Topic: ANTMINER S4 2TH/s, Batch 1 on Sale this week, shipping before Sept. Ends - page 9. (Read 33477 times)

1450 USD? No way.. With the new difficulty level, you would make less than $300 a month. It would take 5 months for it to break even.

I am definitely hanging in there for the S2 upgrade kits... the only reason I haven't given up and ditched my units on ebay. I don't have very high hopes though after seeing what a joke the S1 upgrade kit price is compared to a new S3+. I was all set to buy ten of them until I calculated how much I would lose in hashing speed vs. lose in fiat with the upgrades. That's why I own the S3+'s now. S1 upgrades were not a responsible choice.

I was proud of being an Ant farm... now I cannot wait for the next developer to come along. My loyalty has been taken for granted and Bitmain is trying to stick it to everybody, first by driving up difficulty competing and then by their equipment prices and customer standards. I know they are a business out to make money, but they shouldn't then also pretend to be our friend. This is a world of business, and they are simply practicing the hard and shady side of it.

My 0.02.

C'mon manufacturers. Gimme SOMETHING to spend my money on already.

-OCS

Bitmain wouldn't sell the S4 at $1450 if BTC value was much higher.  It'd still be much higher than it's competitors are charging, and history proves this.

Just look at when they first priced the S2 back in March for April launch:


This was already when A1s and Dragons were already selling similiar 1 TH/s miners in the low to mid $2000s.

This is nothing new.  This what you call a fuck job.

I am curious and anxiously awaiting to see what the S3+ B10 prices at. Our B8 and B9 units are working great.

I think BitMain honestly got a little screwed by the big price drop of Bitcoin, even with the paypal recovery it's not enough. They are in business to make money, which you can't fault them for. Smart business owners look to achieve the highest profit margins based on supply and demand, cost reduction, and other factors.

The fact that they are pricing the unit at 1450 is simply them saying they are more profitable for them to sell slowly, or sell at a lower price down the line, after mining BTC direct with the units in the meantime. You can't fault them for that.

Lastly, and perhaps the most important point to consider:  While I have no way of knowing what their actual profit margins are on these units, I have a feeling it's a fraction of the selling price. Consider their costs both fixed and variable; Fixed: Staff, Research and Development, Overhead (Rent, AC, Insurance, Interest, Technology), and then add the Variable costs:  Production cost per unit, materials, waste, shipping per unit, handling returns and repairs, etc.

So if on a 1450 unit (3.38BTC) their realized profit margin on X units sold at the end of the fiscal year is (Wildly guessing) $400, which is likely a higher number than they actually see, then what they are doing is making the right business move. Keep the unit for just 1 Month and mine .5 BTC and their unit margin for profit is now $612 provided they can still get $1450 point of sale for the unit.

Makes business sense to me. Can't fault them for that.

Strato

What about holding out to see what the S2 Upgrade kit looks like?

The experience that you and many others have had with S2s is a reason why I will never buy a batch 1 product from any manufacturer.  I'd rather let impatient people be the testers and I'll wait for price to come down and see how they are working for people before I buy.

2TH with four s3 would have costed 2.32 BTC ,,, Facepalm

I own three S2's (1THs) that run right at 550-720GHs poolside if rebooted twice a week. Otherwise less. One has a hashing board that dies after 5-6 hours (all x's) until it get s hard boot.

I had hoped to bump them out of service, replacing them with S4's. After seeing the initial release price, there's no way I can gamble another round. I got taken once. It won't happen again. Sorry, Bitmain. Not even close to being worth the risk. I see how you treated me on S2's and S3 Batch 1-4. Your customer relations are as shaky as your hardware.

(Full disclosure: I have ten S1's and two S3+'s and love every one of them. The S2's are just absolute dogs and S4 pricing is a farce.)

If they want them to sell, they need to get bitcoin back up to $1000 usd fast or sell them for 1.5 BTC and they can hold the bitcoins waiting for the price to increase 

That price is outrageous! Even with free electricity (and assuming a 15% ave diff increase) it will produce less than 2 bitcoins over its lifetime.  Thats right, wont even 50% ROI with free electricity.

I truly feel sorry for anyone dumb enough to buy this machine at those prices.

If you look at hashnest and how they integrated 2:1 the Antminer s1 into "UMISOO" or S2's you can see that these are going to be the upgrade for the S2's that people have been asking for.

People looking to get "new"software might want to look at the L1. Bitmain is holding the line here with this price, to me It feels like they would rather slow sales, and keep a margin, then price themselves out of a profitable business model.

Anyways, the S5 or whatever the next gen bitcoin miner that comes out from bitmain will say a lot more about the future and where this company is heading. This machine is clearly about the past, and making good on promises to the s2 holders.

If Bitcoin wasn't at $425 the ROI would be much better. That's the issue. Is that the unit is priced in USD but paid in BTC.

If Bitcoin was trading at $1000, the unit would cost 1.45 BTC and would be a no brainer.

But then again, if BTC was at $1000 they likely wouldn't be shipping these any time soon. 

Strato

Wow...it's like a big F U to the community that support them.

$1450 or 3.389 BTC is just ridiculously priced for October launch.

No ROI in sight for anyone.  Please community do not buy this, and enable the manufacturers to keep screwing you on outdated overpriced gear.

No hardware is close to ROI right now in the first place, but hate to say it, the AM Prisma is a way better buy.

If you're going to mine at all, do the right thing, and let your money do the talking.

Boycott this one, and order from a much fairer deal.  Order from Crazy Guy's group buy:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/closed-asicminer-prisma-14ths-147-btc-795477

The ad said S4 is 3U, and the rendering on the website seems to match that. S2 is 4U.

price is high will not be buying it...
I will go for the SP as I have PSUs and will enjoy the higher selling price for used unit afterwords...
its a pity that I waited

i found interesting results for S4 price (lead time first week of october, 1550$ total paid)

roi in 12 months with free power

mine + sell (weekly payout)         3.74 ฿         943.36 $
mine + hold (final payout)         3.74 ฿         943.38 $
฿ buy-in only (and hold)         3.74 ฿         1550 $

http://btcinvest.net/en/bitcoin-mining-profit-calculator.php?diff=29829733124&dcosts=1550&diff_mincrease=10&blpbtc=25&dhsmhs=2000000&diff_mincreasedecrease=1&btcusd=414.28&dpowcon=1400&btcusd_mincrease=0&pcost=0.05&calcweeks=32&dleadtime=2&action=calc

I did a calculation with a generous 15% difficulty and 2 TH/s output. At 100 days, an S4 will produce a little more than 2 BTC. This is before power costs (which in my case is free).

These units have to come down to under $1k, or BTC has to rally to something like $725 (getting the price per unit down to about 2 BTC) before these would make any sense.

Since neither event is likely to happen, I'm staying clear of the S4.

Some questions that will help
1/ What would be the total cost of 4 or 5 stock S3's INCLUDING PSUs
2/ Can the S4 be overclocked
3/ What is the power efficiency at the wall

Bitmain in the past has been the choice for the home miner, but this was just a plain and simple "Screw You". I guess I will be buying more Tubes going forward.

How many bitcoins do I need for an S4?



I'll go collect some now

I saw that and I was wondering why the s2's went away so fast. Even with their original problems and their power draw, it was a good machine. They shot out the S3 and that was the end of the 2's. Now I see that 4300+ S2's are tucked away in their own farm and they sent us the defective (well not to spec) S3's instead.

As I posted a day ago, I was concerned about the ROI on the S4 as I thought something like that was going to happen and sure enough, at $1450, it did! Someone then says that if I have to worry about ROI that I shouldn't be in mining!!! Guess what, looks like NO ONE should be now since at $1450, unless you get power for free and still care to waste your time and money to make what little scraps are left that these manufacturers let us have, it's not worth it anymore!

I'm getting power here in the states (Illinois) on average of 4.9 cents a KWH and it's still not worth it. As someone else posted, unless you have machines that are paid for, and a good amount of them, and can absorb the cost of the S4's into your running farm, that's the only way you have any shot at this price. These machines need to be at $999.00 each or less. I liked someone assessment of around $700.00. I mean, more money and research has gone into making TV's than could ever go into these miners and with the manufacturers subsidizing themselves with cloud mining as well as taking pre-orders and waiting a month to ship (which the whole time they are just using your machines to make the money mining with them and if you don't think they aren't then you're a fool! They get the absolute lowest cost per bitcoin as they are using todays difficulty on a machine that they not only SOLD to you at a PROFIT but are mining for FREE with it for a month and then sending it to you so you can use it to get what's left of the difficulty before the machine is no longer worth running or keeping anymore! Then you end up on their doorstep waiting like an idiot to buy the next thing (S4 which has been produced and running for over a month now and can easily be proven by looking at the huge increase in hashing out there in the last few weeks when Bitmain and more everyone else were not shipping much of anything to anyone!!!)) you would think that they could and would easily sell these new machines for far less than what they are. Every machine they sell as of this minute is probably close to 90% pure profit for them since they already made money on it mining with it and at a far lower difficulty than the new owners of the machine will ever get to enjoy. (Sorry for the redundancy but I hate companies that take advantage of people so blatantly)

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