I've been mining for 6 months with my gaming rig, as I don't have the capital to invest in a dedicated mining system. I slowly accrued fractions of a bitcoin mining a few hours a day with a 5670 before upgrading to a 6870. I've read through hundreds of pages on this forum about how the entire system works. I'm a college student studying electrical engineering, and I'm very good at electronics design and dabble in python coding. I read through the source for poclbm and figured that phoenix is more efficient and a better overall system. I have earned a couple of hundred dollars from mining, and if I'm going to put it into an ASIC, I'm going to be damn sure it's worth it. I'm a low risk trader. I'm not betting my hard earned money on anything less than 100%. I'm not a newbie, I just want a concrete answer.
Well, if you are looking for 100% you might want to look for another hobby. A major reason that
BTC is exciting to many folks is that it is still in a state of growth, and everyone at this point can be considered an innovator or early adopter as far as the overall developing economy is concerned. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle) Because of this early stage, the rules, regulations, and limits of what you can do with
BTC are very loose and ill-defined, which in turn leads to:
OPPORTUNITY!100% certainty is going to exist only in mature, and often ossified, systems that are already "loaded" in favor of the incumbents in the market (see: Regulatory Capture) and the margins are thin.
BitCoin offers far lower certainty, but you have huge opportunities like a potential future with $100 or $1000 value, which helps make up for the chance that I might to lose the whole thing.
Something else you can see played out here is the "Hype Cycle" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle) with an overall BitCoin trough starting in preparation for the block reward halving, overlaid with an ASIC hype cycle that is in a trough before anything actually ships.
After 20 years in IT, I can tell you that BFL passes my BS test, but ordering today from them is more of a crapshoot because of shipping backlog than anything else.
To everyone who thinks that the only 2 options are "Legitimate or Scam" (I know, very small, very vocal %) you migh want to consider that you are spending so much time on the wring questions, that you will forget to ask the right ones. For instance, I have a big
new concern after seeing this thread.
BFL: Are you using this equipment to manufacture preorders? When do you anticipate starting production using the new gear?I ask this out of genuine business concern. If BFL is just getting their first pieces of high speed equipment, then there are 2 (likely) options:
- They have already gotten the boards for the first few batches prefabbed, and this is for future runs/products
- They have no boards yet, and need to start running this equipment ASAP
I'm hoping that it is the former, since I'm assuming that this stuff is a bit more than Plug-n-Pray to get up and running. They do mention an experienced team, but do they specialize in urgent turn-ups of this gear. Who knows, maybe these are they same guys that fed the machines at their previous home.
Since I'm not an employe, stockholder, or board member of BFL I really don't expect them to feel obligated to answer my questions, but if they do I will have a bit better information. Of course so will their competition, who may elect to change their own plans in response and remove the advantage BFL was trying to establish with the purchase of this equipment.
Trying to be a community member while also feeding your family (and employees families) with a for-profit enterprise is a difficult balancing act. The standards of this community around certain things is out of line with typical business expectations. 90% is information that I see shared under NDA in the IT world, but this forum is not exactly NDA...