Topic: [On Hold] Hosted (or not) Gridseed ASICs -> Batch 1 Ordered (Read 5607 times)

New thread here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/smarthashingus-gridseed-accessories-for-sale-hosting-newsdiscussion-529508

Lockin' this up, please come over to the new thread!

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You may use the PGP in CoinHoarder's signature to determine the validity of this account and message.

We will be locking this thread momentarily and switching to a new one for the company. Please continue all conversations there.

The terms and conditions in the OP for Batch 1 will still apply.

Thanks
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Surprise!

Grand Opening!

smarthashing.us

We are excited that it is finally time to announce Smart Hashing to the world! Although we are a new company, we are anything but new. Smart Hashing’s founder William Connatser is also president of CryptoVest, a physical cryptocoin company specifically known for making Physical Litecoins. He has been operating large mining farms for over two years now since initially getting into Bitcoin and Litecoin. William, also known as CoinHoarder online, was a pioneer in group buying on the Bitcointalk forums, putting together one of the biggest group buys to date for Batch 3 Avalons and raising more than 722 Bitcoins just in a couple weeks! This group buy was the first one of its kind for Bitcoin mining ASIC hardware. We think it is safe to say that he started quite a trend! Group buys have become so popular that a subforum was created in the Custom Hardware section of Bitcointalk.org to hold them all! Before operating several group buys, William also setup and operated a large GPU farm that was pushing upwards of 16 Mh back in late 2012! Ever since getting his first mining rig, he has been very active within the Bitcoin and Litecoin community. For over a year William’s been gaining experience planning, setting up, and operating group buys mostly off Bitcointalk forums and his own private forums. A couple weeks ago after getting back into group buying, Williwam decided he would improve his hosting service and mining sales service into a more professional operation.

In an effort to stay competitive, provide the best customer experience as possible, and offer a more professional sevice, William has now formed Smart Hashers to conduct his hosting and mining sales business. William is starting to take his businesses more seriously and is hiring one full time manager and a part time network administrator to help him run the hosted equipment and help with customer service for Cryptovest. There is a lot of work to be done in between doing sales, testing, packaging and delivery, and offering hosting services. We hope that by adding people to the team, everyone receives a better experience all around both us as administrators of the company (William will have some free time again!) William has gone on record as being dmittedly bad about checking CryptoVest’s email in the past. Basically he is working full time along with running two businesses and he needs help! This will end once and for all and today we are turning over a new leaf.. starting a new chapter if you will. Thank you to all that have helped us get to where we are today. We only ask that you continue to let us serve you by offering you sweet deals and exemplary mining equipment hosting!

All Gridseed mining equipment in our web shop is currently a 3 to 5 day long pre-order and there are only accessories and ATX power cables in stock at the moment for Scrypt mode only. Dual mode mining cables are coming, but due to ineffeciencies Dual mining is not allowed on hosted units at this time. We will let you know when that changes. There will be a small fee for us to switch out the power cables for dual mining to Scrypt mining and visa versa due to the time it takes to do it. We are looking into turning this into a truly innovative hosted mining experience. We have negotiated a sweet deal with a large supplier that is buying 1000s of units from Gridseed every week to supply us. They have afforded us the pleasure of buying in small quantities, but with steep discounts. Due to the fact that we can order in smaller quantities, we can order batches more frequently, thus making delivery to the customer even quicker than waiting for a big batch to fill! Typically packages are delivered in 3 to 5 business days to the USA from China, so our customers don’t have to wait long and that makes us happy! Setting up this partnership is instrumental in Smart Hashing having competitive pricing, because we want to save our customers as much as possible and want them to feel like they got a good deal. When our customers are happy, we are happy! We are not charging a huge mark up, a medium mark up, or even a small mark up! Our mark up is tiny compared to some other distributors and we hope that you appreciate that!

It is Williams’s goal that his companies improve and expand throughout the rest of this year while making customers happy and meeting some good friends along the way. There is nothing more than he loves setting up, troubleshooting, and hosting mining equipment, so he is determined to make this a success! A new website with a lot of new features is in the works. You will likely be able to change your payment address, automatically notify us when you’d like to sell your hosted equipment, see the farm hash rate and worker break down, and even keep a record your payout information also! This will definitely be a step up from the forum-based company William and his clients are used to him running, and we are excited to help this company grow and help our customers save a buck. Although Smart Hashing doesn’t have a huge wad of cash that some of the larger distributors do, we are still selling at as competitive a price as the larger distributors!!! Even though our prices may be slightly higher than some of the cheapest companies in this space, they are selling at a similar price as us but buying the units for much cheaper and making a killing doing so. They are making much more money than most group buy operators, and are snuffing out the competition by doing things that are economically infeasible to do for a smaller businesses like ourselves. We aren’t going to lay down and let them put us out of our misery just yet though! We are putting our foot down and we won’t let guys with big stacks of cash take over what has traditionally been done by individuals and mom and pop type operations on the forums. We love our small businesses here at CryptoVest and Smart Hashing! Feel free to reach out to us if there is any way we could help you! We are very much interested in cooperating for the better of the community!

Smart Hashing will only source mining equipment from companies that have them in stock and can ship them promptly. We will stay away from month to year long pre-orders. Extended pre-orders puts consumers at a disadvantage because they do not know when they will receive the unit and how profitable it will be by the time they get it. In stock mining equipment allows for easier decision making based on something more than a lot of assumptions and an overly optimistic development time line. We at Smart Hashing recommend you stay away from  extended pre-orders, it doesn’t take but getting stung once to learn your lesson. We hope you don’t learn the hard way! Stick with us and you won’t be left scratching your head 6 months later wondering where your gear is with pitch forks and torches on Bitcointalk ready to start a riot!

All joking aside, if there is anything we can do then please do not hesitate to email us at [email protected] and we will get back to you at our soonest convenience! Thanks for your continued support and we’re excited to start this new journey together with you!

The Smart Hashing Team

PS: All Batch 1 participants will pay the new sale price and be refunded the difference. This sale only lasts through the end of the week, as we are hardly making postage! All shipping is included in our prices!

Hello Will.
I see you've been a busy mining hoster in preparation

What is the big announcement?

Wolfey2014

For those of you waiting on me to open back up orders, I am planning on opening that back up tonight or tomorrow with new pricing so stay tuned.

I'm planning on placing an order at the end of the week.. I know of several people waiting so I think we will have another batch by then no problem.

Thanks

Hi,

I'm sorry.. it was extremely busy weekend and it appears there is no end in sight! Argghh!

Yep the order was placed on Friday night with no problems. It's 3-5 days shipping from China, so I expect to get them sometime in between Thursday and Saturday. I still kind of have a lot to do myself in between now and then, so I'm glad that there is time. The only reason I can think of this might get delayed is if I run into technical problems... more than enough parts are in to run all the Gridseeds I ordered. I planned the pricing and quantity of each component based on me being able to run at least 44 units per Pi. This could cause a problem on my end because I would have charged too little, but it will not cause a problem on your end because I ordered extras of everything. I even ordered several different USB hubs to find the best one for chaining as many as possible on a Pi. This isn't my first rodeo- I feel like I am capable to fix just about anything that isn't simply DOA or faulty.

There's still a couple things to come in, but I've had tracking numbers for them since last week and am expecting everything to get in before the Gridseeds do. I will overnight something I need if that's what I have to get these up and running. I have my buddy on stand by to help me setup the farm.. he has helped me setup, configure, etc. some of my GPU farms in the past.. he will be a good helper. Furthermore, I have a couple family members putting together some custom Gridseed ATX power cables. There are a lot of them to put together and I didn't have much time this weekend. It's kind of a pain in the butt honestly.. I kind of wish now I would of just went with the cheapo Chinese PSUs etc. that all the other suppliers are using.

I feel like this sets me apart from them a bit though, I feel like I definitely have more quality package deals than most of my competitors. Not only because of using the ATX PSUs, but I am also providing Pis with nice cases and 8 Gb SD cards in all packages with all software installed. All package deals will work right out of the box! Furthermore, each package comes with the ATX power adapters to supply 5v power to your accessories like your USB hubs and Pis. I'm hoping that getting rid of those cheap cell phone charger-like PSUs that most USB hubs use and even some gridseed suppliers are using to power their units results in higher stability of the packages I sell. Also, most of the other suppliers use the wiibox (or controller) which has been reported somewhat unstable. I feel like a Raspberry Pi is the obvious best choice and makes the most sense. Stability will only get better over time by using open source software like cgminer or bfgminer, Gridseeds are still relatively new and there will be many improvements in these regards.

Anyways.. I talk too much. I'll talk to ya'll soon.

Hey CoinHoarder, any update on how the order went?  Did everything go through smoothly?  Have you received a tracking number yet?  Do you have an ETA for getting everything up and running?

I appreciate that you have ordered everything in advance of the miners, not to happy with another group buy that I am in, where he did not tell us that he would buy everything once the miners came in.  Needless to say, he is now scrambling to get everything and it looks like it will be a week after the miners arrived before they are all running.  Pretty ridiculous.  Just another thing that this group buy has correct IMO.

Thanks again!

DebitMe

The way I calculated it, we're looking at at least 4-6 months before ROI. I share your opinion, though, that a lot of those other scrypt ASIC companies will experience either production delays or shipping delays. There are also a lot of scrypt alt coins that can be mined, so we've got a lot of choices should the difficulty of any one coin go way up. I only invested into this GB what I could afford to lose. I like the idea that I won't have to monitor anything or worry about power costs etc., because CH is taking care of all of this, and I'm willing to pay his monthly fee for not having to screw with settings or worry about downtime.

Darn, missed out. Waiting for batch #2 as well.

You guys are correct, these will take a while to ROI, but you are also operating under the assumption that all of those companies will ship.  The only company in that list that has shipped a product is KNC, but their order page says they are shipping in Q2 or Q3, which means it could be between Apr and Oct, and since their other products have/are been later rather than sooner, my guess would be closer to Oct.  Of course they only made a SHA-256 ASIC, and a scrypt one is harder.  The other 2 companies you listed have not shipped products before.  IDK who that 3rd one even is?  So as far as shipping a working product, who knows when that will be.  Remember, no company as of yet has shipped an ASIC by their delivery date, just for reference.

There are also a few other companies to consider that you did not mention.  The Fibonacci project seems to be well underway with a scrypt ASIC, and BA says they have something in the works (although I would not trust or believe a word they say anymore)

Also the price for alt coins has dropped in he last few weeks.  If it starts to go back up, then positive ROI will be even sooner.  So there are many things to consider when choosing to buy these.  They also use very little power, which means they can run for a long time before not being profitable to run anymore.

CH - excited that you are doing another group buy.

I'm a bit confused. By my math at 0% increase 1 girdseed will take ~220 days to break even. Did I make a mistake in my calculation?

Hello coinhoarder,

I don't know if I'm in the right place for this.. but maybe I want to buy a lot of gridseed. Don't know how much exactly yet but I have two serious investors with which I will talk to probably on Tuesday. 

I Have my own office where I can put the miners so I wont need a hosting service but maybe helps to get the price down or to full a batch.

But I have a question and since your doing this you must be convinced that this product will make roi. I would like to have your opinion if you don't mind.

July/august, knc titan miner, alpha technology miner, and mining asic technology (MAT) in the netherlands are planning to deliver 100 mh/s units. If you take the average diff increase from the last months and extend this to coming months untill august. Then If you calculate your earnings for example with ltc and you add up an increase of 100 every 3.5 day and you do this till august and you sum up al the coins you mine with the given diff your no ware near roi. How do you see this? I trying to figure out what percentage of the investment must go to the gridseed and to preorders.

I do believe this companies will be game changing. I don't want to depend on the profit from new coins with pump and dumps. So how do you see this?

Thanks,

Bob     

Hm, I thought I knew what the surprise was but maybe not...

Excited to have units on order!

Waiting for your batch 2. 

It's a surprise! 

I will place the order for batch 1 in just a moment once the last transfer has confirmed! Batch 1 customers will receive a refund late next week once I am sure all accessories work as planned and the final costs are realized. Thanks all for a successful Batch 1! There were a lot of familiar faces in Batch 1, thanks for choosing me to host your mining equipment once again! Big changes are coming in a couple days.. I will let you know when I'm ready to announce what's up.

For the time being, all ordering is on hold. The payment address has been redacted from the OP.

Thanks

It's the new lease to own program I had suggested to him a couple weeks ago!
He said he'd do it if he could so.........
I can't afford to buy 100 GS5s up front so he probably found someone to finance the operation in exchange for a nice payback of course.
This will be a boon to Will's hosting service as well as everyone else who gets involved!
It's good for us, it's good for him, it's good for the movement, it's good for the entire industry! Win Win Win!
So now the average guy/gal has the same opportunity as everyone else to make money from crypto mining.
That's my guess/wish
Let's see what happens.....
.05btc to me if I'm right. everybody  
Wolfey2014

Good to hear! and I am not envious of your weekend with all of those cables my friend.

You have peaked my interest about the good news, and now you tell me I must wait...Blah, that's evil

is some maggot hacker ddos'ing this site?
I keep getting 505 'bad gateway' errors all the sudden!
geesh! get a life, hack!

Cables??! We don't need no stinkin' cables!!! 



Now for the fun part... connecting 1000 barrel plugs to the ends of 2000 wires.

No wonder Santa hires elves. 

I will be placing our order this evening. Please get your order in ASAP to be included in Batch 1

Power cable components, barrel plugs, USB hubs, PSUs, and the Pis have arrived! The only thing we're missing is Mini USB plugs which should show up on Monday.

I have some exciting news, but it will have to wait a day or two.

Thanks

Hi Wolfey,

Yes everything is coming together nicely. Although the company you linked is selling units for way more than I am charging to my own customers.. I'm not sure that will help me much, but thanks for trying to help me out- I appreciate it.


Hehe, thanks for the free bump.


---------------


Effective immediately the cost per miner has been reduced $5 each per unit, as I was able to secure a better deal. For those that have already paid, you will be refunded $5 per miner as soon as the order is placed. I am waiting to refund the $5 because BTC value may change in between now and when I place the order this weekend, making it more expensive or less expensive for me to order the equipment. If the value rises and I have excess funds on top of the $5, that will be refunded as well.

There may be further refunds on top of this as well due to other logistics of sourcing the accessories. If the cheapo USB hubs I ordered work, then expect further savings on top of what I have already mentioned. I priced in the more expensive USB hubs that I know will work, but if the cheap ones work then that will be good for everyone. As mentioned previously, Pis can be finicky with USB hubs.

Thanks for choosing me to buy your units from and host them. I promise to pass down any further savings I can achieve down to my customers, even those that have already paid. I have edited the cost in the OP, so it now shows the current and correct price.

Thanks

Bump

Come on guys, join the GB

Yo Will,
exhilarating when you're fully committed and your ars is on the line eh?
I feel your pain, man!

Here. This may help you and others, A LOT!
Check it out.....

*********************************************

HASHRA TO THE RESCUE!
I have been authorized by HASHRA to announce....

New firmware for our controllers.
Could these be the ultimate cure for our hash configuration woes?
No more pissin around with tweak this, config that, change this, debug that....ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Ladies and Gentlemen!
Get your FREE firmware upgrades here! http://hashra.com/support/

A little background via direct quote:

"Our firmware "HASHRA CONTROLA" can be found here… hashra.com/support.

It is based on CGMiner and we have also made all the source code public on our GitHub page, please feel free to spread the word about it.

We were really aiming to create something that was stable, not just blast a whole load of hashing power if it keeps restarting etc.

We are happy with what we have so far though it is still in continuous development.
We plan to use this as the basis for our future products coming up and is designed for the Raspberry Pi.

At present you can use it to mine SHA or SCRYPT though we are still working on the dual aspect… it is proving tricky but we are getting close to having it now stable… to get it you will just need to hit update firmware and it will update straight away.

Using our firmware we recommend core speed at 850… should sit at just over 3.6MH for 10 units with no issues."

Let me/us all know how it works out. I don't own a controller yet but,,,soon!
I want to let all the bugs get worked out, then decide on which is the least hackable, least attackable and most stable controller out there.

One other important note. HASHRA will be set up for taking bulk discount orders from ww vendors and customers alike! They are now directly under and in between GridSeed and the rest of the world.
No import or customs hassles!

Hope this helps you a lot Will!
Good luck, man!

Peace
Wolfey2014

Thanks for the kind words, I am working really hard to make this group buy a success. I have crossed the point of no return with this group buy by buying so many accessories and renewing my lease, so I am determined to make this a success. I have sourced all the accessories from alternative sources and everything is arriving this week. Some things arrived today, the rest are set to arrive tomorrow or the next day. This includes all components of our custom ATX cables, mini usb cables for the gridseeds, silver rated ATX PSUs, Pis with cases and 8 Gb cards, USB hubs, standoffs (although I may have changed my mind about stacking so many units and the time it would take to do it).

By ordering the cable components early, I will be able to make them by the time the Gridseeds get here. I need to strip wires, install barrel plugs, and shrink wrap the cables, so it is good I have some time to do this. I must disclose the only thing I am worried about is finding out that the USB hubs I ordered don't work well with chaining Gridseeds on Pis. Pis are finicky with USB hubs. Worst case scenario I will give a refund for the USB hubs and ship out the units. I will suggest a USB hub that works (I have ordered 4 different models that supposedly work well with Pis) and you should order it yourself. It will take about the time for me to ship your units and you receive them as it would take for you to order and receive a USB hub. This is my backup plan in that scenario. If the USB hubs can be modded to save them, then I will.. sometimes they work better when being powered by an ATX PSU rather than the cheap walmart phone charger-like PSUs.

Anyways.. I think everything is coming together nicely and I will be ready to place the order this weekend and receive the units next week.

Well Coinhoarder, I am not sure why you aren't getting more interest in this.  You have been around here a while and have good trust, which is more than what can be said about most gridseed resellers.  I admit, I was a little weary about such high hosting prices, but will happily pay the new rate and keep the miners with you.

I have been referring anyone I can to this GB as I have been very happy with it BTW.

If you are unable to secure any more orders by the weekend do you think you will be shutting this down?  Is there a number your looking at to keep this open?  Just interested as I may start looking at backup investment ideas if this one falls through.

Thanks for your diligent and good work, its nice to have a competent GB leader in the crypto world.  Hopefully you can continue to make this thing grow and expand, please let me know how any of us could help you if you need it.

Thanks,

DebitMe

There's not much interest in this compared to some other options and competition has got more intense with other Gridseed hosting options popping up. I don't really have a lot of money to secure a bulk purchase with Gridseed to the lower prices and order directly, so I'm sitting on somewhat unfair grounds. So, I have been thinking of other ways I can improve this offering.

In an effort to remain competitive, I have decided to take a gamble on the hosting costs and the farm reaching full capacity. I hereby eliminate the large monthly fee structure that has been sitting in the OP for a couple weeks that was dependent on the number of units hosted. The hosting fee is now a flat $4 fee per miner, no matter the number of units hosted. The first month is still free. Thanks for those of you that have shown your support thus far by ordering! I hope you like the fact that the fees are now much lower when less units are hosted. Refunds are available at any time until the order is made this weekend if not.

I will be offering the option to host other mining equipment, so reaching capacity does not depend on interest in Gridseed mining equipment. If you are interested in hosting anything else contact me, I will do it for $0.57 per watt per month. This includes any Bitcoin and Scrypt ASICs, I have experience hosting GPU rigs as well. Since I am taking the risk of the costs of the bills, I need to find other ways to make sure I reach capacity.

I hope this sweetens the deal a little bit. I feel like my hardware prices are pretty competitive and I can't get any better prices without going directly through Gridseed, so it is what it is. I can't go through Gridseed with this low of volume.

I also needed to add a provision to the sale of hosted units. The selling of hosted equipment must be done for cryptocoins, since it may put me in the field of being a money transmitter if I sold for FIAT on Ebay and converted it into Bitcoin to pay you the proceeds. I'm sorry, but I need to implement this policy to make sure I don't break any regulatory rules of money transmitting. As always, a refund is available if you do not like this policy.. I realize we could probably get more $$ by reselling them on Ebay instead of the forums, but its the best I can do with the government breathing down our necks.

Anyways... thanks.  

Sorry to bump again, but I thought some would like to know that I have reduced the price of the accessories when ordering non-hosted units, including the custom power cables. The price I put up yesterday was somewhat of a guesstimate.. I have now worked out exact costs and reduced them accordingly.

Thanks

If you see movement of funds on the group buy address do not be alarmed, I needed to issue a refund.

I have no problem issuing refunds up until the point in time the hardware is ordered. From that point forward it will be out of my hands.

Thanks

Bump  

I can sell cables separately, but I'm not likely to have all the parts in until next week for them.

Thanks for pointing that out. 

I think you made a mistake, under 3c it says 185 dollars but has the btc amount for 195 dollars. Just FYI

Ok guys... several changes.

There is now the option to buy units that you want delivered and do not want hosted at all. I want to offer a better deal to everyone, so I am offering this group buy to non-hosted people as well now. This is so that possibly we can secure more ordering volume and get a better deal on the equipment. All savings will be pased down to the group buy participants and I will give refunds to those that have already paid if I am able to secure a better deal.

I have added it in the instructions of how to participate under option 2c. Please refer to the short paragraph of terms for non-hosted units. It basically releases me from all liability from misuse of the custom power cables, and also states that you must pay shipping when the units arrive.

2c. Not Hosted Costs/Options (comes with just a Gridseed miner, no accessories whatsoever):
         - $185 per unit =
         - You will be billed for the full shipping costs once the units have arrived.
         - Accessories:
         - Plus $100 for a Raspberry Pi host =
              + Pre-configured to work with Gridseeds. Can likely host up to 50 units depending on USB setup
         - Plus $2 per miner for Standoffs to stack your Gridseeds =
         - Plus $2 per miner for Mini USB cables =
         - Plus $30 per USB 10-port hub (Raspberry Pi compatible) =
         - Custom Cables (Scrypt ONLY:)
              + Heat shrink, 18 AWG, Plug and Play ATX Power Cables, Hand-made Custom Cables
              + Disclaimer: All cables provided for non-hosted units are for use at your own risk. Please make sure to research whether these cables will work for your PSU and do not over load the 12v or 5v lines of your PSU, or chain multiple cables together. Please ask for advice if you're not sure.
         - Plus $55 each for an ATX CPU/EPS 8 pin power cable =
              + Can power up to SIXTEEN (16) Gridseeds
         - Plus $45 each for an ATX PCIe 6 pin cable =
              + Can power up to TWELVE (12) Gridseeds
         - Plus $35 each for an ATX 4+4 pin CPU cable =
              + Can power up to EIGHT (8 ) Gridseeds
         - Plus $30 each for an ATX Molex 4 pin cable =
              + Can power up to FOUR (4) Gridseeds and FOUR (4) 5v accessories (Usb hubs, Pi, etc.)
         - Plus $35 each for an ATX SATA cable =
              + Can power up to FOUR (4) Gridseeds and FOUR (4) 5v accessories (Usb hubs, Pi, etc.)
         - Custom Cables (Dual Mining Mode:)
         - Coming Soon

-------------------------

Thanks all.  

Thanks I can confirm I received it. 

Sending my payment tonight. I was waiting for blockchain to come back up.

Hey,

There are 75 units paid for at this moment. 

Thanks

How many devices ordered are we at right now?

Back to page 1

The first order will be placed this weekend. Please get your order in!

Good question. Please PM me the number of extra units you'd like hosted and what kind of accessories you can send with them, then I will figure out if I would need to buy anything extra. I likely at the very least will need to charge for the power chords because I'm using a custom ATX-based solution.

It won't be too much added expense, but it is certainly worth noting.

Thanks

Thanks for the information, let me get the bitcoin together from the different places I have it stored and will send you a PM tonight.  I also will be getting at least 12 units from another GB that I will mail over once I receive them. (Do i need to provide anything besides the units?  Cords and what not are included?)

Hey,

I answered your PM just now.

I am pretty sure these will be the newer version... the retailer we are buying from does a lot of volume, so I'd be surprised if they still had any of the older generation still in stock. I only put 300-333 Kh to be conservative and I wasn't sure exactly what speed these would run at. I expect to be running something like 375 Kh... maybe more. I am definitely overclocking a little bit, but I'm not going to get out of control with that. I have heard 850 mhz runs pretty stable (which gets almost 400 Kh I think.. but maybe this is the older model and the newer one will be faster than 400 Kh while overclocked). I am likely going to try that first and if it works OK I'm not going to change it. I also might underclock when we get to full capacity for efficiency's sake. I'm going to play it by ear as far as overclocking.  

Thanks

sent you a PM with a few questions, forgot one though.  Is it 100% positive you will only be getting the ones that get up to 333 Kh ea?  No way to order the ones that have the updated firmware that get up to 400 ea?
Also, where are you located in the US?  Don't need a specific address, just a state and possibly city.

Thanks a lot.

I am going to try to get them hashing sometime next week for sure. I am even ordering extra USB hubs in case the cheapo ones I bought don't work properly... the Pi is finicky with hubs. We should be set to go when they arrive. 

Just sent my payment for 20 units!

Let's hope the units start hashing soon 

Hey,

I am going to wire in a fuse panel for DIY hosted units. If they dual mine, then the fuses will blow and there will be no problems for anyone else.

Their units (or the ones they tried to dual mine with) will be down until I can replace the fuses. Hopefully this will be enough of a deterrent from people trying to do it. If not, it's not an issue for everyone else.

Thanks

Interesting GB.
Is there a way to not allow dual mode so that other users in "DIY mode" don't cause grief for the rest of the miners?
In other words if someone does not follow the guidelines and produces too much heat or causes circuits to blow what will be the course of action?
Thanks
DBA

Thanks. Confirmed

-----------

To all:

Please don't forget to PM me your info when sending in funds.

Thanks

Will

Hey CoinHoarder, I just sent payment and PM'd the requested info. 

Alright guys, I posted the payment address in the OP.

I'm pretty happy with the terms and I think we have everything pretty well planned out, so lets get this show on the road. Anyone that can get their payment in by the end if the week will be in Batch 1. A lot of the accessories aren't arriving until late next week anyways, so it gives us a little time to prepare so that we will be ready to go when the order is placed. They will be shipped from the USA, so I expect to have them in about 10-12 days. 

Thanks for your support!

Well that won't really work in the summer which is coming soon.

Looks like this thing is about ready to take off, very cool! Im excited to see pictures of all the units hashing away!

PM coming your way...

Is using outdoor air to cool them a possibility? Also, if you are running a SCRYPT only farm, the wattage from each unit is miniscule but of course they add up to a lot of heat when you're running hundreds of them at a time. All you need is a fresh air inlet and place for the heat to escape out to.
Perhaps this arrangement will offset the A/C unit compensation thereof.

All those small fans on the pods are not necessary but I understand you don't want to be desoldering and removing fans from hundreds of units ;! That's not practical.

Wolfey2014

No it won't take nearly that long. I expect to have the first miners hashing in about 10 days, and all of the first batch hashing by the end of that week if everything goes as planned. Yes you may do the DIY mining with less than 50 units. Just please add $70 for your own raspberry pi please.

On a side note, I also wanted to mention I will be making a list of the number of units you need to order in order to receive certain accessories when ending the hosting. Like.. every 10 units will likely come with USB hub, standoffs, etc.. ~every 50 will come with a raspberry pi, and so on and so forth. This is going to me the last edit to the OP before starting to collect funds later today.

I'm also generating a vanity wallet for the group... it's been hashing away at it all night and still hasn't found it although it's on 65% likelihood now. Our firstbits will be 1GroupB

Edit: Vanity gen reached 100% probability to find the address, but I got tired of waiting on it and used an address that starts with 1HosT instead.

I plug 30A PDUs directly into the 30A circuits, and branch the PSUs off the PSUs. Everything runs at 240v.. there is no step down to 120v.

I have about 8 30A circuits available, but cooling is the main issue holding me back from filling all of those up. Even though I have a really nice commercial A/C, it can only handle so many watts. I am due for an upgrade and it is on my to do list. If the A/C is upgraded we could possibly expand to several thousand units.. but I am not promising I will be able to do this. An A/C upgrade is probably going to cost something like $5k to $10k.  

Expected would be somewhere in the first half of April then? 

Is it also possible to do the DIY solution with less than 50 units (I'm interested in 10-30, haven't decided yet). This because it will need it's on Raspberry Pi to control it, while it could actually be hooked up to 50 according to your OP.

Hey Jos-T,

I just ordered accessories last night to run about 500-1000 (some components I bought for 500 units, some were cheaper and I went ahead and got 1000). I tried to order as much as I could from North America so that we will likely receive mostly everything we need sometime next week. I am planning on making an order next weekend for the miners.

I would like to go ahead and get an order in the next couple days, however some of the accessories might not have arrived by the time we receive the Gridseeds, so I'd rather wait to be sure that we have everything we need to get started. I am buying them from a reputable company in the USA to negate the risk of getting scammed, also shipping time will be short and is expected to only take 3 days. My guess is the first batch will be up and hashing in about a week and a half. After all the accessories get in, previous batches can be ended as soon as there are enough units ordered.

Thanks

Are those circuits powering UPS's then out to all the 120V psu's?

You have a total of 16 120V 30A circuits to use.
Why not feed all the psu branches that way?

How many total 30A circuits do you currently have available?

Wolfey2014

I'm pretty interested in letting you host 10 of these.
If I'm correct this will give me around 3.0-3.3MH/s hash rate in grid seed scrypt miners?
If I were to order in the coming 1-2 days and send you the BTC payment directly, what is the ETA for the miners to be running?
I would prefer the 'do-it-yourself'-solution.

Thanks for any answer!

8 30A 240 circuits.

Need to upgrade the HVAC situation before I can use them all though.

I love the pic of the all the 30A sockets how many do you have and how many volts ?

You mean say, 1 to 2 amp fuse per 10 units running in Scrypt. Spec's say 5000mA max. So this would be a good current limiting range to use to prevent any possible serious problems. The 5 chip units will ever pull anywhere near 5 amps while running Scrypt mode. As I recall, in Scrypt, they pull around 480mA max.
If they trigger a SHA session, the fuse will simply blow and that will be that until it's replaced. Perhaps a charge for having to reset them for trying to mine SHA would be appropriate as well.
Wolfey2014

I am looking into adding 12v fuses inline with the DIY units to prevent any problems or accidents. I agree it will be better safe than sorry.

Fees & Hosting Terms:
- The hosting fee is all inclusive of power costs, internet bill, ordering, setup, troubleshooting, and hosting for all units.
- The fee will be dependent on the number of units hosted and will be as follows:
      100-200 units hosted: $11/month       200-300 units hosted: $10/month
      300-400 units hosted: $9/month        400-500 units hosted: $8/month
      500-600 units hosted: $7/month        600-700 units hosted: $6/month
      700-800 units hosted: $5/month        800-900+ units hosted: $4/month
- First Month = Free Hosting Hopefully we can reach half capacity+ in about a month and no one will ever have to pay >$9 for the hosting fee.  Smiley
- Bitcoinaverage.com will be used for calculating usd/Bitcoin ratio for hosting fees
- All units can only be ran on Scrypt mode only due to power/accounting issues.
- You may request delivery of your unit(s) at any time. You must pay for shipping and the hosting fees through the end of the month.
- We are located in the USA and shipping will be $10* domestic and $20* international per unit.
* Shipping costs are subject to change, for the better or for the worse. If shipping multiple units it will likely be cheaper.

***********************

Great idea! Good stuff!
So am I to understand that if I rent or rent to own 100 to 200 units, I have to pay out a hosting fee of anywhere from $1100 to $2200 per month?:

What happens after they are paid for? I can either have them sent to me for my own personal hands on or just leave them there and use them to make 'us' money? You your hosting fees and me my profits.

What are the odds of my miners paying all of that by themselves from day one?

At what point do I become 'owner' of the hardware? i.e. Psu's, controllers, miners etc? What exactly am I buying - if I go that way? Miners and support equipment or just the miners?

So I just send you my btc# and you set up the number of units I order, start them mining and making profits and if at the end of the first FREE 30 days they don't pay the rent / hosting fees, I have to pay if out of pocket?

Will the program e structured in a way that this will always be profitable and only become unprofitable if the market take a very marked dive? I mean in that case, it would hardly be worth continuing with the program, eh?

My farm should be making me a profit and hopefully paying some of my other bills too

Thanks for your ideas and offer to do this for people. I think it is very needed and wanted!
This could cause a boom in the mining side of the game which is what we need to help this industry grow and continue to be around from now on!

Wolfey2014

I understand your worries, but I honestly don't think it will be too big of a deal. I will make sure to change the default Login info on all Raspberry Pis that run the farm. The DIYers will only have access to their own Pi that only has their units on it. If they were to do something and somehow hijack the farms hash power, then I feel like I or someone else will be noticing that very quick. The options I'm choosing for pools have very good monitoring options, so I think everyone will like to check it every now and then. If they hijacked the equipment and changed passwords or something, I can simply unplug the power and reformat the sd cards and regain control of the farm pretty easy. So far there is only 1 DIYer.. so we will know who did what if something does happen. I don't imagine there being much interest in that type of hosting honestly.

I am a bit worried about it for other reasons though. Like.. perhaps someone accidentally choosing dual mining and starting a fire or something. I will make sure to drill it into peoples heads not to do dual mode mining.  There are a lot of things that come with it. Also I would probably be more worried about physical theft than intrusions by DIYers, but I am upgrading from a Motion Sensor camera to a 24x7 monitored security system which is included in the hosting fee. Whomever breaks in to steal our hashes... I hope they can run fast.

The price is pretty much finalized and I have updated the OP with it. I was able to get the costs down to $195 per unit including all PSUs/adapters/cables/hubs/pis/etc... You may see better prices around but most of the really cheap ones don't have accessories and you have to take the costs of those into account. Also, since our batches will be smaller I wasn't able to order from Gridseed directly. I designed a custom power solution that I am pretty sure will run 88 Gridseeds off of one 1000w ATX PSU!!! I sourced all cables as cheap as I could find them. I have already ordered all cables, components, adapters, pis, hubs, etc. for up to 500 units. Some components were ordered for all 1000 units, so we are pretty much ready to get going!

Ordering will open up tomorrow afternoon, so please get in any last minute terms/conditions suggestions in now.

Okay, I don't really want to do the do it myself mode.  I was wondering what type of security you would have.  With this you're more vulnerable to attack.  For example someone could switch your miners to a different payout address and you might not notice.

Thanks for the kind words, I'll mark you down for 20 units.  


------------------------------------


I updated the OP:
- To allow for both automatic mining (you simply provide a Bitcoin address for payments) OR do it yourself mining (you receive log in information and do everything yourself).
- Offer the option to sell the units and pay you with the proceeds of the sale as an extra option as opposed to getting units shipped back to you when unprofitable/you want to end the hosting arrangement.
- Further reduced shipping costs to have miners sent back to you.
- I reserve the right to overclock or underclock the Gridseed miners at my descretion for units hosted in Lazy Mining mode. I promise to take it easy on them.  

Very Important: Someone lost 60 BTC this way in one of my previous Group Buys. The attacker quoted my OP and edited the Bitcoin payment address to his own. Please make sure you are looking at the OP of this thread when getting the payment address. Furthermore, I am taking precautions to prevent this from happening again and other man in the middle attacks, please validate the Bitcoin payment address by using the PGP Key in my signature. For more information on how to use PGP, please see this website: http://www.bitcoinnotbombs.com/beginners-guide-to-pgp/

I am still getting the final costs per unit from resellers & I'm trying to calculate in the cost per unit for power supplys, usb hubs, cables, etc... I expect to have this ready by the end of the weekend and I will open up deposits for the group buy at that time. There isn't really a good solution as far as power cables for a farm of this size. I may end up making our own cables just so I can set everything up how I want to- using ATX power supplies. Please let me know if you have any more suggestions for the terms or other options you'd like to see.

Thanks

I have participated in both of the previous group buys that CoinHoarder has ran. CoinHoarder has spent many sleepless nights trying to keep our miners running at their best and I trust his ability to run another successful group buy. There have been some minor problems along the way but I do believe he has done his best to be upfront and honest with us (the participants) as issues arose. Thanks dude!

I'm in for probably 20 units this time around... just let me know payment info

Also in dual miner mode because it uses more electricity it will also be generating more heat.  This causes a greater strain on the AC system.

Thanks for you suggestions.. they are very good ones.

Let me think it over a bit and I'll post an update this evening. I like all of your suggestions, but I'm not sure if option #4 will be feasible due to the extreme difference in power usage dual mining mode uses compared to Scrypt only. Since it uses more power, the hosting fee would need to be higher for dual mining units, so it kind of complicates things quite a bit. Also in dual mining mode the amount of units I will be able to host will go down, therefore hosting per unit will be more expensive.

I'm open to ideas though. Thanks again for the quality feedback.

Alright!  I am in for a full controller block whatever that happens to be.

I think the easiest way to handle payment would be just require upfront payment for a term of several months (3 is probably a good number, since after that who knows what difficulties and feasibility will be on scrypt). 

Also, while I am getting everything I asked for I might as well add a few other nice-to-haves, but I am "in" for the self-managed block either way.

(1) a bulk shipping or at least a self pickup option for someone who has a lot of units at the end of the hosting term... at $20/unit returning 30 units would be over $600 which seems excessive. 

(2) just like with self-storage, at the end of the hosting term as an alternative to renewal or shipping back units, sell the units on ebay (possibly with the automatic hosting units), keeping a decent fee for yourself and remitting remainder (probably better than shipping back, especially if you have many units from multiple customers).

(3) option to ship my pre-existing units to you to add to my self-managed hosted farm (I realize this would have to include a setup fee to deal with the controller, hub, power supplies, etc. that you are already incorporating in the price of the GB units).

(4) option to power units sufficiently to mine BOTH BTC and Scrypt.. I have experimented with this and found that it is actually more profitable at times, especially with alt-coins recent drops relative to BTC .. I am working on a cgminer code that will autoselect BTC, Scrypt or both (don't hold your breath though, its really complicated) and would like to use this.  It would significantly increase power required so obviously would be more $$.

Thanks 

I sleep with one eye open, I hope this qualifies to your standards!!! 

Hi, thanks for your interest.

1. Yes I will have a better price than $230. I am still getting quotes to see who can give me the best deal, but it will be around $200-$225. Gridseed is non-responsive.. I think they are only interested in dealing with 100s-1000s of units in one order, so I am going to be forced to deal with a reseller/group buy coordinator. I'm hoping that the resellers will see the big picture and that I will likely order 100s of units, therefore give me a better price although I'm only planning on ordering in 20 unit batches. The batch sizes could be increased no problem if we could secure a better deal that way, but I feel like there is a fine line in between savings per unit and making people wait for a large batch to fill up. They could be mining a week earlier than waiting, negating most of any price difference that would be had for a larger batch. Please keep in mind I am paying for Pis, stand offs to organize the farm, power supplies.. everything. These costs will need to be factored into my cost per unit, so it may be a little higher than what you see in other group buys in the forums, but it includes everything we can possibly need.

2. I think you have a good idea, and I would not have any problem setting up something like this. You have made me rethink my hosting options, I am thinking about offering an "automatic" service and a "diy" service to cater to both crowds. Automatic service I do everything for you, DIY service you pick your own pool, configure the miners. I can give access via ssh or whatever you prefer. I have seen a pi working with 50 Gridseeds.. you are right, the limitation is the amount of USB hubs you can chain together. The only thing about doing a diy service is I will have to bill you for the hosting fees and can't just take them out automatically. I don't really have a problem with this, just so you know. I think I would give someone up to 1-2 late on their hosting fee before taking of their units and mining the hosting fees. Some type of "contract" will need to be written and added to the OP to cover different situations that could come up with hosting diy Gridseeds, but I feel that's nothing that you and I can't come to agreement about. Let me think about it today and I will add a rough draft of the diy provisions to the OP later today.

If he sleeps more than 4 hours, I'm not interested.

Great to see you working on another GB! I can also vouch that CH has handled the previous groups very well: good communication, good planning, good troubleshooting skills & always committed to making it work!

I ask because I am interested. A couple more Qs:

*I'm based in the UK. Any issues?
*Fibonacci is taking pre-orders next week. Delivery ~July. But it will be a hosted solution of some type, plus limited supply per customer. Any views vs. Gridseed?

Two questions (or really one question, and one hopeful suggestion):

(1) If you are able to get a better price than $230, will you pass that along to the GB?  It looks like prices are coming down close to $200 as of now anyway

(2) It would be really great if you offered an option for someone to buy a "full controller block" of these with the option to self-manage the hosted units.  By "full controller block" what I mean is the number of units that are run off of a single controller (or rPi if that is what you are using).  I am not sure what the limit is (I know, because I have 10 now, that the limit for the controller that gridseed includes is about 10 in practice, though they claim 20... the rPi could probably handle 30-40 but then you run into USB hub limitations I suspect).  Whatever the number, each full controller block would have to be setup and managed individually anyway... if you instead allowed VPN access to that unit (to someone who is willing to buy that full controller block of units) it would alleviate some of your management as that person (me!) would not have to be included in the distributions, etc.  It would be a more traditional hosting-only operation... for which I would still expect to pay the full hosting fee of course.   I would be in for 20-40 units under this type of arrangement.

Thanks for pointing out the typo in my post earlier. I had meant to type $230, not $130.

In Scrypt mode the Gridseeds supposedly use ~ 7 watts, so yes it is much more efficient than GPUs. I would only be able to cool a farm a fraction of the size than I could with ASICs by using GPUs.

r9 290s from what I can tell (I'm still using 5xxx cards) can do about 800 Kh at 300 watts.

The Gridseed can do about 333 Kh (I have seen screenshots of 377 Kh+) at supposedly 7 watts.

Big difference.  

Hopefully this answers your question.. I'm unsure if you were just simply asking about the price or what.

I have a bunch of r9 290s and tri-x cards.

Leaving the cost of power out, are you saying the units are now $130 each and not $230?

would it take 3 to match an r9 290 in terms of hashing, but with the lower power use?

Some common questions answered:

Why not a set fee like x%? From experience I have found that setting up the fee structure like this does not work. My first group buys I set the fees at 3% and paying expenses out of that 3% can get very tight and I even have operated some months negatively. It takes a lot of work to setup and host a group buy, and I am simply making sure that it will be worth my effort. I was one of the first (if not THE first) group buy operators on these forums, and I think that most people that offer hosting for a set fee will realize sooner or later that this is not an ideal way to implement hosting fees. Although the fee structure may seem odd, it was the most fair way I could think of for all parties involved. If I was hosting this out of my home (which I am not and cannot.. already hosting Bitcoin ASICs there), then I might be able to work off of a 3% fee even though when profitability diminishes I would essentially be working for free (or very cheap.) However, this is commercial property and with that comes expenses that need to be taken care of. I have rent, internet & security system bills, along with a commercial sized A/C which is most efficient when cooling more hardware, so it is more expensive to host less equipment than it is more.

Ideas to lower the hosting costs in the future: I can likely expand hosting even further into my home once capacity has been reached. This can possibly bring down the hosting fees even further. I am already renting about the cheapest place I could find, so no dice there. If I can save up enough to upgrade the A/C, I can host more units to bring these costs down. However, upgrading A/Cs is likely going to put me out $5k+ even after selling the old one. I just don't really see it as an option unless I just have some extra cash laying around.. which I don't. An alternative would be to find trustworthy people and spread the hash power out to others that could host them cheaply in their homes. Any other ideas?

What pool will we use? I will give my top three suggestions for multicoin pools to the group and outline what I deem to be their strengths and weaknesses. From that point a vote will be held on which pool we use and whichever pool wins by majority vote will be the one we setup with. We can always change pools at any time, again a majority vote will need to be held to change pools.

Will we be able to monitor the hash rate, worker speed, and income details? This depends on several factors, the major one being what pool we decide to use. I will make sure to outline which pools have the best monitoring options when outlining their strengths and weaknesses for the vote. At the very least I plan to make the hash rate for the entire farm publicly available (so you could tell how fast your miners are running by doing a simple calculation), and also all accounting information regarding income will be made available in a transparent manner. If it is economically feasible I will look into getting a custom website for these purposes- for now I use private forums separate from Bitcointalk.

Thanks Chris

---

Ok, I realize the group buy terms may be turning a few of you off so I have sweetened the deal a bit:
- Lowered hosting fees across the board by $1 a month
- Lowered shipping costs to get the units delivered if you want to
- Added free hosting for the first month (hopefully we can reach half capacity+ in about a month and no one will ever have to pay >$9 for the hosting fee.)
- Batch sizes lowered to 20 units, so those that are interested don't have to wait forever for a 100 unit batch to fill up. The price needed to go up a bit since we're not buying in as high quantity anymore, I can't get as good a discount. Please note I am still getting bulk prices from different Gridseed distributors so I hope that the actual price paid will be lower, but I have it set at $230 per unit for now.

This is the absolute best deal I can give. I may make one more revision to the terms before starting this group buy, but the terms as you see them are not likely to change much. With expenses this puts me at about a $1500/month profit when the farm is at full capacity (900+ units.) I will lose money obviously by offering free hosting for the first month, but I feel like this will make it more fair for early group buy participants. From experience, I know how much time it will take to maintain this group buy including setup, troubleshooting, maintenance, making payments, and managing the books. I'm not going to take any less for this effort of running 900+ gridseeds and dealing with all of their owners... you guys can take it or leave it. There will be a lot of work to be done to set something like this up.

I am going to set a deadline of 60 units reserved by the end of the week (3/16/2014), or I will need to cancel this group buy. Again, my lease is up on March 31st so I need to figure out if there is enough interest in this quickly, because if not I have a lot of work I need to do to get moved out. I don't want to lock myself into another year of rental payments if I'm not going to be using the office space so I need to get this figured out ASAP.

At this time 17 units have been reserved.

Thanks,

Will

Yes, I can also vouch for coin-hoarder.  He's consistently paid dividends for the first group buy.  He also gave had an entirely transparent system.  We had information on stakeholders and also dividend information.  Also, when any problems occurred he did his best to fix them and make the best of the situation.

Thanks for the kind words!

I just updated the hosting fee to make it more fair. It now changes with every batch of 100 miners ordered... let me explain why it is what it is. Each month I have a set amount of expenses for the commercial property... rent, electricity, air conditioning, and an internet bill. Other than the units themselves which use very little electricity, these expenses are the same month to moth. This is why the hosting fee is higher the less amount of units that are hosted and it will decrease with every batch purchased. Basically the A/C and expenses will be more economical the more units that are hosted. It is likely I will have extra room in my home to host additional units to bring down these costs even more from the price for 900 units, but this will not be done until capacity is reached at the commercial property.

I can vouch for CoinHoarder as a member of both his previous group buys as well as owning a few of the Physical Litecoins he sold (is still selling?)

He is a good, honest, hardworking guy, something rare in this community unfortunately.

Good luck!

What: All-inclusive Scrypt ASIC mining by the unit. Exchange units for physical hardware at anytime, or just give me your Bitcoin address and I will do everything else... all ordering, setup, maintenance, and payments will be done by me. You just need to sit back and relax. You are not buying partial shares of mining equipment, a company, or a security. You are buying Gridseed Scrypt ASIC mining hardware and each "unit" you buy is redeemable for actual hardware. I am simply offering hosting services for a set monthly fee and not operating off of a percentage of the mining income as is common in other group buys.

Who: I did a couple of the first ever group buys on these forums for seven Batch 3 Avalons last year and a diversified group buy in which we ordered from multiple manufacturers. I have handled over 1500 BTC through these group buys and other business dealings in a very transparent and honest way. I also make physical Litecoins, which many people that trust me to assemble the coins for them. This will be my first Scrypt ASIC group buy, although as mentioned I have ran ASIC farms before and have ran large GPU farms since before then. My identity is well known by multiple people in the community.

Where: A modified warehouse building specifically for Bitcoin/Scrypt mining. I have installed a 36,000 BTU A/C that is capable of cooling about 850 Gridseed units. I have also had an electrician install more than enough 240v 30amp circuits to provide power. 30 amp 240v PDUs for powering the units, PSUs, Raspberry Pis, and all power/usb cables are included in the unit pricing. This warehouse has been operating for almost a year now and has suffered very little down time. There is a 24/7 monitored security system installed with sensors.

How:
****Lazy Mining***
- Everything is done for you, you simply provide a BTC address for payments.
- Scrypt Multi-Pool with monthly BTC payments, pool chosen by majority vote.
- The hosting fees are taken out of the monthly BTC payments.
- If difficulty rises so much that one unit does not make the hosting fee, then you will be notified to pay for the equipment to be shipped back to you, or you may optionally have me sell your unit(s) and I will send you the proceeds of the sale. This sale must be done for cryptocoins, since it may put me in the field of being a money transmitter if I sold for FIAT on Ebay and converted it into Bitcoin to pay you. You will have one month to respond to this notice and let us know if you want me to sell or ship your equipment to you. If you do not respond within one month, your equipment will be automatically sold and the profits forwarded to you.
- I reserve the right to over clock or under clock the Gridseed miners at my discretion. I promise to take it easy on them.
***Do It Yourself Mining***
- You provide pool information and I will get your units up and running.
- After initial setup, it will be up to you to monitor and control your units. You will be given log in information and your own raspberry pi for only your units.
- No dual mode mining. Very important not to dual mine- you could possibly start a fire the way these will be wired up. I am using a custom power solution for the whole farm made for Scrypt only. Dual mining mode uses a lot more electricity and the hosting fees would have to be almost 9x higher. It is simply not feasible due to the costs, limited space, and accounting issues. Edit: Fuses will be wired in to prevent any fire or anything happening if someone dual mines. You will need to wait until I replace the fuse to get your units back up and running.
- You will be billed monthly for the hosting fees. I reserve the right to take over your units due to unpaid hosting fees and mine the hosting fees with your equipment. Your units will be returned to your control after the hosting fees are mined. I will only do this if you get more than 2 months behind on payments, as it will be a pain in the butt for both of us.
- Add $70 for your own Raspberry Pi with Case and 8 Gb SD Card to the total cost of the Gridseed units for every 50 units you'd like hosted.

What is included with Hosting?
This price includes all PDUs, PSUs, cables, USB hubs, raspberry pis (for DIY hosted units the Pi is extra), ordering, unpacking, setup, troubleshooting, security system, electricity, internet and other bills, and everything else that goes along with hosting ASICs.

Fees & Hosting Terms:
- The hosting fee is all inclusive of power costs, internet and security system bills, ordering, setup, troubleshooting, and hosting for all units.
- The hosting fee will be a flat fee of $4 per miner month
- First Month = Free Hosting  
- Bitcoinaverage.com will be used for calculating usd/Bitcoin ratio for hosting fees.
- All units can only be ran on Scrypt mode only due to power/accounting issues.
- You may request delivery of your unit(s) at any time. You must pay for shipping and the hosting fees through the end of the month.
- We are located in the USA and shipping will be $10* domestic and $20* international per unit.
* Shipping costs are subject to change, for the better or for the worse. If shipping multiple units it will likely be cheaper.

Frequently Asked Questions:
How can we possibly lower hosting costs?
I can likely expand hosting even further into my home once capacity has been reached. This can possibly bring down the hosting fees even further. I am already renting about the cheapest place I could find, so no dice there. If I can save up enough to upgrade the A/C, I can host more units to bring these costs down. However, upgrading A/Cs is likely going to put me out $5k+ even after selling the old one. I just don't really see it as an option unless I just have some extra cash laying around.. which I don't. An alternative would be to find trustworthy people (like... family & friends) and spread the hash power out to others that could host them cheaply in their homes. Any other ideas?
What pool will we use?
I will give my top three suggestions for multicoin pools to the group and outline what I deem to be their strengths and weaknesses. From that point a vote will be held on which pool we use and whichever pool wins by majority vote will be the one we setup with. We can always change pools at any time, again a majority vote will need to be held to change pools.
Will we be able to monitor the hash rate, worker speed, and income details?
This depends on several factors, the major one being what pool we decide to use. I will make sure to outline which pools have the best monitoring options when outlining their strengths and weaknesses for the vote. At the very least I plan to make the hash rate for the entire farm publicly available (so you could tell how fast your miners are running by doing a simple calculation), and also all accounting information regarding income will be made available in a transparent manner. If it is economically feasible I will look into getting a custom website for these purposes- for now I use private forums separate from Bitcointalk.
Can I ship you Gridseed units or other mining equipment I already own for hosting?
Sure, please PM me to arrange shipment.

Hosting Other Mining Equipment:
Are Gridseeds not your thing, or do you want to buy mining equipment from other manufacturers? Go ahead and I will host it for you for a flat fee of $0.57 per watt per month. This includes any Bitcoin and Scrypt ASICs, I have experience hosting GPU rigs as well. Please contact me for more information or to make an arrangement.

Risks: Any mining equipment purchase is risky, please do not buy more hardware than you can afford to spend and more money than you can lose. There is no guarantee, expressed or implied, that you will make any profit from buying this hardware. I promise to provide a good hosting environment, but I will not be held liable for anything that is out of my control. This serves as each group buy participant's legal notice that I will not be held liable for anything that happens that is out of my control. Anything that is "out of my control" includes but is not limited to the following: a Bitcoin/ALT coin price crash, Bitcoin/ALT coin network difficulty spikes, hardware failures, security intrusions by hackers or thiefs, computer software glitches, nondelivery of our order from the manufacturer, the manufacturer delivering the equipment late, a natural disaster, electricity spikes, electricity surges, electricity brownouts, or any other electrical problem that could harm the ASICs that is out of my control, fires, floods, vandals, or ANYTHING THAT IS OUT OF MY CONTROL.

Non-Hosted Terms: All cables provided for non-hosted units are for use at your own risk. Please make sure to research whether these cables will work for your PSU and do not over load the 12v or 5v lines of your PSU, or chain multiple cables together. Please ask for advice if you're not sure. You will be billed for the full shipping costs once the units have arrived. International shipments will be declared at the value that you pay automatically, contact me to change this. I am not liable for nondelivery of our order from the manufacturer or supplier, the manufacturer/supplier delivering the equipment late, or anything that is out of my control.

How To Participate:
Batch 1 will consist of however many people can get their orders in by the end of the week. All other batches will be on a weekly basis and consist of how many orders are submitted during the week.

Very Important: Someone lost 60 BTC this way in one of my previous Group Buys. The attacker quoted my OP and edited the Bitcoin payment address to his own. Please make sure you are looking at the OP of this thread when getting the payment address. Furthermore, I am taking precautions to prevent this from happening again and other man in the middle attacks, please validate the Bitcoin payment address by using the PGP Key in my signature. For more information on how to use PGP, please see this website: http://www.bitcoinnotbombs.com/beginners-guide-to-pgp/

1. Decide which option you'd like: Lazy Mining or Do It Yourself Mining or Not Hosted
2. Calculate total costs:
    2a. Lazy Mining Costs:
         - $190 per unit =
    2b. Do It Yourself Costs/Options:
         - $190 per unit =
         - Plus $70 for every 50 units hosted for your own Pi =
              + A case and a 8 Gb SD card is included
    2c. Non-Hosted Costs/Options (comes with just a Gridseed miner, no accessories whatsoever):
         - $180 per unit =
              + You will be billed for the full shipping costs once the units have arrived.
         - Accessories:
         - $90 for a Raspberry Pi host =
              + Pre-configured to work with Gridseeds. Can likely host up to 50 units depending on your USB hub setup
              + A nice case and a 8 Gb SD card is included
         - $1.5 per miner for Standoffs to stack your Gridseeds =
         - $1 per miner for Mini USB cables =
         - $30 per USB 10-port hub (Raspberry Pi compatible) =
         - Custom Cables (Scrypt ONLY)
              + Heat shrink, 18 AWG, Plug and Play ATX Power Cables, Hand-made Custom Cables
              + Disclaimer: All cables provided for non-hosted units are for use at your own risk. Please make sure to research whether these cables will work for your PSU and do not over load the 12v or 5v lines of your PSU, or chain multiple cables together. Please ask for advice if you're not sure.
         - $45 each for an ATX CPU/EPS 8 pin power cable =
              + Can power up to SIXTEEN [16] Gridseeds
         - $40 each for an ATX PCIe 6 pin cable =
              + Can power up to TWELVE [12] Gridseeds
         - $30 each for an ATX 4+4 pin CPU cable =
              + Can power up to EIGHT [8] Gridseeds
         - $25 each for an ATX Molex 4 pin cable =
              + Can power up to FOUR [4] Gridseeds and FOUR [4] 5v accessories (Usb hubs, Pi, etc.)
         - $30 each for an ATX SATA cable =
              + Can power up to FOUR [4] Gridseeds and FOUR [4] 5v accessories (Usb hubs, Pi, etc.)
         - Custom Cables (Dual Mining Mode)
         - Coming Soon

3. Send the total Bitcoin payment to:
    3a. Only send from an address you can control and sign messages with. Do not send from an exchange or service, this can cause an issue if someone else tries to claim your payment is theirs. A Blockchain.info wallet will work for this purpose, or a wallet that you have on your computer such as Bitcoin-QT.
    3b. By sending your payment to the above address, you are agreeing to all terms and conditions outlined in this post.
    3c. The payment address will be posted below. Please check the validity of the Bitcoin Address using the PGP key located in my signature.

Group Buy On Hold

4. PM (private message) or reply with the following information:
    4a. Lazy Mode or Do It Yourself Mode or Non-Hosted
    4b. Bitcoin address (for Lazy mode) or Email address (for Do It Yourself mode) or Shipping Address (for Non-Hosted Units)
    4c. The Bitcoin Transaction ID of your payment.
    4d. Your country (so I don't have to ask for it when shipping is requested and can accurately quote shipping costs efficiently)


Pictures of the Hosting Environment:






Some Farms I've hosted: