Topic: Looking for a large loan. (Read 2642 times)

Thanks to all of you for the comments.

DOH!- Yeah I have been looking at the list. It was showing about 30 th/s but like jwzguy says there are probably a lot more who didn't make it public.  I don't think I ever put down my two Bitforce Singles when I got them.  I was thinking maybe 5 times as many more since this is a main Bitcoin site.  jwzguy says 10x would be reasonable and I have no reason to think my guess would be better than what he is saying.  I'm kind of thinking like you that the small operations are going to pretty much die off.  That's actually one of the reasons I wanted to try for the Mini Rig 'SC'. 1 th/s is not exactly small until the network hits about 1,000 th/s.  At that point at today's price you would be making about 0.1% of the network or about 108 Bitcoins of the  108,000 or so that will be produced so that would still be $1,080.  If that was a year and a half or two years down the road that wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me but at 4 or 5 months down the road it would be pretty much doom and gloom.  Anyway for me the production for a 1 th/s machine still looks good for quite a ways into the expansion.

jwzguy-Hi, I have to agree that we don't really know what the ceiling is going to be.  It is hard for me to believe we'll hit 1000 or 1500 th/s in 4 or 5 months though.  I didn't assume the present conditions.  I was actually figuring on a 200 th/s network after the reduction in block payoff when I got the 50% return figure.  I didn't think it would hit that for 8 months or so at the earliest.  From what I'm hearing I may have been slightly underestimating(maybe a little more than slightly).  Maybe I would be better off just buying Bitcoin and holding it but that would also take money I don't have.  I was thinking that with 1 th/s I would make enough during the expansion to pay it off and the investors before the network expanded so much that it wasn't profitable.  Once I got the loan paid off anything extra would put me ahead of where I am now.  I just checked at bitcoincharts.com and it has us right now at a network of 19.26 th/s.  So right now I am mining with about 0.000114 of the network.  I was mainly thinking that with a bigger chunk of the network I would do better.  I was thinking right now and for the next couple of months was still in the window of opportunity for this but all of you are saying that it is probably already gone by.  A lot to consider.

P4man-As you say why would someone lend me the money to do this if they are mining themselves?  I am not sure though, like you I see it happening a lot so I thought I would put my proposal out there.  The others probably have better credit or financial situations than I do or maybe I just have really terrible timing.  I still think I see a slim window of opportunity but all of you have got me digging a lot deeper into all of this.  Regardless of how the loan turns out, and it doesn't look good presently, at least I am learning a lot more about Bitcoin and the market dynamics which may turn out to be useful at some point.

Well put


Thats the irony of it: because its a zero sum game, the profitability will be determined by how many "idiots" (/ignorant/whatever) preorder the gear. If you have lurched on this forum for a while, then you may have noticed there is no shortage of people with more money than brains, so my guess is there will be far too many orders to make it profitable. If I misjudged that, the "idiots" might make a nice profit for a while, but I wouldnt count on it. Its a bit like a penny auction. The auctioneer (ie, supplier of ascis)  is the only one I might bet money on getting a good deal out of this.

It's not that there's "no money." It's that there is a FIXED amount of money and it gets split up by power. Read the thread already posted about how much ASICs equipment has already been pre-ordered. That's only people who made their orders public (which I wouldn't have done) so multiply that by at least 10 (reasonable) or even 5 (very conservative) for a minimum of the amount of power that's going to get added to the network if and when BFL delivers...and if they don't, someone else will. And that's just the beginning. 100TH is nowhere near the ceiling.

A lot of people have come onto this forum and made the same basic mistake you've made. You run a few numbers based on what your returns would be if you could start instantly and no one else changed their behavior. So don't take this personally...it's been beaten to death. Your assumptions are not only wrong, they're wildly off, and if you're in a "desperate" situation, you are making a very unwise gamble. We're just trying to help.

I've been mining for close to 18 months now. I put a large personal investment in and have been watching all these developments closely. I am absolutely getting out of the game when GPU mining is not profitable. Hats off to everyone who continues...I hope you did it for the right reasons (distributed security for the network) and not to get rich or even make a living. Unlike GPU mining, there is very little technical barrier and also not nearly as much of a logistics barrier to running ASICs rigs....for most users it's probably going to be an unwinnable arms race.

The only saving grace for miners is an increase in the price. And higher difficulty doesn't directly raise the price...it might have a slight effect but not much. It seems that a lot of people who want to make money by jumping into mining seem to miss this point: if you're -counting- on a price increase to keep your mining operation viable, you can make a much safer bet by just buying Bitcoin directly. If the price -doesn't- go up you can at least recover some if not all of your buy-in.

Not everyone agrees, and Ive been wrong before,  but its my belief that soon there will be no money to be made with mining for the vast majority of (asic) miners. There will be a  short, very profitable window, but its anyone's guess who will get their gear in time to profit from that. Almost certainly no one still ordering today though. And even then Im assuming most of the potential profit isnt reaped by the ASIC vendors themselves, since some of them will do their own mining.  After that, its game over IMO, and mining will become a matter of reducing your overall losses until asic prices bottom out and it once again becomes a matter of having lowest electricity costs.


Well, thats the other problem with your post; even if asic mining were a fairly sure way to earn lots of money, why would people lend you the money and not order the asics themselves? Its not like it requires any skills to operate a mining rig.

To be fair though, it is done quite often, if you go over to https://glbse.com you will find a bazillion mining companies and bonds and people trying to get the money to order mining gear. I wont stop you from trying, but its not gonna be a gold mine for you (and most likely even less for your investors).  But best of luck should you decide to try.

Hey there, I just thought I would chime in.  Might want to take a look here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/wait-list-bfl-sc-pre-order-information-monarch-orders-too-89685 , this is assuming that you haven't already, of course.  Keep in mind that this is only a list of known orders, I'm sure there are lots more that didn't feel like posting there.  I was trying to borrow some coinage to grow my small operation, but it seems as though it would be a bad investment that would put me in a pinch when it came time to repay.  Don't get me wrong, it seems very enticing and being a hardware junkie myself I would love to have a couple of extra 7970's free and clear once the fit hit the shan, but I don't think there will be a lot of room for smaller operations in the near future.  I think you might be able to do well selling one of your singles now and upgrade the other one to sc with the proceeds from the sale or sell your gpu's and upgrade them both, at least then everything you make would be profit... Just my .02

So basically all of you are saying that there is no more money to be made at Bitcoin mining.  I have to admit that surprises me at this site.  I was thinking I had a window of opportunity of about a year and a half to two years to make money before the ASICs really geared up.  I was thinking those that got their machines in the first few months would get their money back pretty quickly and still make a nice profit before the network grew too big.  It still seems to me that the early adapters would make a good return while that build up was going on.  Though actually it is starting to appear irrelevant as I seem to have no one actually talking about a loan.  Nonetheless, you have given me a lot to think about.  Thank you for your comments.

http://Same as this one, just to find out what the button does! There's always work for a good carpenter

I had to.
 BUY SHARES!

It's pretty easy to believe if you take a look at how much equipment BFL has already sold.
As far as depending on the price going up, think about this. If you'd just spent the USD you had on Bitcoin directly, you'd have a 100% ROI when the price doubled, instead of being back to 0% in 3 months. I hope that wasn't 3 months from today, because if you'll take a look at the difficulty increases we've been having, you'll see that your payback time is getting ~10% longer every ~12 days. You may never break even if the ASICs equipment ships on time, unless you trade them in and double down....even then it may take a long time.

Why did you use this text? Also, Assume that the man has already looked around for jobs, Certain jobs Just Dont Exsist in some areas

Have you considered carpentry might be your best bet?

Okay, Okay, I was a douche, I whole heartedly admit it, And I am Sorry.
We just get ALOT of loan requests, And they usually arent.... So...
Well i'll be honest, It was annoying to read it, We have a Stickied Thread deticated to preventing wallsofloantext https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--97214

So my immediate inferrance of you post was "guy didnt read the guidelines" Wich are Kiiinda simmilar to rules...

Goodluck.
Loaners and Lendies, Goodluck.

And just to say, yeah, It Really Freaking Sucks watching the hashrate launch up, And be sitting with GPU's crying in the dark as they lose value and cost more and more to operate.
And lets not forget the Freaking block split, Anyone who forgets to include that in thier plans of mining, Is automatically screwed IMO

Hi P4man.  Group apology accepted.  I see you are a hero member and pretty active on the site so you probably know more than I do about Bitcoin.  It is hard to believe that in four months or so the network will go from 15 th/s to 1500 th/s.  I'll have to look into that a lot more.  I was figuring I would have at least a year to a year and a half of decent production before I had to worry about it increasing to the point that 1 th/s produced less than a couple of grand a month.  You have given me something to look into.

Pirate1, Im actually inclined to believe your story, and would like to apologize on behalf of some of the other posters for unnecessary rudeness.

That said, cedivad is quite right and your plan is a terrible one. It will not work for a lot of reasons, and I would strongly urge you to let it go. Anyone ordering a minirig SC today is bound to lose money on it. There are no less than 4 known ASIC providers that have promised hardware this year (or maybe early next year for deepbit, not sure). This will cause a spiral  of lowering hardware price and rising difficulty.  ASICs are dirt cheap to produce, prices could go orders of magnitude lower than they are today, and difficulty will rise with it. I wouldnt be too surprised that by the time you get your minirig, difficulty will be 100x what it is today. And by the time t has earned  back its investment, we will all be long dead.

Bitcoin isnt the answer to your problems Im afraid, certainly mining isnt.

Hi cedivad.  Apology accepted.  Thanks for the input you just gave.  I have considered most of those.  Here is my thinking about them.
#1-the $150 ASIC produces 3.5 gh/s which is between $42 and $43 a gh/s
      the $1300 produces 40 gh/s which is between $32 and $33 a gh/s
     the $30,000 one produces 1,000 gh/s which is $30 a gh/s
So actually it seems like you do get a little better bang for the buck as you go up  the scale.  Of course these are just projected results and the actual results may be completely different.

#2-I have to agree with you about this.  I think it is a bad idea to borrow money for any reason.  However, at present I don't see any other way around it for my situation.  I am still looking for a job and this is just one thing I am trying.  I am very conscientious about debts and don't like incurring them.  I just don't see any other way to increase my Bitcoin production enough to make a living or get a business started.

#3-On this one also I agree with you.  I have been figuring that if I ordered by the end of September that the earliest delivery could be would be the end of December and I would tend to think more probably in late Jan.  This is also a little taking them at their word that they are going to do better this time around than they did the first time with their delivery dates.  I have talked to them and they are pretty adamant that they will be better this time.  If I had enough I might build a video card mining rig for the meantime or get some more Bitforce Singles that I could trade back in when the ASICs hit.  I also already have two Bitforce Singles so I could put them up for the trade in and that might help me with skipping part of the waiting list.
 
#4-I think the difficulty increase will be very big.  The network is about 16 th/s now.  I think it may go to 100 th/s fairly quickly.  On top of that the drop from 50 Bitcoin to 25 Bitcoin per block should happen in December.  That will make the total Bitcoin/month go from 216,000 to 108,000.  Even at 100 th/s one Mini Rig 'SC' still makes 1 th/s.  That would be 1% of 108,000 Bitcoins.  There would be fluctuations of course but roughly you could figure to make about 1,080 Bitcoins in a month.  At present prices that would be a little more than $10,000.  I do expect prices to go up when the block award halves but it doesn't have to to make the Mini Rig 'SC' a good investment.  If it even went down to just 500 Bitcoins a month I think it would be a good investment.  Even at that production it would pay itself off in six months and six months later you would be able to pay back 50% more and still have another 50% of the original price for yourself.  Those are the figures I used to arrive at the 50% interest figure.  It is hard to imagine that 1 th/s wouldn't make more than 500 Bitcons a month anytime soon.

As I said earlier I did get two of the Bitforce Singles.  They cost me $1,240 with shipping.  I figured it would take about 7 months for them to pay themselves off when I ordered them.  Now that I have them it looks like they will payoff in about 3 to 3 1/2 months since I had figured my payoff at $5 a Bitcoin originally.  The $300 a month I am making on Bitcoins now is about the only money I have coming in.  That is the main reason I decided to see if perhaps I could obtain a loan and get more equipment.

About your PS I think I agree with you there also.  Now that I have my degree I am beginning to think that a certification like Cisco would have been a better investment than the degree.  Even more important is the experience.  That is hard to get when you can't get your first job.  It seems not many want a 58 year old recent college graduate for an entry IT position.  That being said I have greatly enjoyed going back to school and getting my computer education.  I'll soon have my Master's in Software Engineering and I will be trying to get some certs after that.  I have a new found passion in computers and computing and I found I really enjoy computer games.  If I can ever get on my feet again I would like to spend some time designing a game but I think I need to be on a little better financial footing before I spend the amount of time it will require to design a game.  In the meantime I try to fool around with the CryEngine3 Dev Package I got from Crytek.  It will take a while to master that.

So anyway thanks for talking to me.  I do see what you mean.  In my situation I just think it was worth a shot to see if I could get the extra machinery.  My experience with Butterfly Labs has been pretty positive and I have talked to them a couple of times about the new ASICS machines.  Then there is the whole idea of getting a loan.  A lot of the lenders are asking like 10% a month for really little loans and I just can't see that.  But I think I am using pretty conservative figures to justify the 50% return in a year.  I think I would do much better than that and would give a bonus to lenders if I did.  I am still out looking for a job in IT or even a carpentry job.  There isn't much construction work around here yet but it does seem like it is just starting to come back a little.  My first career was in carpentry and I am a master carpenter.  With my new degree and coming Master's I really want to find a position in my new field.  If this worked out it would give me a chance to work with computers and I would have more free time and enough money to get my web design and computer building business off the ground.

Ok, i'm than sorry for my words and i will try to make you to understand why I think that what you are doing is a really bad idea.

#1 You can invest in that ASIC 150, 1300 and 30000. It's like buying shares on apple, buying 30k shares you don't get more powerful powers. You get what you paid with the same hash/$ ratio of the lower investments.
#2 It's a bad idea to invest more than what you have, you could invest 1300 if you really belived in Butterfly Labs, and you would have the same result.
#3 You are not, absolutely not, sure about your ROI. Truth is that you are also late in this game, and you BL could ship to you even in January. What's the point on paying now and having the hardware delivered 6 months from now? That alone is a loss in term of money.
#4 The day BF will launch its ASIC (if that day will come) the difficulty levels will start to grow, just like it happened when mining went from CPU to GPU. You are now calculating your ROI based on a GPU market, where the average $/MH is x, what will happen when 1 month from the ASIC launch it will be 1/10 of x? (eg: cheaper hardware can mine at the same Mhash/s speed) Want a rougly answer? Buy 30k$ of mining hardware now, calculate how many BTC you find every day: that how many you will find with the same amount of ASIC hardware in the future.

As you see it's a loss-loss game. The only one who wins is Butterfly Labs.

That being said, i tought a lot about ordering a "Single SC", but i desisted, i din't want to trow 1300$ in the trash. Even if it would have been a cool way to lose that money.

PS: here in Italy a Cisco Certification with a little of experience is more expendable than a degree in that field.

Good Luck.  (and by the way, feel free to use the Google Voice number publicly, because it has the same spam protection as gmail)  ..don't be afraid to give it out... Hell  I'm 631-503-6010

If I had BTC I'd loan it to you, you probably have more than me already

Ok hottweelz.  I just checked into Google Voice.  I got a number that will ring my home phone.  If anyone does want to talk to me all they have to do is e-mail me at [email protected] or at [email protected].  E-mail and ask and I will e-mail back a phone number if they want it.  In fact they should e-mail and talk to me if they are considering lending me some Bitcoins.  While the sites I referenced will tell a lot about me and what I am trying to do there is no substitute for actually talking to someone.  Thanks for the advice.

Its one of many way that people can successfully identify that you are who you are... They'll only trust you for a loan if they know they can contact you. 

Now take that 352 number of yours and cover a google voice number over it... offer the potential loaners to "give you a call"

Make them feel better, someone will loan it to you without you going through the jive of people calling you a scammer.

Dig?