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AlcheMiner has posted that they are planning to start work on a second generation Scrypt ASICs, however they are looking for investors to help them start the process and that they plan to gather $5 million to $7 million for the Alchemist II project. They are looking for serious investors offering multiple investment plans starting at 50K USD, 500K and 1 Million USD offering different benefits. According to the information published it will take them about five to six months for the first batch to be launched in the market after the fundraising goal is met. The new chips are supposed to be used in AlchemistII-128 128 MHS miner with 280W power usage priced at $1299 USD and AlchemistII-512 512 MHS miner with 1150W of power usage and a price of $4950 USD.
The brief specifications for the new chip:
– Hash rate: 2 MHS
– Power consumption on the wall: 3~4J (1.5J~2J/MHash)
– TSMC 28HPC tech node
– Full custom design
The problem with their offer is that with their first generation hardware things were not that bright, there were issues and delays, problems with some of their partners such as MAT. Now the company wants to find big investors for new Scrypt ASIC miners promising hardware delivery in half a year with not so attractive hardware prices although specs look promising. The problem is that their track record is not that good, even though they actually had some hardware released and the current situation with Scrypt crypto currencies including Litecoin is not so great at the moment. The low market price of LTC following the recent halving of the block reward and the general uncertainty in the future makes it hard for anyone to actually invest in Scrypt ASIC hardware that is actually not ready at the moment. The recent SFARDS fiasco with the company being very vocal prior to having their new hardware ready and then going completely silent after apparently it has been ready for market also does not do any good for initiatives like the one AlcheMiner is trying to do. So what you might be waiting with anticipation in regards to Scrypt ASIC hardware could only end up being the next generation Innosilicon hardware that might soon be available…
BitMain Cancelling the AntMiner L1 Scrypt ASIC Miner
19, Dec 2014
With the current situation on the crypto currency markets and especially the low exchange rate of the Litecoin it is no wonder that we are seeing another ASIC manufacturer cancelling their plans to release a new Scrypt ASIC Miner. The problem with these kinds of actions is that manufacturers are loosing users trust, even though they may try to compensate their customers in some way. Back when BitMain announced the pre-order for the L1, something new for them back then, we weren’t that happy and now we are also not very happy with the fact that BitMain waited up until now to announce they are cancelling the L1 when they were supposed to actually start shipping the finished product. Below you can find quoted the official announcement from BitMain about the discontinuation of Antminer L1 along with what options they offer to customers who have pre-ordered the miner:
Dear loyal customers,
The decision has been taken not to continue production of the Antminer L1
In response, all customers will be able to choose one of three options:
1) The original order value of $599 will be refunded at 105% value [$629] by bitcoin at current market rates. Customers will receive bitcoin payment.
2) The original order value of $599 will be refunded at 110% value [$659] by bitcoin at current market rates. This will be credited against any new S3/S4/C1 order placed in the web store.
3) The original order value of $599 will be credited at 115% value [$689] against an S5 order placed in the web store. This will be issued in the form of a 15 day coupon, each coupon valued [$344.5].Please await an email info@bitmaintech.com for further instructions.
Though we are sorry that we do not deliver this time, it still turns out that buying L1 from BITMAIN is a very best way to earn more Litecoin.
Data Analysis: In the beginning of L1 sales, you only need to pay 115.86LTC to buy one L1 per the LTC/USD exchange rate 5.17 in the early September. However, you will get 193.22LTC under current LTC/USD exchange rate 3.1. And then plus extra 5% value, a total amount you get is 202.88LTC per unit. Return on investment is 75%. If you choose coupon compensation, Return on investment is 91%.
It is not very clear weather BitMain has already finished with the development and has actually produced some mining hardware or they are cancelling things before they have actually been finalized. The problem is that after ZeusMiner cancelled their Volcano miner and 3rd generation Scrypt ASICs and now the same happening with BitMain and their AntMiner L1 Scrypt ASIC things do not look that good for Litecoin and other Scrypt crypto currencies. The low exchange rate of LTC at the moment makes older Scrypt ASIC miners not very profitable to run due to their high power usage and with no newer generation more efficient miners announced to be coming soon things could get even worse.
Peter af Geijerstam, a developer who specializes in computer security, has released what he calls a pimped UI for the KnCMiner Titan ASIC, called KnCMinion, as an alternative to the standard old-fashioned user-interface of the device. His more up to date interface does not replace the original Titan UI, just adds a more modern and beautiful UI with the more important information available in a graphical form, not just plain text.
The KnCMinion interface is located in a subdirectory (/kncminion) and is designed to provide a bit more information in a graphical form to the user. It creates client-side graphs of historical values as long as the page is open – it will start empty each time, as no data is stored on the Titan miner. KncMinion is built using CoffeeScript, AngularJS, D3.js, Bootstrap and jQuery and should adapt easily to different resolutions and devices such as a smaller resolution mobile phone. The top graph is the total hashrate in MHS for the miner, the smaller graphs below represent the hash-rate of each individual die for every cube on the Titan (4 dies per cube) with each graph displaying the min/max and current value for the selected duration.
What is interesting is the way that the KnCMinion interface is being installed on the miner, Peter has found out that he can easily package it as an firmware update and send it to the device. The KnCMinion does not modify any of the existing files, it only adds new files to the web-server that are needed for the proper functionality of the UI, however he expresses his concerns that this can pose a security problem. Someone may package a malicious code and trick people to install it as software update and gain access to their mining device.
– For more information and to download the KnCMinion UI for the Titan Scrypt ASIC…