Topic: DIY FPGA Mining rig for any algorithm with fast ROI - page 4. (Read 99474 times)

Funny thing is that they've already started advertising in discord the upcoming Acorn Pro version, while the current hardware doesn't even have working miner software. This selling strategy even worse than $hitmain's

FPGA Definition = a device that take $3200-3600 and turns it into a couple bucks a day after a six month incubation period.

Checked out the first link, lot of good information here but the intro started out rough with poor flow, grammar and spelling issues. Later in the article it got better, but still seemed like it was a bit disorganized, not knowing whether is was going to be a factual report or hype for the card. It also seemed a bit long to me, not sure if that is raw length or a problem keeping the attention of the reader.

Sorry for the hyper critical review, but you asked for my opinion lol.

Without disclosing any details, what could be the largest BCU farm around? 500 BCU's ? less?   500 BCUs would be a huge risk for them to take back then, in the middle of a bear market.

If theres a 500 BCU farm out there, then maybe they would be tempted to buy a private bitstream, but i believe anything smaller than this is probably not worth it...

What do you think?

Hey guys,

I have a few articles we have been working on, we have a getting started guide with resources of where you can grab the bitstreams per card, and a few reviews for the VCU/BCU, TUL's BTU9P and CVP-13. Here is the first one of 3 being published in the next few days.

This is a review on the CVP-13, hardware specs, bitstreams, hashrate, cost and ROI. Feel free to hit me up if you have any questions. I am not affiliated with Bittware, just providing helpful content as we have gotten a ton of questions recently and wanted to give it out to others who may have similar questions.

https://www.freelearner.how/2018/12/13/bittware-cvp-13-fpga-miner-review/

https://www.freelearner.how/2018/12/17/tul-btu9p-fpga-miner-review/

Hop on and tell me what you think!

Count me in, granted I have little experience in vhdl and verilog looks like a foreign language to me. Still, with a codebase to start on and a card to test designs, definitely seems worthwhile.

Also, sent you a PM a few days ago, don't know if you saw it. Your inbox is probably flooded lol

Thanks for a lengthy explanation.

It depends on how much was over-paid for the private bitstreams, but in most cases, yes, it would be more profitable to just release the code. The person buying the bitstream doesn't know if someone else will invent the same and take their earnings before they've recovered. The developer has to trust the person who bought it won't try to resell it and cut the developer out. The person who buys it isn't sure if the developer will sell it to others.

Seems like a risky proposition all around versus releasing it and being sure they'll get some fee % of the mining.

A lot of what people have been talking about regarding this has been fud. Some is truth or at least based on truth. Obviously larger customers have been trying to acquire 'private bitstreams'; wouldn't you if you were them? But, I'm not sure they fully appreciate the situation of how much they'd have to pay to get that 'privately'. Some are buying 'private' bitstreams that are sold to many of these customers, all of them thinking they're the only one  .

What about private bitstreams? Wouldn't it be more profitable to just release the code?

With the completion of the allmine cryptoshell for the Bittware CVP-13 we will be getting back into bitstream development. We have 3 designs that will be released shortly from community developers, but their profitability is nothing amazing. We will start putting together our Phi2 design which will hopefully be released in the next 1-2 weeks. There is more to come, but I don't want to say what at this time.

Most of the developers don't have a lot of base code to work from. We've offered to open up our code base to them if they'd release through the shell as well as provide BCU-1525 units for completion of designs. Unfortunately, that still hasn't attracted a lot of developer attention. Many of those claiming to be fpga developers on discord have disappeared  .


Here's a question for you..

There are about 5000 BCU-1525 in the wild, 1000 CVP-13s coming, 500-1000 VCU-1525, BTU9Ps, various clones, etc out there.

How many units would a developer need to own themselves for it to provide the same revenue as a 5% fee from the units that are already out there (which would additionally require no up front capital investment from the developer)? Answer: about 400... Which would cost them > $1.5M.

So, they can make a $1.5M investment and have the same revenue as not making ANY investment but just releasing their code. What would you do? I'm quite sure only an insane person would spend $1.5M to make the same amount of money as not spending $1.5M.

https://www.nicehash.com/algorithm/lyra2z

0.007 BTC/GH/day

0.06 * 0.007 = 0.00042 btc = $1.5
$1 after power

You sure about XMR welcoming FPGAs?

Which coins specifically are against FPGAs? For example even XMR is not entirely against FPGA. MBC for example is working on a fork against ASIC right now but is welcoming FPGAs.

It's fair to say there will be more profitability challenges for FPGAs as coin developers stand up for their values.  However, I wouldn't say FPGAs will fight with ASICs for profits.  The two are simply in different spheres of influence. 

I think what will happen is that the FPGA developments will drive a further evolution of various coin projects.  There will be coin projects that adapt and overcome according to anti-FPGA/ASIC ideology and there will be coins that fail to adapt despite having the same ideology.  This will mean people will see which coin projects hold true to their word which could also affect future coin performance.  Or... the coin may perform well despite caving in to FPGA mining interests. 

Meanwhile, there could be even newer coin projects who continue to use algorithms that are known to be mined by FPGAs.  FPGAs represent a legitimate hashing capability which also equates to security and development of various coin networks.  We see this all the time with coins releasing on one ASIC/FGPA minable coin or another.

It's all good in my opinion.  CPU, GPU, FPGA, ASIC... doesn't matter.  Some people will be satisfied with one or the other.  Some satisfied with all.  Some will laugh at other people for their choices.  But if a blockchain is successful... I mean... Who cares what mining tech was used?  I don't.

And here's the crazy part they are just getting delivered and now the coin devs are doing what they can to make sure fpga's and asic's dont mine on their chains so the fpga's are going to be fighting with asic for profits

We bought them 5 or 6 months ago when the return showed more promise. The problem is that they are just getting delivered now in a way down market.

Why are people buying these cards? Aren't the only ones who make money the ones who develop their own bitstreams? Feels like eating very expensive leftovers.

SQRL did exactly this with their Acorn "Accelerator" cards.......  People have been waiting for months on their miner after being advertised figures on increased hashrate and decreased power consumption.

Mine shipped today from SQRL!  I received an email with subject line: "Your order has been shipped!"

Their web site also shows shipped.  Fedex tracking shows Wednesday delivery.

When it got shipped, did you get an email or say "Shipped" on the SQRL dashboard? Just curious...

same to me: card without any special cooling, not shipped yet.