I have a hard time believing their numbers. If you can pay off a mac mini in 2-4 months, and make $1-2k profit every month after that, why wouldn’t their business model just be buying mac minis?

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psychoslave 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Because they don’t have that much initial money in their pocket, while the idle computer is already there, and the biggest friction point is convincing people to install some software. Both producing rhetoric and software are several order of magnitude cheaper than to directly own and maintain a large fleet of hardware with high guarantee of getting the electrical stable input in a safe place to store them.

Assuming that getting large chunk of initial investment is just a formality is out of touch with 99% of people reality out there, when it’s actually the biggest friction point in any socio-economical endeavour.

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chaoz_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Solid q. I think the part of it is that it’s really easy to attract some “mass” (capital) of users, as there are definitely quite a few of idle Macs in the world.

Non-VC play (not required until you can raise on your own terms!) and clear differentiation.

If you want to go full-business-evaluation, I would be more worried about someone else implementing same thing with more commission (imo 95% and first to market is good enough).

	▲	jonplackett 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think the point they’re making though is that the numbers seem too good to be true. ie. Does anyone know the payback time for a B100 used just for inference? I assume it’s more than a couple of months? Or is it just training that costs so much?

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znnajdla 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The numbers are obviously high, because if this takes off then the price for inference will also drop. But I still think it’s a solid economic model that benefits low income countries the most. In Ukraine, for example, I know people who live on $200/month. A couple Mac Minis could feed a family in many places.

As a business owner, I can think of multiple reasons why a decentralized network is better for me as a business than relying on a hyperscaler inference provider. 1. No dependency on a BigTech provider who can cut me off or change prices at any time. I’m willing to pay a premium for that. 2. I get a residential IP proxy network built-in. AI scrapers pay big money for that. 3. No censorship. 4. Lower latency if inference nodes are located close to me.

	▲	kennywinker 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		How many of those people who could live off $200USD/month can afford or already have a mac mini in the house?

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dnnddidiej 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is too good to be true. When you see it is making more than a claude code subscription for fuck all work per day.

Prolly gonna make $50 a year tops.

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thih9 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> These are estimates only. We do not guarantee any specific utilization or earnings. Actual earnings depend on network demand, model popularity, your provider reputation score, and how many other providers are serving the same model.

Others are reporting low demand, eg.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47789171

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gleenn 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Power and racking are difficult and expensive?

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kennywinker 3 hours ago | parent [-]

How difficult? Is running 1000 minis worth $1,000,000/month of effort? I feel like it is.

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ffsm8 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And at that scale (1k) it ain't even that hard, a single room could be enough to hazardly drop them on shelves with a big fan to draw out the heat

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runako 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are many people who do not have ready access to a million dollars to purchase said Mac minis, much less the operating capital to rack & operate them.

Very smart play to build a platform, get scale, and prove out the software. Then either add a small network fee (this could be on money movement on/off platform), add a higher tier of service for money, and/or just use the proof points to go get access to capital and become an operator in your own pool.

	▲	nxpnsv 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If those numbers are true, they could tart with one Mac and can double every few months. But, I guess there are also many people who do not have ready access to whatever a Mac mini costs either...

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foota 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Capital and availability?

	▲	kennywinker 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I guess if it only works at scale capital is maybe the answer. Like enough cash to buy 5 or 10 or even 100 minis seem doable - but if the idea only works well when you have 10,000 running - that makes some sense.

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agnosticmantis an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

"You could see a single robotaxi being worth, or providing, about $30,000 of gross profit per year. ... A Tesla is an appreciating asset..."

- Elon Musk during Tesla's Autonomy Day in April 2019.