Obelisk GRN1 Full Sale

That’s really great :+1:

So basically, the reward of GRN-1 Mini would be about 1,1 Grin per day (and not even counting all other ASICs ) That´s not worth at all. I´ll better buy Grin, when it sinks more.

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Ok so I found the post with more info on recent phase out estimates:

C31 estimated to start phase out Jan 2020 and completely phase out Aug 2020, so October deliveries of GRN1 would have a decent amount of time to mine. The discount on GRN2 upgrades are a nice touch to phase in with C32 as well. It was mentioned by SiaBillionaire on the Obelisk Discord that the intention would be just a hashboard upgrade for GRN1 owners. They also intend to be able to reuse the newly designed chassis of the GRN1 for other ASICs they may produce in the future. Similar to how their DCR1 could be flashed and use SC1 hashboards.

C31 profitability is completely independent from C29 hashrate.

There is no phase-in. All of C31-C64 are fully rewarded from launch.

Ah, thank you, I think I’m confusing “phase in” with how Cuckatoo gets 10% of rewards at launch, linearly increasing to 100% in 2 years. This applies to all of C31, C32, etc?

Is the ability to mine C32 and higher limited by pools supporting C32 and higher, given that you have hardware that can mine C32 efficiently? So if Innosilicon releases their miner and it can do C32, it would need to stick with C31 until pools supported C32?

Yes, primary PoW rewards ramp up over the first two years from 10% to 100%.
The relative scaling between C31, C32, … C64 is fixed apart from phase-outs.

If pools do not support some CuckatooN, then one is limited to solo mining it.
Support for C32 will likely be added before phaseout of C31 starts early next year.

Will it not be tied to a factor of 1000:1 ?
(I think I saw something about that somewhere…)

1000:1 is the rule of thrumb of how much speed and energy usage I give for solving a problem on a less complex platform; it wouldn’t relate to the designed rewards

ok, i didn’t pay much attention to it, but i was stuck with that idea…

Considering ROI on these units is complicated because of the phase-out and phase-in - AF rewards are ramping up as CC31 rewards are backing off.

Depending on when CC32 miners become competitive to the GRN1, the GRN1 will be able to mine until anywhere from April (at which point the GRN1 potency is halved) to August (at which point the GRN1 potency is less than 1/10th).

The total block rewards for CC31 will be somewhere between 10 million and 12 million Grins assuming that the machines arrive in October and go obsolete between April and August. 12 million grins at the current price is about $33 million. 2500 miners is about $25 million, which means that - assuming the price stays constant - $25 million of miners are being produced to capture a total potential of around $33 million in block rewards.

This is of course a set of projections that make assumptions which may or may not pan out, and not anything that Obelisk is willing to guarantee. The most that we are willing to guarantee is that we will not manufacture more than 2500 GRN1 units (where GRN1-Mini’s count as 1/6th, voucher conversions count as 1, and GRN1-Immersions count as 2).

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What do these numbers do if we include electricity?

The numbers don’t move a whole lot. That’s one of the advantages of Cuckatoo31, the capital costs are proportionally significantly higher relative to other mining algorithms.

A reasonable price to host a 2200w unit at a colocation facility is $150/mo. So if we count of the cost of hosting 2500 units at that price for 9 months (approximately the useful life of the miner), the total cost rises from $25 million to $28.5 million to collect $33 million.

Again, those numbers are numbers that Obelisk feels are reasonable, but in no way guarantees, and a purchaser should do their own research before making a decision.

How can you conclude that the “numbers don’t move a whole lot”? The electricity/colocation costs you estimated at $3.5 million mean the previous gross margin you calculated as $33 m - $25 m = $8 m has just shrunk to $4.5 m! That’s a ~ 44% erosion of your previous estimate!

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Isn’t the biggest risk the ability of the producer to build and deliver the rig on spec and, especially, ON TIME? A 30-day delay in the delivery of GRN1s kills ALL margin in that model. Yet your company has never yet delivered any batch of any product on time — several months delays. You say that you fixed the problems in production but you don’t have any track record of delivering on time.

By contrast, I was shocked at how you told this user that they just need to wait and take their lumps. Is your contract the same for GRN1 miners? Are you requiring customers to agree to allow any delivery date and any change in specs? From that case that’s been cited:

[Min 15:21, Cooley Atty Welsh] “Now, when it comes to Kickstarters, generally, they don’t meet the deadlines. In fact, I provide for evidence a CNN article from 2012 which references that at that point 85% of Kickstarters will not meet their estimated target date. That is a common process.”

Is Obelisk making any changes to its contract to obligate it to deliver the product on time? Or, as before, are you shifting this risk entirely to the buyers?

OK so on a macro level, $28.5m invested to collect $33m is a 14% ROI on the investment, before taxes. In the USA at least, whatever is mined will be subject to taxes and that’ll reduce the effective ROI from 14% to about 10%. (Note: taxes would not apply if the initial buy of $10k was to purchase 3,610 Grin at today’s prices, I’d have 3,610 Grin at the end of period, but taxes need to be calculated for mining). (Edit: see below)**

One additional point is that the assumption of $28.5 million to collect $33 million assumes only the investment from Obelisk ($28.5 million). If any other players enter the field, then the miners’ investment already exceeds any potential return. In game theory, these numbers assume a one-player game.

**Correction: in the U.S. taxes must be paid on all mining proceeds at fair mkt value. Numbers above (e.g., reducing profit from 14% to 10%) were based only on assumption that taxes paid on the profit, but it’s on the whole mining effort. Accordingly, using the numbers described, and even assuming a one-player, if taxes are considered, there is a negative ROI anticipated for US-based miners when compared to making a direct $10k purchase of Grin now instead of the GRN1.

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To be fair, one can depreciate the costs of mining equipment; I assume the IRS would allow 3-year depreciation, but I’m not sure they would allow 9-month depreciation. (I believe that was the anticipated lifetime for the HW.) IANAL, so apologies if any mistakes.

Yeah, the potential guesstimated gross margin on the whole addressable market/opportunity is not huge at ~14% to begin with. Then it assumes no other devices are competing for that pool of grin which, if incorrect, only has a downward impact on the margin. There are several other assumptions implicit also e.g. Grin may be trading at USD1 in 6 months, the GRN1 may not meet the projected performance etc …Hell, the price of the sparks could increase from the $0.10 or whatever in the meantime! Mining a new (or any) crypto is fairly speculative as an investment proposition to begin with. All in all, it’s hard to conclude that the risk/reward profile is appealing for this miner hardware at the projected price of $10,000.

or Grin price could be 10$ and above… no one knows! only speculation.

It is not a stretch to say followers of this emerging segment of ledger technology are not your typical dividend or savings bond class of investor. They may be more like the early bitcoin pioneers or those who heed to FOMO & get in on the action. We do know history tends to repeat itself. As such, every individual miner has their own profile for risk taking. Apologies if this is motherhood and apple pie.

So from the POV of a community member, the decision-tree(s) are straight forward. And BTW, do not take this as investment advice. You make your own decision and learn to live with it.

  1. For the potential rig buyer, is there more upside or downside to the current Grin price?

-with current price, if you see upside, be the early-adapter of an emerging coin

-if you see downside, fine to be on the sideline.

  1. For the potential ASIC provider (Obelisk, Inno, Vidtoo), the honorable choices are

-offer something compelling and have it pass the scrutiny of SMEs (paper tigers will be called out)

-pie is too small, other coins to target (offer hardware somewhere else)