0002 BTC.

Ahhh - excellent.  Even cooler.

One of my concerns going forward though - is if I'll even be using this setup (Dell supplies and Geckoscience boards) - going forward.

Most of the TH level mining units that are coming out seem to be coming with their own supplies. So when (if) - I move up to something else the separate PSU's will get retired along with the S1's.

I don't have what could be considered a "farm" (yet)  - I've got 5 S1's right now.

But here's what I did.

Originally I was running the 2 S1's I started with on 120V.  I wanted to see how much they were drawing from the wall - so I ran them thru Belkin Insight monitors:
http://www.belkin.com/conserve/insight/    - I was running each S1 on it's own power supply (Corsairs).

So the Insight monitor was telling me exactly what the S1 is pulling from the wall thru the power supply.  What I found was that each S1 pulls about 405 watts from the wall when it's overclocked.   I started off running one of those Block Erupter cubes - that thing bounces up and down as it's hashing bounces up and down - and it's also a power pig compared to the S1.  It pulls about 380 watts from the wall - for like one sixth the hash power.

Because I only had two 20amp 120V circuits where all my computer stuff is situated - and I have other equipment running - I was getting close to maxing out my available wattage (amps available) - by going up to more S1 units.  So I decided to upgrade and put in a 240V drop.  I put in one 30 amp 240V line with a 30amp twistlock plug.   To break this out I got one of the APC "metering" PDU's off of Ebay for a really good price  (it's a rack mount - what they call 'zero' U unit that is designed to mount alongside of a rack - not take up a U space).

The metering PDU has two 16amp breakers on it - and has an LCD panel that shows the amp draw for each of it's legs.  So now I have an idea of how much I'm drawing on each leg and how much juice I'm pulling to support these things.

There are advantages to staying with 110V/120V - in that there are more "consumer" level electricity usage monitoring devices available for those voltages than there are for the 220V/240V stuff - at least here in the US.   I think there are 240V versions of a lot of the same devices available overseas - but then  you're talking about plug incompatibility issues.

My S1's seem to be consistent on that ~400W - 410W usage number when they're overclocked.  So that's what I've been using to calculate how to distribute the load.  I've seen people say they're drawing 500-530watts - but that's not what I've seen.   I haven't run the meters across ALL of my S1's though - and I do notice that different units run at different temps.  That might indicate a different wattage draw.  I've been attributing it to different levels of work quality as far as how the heat sinks are applied though.

Oh yeah - and I should add that I'm going away from the Corsairs and going with using Dell 750W server supplies and the Geckoscience breakout board.  Seems like a much more reliable/redundant setup and once you get the boards the supplies are replaceable for dirt cheap money.  I've found I can run one S1 on one supply and keep the supply's cooling fan turned all the way down and keep it quiet.  The Corsairs run hotter and I've had issues with one of them cutting off occasionally.  Plus the Dell supplies just take up less rack U space than the PC type supplies do.

Hope all of this is helpful.

Now that would be slick - controlling three PSU's together.  I'd have to sell off all the boards I've already bought though to convert over to that.

 
Wow.

Yes - that's the one I remembered seeing.  He's actually sold a couple - but that's way overpriced IMHO.

Yeah - this was somebody else.  And now I can't find the auction.  I checked under the two  usernames you mentioned and it was not either one of them.  They were offering a "kit" with the PSU, one of your boards, a power cord - and the PCI-E cables (which looked like they made them themselves because they were black and red not black and yellow).

I sent you another order a little while ago - keep working those minions!

Somebody is selling a package on Ebay using your boards.  Just saw it this afternoon.

Seems I'm not the only one................

I wonder who the other 6 people are who contributed to his minus 8 rating

I just went back and revisited this.  I could have sworn I carefully checked the positions of the switches when I was testing - but maybe I didn't have them fully moved into position.....

In any case - on the power supply I just checked with, which is a version A00 - the fan speed control is working as expected on that board that had thought that it wasn't.

You'll be getting an email from me shortly at Gekkoscience - I want to order more boards.

This is exactly what I did last weekend.  Luckily - my racks are only about 10 feet from my breaker box.  I wired in a 30 amp 240V outlet with a twist lock - and then attached the APC metered PDU I had scored on Ebay the week before - and now all the S1's are running on 240V.   Speaking of which - I noticed a comment about there being a Rev 06 board for the Dell 2950 750W PSU's - is that out yet?   I'd like to order some more boards so I can get the rest of my miners up and going on the Dell supplies and retire the Corsairs.

Plus I've got one board that seems to have fried the fan speed adjuster for some reason.

Have to agree.  "Sexy" looking miners that don't ROI aren't going to pay the bills.  And women don't pull their clothes off because your server looks "cool".  They pull their clothes off because your miner is filling your wallet with BTC.

Seems like lower cost is a major winner - unless you're paying for hosting costs and rack "U" space.  Running something at home - I'd rather see less expensive and less noisy.  If the Bitmain unit takes up a few more U in my rack - and is quiet and I can't hear it all over the house - AND it's cheaper - then that will be a major deciding factor.