I try to keep my ears open for opportunities to invest and to get ahead using crypto-based investment vehicles. Although there are greater risks, there are much greater potential rewards than a lot of "traditional" investments I've seen.
SiaCoin
One of the opportunities I was considering was Nebulous' Obelisk SiaCoin ASIC miner. The first batch is scheduled to be released at the end of June. The preorder for it ended in November 2017. I didn't have $2,500 at the time, so I missed out on it, but I had major FOMO. With batch 2's preorder ending Jan 31st, I had been watching and considering, especially since the priced had dropped to $1,599.
DRAMA!!
In a covert move, on January 16th, Bitmain, a well-known ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) manufacturer released a new ASIC miner that was specifically designed to maximize mining results on the SiaCoin network. They beat the SiaCoin team to the punch by five and a half months!
Nebulous had promised the batch #1 preorders would have six weeks of protected mining, where Nebulous wouldn't release any other ASICs. All the people who had preordered would now be 6 months late to the scene.
Also putting SiaCoin in an awkward position was that most of the Bitmain ASICs pooled together creating a superpool. This could have theoretically jeopardized control of the blockchain if the pool had attempted something nefarious.
While SiaCoin could "soft fork" the blockchain to invalidate the new Bitmain A3 miners, as of Jan 25th they stated they would not be soft forking at this time, but that "if Bitmain takes any action to harm the Sia project, we will soft-fork to invalidate their hardware."
Moving Forward
It appears no soft fork for now and that it's "business as usual" in SiaLand, but the people who preorderd SC1s are SOL. GPU mining of SiaCoin is officially over, and ASIC take over. The SC1 launch is still planned, but those who get them will struggle to break even. It just goes to show you how quickly things can change.
End result
I didn't end up getting an SC1 or SC2. I also wasn't fortunate enough to pick up an A3 before they ran out of stock. I'll keep my eyes and ears open though.
Did you invest in either the SC1 or the A3? If so, what has your experience been so far?
Let me know if the comment section below.
"Don't vote for me for witness"
I got some of my information from these sources:
https://btcmanager.com/whats-deal-siacoins-asic-soft-fork/
https://blog.sia.tech/response-to-the-sia-community-and-bitmain-653a12284098
Disclaimer: Don't invest more than you can afford to lose. Do your own research. These are just my ideas. What you do with them is your business, not mine.