7 ms·

Bitcoin ASIC Miner from BFL, finally

83 points by enmaku 13y ago

w-ll 13y ago
I ordered the 60gh/s SC Single the night preorderes opened like a year ago. I think there are maybe ~7 orders before me. I hope I get it soon. I paid 220 btc@5.45 usd for it, let's see if its worth it.
- eof 13y ago
  I ordered a Jalepeno almost immediately. I chose to pay by wire, and the email i received included "Your order position won't be penalized for any time it takes to send you this payment information. Please send me an email with a copy of the wire confirmation form. Once payment has been received, I'll respond with final confirmation of your order." I still haven't paid and am going to now. I wonder if they will honor it or not.
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    "time it takes to send you this payment information. " I don't see where it says you won't be penalized for the time it takes for you to make a payment. With that said - I'm curious, did people pay in advance of shipping?
    - eof 13y ago
      oh no! i read that wrong everytime. In my said it said "it takes you to send this payment". but yes, they have been taking pre-orders for like 9 months and people have been paying.
- jpdoctor 13y ago
  > 220 btc Holy moly: $27K.
  - ValentineC 13y ago
    If he paid with Bitcoin, it was probably handled through BitPay, which might have in turn converted it to USD before paying it out to the company. I'm not sure the company could have foreseen the spike in BTC and held off the USD for that long. I wonder who reaped the most out of this.
sjtgraham 13y ago
I doubted that these ASIC rigs would ship any time soon. Wouldn't it be more profitable for the vendors to simply to delay/cancel orders and run the rigs 24/7 themselves?
- gesman 13y ago
  Totally agree. Why would anyone wants to sell the goose who lays golden eggs while gold cost more than the goose? They'll pile up cash from "preorders", mine bitcoins and when time is right - will dump outdated devices to customers.
  - BaconJuice 13y ago
    are there any alternatives to this? and some thing that's already selling them and not pre-orders?
  - starpilot 13y ago
    I see it as a futures contract on the value of the BTC. Selling a mining ASIC locks in profit for the seller, betting that this will exceed the time-value generated from the rig itself. Buying a rig locks in a loss, betting that it will pay for itself. We can't be certain whether the BTC will be at US$1,000 or US$1 a year from now. You could make a case for either side, that's why the contract exists.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Which, by the way, doesn't mean they are betting against BTC. They just elected to take sure profit up front, over less certain profit of potentially greater value long-term.
      - rbanffy 13y ago
        I don't think so. They probably needed the preorder money to fully develop the device and to be able to manufacture it.
  - 13y ago
lingben 13y ago
selling shovels and pick-axes to miners was always much more lucrative than being a prospector - plus ca change
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Well, there were surely a few prospectors who made out like bandits- but on the whole, yes.
- illuminate 13y ago
  Isn't this more selling the pre-used shovels and pick-axes after you've already been at the mine for months using the investors' equipment?
daniel-cussen 13y ago
I thought they had been ripped off by their suppliers and they just never got wise to it.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
sliverstorm 13y ago
The heat is of course a byproduct of the higher wattage, but I wonder what on earth happened to make them miss the wattage target by 6-7x?
- nbanks 13y ago
  They probably missed the clock-rate by a factor of 2x, or decided to use half the number of chips and overclock them to save money. It may also have been their backup plan because people are willing to pay 8x as much for power, but they're less willing to get 1/2 the hashrate. If you run a CPU at the same voltage, but at half the speed, it uses 1/2 the power because CMOS circuits only really use power as the transistors change state. However you're also able to run at about 1/2 the voltage without getting errors. Because V=IR, 1/2 the voltage at the same resistance is 1/2 the amperage, and since P=IV, that's 1/4 the power for normal circuits. Of course CMOS circuits already run at 1/2 the power. In the real world there's also leakage and such, but in a perfect world doubling the clockrate takes 8 times the power. Transmeta's Crusoe was the first processor to really take advantage of this, by varying the voltage and running slower to save battery life. Before this time (2000), laptops would use a duty cycle to save power. Soon all the major chip manufacturers started copying them.
kevinpet 13y ago
I'm sure with enough digging around I could find this out for myself, but could someone familiar with things comment on how the performance of these boxes compares to a standard ATI card miner?
- loser777 13y ago
  High-end ATI cards will do < 1GH/s, with most midrange cards below 500MH/s. This does 5GH/s, while using an essentially an order of magnitude less power than a PC-based rig will use. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
- greenmountin 13y ago
  The more important specification is the MHash / Joule (also found in the link below). The video says this thing does 5 GHash/s @ 30W. That's 100x the efficiency of the best videocards (1000x if you count the power consumption of the rest of the PC).
nly 13y ago
I work this out to be about 180 Mhash/J, which is 80-100x more energy efficient than any GPU mining. Also, for anyone wondering: At current difficulty and rate of exchange this will cost you <$0.10 a day to run and generate $40 of Bitcoin.
- fiatpandas 13y ago
  $40 per day?
  - Tichy 13y ago
    Yes?
  - DougWebb 13y ago
    I estimate it'd produce around 0.25 BTC/day, mining in a pool. That's about $30/day USD at today's price. As ASICs come online, the difficulty is going to go up, which will reduce the daily generation rate for any given miner. I've been trying to decide whether or not to order a device now based on my profitability prediction for months from now when I might actually get it. I'm guessing by the time I get one I might be able to produce at least 0.05 BTC/day. Assuming that's $6/day, the $274 device will take about six weeks to pay for itself. Not too bad, but I don't know if keeping tabs on it afterwards is worth it for $6/day. It'd only be worth it if I think BTC are going to be worth a lot more in the future... getting back to hoarding coins as an investment rather than using them as currency.
    - vl 13y ago
      >getting back to hoarding coins as an investment rather than using them as currency But then, may be it's better just to hoard BTC directly right now by reallocating thousands of dollars required for device? Can't decide for myself.
  - nly 13y ago
    Yes, sorry.
- makomk 13y ago
baddox 13y ago
That is the current expected bitcoin per gigahash earning rate?
yekko 13y ago
Arrived just after the peak too.
- Create 13y ago
  appreciate the thorough burn-in test
Homunculiheaded 13y ago
The more people get excited about faster ways to hoard bitcoins and eventually make a nice profit (presumably in USD in the end) the dramatically more cynical I become about its future. When the bitcoin discussion was mainly around its use as a currency for things like silkroad, VPNs etc I actually thought it seemed to have a promising future. I really hope I'm wrong, but I have a feeling in 2023 the bitcoin discussion will be relegated to nostalgic jokes about how crazy we used to be.
- nvarsj 13y ago
  Indeed, it is pretty crazy. I know someone with an Avalon ASIC who claims Satoshi is a genius. I think he's biased by the fact he has a small device that plugs into the wall and makes him more money than his day job.
  - pdog 13y ago
    Is there any doubt that Satoshi is a genius? Look at what he's accomplished.
- jpdoctor 13y ago
  > The more people get excited about faster ways to hoard bitcoins People seem to be oblivious to the fact that a currency must be available in order to be useful. There is a reason that Gresham's Law has achieved "Law" status. Oddly, the right thing to do for currency acceptance would be to shutdown all of the ASICs.
  - pseudonym 13y ago
    I think people are more oblivious to the fact that a "deflationary currency" is inherently flawed because it by definition results in hoarding, which is not what you want people to do with your currency. Why would you bother loaning or investing it if you can make more money just sitting on it?
    - fleitz 13y ago
ValentineC 13y ago
More discussion on this article at Bitcoin Talk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181849.0;all https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181849.0;all

83 points by enmaku 13y ago

w-ll 13y ago

I ordered the 60gh/s SC Single the night preorderes opened like a year ago. I think there are maybe ~7 orders before me. I hope I get it soon. I paid 220 btc@5.45 usd for it, let's see if its worth it.

eof 13y ago
I ordered a Jalepeno almost immediately. I chose to pay by wire, and the email i received included "Your order position won't be penalized for any time it takes to send you this payment information. Please send me an email with a copy of the wire confirmation form. Once payment has been received, I'll respond with final confirmation of your order." I still haven't paid and am going to now. I wonder if they will honor it or not.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  "time it takes to send you this payment information. " I don't see where it says you won't be penalized for the time it takes for you to make a payment. With that said - I'm curious, did people pay in advance of shipping?
  - eof 13y ago
    oh no! i read that wrong everytime. In my said it said "it takes you to send this payment". but yes, they have been taking pre-orders for like 9 months and people have been paying.
jpdoctor 13y ago
> 220 btc Holy moly: $27K.
- ValentineC 13y ago
  If he paid with Bitcoin, it was probably handled through BitPay, which might have in turn converted it to USD before paying it out to the company. I'm not sure the company could have foreseen the spike in BTC and held off the USD for that long. I wonder who reaped the most out of this.

sjtgraham 13y ago

I doubted that these ASIC rigs would ship any time soon. Wouldn't it be more profitable for the vendors to simply to delay/cancel orders and run the rigs 24/7 themselves?

gesman 13y ago
Totally agree. Why would anyone wants to sell the goose who lays golden eggs while gold cost more than the goose? They'll pile up cash from "preorders", mine bitcoins and when time is right - will dump outdated devices to customers.
- BaconJuice 13y ago
  are there any alternatives to this? and some thing that's already selling them and not pre-orders?
- starpilot 13y ago
  I see it as a futures contract on the value of the BTC. Selling a mining ASIC locks in profit for the seller, betting that this will exceed the time-value generated from the rig itself. Buying a rig locks in a loss, betting that it will pay for itself. We can't be certain whether the BTC will be at US$1,000 or US$1 a year from now. You could make a case for either side, that's why the contract exists.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Which, by the way, doesn't mean they are betting against BTC. They just elected to take sure profit up front, over less certain profit of potentially greater value long-term.
    - rbanffy 13y ago
      I don't think so. They probably needed the preorder money to fully develop the device and to be able to manufacture it.
- 13y ago

lingben 13y ago

selling shovels and pick-axes to miners was always much more lucrative than being a prospector - plus ca change

sliverstorm 13y ago
Well, there were surely a few prospectors who made out like bandits- but on the whole, yes.
illuminate 13y ago
Isn't this more selling the pre-used shovels and pick-axes after you've already been at the mine for months using the investors' equipment?

daniel-cussen 13y ago

I thought they had been ripped off by their suppliers and they just never got wise to it.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

sliverstorm 13y ago

The heat is of course a byproduct of the higher wattage, but I wonder what on earth happened to make them miss the wattage target by 6-7x?

nbanks 13y ago
They probably missed the clock-rate by a factor of 2x, or decided to use half the number of chips and overclock them to save money. It may also have been their backup plan because people are willing to pay 8x as much for power, but they're less willing to get 1/2 the hashrate. If you run a CPU at the same voltage, but at half the speed, it uses 1/2 the power because CMOS circuits only really use power as the transistors change state. However you're also able to run at about 1/2 the voltage without getting errors. Because V=IR, 1/2 the voltage at the same resistance is 1/2 the amperage, and since P=IV, that's 1/4 the power for normal circuits. Of course CMOS circuits already run at 1/2 the power. In the real world there's also leakage and such, but in a perfect world doubling the clockrate takes 8 times the power. Transmeta's Crusoe was the first processor to really take advantage of this, by varying the voltage and running slower to save battery life. Before this time (2000), laptops would use a duty cycle to save power. Soon all the major chip manufacturers started copying them.

kevinpet 13y ago

I'm sure with enough digging around I could find this out for myself, but could someone familiar with things comment on how the performance of these boxes compares to a standard ATI card miner?

loser777 13y ago
High-end ATI cards will do < 1GH/s, with most midrange cards below 500MH/s. This does 5GH/s, while using an essentially an order of magnitude less power than a PC-based rig will use. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
greenmountin 13y ago
The more important specification is the MHash / Joule (also found in the link below). The video says this thing does 5 GHash/s @ 30W. That's 100x the efficiency of the best videocards (1000x if you count the power consumption of the rest of the PC).

nly 13y ago

I work this out to be about 180 Mhash/J, which is 80-100x more energy efficient than any GPU mining. Also, for anyone wondering: At current difficulty and rate of exchange this will cost you <$0.10 a day to run and generate $40 of Bitcoin.

fiatpandas 13y ago
$40 per day?
- Tichy 13y ago
  Yes?
- DougWebb 13y ago
  I estimate it'd produce around 0.25 BTC/day, mining in a pool. That's about $30/day USD at today's price. As ASICs come online, the difficulty is going to go up, which will reduce the daily generation rate for any given miner. I've been trying to decide whether or not to order a device now based on my profitability prediction for months from now when I might actually get it. I'm guessing by the time I get one I might be able to produce at least 0.05 BTC/day. Assuming that's $6/day, the $274 device will take about six weeks to pay for itself. Not too bad, but I don't know if keeping tabs on it afterwards is worth it for $6/day. It'd only be worth it if I think BTC are going to be worth a lot more in the future... getting back to hoarding coins as an investment rather than using them as currency.
  - vl 13y ago
    >getting back to hoarding coins as an investment rather than using them as currency But then, may be it's better just to hoard BTC directly right now by reallocating thousands of dollars required for device? Can't decide for myself.
- nly 13y ago
  Yes, sorry.
makomk 13y ago

baddox 13y ago

That is the current expected bitcoin per gigahash earning rate?

yekko 13y ago

Arrived just after the peak too.

Create 13y ago
appreciate the thorough burn-in test

Homunculiheaded 13y ago

The more people get excited about faster ways to hoard bitcoins and eventually make a nice profit (presumably in USD in the end) the dramatically more cynical I become about its future. When the bitcoin discussion was mainly around its use as a currency for things like silkroad, VPNs etc I actually thought it seemed to have a promising future. I really hope I'm wrong, but I have a feeling in 2023 the bitcoin discussion will be relegated to nostalgic jokes about how crazy we used to be.

nvarsj 13y ago
Indeed, it is pretty crazy. I know someone with an Avalon ASIC who claims Satoshi is a genius. I think he's biased by the fact he has a small device that plugs into the wall and makes him more money than his day job.
- pdog 13y ago
  Is there any doubt that Satoshi is a genius? Look at what he's accomplished.
jpdoctor 13y ago
> The more people get excited about faster ways to hoard bitcoins People seem to be oblivious to the fact that a currency must be available in order to be useful. There is a reason that Gresham's Law has achieved "Law" status. Oddly, the right thing to do for currency acceptance would be to shutdown all of the ASICs.
- pseudonym 13y ago
  I think people are more oblivious to the fact that a "deflationary currency" is inherently flawed because it by definition results in hoarding, which is not what you want people to do with your currency. Why would you bother loaning or investing it if you can make more money just sitting on it?
  - fleitz 13y ago

ValentineC 13y ago

More discussion on this article at Bitcoin Talk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181849.0;all https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181849.0;all