Author

Topic: Importing ASIC miners to india from websites like Alibaba? (Read 460 times)

newbie
Activity: 1
Merit: 0
I've been mining crypto since 2017. By the end of that year indian government started to become a little weird about crypto mining.
Companies like bitmain have stopped shipping to india as well since according to them the customs dont let your packages through.

However when looking up more information about this, most articles and forums date back to exactly 2017 and there has not been any further discussion or information after that.

There are a lot of people trying to sell miners in india on certain websites like indiamart. 99% of those people are very obvious scammers and dont even know the details about the miners they're selling.

History aside, i was willing to take the risk and i went ahead and ordered two Antminer s19 Pro's from a seller on Alibaba. The packages are supposed to be shipped to india via DHL.
The seller willingly showed pictures of the customs clearance forms along with the tax included invoices of other people who bought miners from them in india (their personal information like phone number, address and last name was blurred out).

I will keep everyone updated as to how my experience goes, but i have a few questions to ask:

1. Has anyone recently done this sort of thing of purchasing mining hardware from alibaba? if so then how did it go and what was your procedure of doing it?
2. Do you guys think i'll be successful in this endeavour?





Edit1 : September 3rd 2020
=================

The package shipments have been delayed from bitmain due to covid, however they're providing compensation in the form of coupons and the amount of compensation is increased every 10 days after the shipment/delivery date.

I talked about KingTrans a little in my other reply below. I did some research and found out that the actual company they ship from is ecgexpress and the website is http://ecgexpress.com.
KingTrans seems to be a tracking service that other courier services use, this domain has a lot of different sub domains with the first few letters of different courier services (just like ecg.kingtrans.com).

However ecgexpress seems to be a legit website and a legit transport service.
they've got a justdial profile (which is just like yelp for people who are not in india) and they apparently transport from china to india and then deliver your product via fedex or other courier services.
i was also able to track the tracking number provided via this website https://www.17ckd.com/17ckd/5879/d.htm

The latest tracking number that i was given was on "awaiting customs payment" at the time of making this initial post
as of today the customs have cleared the package and the package is on its way to the destination via fedex.



On a side note, KingTrans also has this
This is apparently what they use to calculate the shipping costs. I was not able to make this form work though. I hope someone else can try and make it work just so i have an idea about the new shipping cost through this service.

i would appreciate if someone looks through these websites and makes sure my research is correct and on point since none of these have ssl for some odd reason.
Also if you've had an experience with this courier service before, i'd like to know how it went.


Edit2 : September 3rd 2020
=================

I called ecgexpress from the numbers provided on justdial. The conversation went very weird and it's almost making me rethink my decisions.
Heres how the conversation went.

Me : "Hey i am calling to ask about this tracking number *proceeds to speak the tracking number*.

Him : "Oh no sorry, look i am the director of ecgexpress, we used to work with another company a few years back but now we dont anymore, the tracking number you provided is from that company because my tracking numbers now start with the prefix ECG. A fraud chinese company is using our company's name."

Me: "Oh thats interesting, however your justdial profile has the website ecgexpress.com on it and this tracking number works just fine when tracking on your website. ecgexpress.com is your website right?"

Him : "oh umm, actually yeah. no my website is ecgexpress.net"

and ecgexpress.net is not even a valid website.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this.


Edit3 : September 3rd 2020
=================

I contacted the alibaba seller once again asking them to give me some kind of website or contact information about the shipping company that they'll use to send me the packages just in case i need to talk to them about custom clearance.
Heres the seller's reply, "Sorry, i only have the tracking portal of the company. However we will send your packages to our shipping agency and from there it will go to india special line. If your package has problems in the customs, someone will contact you. This is a very experienced shipping company so dont worry".


Edit4 : May 3th 2021
=================

Apologies for the delay and leaving this dead from so long, got a bit busy with family due to covid. However i got some good news to share.
I received the miners on the promised date and has to pay a very reasonable amount of money for customs. The miners have been mining since and making a good amount of profit. Overall i think i was stressing out a bit too much than i needed to but its always good to be cautious.



I'm planning to buy the asic machine from the distributor who is not register on Alibaba. Can I take the shipment through ecgexpress. Once the materiel is received to the Ecgexpress warehouse (China). Is it possible for you to share the contact details email address/Phone number/Telegram of the ecgexpress. China office or India Office.


newbie
Activity: 2
Merit: 7

jzk120

Can you please help how I can import asic miners in India. What all will be needed to import successfully as individual or I need company with IEC and GST etc.

Thanks for your help in advance.
newbie
Activity: 1
Merit: 0
Can you please suggest an authentic supplier for ASIC miners on alibaba.com
Thank you
newbie
Activity: 1
Merit: 0
I've been mining crypto since 2017. By the end of that year indian government started to become a little weird about crypto mining.
Companies like bitmain have stopped shipping to india as well since according to them the customs dont let your packages through.

However when looking up more information about this, most articles and forums date back to exactly 2017 and there has not been any further discussion or information after that.

There are a lot of people trying to sell miners in india on certain websites like indiamart. 99% of those people are very obvious scammers and dont even know the details about the miners they're selling.

History aside, i was willing to take the risk and i went ahead and ordered two Antminer s19 Pro's from a seller on Alibaba. The packages are supposed to be shipped to india via DHL.
The seller willingly showed pictures of the customs clearance forms along with the tax included invoices of other people who bought miners from them in india (their personal information like phone number, address and last name was blurred out).

I will keep everyone updated as to how my experience goes, but i have a few questions to ask:

1. Has anyone recently done this sort of thing of purchasing mining hardware from alibaba? if so then how did it go and what was your procedure of doing it?
2. Do you guys think i'll be successful in this endeavour?



Edit1 : September 3rd 2020
=================

The package shipments have been delayed from bitmain due to covid, however they're providing compensation in the form of coupons and the amount of compensation is increased every 10 days after the shipment/delivery date.

I talked about KingTrans a little in my other reply below. I did some research and found out that the actual company they ship from is ecgexpress and the website is http://ecgexpress.com.
KingTrans seems to be a tracking service that other courier services use, this domain has a lot of different sub domains with the first few letters of different courier services (just like ecg.kingtrans.com).

However ecgexpress seems to be a legit website and a legit transport service.
they've got a justdial profile (which is just like yelp for people who are not in india) and they apparently transport from china to india and then deliver your product via fedex or other courier services.
i was also able to track the tracking number provided via this website https://www.17ckd.com/17ckd/5879/d.htm

The latest tracking number that i was given was on "awaiting customs payment" at the time of making this initial post
as of today the customs have cleared the package and the package is on its way to the destination via fedex.



On a side note, KingTrans also has this
This is apparently what they use to calculate the shipping costs. I was not able to make this form work though. I hope someone else can try and make it work just so i have an idea about the new shipping cost through this service.

i would appreciate if someone looks through these websites and makes sure my research is correct and on point since none of these have ssl for some odd reason.
Also if you've had an experience with this courier service before, i'd like to know how it went.


Edit2 : September 3rd 2020
=================

I called ecgexpress from the numbers provided on justdial. The conversation went very weird and it's almost making me rethink my decisions.
Heres how the conversation went.

Me : "Hey i am calling to ask about this tracking number *proceeds to speak the tracking number*.

Him : "Oh no sorry, look i am the director of ecgexpress, we used to work with another company a few years back but now we dont anymore, the tracking number you provided is from that company because my tracking numbers now start with the prefix ECG. A fraud chinese company is using our company's name."

Me: "Oh thats interesting, however your justdial profile has the website ecgexpress.com on it and this tracking number works just fine when tracking on your website. ecgexpress.com is your website right?"

Him : "oh umm, actually yeah. no my website is ecgexpress.net"

and ecgexpress.net is not even a valid website.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this.


Edit3 : September 3rd 2020
=================

I contacted the alibaba seller once again asking them to give me some kind of website or contact information about the shipping company that they'll use to send me the packages just in case i need to talk to them about custom clearance.
Heres the seller's reply, "Sorry, i only have the tracking portal of the company. However we will send your packages to our shipping agency and from there it will go to india special line. If your package has problems in the customs, someone will contact you. This is a very experienced shipping company so dont worry".


Edit4 : May 3th 2021
=================

Apologies for the delay and leaving this dead from so long, got a bit busy with family due to covid. However i got some good news to share.
I received the miners on the promised date and has to pay a very reasonable amount of money for customs. The miners have been mining since and making a good amount of profit. Overall i think i was stressing out a bit too much than i needed to but its always good to be cautious.


[/Hello there thanks for sharing your information.I am planning to order some asic miners too from alibaba.Are you kind enough to tell us the price u paid for the product and how much have u paid for the customs fee]
newbie
Activity: 18
Merit: 7
@Heisenberg_Hunter
Thanks for such a well put together reply!

I have absolutely no idea on this since I have never shipped miner to India, but I am thinking about the possibilities to do something in the future. I might even proceed with my first purchase on how well you receive your order.
i'll try my best to keep this as updated as i can

I have imported and exported various other items including precious metals to and from India and all my experience was that it went good with India Post/USPS or other country posts. There are quite less checking with government postal while comparing with premium shippers. I am going to try importing items using Royal Mail(UK) for the first time in a couple of days and I will try to post an update here.
I would assume, and i say this by giving the benifit of the doubt to the seller, thats the exact reason the seller told me about KingTrans being safer, because according to my research the package ultimately ends up being taken care of by the India Post once it enters the country.
Also i look forward to your update!

The best shot would be to go with Mantis Escrow and DIstribution & Courier service hosted by the trustworthy minerjones for your future dealings. MJ can take care of your shipping AFAIK and might help you in getting them safely.
Thanks SO SO much for this information, i'll make sure to shoot him a DM the next time i need to order something.
I wonder what the total price difference would be when using an escrow service vs ordering from alibaba (assuming all of this goes well). Because alibaba has quite a huge amount of fees while ordering a miner.
Alibaba charges 3% of the total cost from every sale made by the sellers so the sellers add that 3% in the total cost of the order. Along with that theres a huge amount of visa fees when paying through alibaba.
so i wonder how that would boil down to when compared to the escrow service fees and everything.
legendary
Activity: 1578
Merit: 1265
Heisenberg Design Services
S19 Pro is quite good for India comparing the electricity costs since they are the most powerful miners ever made hashing 110 TH/s. There are various recent articles published after the removal of banking ban stating Mining isn't legal in India, (well our country doesn't like decentralization for sure) but having a house setup might be safer. The traders from IndiaMart seems like outright scammers as you have said but truly speaking I have never done any crypto deals outside this forum.

1. Has anyone recently done this sort of thing of purchasing mining hardware from alibaba? if so then how did it go and what was your procedure of doing it?
As TheUltraElite said, you could have probably tried trading with people from Computer Hardware rather than trusting random seller from Alibaba. Trust has been a very important factor here and many do quite huge deals over here in Hardware section and Collectibles section of the forum. I am thinking of purchasing a cheap used GPU/ASIC from someone here in future to learn a bit about how mining works on a practical scale from setting up to cooling them.

2. Do you guys think i'll be successful in this endeavour?
Based on the information given by the seller from Alibaba, I think this might end up successful unless customs doesn't play any nonsense games in the middle of shipping.

According to my calculations, with the electricity rate in my area of $0.07/kwh and miners mining around 220TH/s, i would be making an okay amount of profit if i receive these two.
You would be making a not bad profit for sure and if you are facing any good set up oriented issues, you can reach out to the Mining section of the forum. People available there are running mini-mining farms and some have been mining since 2011.

The customs have been known to even dispose off the mining hardware that enters india or in rare occassions having the customer to ship the product back to the seller paying the visa fees and shipping costs all over again.
We know how our customs works, if they find anything fishy in the parcel there are higher possibilities they might keep them aside and rob them  Tongue

I was wondering if there are ways or lesser known courier services who ship to india and would clear the packages, KingTrans apparently being one.
I have absolutely no idea on this since I have never shipped miner to India, but I am thinking about the possibilities to do something in the future. I might even proceed with my first purchase on how well you receive your order.

The seller claims that even if the package through this service takes a few more days to arrive, the people working in this service "help" you with the customs if your package gets stuck .
I have imported and exported various other items including precious metals to and from India and all my experience was that it went good with India Post/USPS or other country posts. There are quite less checking with government postal while comparing with premium shippers. I am going to try importing items using Royal Mail(UK) for the first time in a couple of days and I will try to post an update here.

What do you think would be my best shot to make all this work?
The best shot would be to go with Mantis Escrow and DIstribution & Courier service hosted by the trustworthy minerjones for your future dealings. MJ can take care of your shipping AFAIK and might help you in getting them safely.
newbie
Activity: 18
Merit: 7
I have been following the mining trend in India and as far my calculations go it is not profitable, not sure why you are ordering these miners anyway.

No, I haven't bought any miners in such miners but I hope what you ordered is legit and you get them in working condition.

One suggestion would be to check the "computer hardware" section of this forum where we have many trusted users buying and selling mining and mining related equipment. Rest assured you would not be scammed by the trusted users there but you should use an escrow none the less, although again I lack information as to who does such escrows in this subcontinent. Maybe some of our well known users here would be willing to.


According to my calculations, with the electricity rate in my area of $0.07/kwh and miners mining around 220TH/s, i would be making an okay amount of profit if i receive these two.

Oh thanks for the info! i might actually wanna take a look around there.


The main issue here in my country is not the legitimacy of the miners as much as it is with the customs holding the packages and never clearing them.
The customs have been known to even dispose off the mining hardware that enters india or in rare occassions having the customer to ship the product back to the seller paying the visa fees and shipping costs all over again.

I was wondering if there are ways or lesser known courier services who ship to india and would clear the packages, KingTrans apparently being one.
Now i dont know if its legit (i asked in the off topic section about it).
But the seller i am buying this from apparently has and shared tracking numbers of customers from india who purchased miners from them in the last month.
Here is the link i was sent where i was able to track with the numbers provided.

The website looks fishy and almost fake and has whois masking and everything but looking into it a bit more, the website has decent traffic and is about 50 years old.

The seller claims that even if the package through this service takes a few more days to arrive, the people working in this service "help" you with the customs if your package gets stuck .
I am somewhat inclined towards asking the seller to ship my orders via this service rather than DHL since i am taking a risk anyway and DHL has been known to dispose off mining hardware BUT i am not quite sure about it yet.

What do you think would be my best shot to make all this work?
legendary
Activity: 2828
Merit: 1213
Dont be a ShitcoInfluencer for quick bux, it sucks
I have been following the mining trend in India and as far my calculations goes Bitcoin mining is specifically not profitable since post-2013, not sure why you are ordering these miners anyway.

No, I haven't bought any miners from such sites but I hope what you ordered is legit and you get them in working condition.

One suggestion would be to check the "computer hardware" section of this forum where we have many trusted users buying and selling mining and mining related equipment. Rest assured you would not be scammed by the trusted users there but you should use an escrow none the less, although again I lack information as to who does such escrows in this subcontinent. Maybe some of our well known users here would be willing to.
newbie
Activity: 18
Merit: 7
I've been mining crypto since 2017. By the end of that year indian government started to become a little weird about crypto mining.
Companies like bitmain have stopped shipping to india as well since according to them the customs dont let your packages through.

However when looking up more information about this, most articles and forums date back to exactly 2017 and there has not been any further discussion or information after that.

There are a lot of people trying to sell miners in india on certain websites like indiamart. 99% of those people are very obvious scammers and dont even know the details about the miners they're selling.

History aside, i was willing to take the risk and i went ahead and ordered two Antminer s19 Pro's from a seller on Alibaba. The packages are supposed to be shipped to india via DHL.
The seller willingly showed pictures of the customs clearance forms along with the tax included invoices of other people who bought miners from them in india (their personal information like phone number, address and last name was blurred out).

I will keep everyone updated as to how my experience goes, but i have a few questions to ask:

1. Has anyone recently done this sort of thing of purchasing mining hardware from alibaba? if so then how did it go and what was your procedure of doing it?
2. Do you guys think i'll be successful in this endeavour?



Edit1 : September 3rd 2020
=================

The package shipments have been delayed from bitmain due to covid, however they're providing compensation in the form of coupons and the amount of compensation is increased every 10 days after the shipment/delivery date.

I talked about KingTrans a little in my other reply below. I did some research and found out that the actual company they ship from is ecgexpress and the website is http://ecgexpress.com.
KingTrans seems to be a tracking service that other courier services use, this domain has a lot of different sub domains with the first few letters of different courier services (just like ecg.kingtrans.com).

However ecgexpress seems to be a legit website and a legit transport service.
they've got a justdial profile (which is just like yelp for people who are not in india) and they apparently transport from china to india and then deliver your product via fedex or other courier services.
i was also able to track the tracking number provided via this website https://www.17ckd.com/17ckd/5879/d.htm

The latest tracking number that i was given was on "awaiting customs payment" at the time of making this initial post
as of today the customs have cleared the package and the package is on its way to the destination via fedex.



On a side note, KingTrans also has this
This is apparently what they use to calculate the shipping costs. I was not able to make this form work though. I hope someone else can try and make it work just so i have an idea about the new shipping cost through this service.

i would appreciate if someone looks through these websites and makes sure my research is correct and on point since none of these have ssl for some odd reason.
Also if you've had an experience with this courier service before, i'd like to know how it went.


Edit2 : September 3rd 2020
=================

I called ecgexpress from the numbers provided on justdial. The conversation went very weird and it's almost making me rethink my decisions.
Heres how the conversation went.

Me : "Hey i am calling to ask about this tracking number *proceeds to speak the tracking number*.

Him : "Oh no sorry, look i am the director of ecgexpress, we used to work with another company a few years back but now we dont anymore, the tracking number you provided is from that company because my tracking numbers now start with the prefix ECG. A fraud chinese company is using our company's name."

Me: "Oh thats interesting, however your justdial profile has the website ecgexpress.com on it and this tracking number works just fine when tracking on your website. ecgexpress.com is your website right?"

Him : "oh umm, actually yeah. no my website is ecgexpress.net"

and ecgexpress.net is not even a valid website.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this.


Edit3 : September 3rd 2020
=================

I contacted the alibaba seller once again asking them to give me some kind of website or contact information about the shipping company that they'll use to send me the packages just in case i need to talk to them about custom clearance.
Heres the seller's reply, "Sorry, i only have the tracking portal of the company. However we will send your packages to our shipping agency and from there it will go to india special line. If your package has problems in the customs, someone will contact you. This is a very experienced shipping company so dont worry".


Edit4 : May 3th 2021
=================

Apologies for the delay and leaving this dead from so long, got a bit busy with family due to covid. However i got some good news to share.
I received the miners on the promised date and has to pay a very reasonable amount of money for customs. The miners have been mining since and making a good amount of profit. Overall i think i was stressing out a bit too much than i needed to but its always good to be cautious.

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