Bitcoin Forum

Dear ASIC mining equipment manufacturers,

I am your potential customer. 
I am an experienced bitcoin miner. I consider my level of technical knowledge to be above average.

Here's how you can sell me an ASIC miner:

1. I will only buy from your current stock. I am not going to purchase something you have yet to create. When I pay for the equipment I expect it to be boxed up and on it's way to me the next day. I expect it to be in my hands within a week. tl;dr no pre-orders.

2. I will not pay more money for your equipment than I can earn with it. In fact, I want to make a good profit with it. I did not get into this game to lose money. I used to make a good profit with GPUs before ASICs came into play. The earning potential of your equipment is time sensitive.  A lot of us use The Genesis Block Mining Calculator to determine potential profit; you should use it to determine your pricing.

3. Good customer service goes a long way.  Treat your customers right and they'll buy from you again. Repeat customers is how a company stays in business. If you can consistently provide service and products that exceed expectations, you will sell much more equipment.

4. This is business.  If you can't honor your end of the deal then the deal is off. I don't want excuses, I don't want promises, I want my money back.


I am your potential customer. Maybe we can do business.

i agree with what he said

You say these things but... people will always hope "what if..." and buy preorders anyway. Why do you think Nigerian scammers still try and scam? Because some people fall for it; and some is all they need.

I used to ignore you (I don't now after reading the block erupter blade guide) but overall you're cool folks.  I'd say that the nigerian scam happens because that is all they can realistically get away with there.  Try that shit on a local their and you're likely to get something like your head chopped off.    I only buy preorders on stuff like GTAV (yea i know pathetic) but in the asics game...you don't really have a choice.  Its as the fry gif says "shut up and take my bitcoin!!!!!!"  You try to be smart about it and you end up gettting passed by folks who are riskier than you and willing to get in line to get their hardware up and running before you.  All of us who talked shit about people who bought block erupters that had been hashing since 2011...they obvously saw that the savings from power was worthwhile to buying up the Block erupters...and that having the btc to be able to buy them up in bulk allowed them to also participate in the re-seller pyramid which kept prices high.


Its just like this - would you pay for 500 GH in Early november or would you pay the same amount for 2 TH in January?  Which would win?  Because there is a moving target and the difficulty instantly becomes skyhigh once a majority of preorder has been delivered towards the end of Dec, that 2 TH in January is now akin to 250 GH that would have been preordered at the time you bought the 400 GH.  ( I don't have concrete data or details as Im armchair calculating this )

Looking for compelling reasons to disagree with the above mentioned statement.

EdManet, very nice summary, agree with all points above without any doubts.

but there is a small catch - you will be always potential customer, because no one in this business is able to instantly sold you money printing machine OR/AND there is lot of guys around, which are able again and again accept preorder, even if the company already fuck up in past (BFL case and Monarch preorders)

good luck dude.

If they want to sell to the un-informed masses and make a quick buck, then they can do that. But they will not prosper and will not stay in the business very long.

A better business model is to sell to the informed consumer.  I think that's what Redhash is going for and I think they will wind up winners in the game.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=303376.0

I'm sure the millions of dollars they've made are very useful for wiping away tears when they cry themselves to sleep at night on their private island after having "not been in business very long."

Pessimism Detection = 2 weeks^tm

Maybe I'm an optimist.  But I'm not buying any ASIC until I know it can earn me more than I can make just buying BTC.

you will never see a machine that can deliver consistent ROI ready off the shelf...Its called market efficiency to self correct.  People will use up their past roi to throw money into the bubble until either the asic mfgs jack the price up too high too soon (whats happened between April and Now)  or until too many new competing asic vendors come around and btc mining hardware is overproduced as a result.  Diff will always become skyhigh when hardware is quickly available with substantial ROI.  I think Value of hardware relates to the price of btc also which explains the hardware price jumps back in March. 

You can't possibly expect to make a profit while taking on zero risk. If that were the case you'd forever be in the sidelines.

Mining profits are dependent on future difficulty which nobody can predict with any certainty. Mining for profit will always involve some level of risk.

I don't beleive you will find any asic bitcoin hardware supplier that will meet your criteria .

bitcoin mining is high risk -

ie you will not be buying any hardware this year

If there was any sort of guarantee that you'd make more money than the price you paid for a device then the manufacturer would probably just be mining with the device themselves.  (Large hashrate miners don't stand out as much now that the network hashrate is so high)

While it'd be nice if all vendors & manufacturers followed your rules, the market for Bitcoin mining hardware is unfortunately still very much a seller's market rather than a buyer's. 

Fortunately it looks like some real competition is starting which is always good for the buyers.

Sounds nicely put and all that, but point 1 and 2 contradict each other

BTC mining idea wasn't created to make profit.

OPs views are great. I however do have blue fury and drillbit preorders - only because they are in my country and fairly soon on delivery.

To all of you who don't understand why the ASIC Miner Manufacturers chose the way of pre-orders.

Developing and building a custom ASIC Miner is a risky enterprise.
At some point in the decision making process you will have to find someone who is willing to fund the development of a custom chip up to the point of production.
Usually, you'd think "Investors" would be happy to spring into action.
But would they?

Well, from an investor's point of view, it looks like this:
1. fund a million Dollars for development
2. finish development in time
3. get production running smoothly in time
4. ship your product to customers at a margin
5. profit

But hey, there's a downside, and that's the "in time" stuff.
What if you don't make it in time?
The product you just developed for a million bucks is worthless junk the day it leaves the development process.
Other competitors will have a better product to sell and you can't expect to sell a single item at a margin.
Wow, now that's a risky venue.
High upfront costs and a high risk of 100% loss.
Well, there are investors for that kind of business.
We'll call them gamblers.

Gamblers will only be willing to gamble a tiny part of their fortune for such a risky venue.
So, to fund a million Dollar development, you'll probably need a lot of them.
And they expect a high return on their "investment".

Hmmm, I wonder.

Why would you collect money from hundreds of gamblers and promise them a high return, thereby even increasing the price of your final product, if you could also just call out to the crowd who are going to buy your product in the end?
That way, you'll even reduce the price of the end product for your customers.

And that's the miracle of the birth of crowd-funding. In a nutshell.