Bitcoin Forum

I've been gone for a couple months to come back to see scrypt difficulties rocketing up.  Is this Bitcoin Asics all over again?  Meanwhile X11/13 profitabilty is laughable.  Current scrypt asic prices don't look like they would ROI if difficulty rate continues at current pace.  Each $10,000 unit only brings in $1800 first month. What are your guys projections for the following months?

Thoughts?

it was doomed from the start because like the KNC fisaco Manufacturers have been to greedy and they mine with the hardware before they ship/sell to customers.  They are playing a double game here, its not all companies but too many of them have gone this route (Black Arrow, KNC, BF ,AVAlon etc)
Eventually I am thinking next year users will wise up and no one will be buying Asics anymore except for volume buyers who get the first crack at the hardware anyways.

+1, I am also afraid that this will have a negative effect on the bitcoin and altcoin value aswell.

Less people will be mining, which results in less people talking about the benfits of cryptocurrency and the daily trade volumes will propably also decrease alot which results in bigger price fluctuations.

what do you think about this?

There is a project which is embracing scrypt asic mining (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=660544.0) :)

Question is who is getting most out of asics , Answer is Manufacturers but people will keep on buying pre-orders and what not, its never ending cycle.

Since the manufacturers are making the money I think it's only a matter of time before group buys turn into crowd funding to start their own ASIC productions.

That is laughable.  If you think the motley mess of scammers and incompetence of the current round of ASIC manufacturers is high, crowdfunded attempts will bet that 10 fold.  Most crowdfunded projects end up barely breaking even or a failure with only a shoddy product as a result.  Sure there are good ones but that comes from sharp management.  If management was that sharp they would have just went straight for preorder.

When scrypt coins collapse because of the KNCminers released all those ASICs will be absolutely useless.  People will be cutting their loses hoping to sell their miners to a sucker on ebay for a fifth of what they bought it at because they are not even making their electricity bill.  Most of the manufacturer orders will dry up and if they are lucky to have made back their NRE they will be fire selling their miners in order to cover overhead and expenses.  Most will go bankrupt and any orders in the queues will be wiped out.

What is different this time from the ASIC run on BTC is that this time there is a lot more money being pulled into ASICs for a lot less profit.  There was a fall in BTC prices when ASICs started coming out and there was a sell of or even chips being thrown away.  It will be 10 times worse for Scrypt.

While I do agree that most smart people would just do a high volume ASIC purchase from the manufacturer and get their orde bumped up the chain, there is the option for somebody intelligent and ethical to lead such a crowdfunding project.  See the part I bolded - you basically repeated why the current model of ordering ASIC from greedy companies is silly.  You're guaranteed to hand the profits to them.  At least if it's a decently controlled design it may not be profitable but you would be part of the project and not subsidizing somebody elses retirement plan.