Obelisk, an ASIC manufacturer founded by SIA Storage, announced a new batch of SC1 Slim miners for sale. Here’s the catch. According to the official website, virtually nobody buys these units lately. Does that mean that the units are not worth it or are we about to find a hidden gem? Let’s find that out.

1. Is Mining SIA a Good Idea?

The first reason why people might not want to buy an ASIC is because the coin it is made to mine is dead. Could this apply to SIA?

As for today, SIA is a coin with a $86,572,943 USD market cap and a $793,575 USD daily volume. While these past 12 months haven’t been too forgiving for the coin (it has been a pretty rough time for most cryptos to be honest), SIA is definitely not a small coin, neither does it look like one that is dying. In fact, SIA is ranked #50 on CoinMarketCap.

Even though it has pretty decent competency, SIA is the biggest fish in the pool with MaidSafe being ranked #65, Storj #129 and Filecoin #1774. All of the mentioned coins have similar market situation too (just on different scales), which means that SIA will probably remain in the leading position for as while (though this is mere speculation based on numbers).

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2. Are Obelisk SC1 Units Profitable?

The second thing that usually makes people to avoid buying an ASIC is when the global network hashrate of that specific coin is overly saturated and the new units don’t hash well enough to be profitable. Most big coins have this problem and since SIA isn’t exactly small, maybe this is its case too?

The answer is no. Every board in a new SC1 Slim hashes 600 GH/s on average, while the network hashrate is 1.6 PH or 1,600,000 GH. This means that every SC1 Slim board produces 1/2,500 part of the global network hashrate. As a comparison, the popular Antminer D3 produces 1/133,333 parts of the global hashrate for Dash. In fact, Obelisk SC1 Slim is the fifth most profitable ASIC according to ASICMinerValue, with other two Obelisk SIA ASICs taking the first and second spots in the global leaderboard.

This used to be different before the hard fork that happened November 1, 2018. Back in the day, Bitmain and Innosilicon miners kept SIA network hashrate 100x times higher than it is now. Then, the hard fork bricked (made incompatible with SIA algo) all of those units, leaving only Obelisk SC1 units untouched.

This leads us to our next question: Maybe people don’t trust Obelisk?

3. Is Obelisk the Problem?

Unfortunately for the company, Obelisk does not have a flawless track record. The SC1 was the company’s first ASIC and as expected for a fresh company, Obelisk miscalculated the shipment dates. As a result, the company delayed the shipment of their first two batches of SC1 miners by few months, which caused a lot of anger in the mining community.

While the outrage is perfectly understandable, part of the community also understand that Obelisk hasn’t scammed their customers per se. Batch 1 units were delivered and are hashing as advertised, and now Batch 2 units are being shipped too. The company kept a constant contact with their customers and even announced a compensation plan to make up for the monetary losses their customers had to face for not mining all these past months.

I understand that unlike Bitmain or Innosilicon, Obelisk is a new company that has to figure a lot of things out. One glance at their updates is enough to realize that the company has still a lot of things to polish – they face a lot of unexpected challenges and they have to find solutions on the go. Obelisk is a new company and personally I don’t expect them to instantly become as fail-proof as, say, Bitmain.

SIA Fork and Obelisk Monopoly?

Some of the people who forgave Obelisk for the shipment delay (after all, the compensation plan should make up for the financial losses too) are still hesitant to trust Obelisk because of the recent hard fork they’ve made.

You see, SIA is a for-profit project led and developed by Nebulous, which also happens to be the company behind Obelisk. The two companies are so closely related that their names are pretty much interchangeable.

This means that now after the hard fork, Nebulous is the only company producing ASICs for their own coin. Smells like monopoly and centralization, right?

I have made an in-depth analysis of the whole situation here.

So basically what happened was – Innosilicon was actively amplifying their SIA mining farms – three weeks prior to the fork Innosilicon owned 37% of global SIA mining hashrate, a week before the fork they owned 43% of the global hashrate. The company was steadily and quickly making it to the so-feared 51%. Once having 51%, Innosilicon would pretty much make SIA mining centralized.

David Vorick, the owner of Nebulous, was probably thinking: “SIA, a project that is is all about decentralization, is now about to become centralized thanks to Innosilicon. Innosilicon could have sold its miners to the public to prevent mining centralization but for some reason it decided to pile those miners up in its huge mining farm. We have to stop that.”

Are the Obelisk SC1 Gen-2 Miners Good, then?

All of the above makes me conclude that there is still a lot of negative bias towards Obelisk. If Obelisk is a monster who only wants monopoly and money then you obviously don’t want to buy a miner from them.

However, Obelisk proved to be a pretty transparent and honest company so far:

That, combined with the fact that SIA is a pretty solid coin and that now the low network hashrate made the Obelisk SC1 units profitable again, does that mean that we should all rush and buy our SC1 gen-2 units?

Obelisk SC1 WTM Mining Profitability

obelisk sc1 mining profitability

I have no idea. The main reason being that I can’t endorse a piece of hardware I haven’t tested myself. It can be look amazing on paper but I’m not here to tell you guys “hey this ASIC kinda looks good go buy it!”. I can criticize an ASIC that looks bad even on paper without owning one myself, however if I want to recommend something, I have to have the unit in hands.

Gigabyte, AsRock, Canaan, Rebtech, HashAltcoins and others know it, which is why they take the risk and send me samples for me to test and review. Luckily for all of us, so far all of the products I have received from them were good and worth a recommendation. No matter how much I like Obelisk, I won’t make an exception for them.

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In Conclusion

If I ever receive a unit from Obelisk, I will make sure to make a detailed review for you guys. For now though, I will limit myself with this review of the situation surrounding the Obelisk SC1 miner and the company that manufactures it. Some people get scared away by the hardfork and Obelisk’s motivations, and then they further lose trust when they go to Obelisk’s website and see the huge dip in SC1 unit sales.

Obelisk seems like a transparent company to me and I even have some sympathy towards them. Some people can’t tell a mistake from malicious intent apart, which is why they labeled Obelisk as scammers. While I understand their position, I still believe that the company is often misjudged.

That being said, what are your thoughts on it? Please let me know in the comments section below:

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The post Obelisk SC1 Slim Gen-2 SIA Miner – SCAM or Hidden GEM? appeared first on 1st Mining Rig.

In their recent update, the Sia team has announced that they will be shipping their first official ASIC the first two weeks of July. This is for batch 1; batch 2 will be shipped a couple of weeks later.

Sia Coin is used by Sia Tech, a decentralized P2P storage network. The latest is the most appealing for people who appreciate privacy and data safety. The mined coins can be either used in the network or sold in exchangers for cash/other cryptos.

What to Expect from the Obelisk SC1

Most of you know what happened to Sia ASIC mining – the delay of Obelisk and the introduction of the Antminer A3 that took everyone by surprise. Most people don’t know what to expect from the Obelisk – there is a lot of negativity and bias on the forums, which is why I would like to talk about this topic here.

Let’s start by briefly reviewing everything we know so far – this will be the most interesting for those of you who have not been paying too much attention to Sia ASIC back when this all happened.

A Brief History of SIA ASIC Mining (Skip if you already familiar with it)

Sia coin originally could be mined by renting your free HDD space to the decentralized network. GPU mining was possible too, though it has never been too profitable.

Then, a year ago, the team behind Sia Tech has announced the pre sale of the first ASIC for Sia coin – the Obelisk SC1.

Back in the day, the miner only existed in blueprints. There were only estimates on its hashrate, power consumption and shipping date. That being said, anyone willing to get that miner had to preorder it, pay $ 2500 USD in advance and then wait about a year while the developers hire more people, create the first prototypes and basically take the ASIC from a blueprint all the way to mass production.

Obelisk SC1 ASIC Miner 3

Obelisk SC1 ASIC Miner

Several hundreds people have decided to take the risk and support the creation of the first Sia Coin ASIC. This is understandable because the reward was quite high too – it’s very profitable to be among the first people who own the first ASICs in a network.

It all made sense until January of this year when Bitmain has announced their first Blake(2b) ASIC (the algorithm behind Sia Coin). The Antminer A3 is more efficient than the Obelisk and the units were shipped to customers in a span of 10 days! No need to wait a year to get the miner.

The first people who have got their Antminers A3 were enjoying about $400 USD profit per day (in Sia currency, of course).

Basically, people who have purchased the Antminer A3 have reaped everything the people who have preordered the Obelisk were aiming for. Now that the network hashrate is high, the Antminer A3 is no longer profitable since it mines $ 80 USD worth SIA every month and consumes $ 128 USD in electricity. Will Obelisk miners be profitable once they reach their owners? I doubt it!

What happened raises a lot of questions and I will be focusing on two that I believe are the most relevant.

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Question #1: Can Sia Tech be Trusted?

There is something that makes people doubt whether Sia Tech is a trustworthy company. In the past months, Sia has been labeled as a company with lack of professionalism or even as scammers. The reason is simple.

During the pre-order week, Sia advertised the Obelisk SC1 to hash about 800 GH/s or more. Then, in January, Sia posts an update and says that the SC1 will be hashing about 550 GH/s, which was about 40% less than what the Antminer A3 was delivering.

Later in May, Sia Tech has clarified that the 550 GH/s mark is the lowest mark and that in reality, the Obelisk should be able to hash way higher. Every board of the miner has 30 chips, each of which is clocked at ~300 MHz. They have added that

Basically, by overclocking the chips, they might get way better performance. That’s something we do to our GPUs and I’ve seen people overclocking certain ASICs too. In addition to that, the author of the official update claims that their chips work even faster when heated to 85-100 C, which coincidentally is the normal operational temperature of the device.

So to answer the question – can we trust Sia Tech when future ASICs will be released? If they manage to get the SC1 to hash as announced during the pre-sale, I’d say that there is no reason to not trust those guys. After all, people were aware of the risks by preordering an ASIC that would take one year to be designed, manufactured and shipped.

Now, what if Sia’s intentions were good and they deliver as promised, though despite that, the end result was disastrous for their customers? In other words…

Obelisk SC1 ASIC Miner Boards 2

Obelisk SC1 ASIC Miner Boards

Question #2: Is it the Obelisk SC1 Outdated?

This topic might be interesting for those of you who have preordered your Obelisks, as well as for those of you who have Antminers A3 ASICs. Our takeaway from this will also affect our final conclusion: did Sia Tech screw their customers over?

Simply put, if we plan on immediately selling any coins we mine then yes, the Obelisk SC1 is definitely a piece of expensive junk.

On the other hand, if you mine to hold (“hodl”) then you might want to think twice before posting your SC1 on ebay once you receive it.

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The cloud storage market is anticipated to hit the $88 billion mark in 2020. If Sia Tech manages to capture a fraction of that market, the price of the coin will explode. To put things into perspective, as for today, the amount of generated Sia tokens is around $18 million per year. A quarter of a percent of that market share would make the coin price skyrocket.

This is a quick ROI calculation based on price history with current reward/dificulty at 800 Gh/z mining hashrate

Results looks pretty good to me

Another factor that should positively affect the coin price is that block reward size is decreasing. It is estimated that block reward should go from 140000 SC per block down to ~ 30000 SC per block by mid 2020.

Can mining and holding Sia coin be a good idea? Probably, yes. A risky one too, though risk and cryptocurrencies are close related anyway.

Obelisk SC1 ASIC Miner Boards 3

Obelisk SC1 ASIC Miner Boards test

In Conclusion

While what happened is bad news for those users who want to mine and immediately sell their coins, the situation might not be as grim for those of you who are mining to hold.

For some reason I believe that people will be getting their Obelisks in time in some weeks. Yeah, the device is definitely not going to make you any money in the short run, though it might pay off in a year or two. In fact, it might bring you way more profit than we can imagine now.

Once again, we are talking about a risk that Obelisk owners can decide to take – to spend money on electricity bills and hoard Sia coins or try to resell their units to those who are willing to take risks. What is your take on this? Have you preordered the Obelisk SC1 back in 2017?

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The post Obelisk SC1 SIA ASIC Miner Release Date Confirmed! … What Now? appeared first on 1st Mining Rig.

SIA is a cryptocoin based on SIA Storage – a decentralized cloud storage system that allows users to enjoy safe and 100% anonymous storage for a small fee. The system is based on decentralized nodes all around the world.

The storage service received many positive reviews so far and looks like it is becoming a decent alternative and rival to giants such as Amazon S3 and Dropbox.

Until not long ago, the only way to mine SIA coins was by either using a GPU rig or by renting HDD space to others via Minebox. It does make sense since the decentralized storage system relies on thousands of users from all around the globe who provide free HDD space.

However, not long ago SIA Tech released an ASIC for SIA coins.

Meet the Obelisk SC1

SIA Tech was a bit reserved about this ASIC miner. Therefore, no one knew exactly what it will be until Friday 23th. Even then, there is still little information about it and new info is being released every day.

What we know so far is that the Obelisk is a 28nm full custom ASIC that is being designed and will be manufactured by a third-party US-based semiconductor company. According to SIA Tech, it is a trustworthy company wit a 20-year track record in ASIC design. If that is true, then we might expect good quality hardware, opposed to those ASICS that are designed by enthusiasts.

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Hashrate and Price

Until Friday 23th, it was unclear about the hashrate and the price of the Obelisk. Now we know that the ASIC costs $2499 and can be preordered on their site.

The presale will start in 1 day (Wednesday, 2pm eastern time) and will last for one week.

Announcing the Obelisk Sia ASIC miner presale! Presale begins Wednesday at 2pm EST, will be open for 7 days. https://t.co/CgbwRKCsIc

— Sia Tech (@SiaTechHQ) June 23, 2017

The expected hashrate of the Obelisk is 100 GH/s, which means that with a block reward of 20M SC/DAY the monthly revenue will be of 60,000 SC. The revenue will be higher in the beginning and is expected to get to 60,000 SC/month when 10,000 Obelisks will be sold. This is expected to happen by June 2018.

SIA Tech claims that the power draw of the miner will be below the 500W mark. Combined with the expected hashrate of 100 GH/s, we get some impressive numbers. It is certain that once the Obelisk is released, there will be no room left for GPU SIA coin miners.

Finally, SIA Tech promised to introduce decentralized mining pools by the time the miners will be shipped. This will allow users to choose between solo and pool mining.

Shipment and Payment

While the presale starts in 1 day, the first ASIC shipments are expected to happen in June 2018. There might be delays since ASIC manufacturing isn’t something SIA did before, so personally I take the expected shipment date with a pinch of salt.

Just like most ASIC manufacturers, SIA Tech will only accept Bitcoin for their miners. They won’t accept SIA coin as payment since the relatively new coin does not have the liquidity it takes to handle such massive transactions in such a short period of time. Bitcoin does.

Package

According to SIA Tech, the miner package includes everything, even the power supply. They promise that the setup is minimal.

Controversy and Critics

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Now, there has been a lot of controversy regarding the release of the Obelisk SC1. You probably noticed the tension in the forums about this new ASIC. That was expected since ASCIS are rarely welcomed in the mining community to begin with. On the other hand, the introduction of ASICs was rather beneficial for the cryptocurrency world and it defined cryptomining as we know it today. This is why I prefer to stay away from any bias as much as possible when making my research about any specific ASIC.

People have been also complaining about SIA Tech only accepting Bitcoin as payment. The daily fluctuations of the cryptoccurency price greatly affect the final price of the ASIC and many users are not okay with that. Yesterday, SIA Tech officially acknowledged this issue and promised to compensate the loss if the price of the currency drops by up to 5%.

The main downside about the Obelisk SC1 is that it does not support any other algorithms except the one for SIA coin. Most popular ASICs can work with multiple coins that are based on the same algo, which gives them more versatility and lifespan. This is the only downside about the Obelisk SC1 that does make sense in my opinion.

In Conclusion

Whether the Obelisk SC1 will be a good ROI or not, it will definitely change the way SIA coin is mined and traded. I really hope that it will be for the best.

While the price of the Obelisk SC1 is rather impressive, the ASIC is expected to outperform any GPU rig. According to the official site, each ASIC chip performs as well as 100 GPU’s. I think that’s something to consider.

What do you think about this upcoming ASIC? Will it be worth the money? How will its release impact the SIA coin?

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The post Obelisk SC1 – the First SIA ASIC Miner Is Confirmed! appeared first on 1st Mining Rig.