Topic: Antminer S3 - Profit is Impossible (Read 20101 times)

   no 2 s-3's at free power = 900gh about 13.43 usd a day.

hosting at gawminer for an s-3 is 90 cents a day. or about 14 s-3's as 14 x .90 = 12.60 usd

so free power for 2 generates paid for power for 14. so you have 16 s-3s not 2 .

Disregard the purchase cost.  As they will get sold on ebay as time goes on.   it is pretty easy to turn s-3's into a profit if btc price stays above 580.  don't forget it dropped as low as 400.

Hey man, not all of us can rock 20 th/s.  I was thrilled to get past 5! hah.

Absolutely!

I'm so tired of these jokers with "free electricity". Is running one or two 200-500GHs miners off of a university dorm room outlet a real "mining operation"? Enjoy you $6 per day. That's really going to help with tuition and beer money!

Most free electric only have like 15 amp which is really low profit..

Free electricity is a big factor, imo. Those who pay higher rates will have a much harder time receiving ROI.

Right now the mining manufacturers are just packing more chips with the same hashing speed and power requirements into larger form factors. A good example is the rbox and the antminer s3. So we aren't seeing any new innovation right now in hardware, probably the latest advance was the KNC Neptune but at the wrong price point.  Right now, twice the mining power at twice the power requirements isn't allowing the miners to get ahead of the difficulty very far. For now, were just seeing the 400ghs and 1ths clones which aren't doing us much good.

Uh uh - posting twice in a row.

This is a good example of the point I just made:

+1

Google "end of moore's law"
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/165331-intels-former-chief-architect-moores-law-will-be-dead-within-a-decade

that was a missed decimal point. and 2 miners for 1.28 was a good deal for me.  they have earned more then .4 btc back against that price.

you need to look at it from watts per gh. 

 300 for 1gh was a money making gpu in april 2013
10 for 1 gh was a money making AM cube in July of 2013
2 for 1 gh  was a money making bitfury chip and still can make money
many pieces of gear were 2watt gear.
1 for 1 gh  was and still is money making gear
.75 for 1gh  is the current common money maker  the s-3
.64 for 1gh  is the sp30

the improvements in watts are ending so diff slows.

june 2013 to dec 2013 = 25%
DEC 2013 to july 2014 = 18%
July 2014 to Jan 2015 = ?    my guess is 12% at worse 15%

Two go for 1.17btc with coupons....

So where do you get 2 S-3's for .128 BTC (i.e less than $100)?

That sounds like the steal of the century, or is the price wrong?

Is it safe here?
Can I say that the S3s lack of active blinkenlights disappoints me more than my units finicky performance?

 

right now gawminers is hosting your antminer s-3.  you can pay with a cc. you get 1 month free hosting

it is better then the normal cloud hosting deal.  I have a thread link


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=698679.0;all


these are far better deals then most cloud mining places.

cex.io
scrypt.cc

cost way more then hosting a miner you purchased from them.

if you use a cc mine for the free 30 days. then have them ship the miner to you. it should earn miner.  I have the 3 miners with them.

i plan to run them until hosting ends then ship them to my home and list them on ebay or mine them at home when the need for ac will be gone.

Agreed.  I have yet to see a cloud mining contract that makes sense as an investment.  Think about it.  The owners of the asics doing the mining are only writing cloud contracts because they make more than just mining on their own.
You might find someone, like jjc326 pointed out, who has a razor thin margin.  But you are still taking a big chance for very little potential upside.
At least with live mining YOU are in charge of your costs and you get to sell the equipment.  You also can decide your own timing for getting out, depending what the market does.
But I also understand that not everyone can house a 10 Th/s mining farm in their house/office etc.  I had to move mine to a datacenter.  Maybe there is some justification for these folks to have a cloud contract if they were going to be buying the btc anyway.  Not sure about that though.

Well said you lucky you.  But yeah, them lights shure are purdy

You do raise some interesting points but I think cloud mining can be profitable.  For instance the company in my signature, you know what your costs are going to be.  Then you need to put the numbers into a spreadsheet and figure it out.  If you think the difficulty increase is only going to be like 5-10% then you will make money with lunamine.  There are some cloud mining companies which are "too good to be true" and you have to watch out for those going out of business, but not all of them.

I don't understand how anyone can justify investing in cloud mining.  You get zero residual on the purchase unlike hardware (no matter how small that residual resale value is, it still exists) and the $/GH/s is ridiculous.  No matter what anyone says, investing in BTC be it mining or in coin is risky, and not a single person on this forum has accepted that without making their own assumptions. The problem is asserting one's assumptions as facts, and calling another's fallacy.  Nobody knows what's going to happen, don't make it sound like gospel.

What I like about mining vs buying coin is the flexibility.   Markets naturally self-adjust, so if BTC was to plummet, then a significant amount of miners using less efficient hardware and/or paying more for power will pull the plug, far sooner than those of us who secure electricity/hosting deals or have access to cheap power, driving the difficulty down.  Now tell me this, if we are to measure ROI in BTC and BTC alone, what would happen if BTC plummeted to $100 US?  I'd wager that the drop in difficulty would result in an S3 paying for itself in a real hurry, even if the exchange to fiat wasn't exactly favourable from an investment point of view. The problem I see is that many people have turned their assumption that BTC will significantly increase in value into fact.  Miners can hypothetically make a return on investment if the exchange stays flat for the years to come, buy & holders cannot.  Should I start a thread labelled "Buy and hold - Profit is Impossible"?  (...aaaand putting on flamesuit)

I find it interesting that the buy & hold types on here try to discourage mining as much as possible, when it is a major driving force behind their investment.  Leads me to believe that maybe the ones discouraging mining have a vested interest in mining themselves...

I completely agree that everyone should have balance, just like any other portfolio.  Buy some coin, buy some hardware.  Buying coin can be made more advantageous by deciding when to buy in, unlike hardware.

I agree with OP.  We need more candid and frank assessments about mining.  I really don't know what is supporting all these people buying these high priced items.  I think you're better off with cloud mining as long as it's a legit company.

Agreed. Plain and simple, this notion that you cannot be profitable under the 10TH mark is simply nonsense. Even with more conservative jumps around 18-20% ROI is more than realistic if you are even the slightest bit bullish. If you're not bullish on BTC, you probably shouldn't be mining...

If you:
 A) own a spare atx psu that will run 2 s-3's
B) already are paying for the internet
C) have a few cat 5 cables and a spare gigbyte switch.

you need only buy a pair of s-3's and pay for power .

2 s-3's are .128btc

if diff = 11% over the next 6 months they do btc roi

Just my two cents.

GPU mining early + Selling LTC at the right time + Buying S1s at the right time + purchasing A1s at $1.25/GH + Antminer S3s + Free Power = A perfect storm wherein I've been able to ROI and sustain purchases.

I don't think I'm the only one in this boat. 
My purchases were made through retail channels without any special discounts.
 
There is also the chance that we will continue to see sub 20% diff. growth over the next few months. As others have stated, we've hit a bit of a wall in terms of asic dev. We're not in the same boat as we were this month last year.

I will agree though, I'm finding it harder and harder to make an argument to my friends and colleagues to begin mining. Unless you have a special set of circumstances (free power) and can invest in a substantial amount of hardware, the potential gains are not worth the risks over buying and holding.

Unless you always just want to mine as a hobby, and hope you ROI.
Plenty of folks do this.
They like the blikenlights.

The S1 has awesome blikenlights.

i have 200 amp service

I guess the sticking point would be whether or not the insurance company would consider it a hobby or a business.  Some go by the revenue, some go by the devices intent.

You would need to call the insurance company directly.  I had to get a jewelry rider last week because I bought some rings and necklaces.

Thanks for the info.  I did not know that commercial endeavors would not be covered, but that doesn't surprise me.  Certainly if you had a whole bunch of ASIC miners it would be a commercial endeavor.  However, if you just have an ASIC miner or two, couldn't you still claim that it's a hobby if you're not declaring that you own a business (which is basically what I was thinking when I wrote my previous comment)?  Or would the definition of commercial endeavor simply not allow for that?

Geeze, assuming you ran 3 off 1 power supply, you'd be pulling 70 amps off a 100A panel.  Don't start the washer or the dryer

I used to work in liability and risk management.  The majority of homeowners' policies do not cover commercial endeavors used at home.  So if you install a car lift in your home garage it would not be covered.  ASIC miners would be considered a commercial endeavor since it expressly generates revenue.  To have it covered you would need to get a rider policy.

This was a grey area with GPU mining since GPUs were not tasked for this, but with ASICs unless you want to try to blatantly lie to the insurance company most people would have to get a rider policy.

Philip...is this what you are doing (20 S3)? I am impressed.

  along that note.  if you use an atx psu like an evga  you should be good.  if you use the dell server psu's I would worry due to exposed wires.

The s-3's are not a short hazard   the s-1's are a short hazard.

an atx psu is not a short hazard  the dell/hp servers are a short hazard.

Home mining is going to have spot gear on a solo pool like  bitsolo.net  .  Spot miners like s-3's where heat is needed.

 Home miners with 15btc worth of miners (s-3's) in a garage  hashing 9.5 th at  7320 watts will stop. 
Since the home miners having power cheap enough will limit that type of use quite a bit.

This kind of thing should be covered by the policy of the homeowner who has the miner in their home.  As long as they don't intentionally set the miner on fire, and as long as it's not considered to be foolishly dangerous (e.g., you know there's a like a 90% chance it will burn your house down), it should be covered.

I think home mining will never collapse. it will morph as people adapt to change.

There's no guarantee that today's valuable BTC won't be worth peanuts again.  

Honestly, who actually buys BTC to then use them to make a purchase... other than to purchase BTC miners? Miners actually spend their BTC and keep the market healthy. What happens to the BTC market when there are no home miners left?

The "buy and hodlers" do just that... buy and hodl. Whereas miners actually aren't so precious with their stash. I truly believe that the collapse of home mining will be the cause of BTC's (and most alt-coin's) demise.

The simple way to approach both the 'mine for btc for miners' camp, and the 'buy btc and hold' camp, is to do both. Miners need to put away a small percentage of BTC mined into cold storage wallets. No matter what new and improved ASICs you use, eventually they will be worthless, and eventually you will decide to move on from mining, may not be this year, but it will happen eventually. But what is a guarantee is that if you have some BTC put away in cold storage, it will make all of this worth your time in a few years time.

Or else you will be like those miners in 2010 - 2013 who blew hundreds, sometimes thousands of BTC on bullshit because it was only worth peanuts back then.

Save some of it. Blow the rest on more miners.

While Antminers aren't known to catch fire, be careful with extending out your liability to other people's homes.  It's one thing to mine in your own house and keep an eye on your equipment.  It's another to have somebody else's home go up in flames due to a power supply failure - and that probably won't be covered by the homeowner policy.

yeah spot mining at home with a power discount will work.

 figure ways that the heat works for you not against you.

 make deals with people that have access to low power costs.   >>>>  big upside if you find them.. 

I have the one spot 14 cent power is discounted 84% down to 2.24 cents.

  I must not run more then 800 watts.
  I  must make the gear quiet.
 There are places that  s-3's will pay to run.
 I know of 2 developments near my home in Howell NJ that use electric power to heat their home. 

 Old school  baseboard heat  heating bills are 300 a month in small 4 room homes.
 I am attempting to have s-3's mining in one or two of these homes.  This could make nice money for me and the home owner's that I recruit.

Well you're obviously the exception to the rule. Maybe the OP was overstating it by saying it's "impossible". But the sentiment is still true for 99% of us.

you are assuming quite a bit saying a dragon will not do roi in btc.  it could.   you have no idea of power cost for someone.  put in 1th with 0 power cost  it will get a lot of coins.
also there is a power wall for asics.  and it will be reached when it is reached growth will slow to a crawl.

if power wall is .2 watts diff will max near 600g   since no one could earn money  even with 8 cents a watt.

and if the power wall is .35 watts diff maxes near 400g at 8 cents

so at a diff of 600g and free power the dragon keeps earning money.

So free power people with smaller rigs will never disappear.

 I made roi with s-1's purchased in may

3 for 1.15 btc     how did i do it.  power at an 84 % discount.  14 cents a kwatt  cost me   under 2.5 cents.   So I will never be fully pushed out of mining due to my power discount.

If BTC doubles in price, people who bought 10BTC a couple of months ago will be laughing at the people who bought miners since they could cash out of they wanted to while the miners are waiting on a trickle of mining income.

Let me throw one thing out there..

If the price skyrockets to 10k, you will be pounding out $ per day.

"OH BUT SPAZZDLA EVERYONE WILL JUST BUY MINERS AND IT WILL KILL THE PROFIT!!"

Oh and where will they get all of these miners?  BFL? KNC? ... Bitmain and Rockminers won't be able to fill all the orders they will get.



This is where mining really pays off when you buy a machine and the price jumps in the next little bit. Also that obsolete machine becomes useful again..

Add to that list the early Bitfury rigs. I've made a buttload of coins from my 4 strange, yet wonderful Bitfury rigs. And they're still as energy efficient as many of the newest ASICs.

The voice of reason at last!

Yes, there is some slim, outside chance that an S3 will earn more BTC than it costs. It is very unlikely though. And most thoughtful investors would stay far, far away from such an investment.

These discussions usually devolve into this kind of argument. It all depends on your assumptions you make. And while you can claim to want to exclude the BTC/dollar (yes USA centric), you can entirely the reason you can't is that I am not aware of a single electric company that will quote you a stable rate in BTC, it's always in dollar. You then have to make assumptions about the difficulty increases, or decreases along the way. Finally you have to make an assumption about the residual value of the mining hardware. It quite easy to pick values that show a profit (in BTC), and those that show a loss (in BTC). All of you can be right, and all can be wrong, all at the same time.

If I assume 20% difficulty jumps, and pay $.50/Kwh, and zero residual value, then I lose for sure. If I assume 2% jumps, $.05/KWh, and 50% residual (in BTC), then profit is assured. Neither of these set of assumptions match my reality, and don't likely match your either. Both however are possible, although not likely.

No it isn't.  I can read quite well thank you.  Perhaps one day you will join us, but I fear not.
Instead of trying (badly at that) to insult me, why don't you point out for me a single thing that I've said that is incorrect.

That is all.

This thread is not about any of those devices and what you can/cannot do with them.  It is about the S3.  If you would like I can run the math with the specific cost of an S3 and show the same result, which will reach the same conclusion.  Profit with an S3 is NOT impossible.  That is what the OP stated as if it were fact, that is what is wrong, that is what the focus should be on.

Learn to read.  That is all.

LOL...I'm afraid you are confusing me with ummm....YOU.  There is nothing wrong my any of my math.  If you can't understand it I suggest you find a tutor.  Maybe they can help with your anger management as well.

The very nature of this thread is antagonistic.  What I am addressing is the inaccuracy of the fundamental thought being portrayed here, that profiting from the purchase of an S3 is "impossible".  It is NOT impossible.  I have simply tried to show the flaws, where I see them, in some of the things people, yourself included, have posted in the thread.
If you would like to take some specific piece of information and warp it until it fits your belief that's fine with me but please do not include hard math in your emotional outbursts.  It is shining a light on you that is very unflattering.

So you're finding the magical miner that makes more BTC than it's initial outlay.  Not one BFL device did that.  Not one Cointerra.  Not one Hashfast.  Not one Black Arrow.  None of the Avalon B3s.

THe first 2 Avalons, the first KNC Jups, and the first S1s did this.

Dragon, Rockminer, SP30s won't.

Good luck.

The post I quoted was specifically talking about a scenario where you  pay 0.75BTC for a miner, having it mine 0.375BTC, and somehow that is still a profit.  So basically, not only can you not do math, you can't read either. 
No wonder people think miners are stupid, they have to deal with ignorance like this all the time.

I thin it's YOU who is trolling...

BTC @ $600(USD) I Buy 1 coin
BTC @ $600(USD) I buy mining equipment for 1 coin

BTC @ $550(USD) My one coin is worth $550
BTC @ $550(USD) My mined amount can go OVER $550 because I can mine 1+BTC with it.

Are you so obtuse or ignorant that you cannot understand something this simple?

There's a hidden variable here though.   If 1000 or 10000 people decide the same thing (purchase BTC direct rather than mine it), then the
additional purchase pressure makes the exchange rate less likely to go down. (and more likely, up)

The attractiveness of mining now is partly getting BTC from the pool of newly minted coin every day, rather than on an exchange, where
you are opening yourself up to unknown fraud potential, KYC rules, and possibly enriching an early adopter by purchasing their old coin,
or otherwise contributing to the demand side.   

The thing that baffles me though is that the upside is completely capped by the size of the initial investment.   Because of rising difficulty,
all mining investments become trickle income in a few months.   It's like congratulating yourself for buying a share in Apple at $100 (pre
split) and watching it grow to $700.    You only realize the $600 profit if you sell it, and you only have one to sell.   Once that's done, you're
out of the game.   People who purchased a miner and used it for a few months are partial BTC owners, they are not on the path to
the "new wealthy elite".    The logical thing at that point is to turn off that miner and move on.   It is not logical to decide that they need to
10x the size of their initial investment just to stay in the game.

Once the initial miners decide to get out, the hardware will go on the open market at blow out prices, there will be purchasers for those
who will make new ROI decisions on old hardware at trickle income rates. 

Purchase miner for 0.75BTC.  Mine 0.375BTC.  BTC goes down to say $100.  You have 0.375BTC worth $37.50.
Don't purchase miner, keep the .75BTC.  BTC goes down to say $100.  You have 0.75BTC worth $75.00.

No matter what happens with the exchange rate of BTC or whether it goes up or down, 0.75BTC is always more than 0.375. 
At this point I simply refuse to believe that anyone can be this obtuse or ignorant.  You must be trolling. 

No, I didn't see that when I replied.  I was speaking strictly in terms of what makes you the most money.  If you enjoy mining then of course you might purchase a miner even knowing that it will lose you money/

What if the coin goes DOWN?

Can you profit buying the coin (shorting BTC is very difficult from what I understand) if the exchange rate drops?  A miner can.

Did you see the part where I said, "However, it is certainly true that you could skip the whole mining process and simply buy 0.75 BTC instead.  But that's less fun."?  (Although I will grant you that I added this to my original comment a minute or two after I posted the first part, so you may not have seen it before you started writing your comment.)

I like my BTC toys.

Save you the trouble, buy the 0.75 BTC with $450 and then sell it when it hit $1200. You now have $900.

I don't know how easier to explain it to you.  .75BTC is .75BTC, it makes no difference whether you bought it on an exchange, "converted" it as you say, mined it, stole it, scammed it from someone in the lending section, whatever.  If you purchase this miner for .75BTC and then it mines .375BTC, you just lost .375BTC.  Meanwhile, the person who didn't purchase this miner still has .75BTC.  BTC increasing to $1200 has nothing to do with it you lost 0.375BTC.  If you absolutely insist on thinking in terms of dollars, than the person who didn't purchase the miner now has $900.  You should have $900 too but because you bought the miner instead of keeping the .75BTC, you now only have $450.  You didn't break even.  You mined $450 worth of bitcoin but spent $900 worth of bitcoin to get it. 

I'm not going to keep beating a dead horse.  If you can't understand the simple, intuitively obvious concept that 0.75BTC is always more than 0.375BTC no matter what the fiat exchange rate is, than I don't really know what else to say on the matter.

If you just buy with BTC, then yes.  But if you buy with converted fiat, it would be a lot easier to make a profit.  For example, if the USD exchange rate is 600 right now, you could buy a 0.75 BTC miner for $450.  If BTC goes up to $1200 each, then you only need to mine 0.375 BTC to break even in fiat terms (ignoring potential power supply and power costs).

However, it is certainly true that you could skip the whole mining process and simply buy 0.75 BTC instead.  But that's less fun.

Why do people keep saying this?  What does the exchange ratio have to do with it?  If you purchase a device for .75BTC it either mines more than .75BTC or it mines less than .75BTC.  If it ends up mining less than .75BTC you lost money, regardless of the relative exchange rates.  This should be intuitively obvious. 

All that calculators are for them who will withdraw their just-mined coins and axchange it to "usual money". You missed that BTC exchange ratio should and will inevitably grow. That's all.  

If you keep them and mine with them, yes.

I don't know if it's still true or not, but people used to offer above the already bloated retail value to buy ASICs "in hand".

and most people talking about mining with their ASICs aren't people that have been on this board for more than a year or two

Really mining should only be a small portion of your investment if you are really bullish.  I use mining to hedge, really.  And it makes the MOST sense to get into mining now for that reason because we are getting to the top end of what is possible with current hardware.  A few terrahashes never hurt nobody!

You got that right! The more I learn about BTC the less I know!

conundrum

Searing

Ummm, haven't we learned anything in bitcoin mining? Never say never.

The diff adjustment this next block will be 2%. In 2 months at that rate you break even.

yep all newbies buy equip ....(heh me to) I got a knc jupter july 1st 2013 had no problem with 7131.80 usd for the miner..shoulda just got btc instead heh
got 50 btc out of the jupiter eol likely woulda had like 80 if just got btc

a newbie tradition heh

Searing

As I stated in a more round-about fashion, comparing strictly in terms of BTC, making a profit would be difficult.  So we agree there.  But how is gaining more fiat not making a profit?

Google your right. Please accept my most sincere apology. Potential miners....please be advised I am known to ingest copious amounts of alcohol and cannot be trusted.

Ig

iglasses, don't be an asshole.  You know these threads only exist to stop future miners from raising the difficulty so we can have more BTC for ourselves.  WHY YOU GOTTA RUIN A GOOD THING BRO?

Here is why I disagree...

round one
@ 18g
495Ghs
.1656 (.0138 per day)

round two
15% increase to 20.7
.144 (.0120 per day)

round three
15% increase to 23.8
.126 (.0105 per day)

round four
15% increase to 27.4
.1092 (.0091 per day)

round five
15% increase to 31.6
.0948 (.0079 per day)

round six
15% increase to 36.4
.0816 (.0068 per day)

round seven
15% increase to 41.86
.072 (.0060 per day)

.7932 after 84 days (2.8 months)


If you look at the last ten difficulty increases they average out to 16%.  If you add the next one which is likely to be 7-8% it comes down to an average increase of 15%.  The numbers above do not account for any hosting or electricity costs but for some of us these numbers do not exist.  If I can break even in the amount of time above and then continue to run the miners for an additional 2-3 months and then liquidate it for ten cents on the dollar (.075BTC) why the hell would I NOT want to do it?

That's not really making a profit.  That's gaining more fiat based on the exchange rate.

You need to compare how much BTC the miner costs currently as opposed to how much the miner can mine during it's useful life.  Almost every miner will currently return a loss.

You should consider the profit in btc instead of USD, as you could simply buy bitcoin now with your USD, expecting bitcoin price to be much higher.

As long as BTC goes up, you can certainly make a profit.  You just have to buy with fiat (i.e., either convert fiat to BTC and buy antminers, or buy antminers and then buy back the BTC with fiat).  If you just buy with BTC you already have, it will be difficult.

Nope...you pretty much hit the nail on the head.  Even here in the states the likelihood of recovering your initial investment in hardware is slim to none.  Plus, your also assuming 100% uptime.  Rig's quit unexpectedly for a variety of reasons:
1.) Hardware issue(s) (failed fans, etc.)
2.) Internet connection lost
3.) Pool(s) going down (this can be largely mitigated by having secondary and tertiary pools but you still lose some hash power switching pools)

All and all mining isn't even a 0 sum game at this point.  It's a guaranteed loss!

they are selling crazy, batch 3 already!

Many people can work calculators..

 They saw big run ups  feb 2013- Apr 2013.. Then Sept 2013 - Dec 2013…

  SO they say  640 now will go to 2000 or 3000 maybe 5000.

I think even some  asic builders fall into that type thinking.

 

Agreed that projections beyond 3 months are meaningless.  Because nobody knows the true pipeline and capabilities of the whole ASIC scene.  If people are ordering stuff more than 3 months ahead of time they are brave.

S3 and Neptune owners are being given a gift right now.  It looks right now like there will be minimal increase.  Then again BTCG, Bitminter and GHash have all had below average luck for the last few days.  I don't know about DF.  The thing I wonder is when those AM chips start getting put into use.

1.5 years ago I predicted that the difficulty would not pass 1 billion.  Obviously I did not see BTC going to $1200 and didn't think people would preorder so much that they would lose money.  I thought everybody buying miners would be able to work a calculator.   How people still manage to place orders with BFL is mindblowing.  So I was way off.  People will do things that I cannot understand.  So now, given people's current fervor and the recent rise in the price, I can see more orders being placed.  People have just thrown caution to the wind.

Shipping 5 days before the end of Q2 is not really what most Neptune users were expecting.  They were expecting KNC's own farm to exceed 5%.  When they said Q1/Q2, most were thinking March, April, possibly May if bad, June worst case scenario.

It appears also that they didn't complete out their Batch 1 deliveries as promised.

How is this for a reason: If you don't mine, than your bitcoin is potentially worth nothing because someone might vote to change it in a way that you don't like.

everyone who has bitcoin should mine, but how much?

Easy to calculate:

M (minimal mining in Th/s)=F X P
where F is a a fraction that your bitcoin represents in 21000000
P-is the power of network in Th (currently ~120000)

F=Y/B
Y-bitcoins that you have
B=21000000

So, if you have 100 BTC, you need to mine (or hire someone to mine for you) at M=100/21000000 X 120000=0.57Th/s=570Gh/s
I is probably better to be ahead (mine more than minimal)
Essentially, if you have less than 30BTC, one antminer S1 or equivalent is OK
at 100BTC-3-4 antminers S1 or one antminer S1 and one antminer S3 is enough

Last difficulty increase was an overshoot. Manufacturers producing new hardware that was added to the network. All those miners are getting ready to ship out now. The miners will stay in transit or about 5- 7days so hashrate will sort of drop from that. When that hashrate is sold, it only changes hands and the network difficulty is unaffected. We are currently at a 0% increase for this cycle and there will be many more less than 10% increases coming soon.

Anyone who tries to predict difficulty outside of 3 months is always way off. If you used one of those mining calculators earlier this year it would have said we should be over 100 billion difficulty by now. Do I really need to screenshot one of these predictions so we can come back to it later?

In long terms, it will pay off. I'm not saying that each BTC will be worth $1 million but it could be more than  couple grand.

Btc roi is really soooo hard to do.  I no longer make bets   but I would think that   to get a s-3 to return its cost of .75btc is not going to happen for most of us.

 USD roi is always possible.  Now many say but if you purchased the 0.75btc and held it   1 year later that was a better profit. 

Yes it is true that buying low and selling high may make more money.  But I am a USA guy I follow USA rules.
 Buying coins and holding them is passive investing as per USA tax law.
 Buying a miner mining with it and then selling it on ebay  involves up to three types of tax rules.

 1) mining which is an active business
2) resale on ebay I have an active ebay store
3) holding the mined coins  .  which is about the same as buy and hold tax law wise.

Many forum members are fully underground.  So they have different condtitions to consider then me.

@DrG, KNC was just on time actually (Q1 or Q2).

Building up a hoard of aluminum, as long as I break even I will become a billionaire from all this aluminum, just watch me!

S1 owners like phillip (see above) took a chance and got lucky due to KNC, BFL, BA and others delivering late.  I have free electricity and I was still skeptical about ROI.  Considering all that late stuff is now delivering, I'll make a 1BTC bet with you that your S3 won't ROI it's BTC costs.  With the 25% jump this last period it's going to get nasty pretty quick.

It isn't and every one of you posting this is wrong.

I have bought batch one S3's
I will profit with them
If you can't I don't really know what to say.

so i have 3 s-1's   i made about 100 usd on them.  they are undervolted-clocked   420 gh  560 watts.


if i sell them on ebay  for 500 as a set of three . it is the best price anyone sells a 3 pack for.

some buyer grabs them and is happy for the good price. as he has free power.

i  take the 500 usd and buy an s-3..  win win for all

That....doesn't make sense.  478Gh/s at 360 watts is either profitable for you or it isn't.    Having other devices mining as well doesn't contribute to the ROI of THIS device anymore than finding a hundred dollar bill laying on the ground does.

I think partially you have to take into consideration that miners might be upgrading their equipment (swapping out S1's for S3's) as part of a larger farm contributing to more TH/s to maintain the increase in difficulty and driving down GH/s per watt for a farm.  I would agree that a single S3 is not going to get you to profitability unless you have a farm that already paid for itself mining in contribution for ROI towards the purchase price for it.

The miners today aren't powerful enough to get ahead of the difficulty at a low enough price per gh/s to make a return. You need like 6TH/s at 1000w for around $1200, which I don't see happening anytime soon.

the reason these miners are sold so quickly is because of new miners. Every new miner heard of the succes of the s1 and when they hear the new s3 is announced they immediately jump in. As you said, no rational miner will buy this.

A good calculator for mining:
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

Play with these inputs and you'll realize that it's almost impossible ever to break even.

I managed to make a profit of 0.65 BTC only by using some very strong assumptions:

Price = 0.75 BTC (I.e. no VAT/customs, free PSU)
Electricity only $0.10/kWh
Only 10% difficulty increment

It implies that no EU resident will ever be able to make a profit. If you live in some parts of the US, you might profit marginally, but not worthwhile given the risk of hardware failure.

May someone explain their rationale for investing in Antminer S3? Maybe something I missed?