Bitcoin Forum

Does anyone have a clue why all of the asic companies are keeping prices as they are now, where's the business case there?

Both KNC 28nm and BitFury 55nm are under negative business case as mining investments at current offers and difficulty if you invest btc. Either this is the end of profit opportunities in mining or the price of btc is ridiculously cheap at the moment, or perhaps we're heading for a diff correction of about 20-40%.

I think it's been this way for a while, at least for consumers / end users.  Personally, I concluded that as an individual I have no real chance of successfully competing with big money interests that are now in the mining game.  I also think it is very likely that there are many private / secret ASICs and mining clusters being developed behind the scenes, and unfortunately I suspect a subset of ASIC companies are simply announcing delays and mining for themselves with little fear of customer backlash having any impact on profits.

People have been pointing out the fact that ASICs purchased today with BTC will never ROI, but customers just keep buying them.  For someone with a profit motive this is completely irrational, yet it continues.  I'm sure the ASIC companies are happy to sell them hardware as far into the negative ROI window as possible.  As long as the mining hardware can be sold for more than it costs to manufacture, the ASIC companies will generate profits.  They just need to maintain a minimum ratio of difficulty vs. exchange price, which suggests that rising BTC value is necessary for ASIC manufacturers to survive.  Considering that some of the ASIC companies are probably sitting on millions of dollars from private investments and pre-order revenues, they could probably buy up coins on the exchanges an drive the price up themselves if needed... and that is how a proper bubble is created.

Except for during the CPU days and maybe the earliest GPU days, I think it was always cheaper to buy BTC directly than to mine for it.  You could've bought so much BTC in 2010-2011 than buy a $300-$400 video card.

As long as customers are lining up to buy the equipment before it is even designed, the prices will stay high. That won't last forever.

why do you think only people with btc/cash in hand are buying?? 

lots of ways to use 0% interest or other creative ways like wall street / big corp does...  time value of money and all that jazz, roll over loans year-to-year..   claim on taxes on your 'business'  who knows but all the tricks are in play

My current model is buying ASICS on 0% credit card, mine and pay off the card. I try to wait as long as I can before paying off the card, as the BTC price tends to trend upwards.

Same here..  I broke that getting a couple modules from KNC today but it was only ~5.8 BTC

Remember you may be able to roll over some of that debt to another 0% card if you play it right (pay off the one, then use the new 0% for all expenses.. don't pay transfer fees)

Here we are 4 months later, same thing, asic prices roi-, even scryptgpu btc invest roi-, diff went up 10 fold, price only 3 fold... two ways, the difficulty is going to decrease 50ish% or the price will follow as in late November... Wonder if this time would be any different...