Topic: Bitmain Antminer S9 (Read 14017 times)

Thread locked refer to main thread.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493601.0;topicseen

You might want to consider locking this thread with an optional link to the S9 thread in the Hardware sub-forum.

The reason I started this thread was to find out people's opinions on the s9. At that point in time they hadn't been released. Thus the speculation section. Now the speculation is over.

no one is telling the OP to stop speculating or posting these types of threads. someone else came in here and was telling us that we dont know this and that so we must be wrong.....but it seems like you agree that the s9 isnt worth purchasing at the prices they are asking for it. but again no one is directing any harsh words towards the person that started this thread....

This is mining SPECULATION thread, so i don't see why OP should stop doing exactly that.
The fact that you think that argument was presented many times over does not mean that OP cannot express his opinion.
I see the current crop of miners (only one so far-S9) as being of interest mostly by their novelty, not the money/profit.

I wish that Bitmain and others were in more 'sharing' mood where they get their fair profit, but let others have such profit (in btc) as well, but it is clearly not the case for people with an average electricity cost. The demarcation was clearly with S7, as S5 was profitable in btc terms, probably because bitmain wanted to drive competitors out of business by going super low on price. This happened in the world of business many times over, so there is nothing new here. As the result, they are enjoying monopolistic prices at the moment.

To me, the situation is crystal clear: as a hobbyist, I can still run S7 until it doesn't make sense, then reevaluate.
S9 pricing assumes 100% share of profits for Bitmain at the expense of negative btc profits for me.
I pass on S9 purchase until the situation changes.

wrong. operating costs can be figured out no matter what. the cost of power never goes down. it only goes up and not by much but power companies put out the increases almost a year beforehand so the cost can easily be calculated. on top of that the cost to mine in the summer is higher not only because running the ac costs a lot but also because power companies charge more for their power in the summer for whatever reason. your right that no one can guesstimate the exact earnings but the calculations i did were based on the info we do have. one thing is certain....if the price goes up the diff goes up so if your arguing that the price going up will make u reach roi because you will mine more per day then i suggest you stop mining right now and sell all your s9's before they lose their value because this isn't the right investment for you. the difficulty will shoot up. the only way the difficulty wont go up is if the price drops and or doesn't change from the price per btc right now. im not sure why its so hard to understand what hes saying. hell im saying the same thing....buying s9's at this price is retarded. no ifs ands or butts about it. if you think you will break even in a reasonable amount of time then again i say this isn't the type of investment someone like you should make. even me with free power wont break even.....that's saying a lot.

to make sense we would need to see a huge drop in diff and a huge increase in value per btc. but the more btc is worth the more people will mine it....the less its worth the less they will mine it. to ever assume that suddenly people wont mine something that is growing in value more and more is silly. think about it like poachers.....if ivory was worthless do you think people would be killing animals illegally to get it?? nope! so why would you think the value of btc going up means less people will mine it?? if you think it show me historical trends that prove your point. you cant prove it one bit so just stop arguing about this because the info give has been proven many times over.

We have years of historical trends now. Difficulty tracks price. Once you accept this, the rest is pretty simple math. It allows you to effectively remove price from the equation. The variations are approximately 10%. On 2.5 BTC that is +\- 0.25 BTC. I was being generous and assuming +0.25 for you.

You're right in that we don't know exactly how much gear comes offline after the halving. For this thing to even break even we'd need to see a colossal drop after the halving. I doubt it will be nearly as dramatic as people speculate.

How can you possibly speculate that max amount I can get out of extra mining time for BTC price going up is .25 BTC?   We don't know what BTC price will be in a few month's don't know what operating cost will be.  No possible way to know how long I can mine profitably.   So to put a number to it.... is almost impossible to do at this point.

There are so many more facts we need to know right now it's all speculation.... which is best guess.  Just like "Any gains you make in additional mining time are likely to get wiped out by increased difficulty."  I don't see any way to speculate this as were talking about a time after having.  We don't even know what hash speed will be like after having, it could have lot's of old gear taken off or could soar like a rocket.     

The quotes are getting a bit long so I'll hit the reboot on them. I agree that BTC price will impact the length of time you can mine (if you pay for electricity which most do). I would point out, however, that the network is self balancing. As the price goes up more gear jumps on the network. Any gains you make in additional mining time are likely to get wiped out by increased difficulty.

I guess the point is that price will have an impact on profitability (by impacting time), but the affect is minimal. It may bump it from 2.5 BTC to 2.75 BTC. Not nearly enough to cover a 1 BTC loss at any rate.

And that is a valid argument that buying BTC is better for some then mining.  I'm not saying mining is for everyone with cost's going into it.   But as you I think see BTC price is HUGE for mining to keep going.  The higher the value should be the longer I can run the miner.    And should effect how much BTC I mine hopefully a profitable amount.  But I admit speculating 6 months out is kinda impossible at this point.

But for miners that are not free BTC price is going to be huge.  If it drops it could directly effect me in mining less day's before I sell the miner.  If it goes up it could directly give me more day's of mining, which should mean more BTC mined. Which is huge as far as ROI.

i have free electricity as well but i wouldn't say roi needs to be 60-90 days. that's just giving customers money. a reasonable time frame to aim for is 6 months or less. what should have stuck out to s9 buyers was how bitmain sold a miner that based on current calculations would break even in way under 6 months. They never do that. but people were blinded by greed and got alot of money taken from them this round. hopefully they learn their lesson this time and dont buy new hardware that costs so fricken much! i wonder what the cost of the miner will be after halving. either way i know it will be a better roi if you wait for a later and probably less buggy batch.

Personally, this just seems like way too long of a ROI for bitcoin mining gear. I get free electricity and I look at gear that i can pay off within 60-90 days.

Ok, let's try again. This machine costs 3.5 BTC. It returns 2.5 BTC in a year. You lose 1 BTC.

I can just buy 3.5 BTC and then not buy the miner. In a year I still have 3.5 BTC. No matter what the cost of BTC is I have more $$ than if I bought the miner.

Yes, BTC price increase will affect your fiat ROI. But look above. If you can't ROI in BTC you would have done better to hold the coin. If BTC goes up, you have more fiat if you hold the coin. If BTC goes down you lose less money if you hold the coin. Mining at a BTC loss is willingly increasing the risk to your fiat while simultaneously diminishing the returns of your fiat. You make less for higher risk.

Would you buy 4 gold bars to trade for digging equipment designed to dig up 3 gold bars and then hope for the price of gold to go up? No you wouldn't, you would just hold the 4 gold bars. Why should BTC be any different? Why would you pay more BTC than a machine returns?

This is why you run ROI in BTC. If you can't recoup BTC, hold the coin. If you can recoup coin plus more, decide if the 'plus more' is worth the risk (will the machine and variables hold up).

I'm not sure how you don't see BTC price impacting mining.  It HIGHLY can impact it.   I have X operating cost in USD per machine per month in electricity.  The longer the BTC stay's above that amount to run the longer I can mine.  Eventually.. I have to sell my miners as I do not have "free" electricity.

I see your point of buying 1 BTC = 1 BTC a year later even.  But BTC price highly impacts me as far as how long I can mine profitable.

The price of BTC going up has no impact on profitability. We are talking BTC ROI. If I rely on BTC increase to fiat ROI, I could have simply held the coin and made pure profit on the increase with none of the risk associated with mining. I can buy this miner for ~$2,200 today and have it return 2.5 BTC in a year. Or I could buy 2.5 BTC today for $1,450...

The only variable affecting BTC ROI besides downtown and power is network difficulty. I see no scenario in which difficulty allows this miner to ROI. BTC in < BTC out. There is no high risk, high reward. Only imoossible ROI, donation to Bitmain.

With increased risk comes possible increased profit.  It is not a sure bet in any means, mining is getting harder and need cheaper electricity.  But if price rises (and it depends how high it goes) getting rewards before having could be much more profit.   I would guess it's more then 100 and in the hundreds... how many hundreds hard to say though.

We just don't know it is hard to say how much btc hopefully will go up to.  But in this game it is normally the ones that take a little risk that profit.  If you are looking for a sure bet not sure mining has been that for a while.  But I know many people including I have managed to do it and enjoy it very much. 

Buying any hardware before the halving is just a big unnecessary risk in my eyes. Best case is you get to mine for 2 weeks on the gravy train and then everybody else catches up. Nice, you just made probably less than $100 more than somebody who had no risk of the halving. (claps)

the way i see it bitmain is trying to find the few people that see a high hashrate and low ROI times that DON'T know about the halving that's fast approaching. when you look it says it will ROI with $.14 per kwh in about 4 months which is awesome but what no calculator states is the roi times go through the roof once the rewards aren't as much. to provoke buyers to order the miners they r releasing it in a very limited batch which makes noobs think "nows my chance!" and they jump on it. i cant believe that other guy ordered 2 of these things and almost ordered a third. does no one do the math anymore? or does everyone jump on the newest miner released and enjoy being the overpriced beta testers?

with that said if the price was reasonable i would deff upgrade to these things. i mean who wouldn't?? but at $2160 a pop not including the $32 i would have to pay for fedex to overcharge me for import fees because they have a minimum fee of $25 for things over $2000 and an advancement fee of $7 which gets tacked on even if you don't want them to advance anything for you. i genuinely think everyone that purchased this first batch were silly and didn't take the time to do the math and for that u will lose out. next time you want to lose money be sure to send it my way

Yeah, I haven't been able to figure this one out either.  From what I can tell the S9 will return around 2.5 BTC in 9-12 months.  If, and this is a big if, we see a significant network drop after the half it may break even (~3.5 BTC) in a year.

So what is the incentive?  Bitmain can plug these in themselves in their data center.  If I buy one, I assume 100% of the risk involved with mining.  Pool luck, internet outages, power outages, hardware failure, and early difficulty jumps (combined with either of the previous absolutely devastate ROI ability).

What is that risk worth?  Apparently Bitmain thinks the risk is worth -1 BTC.  That right, they are essentially charging you 1 BTC to assume all their risk. Whaaat?

Best case scenario, you just break even.  In this case you haven't purchased risk, however, you have assumed all the risk for 0 compensation.  Why wouldn't you just hold the coin?

There's always a chance for a win but at the current price which has held for a few days now it will take 120 days to break even. now if the halving is happening in a month that means in a months time (hopefully you get a full month) you will make $625 minus to cost of power which is (at $.14 per kwh) $141 leaving you with $484 buts profit.

now take $2100 (this doesn't include shipping costs which are $60 per miner in most cases at least they are for me) and - the $484 from it and your left with -$1616

mining after the halving will take 282 MORE days to break even so your total investment wont pay off for almost 1 year. once everything halves the amount you mine per month after power costs will come out to about $171. this is also going based on the difficulty staying exactly the same as it is today which we all know wont happen. once bitmain starts installing these in their mining locations and have them running at full speed 24/7 the diff will go way up. not to mention all the people buying them to run themselves. this means they have a very high chance of not ever breaking even. i say EVER because the s5 and newer miners have a problem that i made a huge fuss about that can be dangerous. when internet drops the fans stop running at full speed but the power doesn't go down with it so they burn themselves up. they have yet to fix that issue and have seen it with my s7's multiple times with multiple different batches all with the latest firmware provided by bitmain. i mean they put out an update to limit the number of boards that can be used with an s7 controller....because that's super important right?? not the fact that your house can burn down or anything lol.

the price will need to more than double to make the $2100 investment worth it and even if the price doubles bitmain will just raise the cost of the miner to match the increase in btc value so future batches wont be worth it either. once the miner is old and less desirable they will lower the cost to where they should be at. until then i wont be swapping out my s7's.

i have free electricity and the numbers still don't work for me.