Would you have sold yours at $200 + boot leg PSU's you had? Or drive a few hours, pick them up, and let them sit in basement until they turn back on again in the future. (Serious since i've been wondering). I figure i could sell them for 250 on ebay but that's a hastle, especially with breaker boards and the like. Oh, and if you can take a loss now you could then have a carry over lost against future gains in years to come. That 1800w PSU has me wondering/thinking. I bet its the s11s but... we will see..

Shut off half my machines. My contract for data hall hosting terminates at end of july. I figure i'll box units up at that point and wait for a future price pump to try and sell then. Even the S7s made money this last bull run. I've had offers to buy them at $200 and I just can't justify that price. If I run them, at current prices, it's a guaranteed loss of $x / month. Unfortunately, i sell coins to buy hosting so i wouldn't break even. At least once I take these home again, if prices increase, I can flip a switch to turn them on. If prices decrease; shut them back off. A lot easier than contacting remote hosting. I didn't expect this outcome last year but this is the outcome received. My units lasted just shy of a year. Talk about fast depreciation. LOL. Honestly, I'm amazed at how well the S9's are performing. I saw bitmain has that new 1800w PSU. So we know something's coming soon, will be interesting to see what it actually is...

James, AFAIk, that's the code from the B3 Asic from bitmain which runs using the tensor chips, same chips used in sophon. I'm assuming, at a minimum you can run the same software on the sophon and mine using the sc1 gpus x2 inside. It looks like the b3 makes around 25 bytom a day and i think has 12 chips? so maybe the sophon makes 8 a day with 4? Question is if you can get it to run on the SS1 and have the GPUs work.  Meanwhile I'm still fiddling with facial recognition but dunno wtf i'm doing :/ Would love to monetize this beast besides cpu mining which is not finding blocks still. Best and please update us with any results you have.

@mindtrip and @ gribbliest

So, i don't know if you guys have sophons, but it looks like bytom and the b3 are using the same chips in the sophon GPU cards.

I found what I think is a copy of the b3 firmware that could be ported to run with the sophon cards and their driver.

This is all a bit above me though, wondering if you guys have any thoughts on utilizing the sophon to mine bytom

https://github.com/Bytom/B3-Mimic

Have you had any luck or done anything interesting with yours? Wondering as there seems to be no discussion of it anywhere.

I think l3+s stay around $8/10/day in profit, just the difference is how much ltc you get. Bitmain has done an amazing job pegging returns to USD in all of their ASICs besides the D3. (If you bought a D3 I feel bad for you. You got hosed, no if and or buts about it). So I think any purchases you will break even USD wise. The issue is whether your returns can break even in crypto spent. It gets really complicated mining stateside however since coins are immediately valued as USD income. All I'm getting to is I think you can continue to buy hardware unless next gen release in 2018. I have a feeling we may get nextgen in 2018 but I'd love for the can to be kicked until 2019. Seeing the new coupons, Bitmain either has LOTS of new units they need to sell or has next gen coming out soon. Ultimately it still means they have units to sell that aren't getting bought. This means maybe prices will continue to drop a bit more. Also, this new Asicboost stuff may change things. Feels too early. Has anyone received stuff bought from HalongMining? I saw those Blake miners for decred at $10k... that seems more risky then s9s or l3+s right now imho...

@Searing,

Honestly I'm in a similar situation as yourself. I need to re-invest in order to offset expected gains from mining from this year. Right now, prices for bitmain miners are nearly at fire sale discounts. The only difficulty is afaik, you can only apply one coupon per order or something, i.e., you can't buy 10 miners and apply 10 coupons to that order. You have to apply them each individually; i'm not sure what i will do about that. Regardless, S9's at $1900 and l3+s at $1400 aren't bad cost per miner. Ideally we will also see some miners start going out of business since they bought units at $2500 and have a much higher overhead, electricity cost, and are not prepared to withstand the bear mining season. This means maybe you could be picking up miners second hand from $800+. Regardless, paying full cost and shortly getting a USD return of $8/day right now in profits per miner for either an S9 or l3+ isn't awful. It's sure not great, but not awful. If you have to buy hardware, better to do it sooner rather than later and simply bite the bullet. The downside to any of this of course is if/when next gen machines launch and how long until they ship. I would assume whenever they are announced it will be a 3 month pre-order. I can't see next gen launching before May, June, or July. So I think if you buy now you will earn for 6 months and then things will get a bit tight.  I'm a bit short on cash so I'm waiting in the wings but eyeing these discounted prices like a vulture. (The other issue of course is finding someplace to hold/host your machines, I'm seeing more and more local pushback to miners...)

I have a large miner friend in Canada in the same area as this location site. Can he do a site visit to confirm that kpmhosting.com isn't a scam? Please advise. Thanks.

Were you able to host below the 10kw minimum? I think I'm at 8600 until my other unit arrives next month lol. Desperate to get hosting outside the house.

Just wanted to stop by the thread and say congratulations. I think at this point in time it's good to be diversified. I think the CME news and launching of futures on 12/18/17 should give us and the market an idea of what to expect. I.e., does it start a bear trend or do we keep pushing for the stars. Thankfully it sure looks like most current toasters from bitmain continue to be fairly reliable and working well. My only suggestion would be to continue to ramp up on the home scale mining. AFAIK, expenditures on mining can be expensed the year put into service under the 179 depreciation thing; so you can reduce income earned from mining and continue to expand operations. That should keep earnings and taxes maybe a bit lower.

I think for me, I don't think I'd really want to retire, at least not yet, I just want to expand mining operations more and more. It's an itch I just can't stop scratching lol. Still, having that sense of financial security is great and must be a huge relief.

Supposedly they've upgraded the website. We'll find out soon enough. I feel your pain but was able to buy more in July. More of a headache and hassle then necessary.

Does anyone have updated profitability and break even data they would be willing to share compared to current difficulty and purchasing new hardware now? Any idea of how long the lifecycle of the l3+ will last? Saving coin/cash for next gen hardware so don't want to buy more now and get stuck in the cold with a q2 2018 release :/

Thanks for the feedback guys. And yeah, at this point, assuming july difficulty increase with new units coming online and price updates don't drop profitability down to anything too horrible, I'm just going to hire an electrician. If profitability stays anywhere like current levels, the demand for outside hosting will continue to grow and I'll need a place to run them in the meantime. Not having the electrical engineering background, or really any electrical background, setting stuff on fire is not my goal nor having the equipment burn out or anything. Thanks again all.

Anyone have recommendations for 1kPSUs for the L3+s that aren't from bitmain so can be run via residential power
 I.e., 120v? I heard the evga1000 had enough connections but wasn't sure due to the rails.  Any help is appreciated.

VLAD! THE MASSES ARE RESTLESS!

WHERE IS THE BREAD AND CIRCUSES!?

WE NEED TO BE ENTERTAINED!

Do we know if they are using AsicBoost on the L3+'s? I know there has been speculation regarding the S9's but I haven't seen anyone do an analysis of the L3+s.
Second point/question is if they really are unleashing more or less double the current network hashpower, isn't it reasonable that they test the units to make sure they don't break shortly after delivery? We know there were some issues with the firmware of the L3s, I'm wondering if they're having heating/cooling trouble with the L3+s?  I think it would be helpful to know if anyone has received the L3+s(maybe someone from china) and if they can comment on whether they've had issues mining/signalling segwit on LTC. The reason I don't necessarily think there would be any trouble re/segwit is because you can use the current L3s to signal segwit now. The L3+ is essentially to l3's taped together so I'm not sure why there would be any super trouble. Re: mining as delayed, doesn't it seem profitable to simply mine right now as units are delayed with other machiens? At least to try and start getting back some ROI? Sure it sucks but cash now is better than cash later?

Last but not least, if they double/triple hashpower, does anyone have an idea as to what mining returns would be assuming ltc/usd price remains around $10usd? I'm not sure how much difficulty would increase if ltcs current hashpower doubled/tripled. Is it naive to think with added hash/security, we might have a price pump too? But yeah, overall it's a crappy situation, but it could still always be worse.... :/

Maybe I'm missing something; I thought the l3's were stand alone units? What Pre l3 software do you need to install?

https://www.eastshore.xyz/tutorial-antminer-l3-litecoin-miner-250mh-400w-for-scrypt-mining/

It seems like you simply log in to the unit, configure it, and... you're mining?

This seems like a very reasonable deal? Is there some hidden catch? Also, can anyone explain to me the $500 difference between buying first batch and second? It it simply because they think the difficulty will rise substantially following second batch? Just wondering. Thanks. Anyone have suggestions on hosting options?

Hi Maxumark,

Is there someone you would use for 'escrow?'

Additionally, once the year is up; do you have more information about what the kwh/cost is at the hosting location?

I'm just trying to understand how, based on current numbers, the ROI gets determined.

Additionally, I know a lot of the l3's have had some slight trouble with nicehash but  I guess those issues have since been fixed; do you have any information you can share about your experience to that regard?

Thanks

Looks like an interesting project!