Topic: ANTMINER S5: 1155GH(+OverClock Potential), In Stock $0.319/GH & 0.51W/GH - page 201. (Read 451039 times)

Bitcoin price goes up from $200->230: S5 price goes from $310 to $341         (~1.2->1.48BTC)
Bitcoin price goes from $230->$280: S5 price goes from $341 to $370           (~1.22->1.32 BTC)
Bitcoin price drops from $280->245: S5 price stays at $370                         (1.47 BTC)

seems they want to price in BTC but adjust the USD price manually. Not sure why they do that, as right now an SP20 is about the same 1.6BTC (shipped) which is pretty damn competitive for a cleanly-made, sealed unit with adjustable speed and fans

to answer these 3 questions:
1. it looks like the sp20, but it is really hard to know as a fact, since the S5 seems to use more efficient chips, but overall the case for the sp20 seems better.
The S5 has an S1 design, clearly the S3 design is better than S1 due to better airflow due to the case and due to having 2 fans instead of one, so I would assume that the S1 design for the S5 was chosen to save money and not because it was better, otherwise the S5 would have been based on the S3 and not the S1.
I am not talking about the chips, since it is clear that in each release they are better.

2. I believe they make a good profit at the low price, they probably figure since the BTC price went up, they can make more money by mining themselves or by having a larger margin of profit even if sales drop.
There is a common concept of making a miner barely ROI to maximize its profit, the old concept of how much useful it is for you  it is how much it is worth, most asic vendors operate this way, but there is another business concept if it costs X to produce regardless of your benefit it will sell for a small margin of profit as was the case for CPU and GPU miners of the time, as such most high end video cards where always sold out during the early days of bitcoin.

I am certain that as mining becomes less profitable they will reduce the price, proving that the cost to make the miner it is very little compared to the price it sells, not because of all the sudden the miner has lower manufacturing costs.

Of course if the miner did not ROI, sales for them would be very bad, but as long as they can make the money mining it is not a problem for them.

As a rule Bitmain sells the miners in such a way that they will barely ROI. It has nothing to do with the bitcoin price since the hardware cost of the miner which most likely it is in Fiat is well below the sale price, so if bitcoin goes up the price of the miner goes up, if bitcoin goes down the price of the miner goes down taking into consideration the difficulty, if difficulty goes down price of miner goes up, if difficulty goes up price goes down, always making the miner barely ROI.

This is a case of greed, since instead of letting their customers enjoy the quicker ROI, the very low ROI is kept constant so you will always barely ROI, it is not like if Bitcoin goes up in price and then the miner cost more to produce, that is not the case, the fact is that the if Bitcoin goes up in price the price of the miner in Bitcoins goes down since it is sold in dollars, and as such you would have to generate less coins to achieve ROI.
No one will think that if Bitcoin goes up Bitmain will no longer make profit at existing price, the profit for them will be the same, since the cost of making the miner is the same, simply they figure they can get more for the miner.

it is not that they barely ROI due to market conditions, or because of hardware costs, or the price of bitcoin, they barely ROI because it is their business model.

An example of extreme greed is knc, they promised  a lot and never delivered, they got the money from customers, lied to them, and once they had the money they build a mining farm for themselves figuring out it was more profitable than shipping the miners to their customers, once they have new tech, they ship the old technology to their customers and very late,  so knc basically mine with their customers hardware.

Bitmain is far from being like knc, but the price increase is clearly an indication of greed, we have enough greedy hardware vendors that is the least that we need.

 
3. as long as there is a profit  in making the miner it is sustainable to sell the miner until there is much better technology in which it does not make sense to make the miner anymore, for example today no one would buy a miner that uses 5 wats per GH/s but from the time they were first released they probably had a life of sales of 1.5 years, and greedy vendors took over a year to ship (bfl).

The way mining hardware should be sold in my opinion, not that it is currently sold this way:
1. vendors of asic hardware should not mine themselves it creates a conflict of interest.
2. hardware should be sold like any other hardware, such a video cards, etc, this model was proven to work, as an example this was the case in the GPU days. No video card vendor would say you will make so much mining and therefore the video card will cost more, some individuals did this, but not the hardware manufactures.
The way asic is sold today it is based on your ROI, so the hardware could cost 10 times less, but if ROI is good you pay a premium.
Ironically the best mining days were the GPU days, it was a fair playing field and hardware costs were not based on ROI.

For choosing mining hardware, the hardware that can ROI the quicker is better, and reliability of the vendor is very important, bitmain if they decide to make it hard to ROI for us it is their decision,  then it is no good for us, if they wanted us to ROI they certainty could, as of now it appears that spoondolies is more willing to help us ROI, of course as I write this things could change.

if it was not because of the sp20 the S5 would cost a lot more, the opposite is also true if it was not because of the S5 the sp20 would most likely cost a lot more. The miners are not sold based on their costs they are sold based on how much they can ROI, which is wrong especially when it becomes obvious due to greed, also competition is a good thing, and right now there is very little competition.


As an example of this greed I will use bottled water vendors during an earthquake.
in the Asic vendors model.
bottled water becomes a very valuable asset as such it is sold for very high prices, a $1 bottle can be sold for $20 or more since it could save your life and it will sell at high prices, high profits are achieved due to people willing to pay a lot for a product, high volume of sales are not needed, this is a case of greed.

in the case of the traditional hardware sales model like video cards:
water is sold at the same price and it sells out due to high demand, high profit are achieved due to the high volume of sales but not based on greed.

Telephone companies in the old days tried unsuccessfully to implement the concept the more  advantage you take of the phone lines the more you should pay, however most people realized that if they were not doing anything special for modems to work there was no reason they should make additional payments to use a modem which they did not provide or did anything special to make it work, and as such their plans to charge more for the use of modems failed.

In the case of the ASICs the less greedy vendors will survive in the end, today no one talks of bfl cointerra, fast hash, or knc this guys were very greedy and they lost the trust of the community.

today we only have spoondoolies and bitmain, and it is a very bad thing is one of this vendors becomes greedy.
no other hardware vendor makes miners that even have a very small chance of ROI.

I am personally planning to buy some mining hardware around march, I will check how things stand by then, but if I had to buy today the clear choice based on ROI is the sp20.

She's most likely the one answering the emails as the english is good. By what method did you pay?

I suggest you send a PM to Bitmain_Janet. She seems to be the magic person that correct situations like this.

Are the support staff very thick or do they just play the act very well??? Or do they not understand English?

I contacted BitmainTech by email about them changing the price at the time I was purchasing.

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My email to them...

I am not happy with your company for changing the price as I made an order. That is the wrong thing to do and misleads the customer. I added the product to the Cart and it was US$341 but when I payed it changed to US$370. If you are going to change prices you should delete the old product listing and create a new one, not edit the product listing that people are currently purchasing from.

I would like a refund of the difference because it was very deceitful on your part. I worked it out to be 0.097 BTC extra that I payed because of your editing.

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Reply from info@bitmaintech

Hi,
sorry for the confusion.
price will be adjusted from time to time due to marketing policies.
When you place the order, the price in our website should be followed.
Thanks for your understanding.

Best Regards

BITMAIN

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My reply back

You changed the price as I processed the order... This is how the events happened.

1 - I opened the product page for the S5, It had the price of US$341
2 - I added the product to my cart, the price displayed was US$341
3 - I went to the checkout to choose shipping and confirm while the whole time it showed US$341
4 - After I had confirmed the order the price magically changed to $370

Why should I have to be understanding? The price changed while I made the order. Like I have said, the price was US$341 until i got to the payment screen. Because of this I did not notice the changed price. This was very deceitful.

Like I said before, you should not be editing existing product listings. If you want to change the price, you should be deleting the listing with the old price and creating a new listing with the updated price.

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Reply from info@bitmaintech

Hi,
The product in the cart cannot show the latest info after we update it.
Suggest you add it to cart when placing the order, then you'll get the correct info.
We'll consider your suggestion in future.

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I can assure you that it DID change. Could someone from BitmainTech actually take this seriously instead of trying to sidestep this.

Yes, we should have freedom of speech.  Everyone has a right to voice their opinion while remaining civil.

My power costs are 7.3 cents per kWH.  Attaining my ROI will be done within a 6 month time frame rather than 5 month time frame because of the price of bitcoin decreasing the way it has.  

Example:  16 S5's @ $420.00 each = $6,720.00
                8 1800 EVGA PSU's @ $170.00 each = $1,360.00
Total:  $8,080.00

.2256 BTC mined daily with 18.5 TH/s on CKPool x 30.416667 days each month = 6.86200008 BTC in one month.

6.86200008 BTC x $257.00 per BTC = $1,763.53

power costs @ 7.3 cents per kWH:

Cost Per Hour:   $0.803000
Cost Per Day:   $19.272000
Cost Per Week:   $134.904
Cost Per Month:   $539.62
Cost Per Year:   $7,015.01

BTC mined per day on average at present difficulty:  .2256 x $260.00 per bitcoin = $58.65 daily - $19.27 power costs daily = $39.38 daily before taxes.

$8,080.00 divided by $39.38 daily after power = 205 days (almost 7 months at present price of bitcoin).

Will bitcoin remain at present price?  I doubt it...

If the price of bitcoin increased 20% in one month and the difficulty increased 10% in the same month; one can subtract approximately 10% of the number of days from their ROI.

Example: 205 day ROI x 10% = 20.5 days [subtract 20.5 from 205] = 184.5 days remaining till ROI is met.

Example: Started with 205 days; 30 days past and 175 days remain; The price increased 20% and diff increasing 10% which resulted in subtracting 10% (17.5 days) from the remaining 175 days to leave left over 157.5 days.

If the next month the price of bitcoin increased 5% and the difficulty increased 15%; one must add approximately 10% of the number of days on to the remaining days.

Example:  157.5 days minus 30 days that passed = 127.5 days; 10% of 127.5 days = 12.75 days that I must add to 127.5 days = 140.25 days remaining to ROI after beginning with 205 days two months prior.

If the next month [3rd month] the price increased 20% and the difficulty increased 18%; then 2% in number of days would be subtracted from our next ROI days remaining.

Example:  140.25 days minus 31 days that passed = 109.25 days; 2% of 109.25 days = 2.2 days; I need to subtract 2.2 days from 109.25 days for a total of 107.00 days roughly.

These examples are assuming we waited till the end of each month to consider difficulty and price of bitcoin at payout (converting bitcoin to fiat).  Does this mean one must convert their bitcoin to fiat to have a return on investment?  No it does not.  Money earned is money earned; weather it was in bitcoin or fiat or a combination of the two.

The previous example is the formula I use to determine when I've reached ROI.  It is a general estimation and not completely accurate but it is close enough for me to determine when I have reached ROI.

EDIT:  Bottom line; the drop in price of bitcoin below $300.00 has hurt many of us.  Once it gets to $300.00 and above the better off most miners will be.  The present price in bitcoin is the main reason why we see the difficulty dropping off rapidly as well.  We have many miners who have not upgraded to more efficient rigs stop mining because their power costs are more than 10 to 11 cents per kWH with power hungry rigs.

Currently the only point of comparison is the SP20. So consider these 3 questions for a second.

1) Which miner looks like it costs more to manufacture?
2) If Bitmain is not willing to sell at such a low price consistently, is there a reason for that?
3) How sustainable is the more expensive to make miner in the long run?

I purchased 2 hosted from Lee today (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/lee-group1980-the-sales-of-first-batch-hosted-antminer-s7psu-included-934581 ) at the 340 btc price, very quick response to PM and miners were hashing to my pool settings very quickly ( and yes I am out of space and power, thus why the need for hosting).

Very pleased so far, Thanks philipma1957 for the link and your recommendation was an influence in my decision.

True, however just as bitcoin is financial freedom, let members of this site express freedom of speech it is very useful for newbies and everyone in general, if it was not for freedom of speech newbies would be getting burned badly by knc, bfl, cointerra, fasf hash, and such.

I think it is a good to express ones thought on this issue since it will motivate bitmain not to be so greedy  and motivate honestly, look at knc when they were becoming scammers a lot of people said do not criticize them they are the best we have, at the time it was true but valid critics prevented many from getting burned or not getting burned as much, same for bfl.

it is not like we have lots of choices for buying mining equipment, right now from 2 vendors we have been reduced to only 1, unless of course bitmain realizes to scam miners like the bad guys is bad for business and decides to remain one of the good guys, then we have 2 vendors to choose from.

Remember a miner must ROI, if it does not ROI it can not be considered for purchase, the concept of barely ROI is not a good one, it shoudl ROI in a decent way.

Everyone should have the right to express themselves as long as it is related to the topic, it is in everyone's best interest, I have always been against censorship on any type.

It is true that bitmain is free to raise the prices to whatever they like, and it is also true for us to voice our opinion  that it is no longer a good business decision for us.

it is a simple matter of math, if the high price is good or not, I will provide a link to a ROI calculator, I can assure you based on the link below that it is overpriced, and could take  up to a year to ROI for someone with low electric rates, which is not acceptable.

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator
based on the calculator make your decision.

As of now sp20 is a much better choice by the simple fact that it costs a lot less and you get much better GH/s per BTC, the S5 could be a better choice if the price was right but it is not.

believe me it is in our best interest to have freedom of speech and to have 2 vendors to choose from instead of one when deciding to buy mining hardware, but if one vendor decides that instead of selling the hardware it is better for him to mine with it, it is his choice, and of course we can voice our opinion and support the vendor that helps us achieve ROI sooner than later, sometimes later never comes as the time to ROI  is infinity.

Bitmain has been an honest vendor in regards to shipping on time, but does not help us if we will not ROI due to greed, in 6 months from now an S5 will be under $200, but it will be because there is something better out there  and cheaper not an act of goodwill.

This valid critics are very useful  to help in the decentralization of mining, we really do not want large mining farms own by the vendor of mining hardware it is not in our interest, in the old days of independent miners the miners kept their coins, now non independent miners which have most of the hash power sells the coins as soon as they can making the price of BTC go down, this did not happen in the early days of bitcoin, we really need the independent miners back, it will help decentralize mining.
In the bitcoin world decentralization is your friend.

Lets do not forget mining is an essential part of the bitcoin economy.

I'm not surprised at all at the rise in price.  I would have raised the price if I were in Bitmain's situation as well.  Most everyone is in the business of bitcoin to make a profit; not to make donations.  This goes for Bitmaintech as well.  The price of these rigs are pegged pretty much with the average miner meeting ROI in 5 months time on average.  It depends on your power costs.  That's why I said, "...on average."

Look at the price of the S1 when it first came out and what the price of bitcoin was at the time it came out.  You will notice then as well that the price was set pretty much for ROI at 5 months on average for most people.

Bitmain did lower the price at least 3 times since the introduction of the S5.  They had the customer in mind when they discounted it as the price of bitcoin dropped.  It is times like this when one needs to buy.  However, it looks like many here did not have the funds available to purchase at the time or may have been unsure about the price of bitcoin and weather to continue mining.  For whatever reason one did not buy, it is not Bitmaintech's fault for people not taking advantage of the price when it was lower.  We had our chance and those who missed it should not blame Bitmaintech or label them as greedy.

We are fortunate enough to have a manufacturer who will sell to the small timer.  We should actually be grateful!!!  They have the most power efficient model on the planet and it's still at an affordable price.  They have a right to raise or lower their price as they wish because they are in a position to do so.  They did not get into this business to make donations.  They got into this business to make as much profit as possible.  Hell, if I were Bitmaintech, I would have done the same thing more than likely.  

Those who want to hold grudges and create labels can do so.  Are those grudges and labels going to hurt bitmaintech?  Probably very little.  Miners will still continue to buy their S5 as long as no other manufacturer offers a rig with the same price per GH and same .51 J/GH power efficiency at the wall.  Those who make the decision to buy a less efficient rig for the same price will ultimately pay more over the long run because of paying more in power costs.  They will also be unable to increase their total hash rate because the less efficient rigs are sucking up more power to keep them from increasing their hash rate by adding more rigs.

This is the beauty of "competition."  I know I will buy bitmaintech units if their price and efficiency is better than the competition.  Otherwise, I'm only hurting myself; not bitmaintech.  So, those of you spouting off about no longer buying bitmaintech.  Be careful about what you say.  You just might eat your words later OR you just might pay more later and hurt yourself.  I would be grateful to have these units made available to me instead of biting the hand of the person that provides me with the most efficient rig on the planet at what is still a fair price.

I missed buying at the lower price because I'm waiting to save enough money for a bulk purchase of 52 units.  Will I have to wait a little longer now?  Sure, it appears I may have to wait a bit longer since the price of the bulk package has risen.  I will not be ready to purchase a bulk package until March/April anyway.  It may be that SPT has a rig out similar in efficiency and maybe also in price.  Only time will tell.

By the way, have you noticed the S4 is not up on the site anymore?  I believe an S6 is just around the corner with the same form factor as the S4.  So, this may very well be a blessing in disguise for those who want a very power efficient rig that will save them more costs in the long run and allow them to increase their total hash rate with what little power they may be limited to.

Be patient and let competition make it's course.  Bitmaintech has every right to raise or lower the price as they wish.  Be grateful you have a manufacturer to provide you with an outstanding rig and good customer service compared to most.

I noticed that all these suggested shipping time frames are mostly based on the USA and European areas and not down south. 
I am just hoping my arrives soon before the postal strikes start again. 

For what it's worth, ZoomHash is still at $325 + shipping. They accept PayPal and Credit Cards. They claim 5 days shipping in the USA.

What is all of the fuss? We have at least 2 vendors with good competing products. The market will force the vendors to be as competitive as they need to be or they will go out of business. Let the market forces work.

Oh, and "you snooze, you lose."

Bitmain: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

Nothing wrong with making money in your business, but when you start to get greedy is when you will find that your business fails to grow and fizzles out. Customers don't want to buy from a company that only cares about getting rich, they want to buy from a company that cares about it's customers.

This is not what Bitcoin needs.

For a moment I blinked and thought they incorporated the shipping fee. Not.

Like many others i was about to purchase more units this morning, but saw the price increase, about 60$ more per units, so Hell no, no more business from me, going to

to buy some SP 20s, instead, it`s the princible of things that matters.

Other options for getting an S5 variant for those upset about the price increase ..... https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/water-cooled-s5-group-buying-thread-936343
Also, just in case bitmain are reading this thread, can we have a price for ordering plain boards (does not matter whether S5 or S3 boards) just like syscooling seem to have?

I see what you are saying but compare them to the rest of the industry and they don't seem so greedy.  Bitmain, Spondoolies, and ASICminer (who has a lot of work to do to regain trust after the prisma debacle) are about the only manufacturers left who haven't told the small time miner to fuck off.  No, they are certainly not perfect but I feel for them as well.  It's easy to turn a profit and make everyone happy when BTC is 750$ and they can move thousands of S1s all day, but when investment starts to dry up, ROI gets tougher and tougher for the miner AND the ASIC manufacturer.  They have at least shown a commitment to continue offering something for the little guy. 

Will they ROI?  Unless you have cheap or free electricity, most likely not.  I stopped counting on ROI from ASICs a long time ago anyway.  The way you make money on ASICs as a home miner is through well timed purchases and resale on the 2nd hand market.  We can have the same discussion on the economics of the situation a thousand times, but at the end of the day Bitmain is still a business and it makes zero sense for a business to sell a money printing machine for $500 when they can keep it and print $600 with it themselves.

I'm not trying to throw bitcoin away buying insanely overpriced mining gear, but I won't bitch and moan too much as I don't want my only option to be a cloud mining contract that can be switched off on a whim.

Thanks for the tip! I just ordered one S5 on Zoomhash. I checked here and there if they were legit...seems ok.

I have to agree, have bought Bitmain in the past but this unfortunately shows their growth has taken them straight down the path of "Corporate Greed". What is sad is without all of our support they would have never been able to grow to the point they are. I am all about making a profit but don't balance your books by gouging the very people that brought you to success.