Posts Tagged ‘Bitmain’

BitMain Now Shipping Batch 3 of their AntMiner S2 1 THS SHA-256 ASIC Miners

28, Apr 2014

bitmain-antminer-s2-sha-256-asic

The Chinese company BitMain has started shipping the third batch of their AntMiner S2 SHA-256 ASIC miners with a hasrate of 1 Terahash for mining Bitcoin. The new batch of S2 miners is priced at $3199 USD (7.387 BTC), the company has started shipping the first two batches of their new Terahash Bitcoin ASIC miners at the start of this month, but the problem is that even at the current price putting the numbers inside a calculator does not give out promising results. With the current exchange rate of Bitcoin you are not going to be able to even get a return of the investment in the hardware you have made. You would need an exchange rate of about $650 USD in order to be able to break even by the end of this year and this everything going on lately things are a bit uncertain. Thus investing in Bitcoin ASIC devices may not be the best choice at this particular moment, especially if you are going to be paying with BTC for them. And with the current market situation investing in Scrypt ASIC miners does seem riskier as well, so people are already very careful in what they put their money into.

Bitmain AntMiner S2 1 THS Miner Starts Shipping in April

18, Mar 2014

bitmaintech-antminer-s1-asic-miner

The company Bitmain Technologies has announced that the production of the successor of their 180 GHs AntMiner S1 Bitcoin ASIC (on the photo above) is underway and they are going to be shipping the 1 Terahash AntMiner S2 starting in April (next month). The Bitmain has become known for their fast shipping and very competitive prices that go down with the difficulty increase and they are yet again showing how to do business with BTC ASICs. The new S2 units are based on the company’s 55nm BM1380 chips that are used in the S1 miners, but apparently they have managed to achieve high-density chip chains and lower power usage in order to be able to squeeze 1 Terahash in a 4U case along with a 1000W PSU manufactured by Enermax.


Bitmain AntMiner S2 Specifications:

– Hash rate: more than 1,000GH/s
– Power consumption: 1,000W from the wall
– Power efficiency: 1Watt/GH/s
– PSU: 1000W produced by Enermax, 80PLUS gold
– 4U Rack
– PSU inside
– Plug and Mining
– Stable and quietly

The pre-orders for the first batch of the new Bitmain AntMiner S2 1 THS ASIC miners have been filled with a price of $3899 USD (6.34 BTC) and a shipping date of April 1st (not a joke hopefully), the second bach of devices is scheduled for April 10th shipping and the price is a bit low at $3599 USD (5.852 BTC) and there are still units available. The new S2 miners do come a bit more expensive than 5x AntMiner S1 miners overclocked to 200 GHs each to give you a total of 1000 GHS with a price of less than 5 BTC. The difference however is that the power consumption for the S2 miner is 1000W and for the same hashrate with S1 miners you would get roughly about 2100-2100W. So with S1 you get cheaper price for the hardware (you will need to also buy 5x 500W+ PSUs for the miners), but more than double the power consumption for the same hashrate, even though the same chips are used in both products. Putting more BM1380 chips running at lower voltage and frequency is what BitMain has done in order to lower the power usage and get better performance per watt without having to increase the cost of the hardware too much.

– For more information about Bitmain Technology’s current and upcoming BTC ASIC miners…

Buy Bitoin ASIC Now, Buy Future Mining Contract or Start Cloud Mining Now

14, Mar 2014

bitmaintech-antminer-s1-asic-miner

The fresh information from CEX.io about the addition of an option to buy future mining contracts for Bitcoin has made us thing and calculate how profitable are they if we compare them to what other options are already available to start mining immediately. We are going to do a comparison between the FHA contracts (purchasing cloud mining hashrate for the end of April) that you can already purchase to the currently being shipped Bitmain AntMiner S1 BTC ASICs and to a BTC cloud mining service that is already available and running by offering 5 year Bitcoin mining contracts, namely the PB Mining Bitcoin cloud mining service. We are going to compare how much it will cost you to purchase 1 Terahash (1 THS or 1000 GHS) worth of Bitcoin mining hashrate at each of these services.

1 THS of ASIC mining hardware currently shipping:
– 5x 180 GHS Bitmain AntMiner S1 overclocked to 200 GHs each
– This will cost you about 5 BTC for the moment for the miners
– You will need power supplies for about 2100W for them
– You will need to pay for 2.1 KW of power an hour for electricity
– Miners will be at your door in a week and you will start mining

1 THS of PB Mining cloud hashrate currently being sold:
– The current cloud mining hasrate price is 0.0083 BTC per 1 GHS
– You will need to pay 8.3 BTC at the moment for 1000 GHS
– The cloud hashrate will start mining for you in a few hours
– No extra cost for electricity or need to support hardware
– This is a long term mining contract for 5 years that you purchase

1 THS of CEX future cloud hashrate for end of April (FHA):
– The current contract price for FHA is about 0.00799999 BTC per 1 GHS
– You will need to pay 7.999 BTC for a purchase of 1000 GHS contract
– The cloud hashrate will start mining in about month and a half for you
– No extra cost for electricity or need to support hardware
– You can sell or trade the cloud mining hashrate contract at anytime

So it seems that all of the above options do have their own advantages, but there are disadvantages as well. It is up to you to decide what seems the most reasonable for you at this moment if any of the options is a viable alternative for you. Based on our experience, the AntMiners are very good product and the company making them is really fast and ships from stock (if ordering directly from them), not to mention the always up to date prices going down with the difficulty increase. The PiggyBack Mining cloud mining service so far is working great based on our few weeks of experience using it, they also update prices after difficulty increase. The use of CEX.io for cloud mining is not so good of long term investment in mining hashrate due to the higher prices driver by the users trading on exchange, but if you use the platform for trade and treat the cloud mining as just an extra profit while trading it is not a bad option.


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