TLDR; Will it replace a Start9? No. Will it outperform an S9 for the money? No. Is it an uncompromising all-in-one solution every household should have? Yes. Satoshi’s vision? YES.

I am excited to get to touch the Apollo 2. Mmm aluuuuu-minuim. I jumped onto the initial pre-order in Jan 24’ and only received on the 8th of May. Yeah waiting took patience but that was rewarded with the ability to be running the first true at ‘home miner’. I say this with trepidation: Have I tried the Canaan Nano 3? Nope. Have I run singular or multiple Bitaxes? I would love to…. No. But I have run underclocked S9s. But for a measly 193W I get a quiet and consistent 6Th/s and a full Bitcoin node. How good! It has been thoughtfully packaged, a delightful initial first time opening experience.

The selling point in one jpeg:

As I’ve learnt more about how centralised the mining side of Bitcoin truely is recently (Braiins etc are just proxies to Bitmain) it’s clearer than ever to me that the same ethos of every pleb running their own node back a few years ago needs to be applied here: Decentralise mining. Add another node to the network. Your miner, your node, your rules.

The Nuance:

-FutureBit haven’t pumped their numbers, Th/s is accurate in all modes. -Eco mode subjective noise pollution is a low level hum, not intrusive per se but silent it is not. -Will not let you hash solo until youve downloaded the full blockchain. (Makes total sense) -No ability to run Bitcoin Knots as yet (if you were so inclined) but you can add text to the Bitcoin Config so you can play with node disrespktor if wanted.

Why did I buy this thing? -This is a beautifully build, aesthetically pleasing well packaged consumer product. It’s been designed so you don’t have to hide your hashing. And I don’t think there’s anything like it for the money. Yes you could buy a used S9 for cheap and overclock it to beat this device?> Yeah you could. But Location matters! Depending what local markets looks like is VERY variable. In my country a used S19 pro goes for north of $3000 usd. You can extrapolate out an S9.

Node: Apollo 2 vs start9, mynode etc: Thats a nonissue - they are serving different purposes. Run more than one node. Let them have different usecases. Apollo will let individual miners send hash to your own solo pool. Start9 will let you run a chat server, lightning node, btcpay server etc. Cool. Run both - they don’t compete with each other - nor would I want them to.

Yes it syncs slower than a purpose built node. My Mac mini (x86 with an I5 and 8 GB ram) running Embassy OS by start9 ripped through syncing the blockchain in 24hrs. The Apollo 2? Call it a safe 3 days minimum before it syncs, but does that matter? No. It’s a one time wait. Be patient.

Miner: Apollo 2 vs S9 or industrial equavilent: Completely different use case. Depending on your compromise level you can run an Industrial built miner at home. From single board S19s to S9 space heaters and everything in-between. Depending on your location will determine your decision, let alone the DIY nature. No doubt I would like to build a DIY Rig in the future. @NicoHeatingBTC ‘s water cooled build is absolute goals. Or setting up something along the lines of 100acresRanch from twitters DC-DC solar hashing model does too. In time. For the first step into at home mining with zero technical skills and zero infrastructure restrictions this is it.

Overall I am thrilled to finally be mining, adding decentralised hash and another pleb node that no one will be turning off. I intend to be solo mining through this entire epoch and adding more hash to this solo pool in time.

First time posting, sorry for grammar etc. AMA