Bitcoin Forum

I really love how the community gets together and supports to the growth of bitcoins.,
it's one of the hardest things to explain to help and i'm gald one of the lucky few who actually gets it.

cant wait to know when BFL is shipping out there ASIC's

I think not as soon as people think -

on the other hand, the longer they wait (as long as they're still first) the longer my gpu/fpga farm is sitting there mining.

If someone else releases before they do - those of us with pre-orders at bfl are going to take a real hit.

on the other hand, if BFL could delay and release them all at once (unlikey in the extreme) nobody would have any advantage, we'd effectively have only made gpu/fpga mining unprofitable.

Something that I find most people are missing is that while the FPGA/GPU farms will hash at a lessor % the price of BTC is sure to rise. We have a "perfect storm" coming in that the amount of BTC released is soon to half, at the same time we will see a dramatic increase in hash rate (400-500 TH/s est). This increase will affect profitability of even the ASIC devices, so even though you will be hashing @ 40 GH/s for a 1500 investment you will only rep .0001% or approx .0025 BTC / Block (est does not include fee/donations). At a BTC value of $10 USD = $.025 / Block. $1500/.025 = 60000 blocks solved for pay back. This equates to 10,000 hours or 417 days for ROI. Since that is NOT a good ROI I would think the price of BTC will at minimum quadruple bringing the ROI into a more reasonable 100 day cycle. I am glad to see the GPU's leaving the mining systems as they are a HORRIBLE waste of energy and a constant maintenance chore. FPGA's were nice while they last, but I do look forward to trading them in for the ASIC model. GPU guy step up, spend some of those coins to stay in the game!

I expect little from them. For $150 dollars, there's got to be a catch somewhere.

I too am hesitant, I will watch them closely but right now I have a few extra computers/GPUS that will keep doing the mining. If they do come out and are great then I will pop for one or two but I will not preorder.

Its not just BFL.  Other comapines are developing ASICs and these will hit the network sooner or later.  Combined with the reward drop, it will put GPU miners out of business and make FPGA unprofitable in some areas (depending on electricity costs).  The BTC price is not dependent on difficulty, so you may not see any real impact in pice!

Sure there's a catch. They will never ship them  :-X

That's another good point - with a single source (BFL?) shipping - there was huge profit potential to ride the wave before difficulty adjusted enough to get the real numbers.

Suppose you got an sc single 40gh - the first week they ship... difficulty doubles - and you'll pulling 7 or 8 btc a day. average time to find a block solo... less than 5 days.

So your index on difficulty (if they ship 1000 orders a week) factor of : 2, 3, 4, 5 --- in 2 months we're at 10x increase.

During that time you'd earn 8 grand before the network hash rate grew to the point where it normalized.

I suspect that when everything is said and done... a jalapeno will earn about what a decent gpu does now - while a single will make about what I single makes now etc...

But then I'm planning for a 40x increase in difficulty. It's still profitable if you can throw enough of a large enough investment at it. That of course assumes that asics don't kill btc entirely - by forcing gpus out and killing the hobbyists interest in spending btc.

I wonder though if BFL's ship dates will slide enough to negate any expectations people had to be early to the party taking the risk with BFL (vs their competitors).

It will be an interesting few months ahead...

if bfl can give order date this year i will enjoy ASIC remotely with my invest on glbse.

what do you have for the investments?