With the hash rate dropping and block generation time going up, it's killing everyone's profits. Give it a few days for everyone to receive their S7 and the hash rate will shoot back up and all the pools luck will start going back up. Bitmain is definitely controlling the hash rate and difficulty these past few rounds of difficulty increases.

 I'm pretty sure the "used" S5s they were selling had already been replaced, or were in process of getting replaced, by S7 units, and a few of the early ones may have been replaced by S5+ units.

 I can't say for 100% certain though, since I'm not working at Bitmain's farm facility(ies).



 I do? I've NEVER said anything about anyone deliberately restraining diff increases. What the heck are you talking about?


 Untill the next oil technology breakthrough. Oil also has major economic limitations on how PROFITABLE it would be to drill it all out that fast, which is why it's never happened and is why we're not likely to "run out" of oil for a good century or more (though we might see more short-term shortfalls as we have done in the past).

 There is some similarity of oil and bitcoin though, in that they are both limited in available product TO "mine" - the biggest difference is the artificial limits on how fast Bitcoin CAN be mined, but it still makes sense for a big miner (be that a manufacturer or not) to push to get as many as it can now BEFORE OTHERS BEAT IT TO THEM, and makes ZERO sense for a miner to try to "hold back the hashrate" - there are too many folks that WON'T collude to make that a viable strategy, unlike oil production where the number of significant producers is strictly limted by the HUGE PRICE OF ENTRY and the limitation of most major oil producing nations having nationalised their oil and access to it (The US and UK are the only significant exceptions to that last, and even the UK has been semi-nationalised for a lot of the time it's oil industry has existed).

 P.S. - who do you consider the "big three" - there's more than 3 makers still around, though a few don't sell to the public any more.

 D'Beers (sp?) is a very different situation from oil. One company in one country controlling the majority of the "reserves" of Diamonds is in no way comparable to the number of producers and countries in the Oil industry - even the Saudis and their "largest proven reserves of any country in the world" are nowhere near having the kind of control D'Beers has over diamonds (witness the current "oil price war", which certainly is NOT maximising profits for anyone).



 Closest we'll see to that sort of thing would be a "full custom" chip in 14/16nm - at this point the cryptocoin ASIC state of the art is too close to the leading edge of semiconductor technology in general for more than 1 more major efficiency jump in the next few years. The big jumps in ASIC have been about playing "catch-up to the state of the art", and there's only one more such jump available at this point and for the next few years.

Based on what I saw, I'd estimate Bitmain was replaceing S5's with S7s for 2 months at most, and possibly with S5+ for a month or two before that (and then likely sold those S5+ as "new" units once they got the S7 into production).

 I don't believe for a microsecond that the S7 has been in production for 6+ months.

Yes, if you were starting from scratch the ROI would probably be a year or more but everyone's situation is different.  My current hardware paid for itself in July so if I sell my 20 S5s for something like $300 each I would have $6000 towards 5 S7s.  That would make my initial investment about $3500 with 24,300 GH/s, 6050 Watts, and power at 0.10.  If you plug those numbers in it shows 94 days to break even.  Even if difficulty made a huge jump in the next 3 months it would look like maybe 188 days to break even for me.  Like I said, everyone's situation is different.

Buying 1 S7 is like buying 4 S5s for $455.75 plus it uses only half the electricity...that doesn’t seem so absurd.  The price seems to be reasonable to me considering it's only just released.  The main problem is if you only wanted to buy 1 S5 then the S7 is priced out of reach.

sigh, so much fail in one sentence.  
I am not predicting future difficulty changes at all, that spreadsheet doesn't even take into account difficulty changes.



But those Parameters do exist like pool luck so how can you even post such a FUD chart like that FUD man. You really think you will make what that FUD chart states. Good luck keep up the fudding.

1. Antpool does not have low payouts, your spreading FUD.

2. Here is the analysis I did on the new V3 contracts...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zbKKyXtW0vcfGDufk_UIRg_gAi0JzjsFwvB7LGj8bOI/edit?usp=sharing

It may be real  but why does itop have a price for it ahead of bitmaintech?


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1146965.0



http://www.itopshop.net/world-biggest-miner-antminer-s5-bitcoin-miner-77-t-3436w-p-271.html


3299 plus shipping  and   it needs 3 evga 1300 psu's >>>>>> a guess


In the USA any gear over 2500 for import is a hassle.   so if this is the new gear and it is 3299 plus 100 to ship  it is 3399.


  I can't use it.  And it will be really fucking loud.

Looks like second hand S5s sold out. Waiting for some news from Bitmain.  

True, as long they keep saying second hand it's not moral but that's how it is in business being cut throat as it gets .

it does say Batch 7 wasn't batch five the last ones sold as new , so yea there coming from data centers in china some place Polly right off hash net, i wouldn't be a bit amazed if they have some S6/7 running on hash net .



Biggest suprise reading it "[Second Hand] ANTMINER S5 BATCH 7"  ....  I just wonder what second hand really means.  


don't know but with a 15 day warr on it, not so sure i would want one . buying off eBay or Amazon used your better off not knowing WTF is up with that at least give 30 to 45 days .


honestly Wtf is up with bitmain did it change hands or some one come down on them to start being ass hole or mean .


Like the GOV in china . i mean they are in china and have to follow the laws and really can't tell us when there leaders get super greedy, so glad, I live were i do .

Biggest suprise reading it "[Second Hand] ANTMINER S5 BATCH 7"  ....  I just wonder what second hand really means. 

When they ran a miner during a batch it was still described as new.   Second hand... think it's coming from data centers wanting to unload whall it's still top product there?   

What's everyone's guess?