Yeah, right exchanges like MtGotcha, LOL
Kudos to gotmilk_ for the reference

where they got the price they quote-out of thin air?
buy 729, sell 728 with btce at 719 and stamp at 695.
It makes no sense.
How could one buy/sell bitcoin (speculate) with these ridiculous prices?

basis for prediction: if price stays the same-$700-$800, then with monthly difficulty rises at 50% (much less than current~72%) by October-November cost of electricity will be approximately the same as monthly bitcoin production (in most places). Considering that machines cost anywhere between $6000-10000 for 2-3TH, the situation would be untenable.

Therefore, BTC has to be at no less than $2500 somewhere between July and Nov (with 50% average monthly rise).
With 40% monthly diff rise-at least $1600
With 30%-at least $900
With anything below these $$ numbers-mining is in jeopardy.

Feb 2015 is too far to predict. Could be between 0 and 10000.

With all tension that we see here, I don't think that they have another month to wait.
First-they already floated a trial balloon re "about 6 mo free hosting"
Second-next week there is a large bitcoin conference in Germany that KnC is a gold/major sponsor of.
Could be good publicity for them to release the news during the conference.

I looked at all hosting contracts-they are all BS and don't make any sense IF bitcoin is stable or slightly declining in value.
Same goes for mining in general. Apart from supporting the network, mining does not make economic sense, unless bitcoin is increasing in value.
However, in the last 2.5 months bitcoin went from $1100 to $700 on bitstamp while diffuculty had increased more than fivefold.
A few more months of this dichotomy and nobody would pay to buy a mining rig.
As Guo of Avalon fame had indicated: you have to have the computational power roughly equal to your bitcoin holdings.
In other words, if you own 20-100 bitcoins, you should currently have 1-5X10-6Xtotal network power(~20000th)=0.02-0.1Th=20-100Gh
In other words, much, much less than Jupiter or Neptune.
This is, of course, a minimal requirement, but there is no point to enrich someone and get more if you got no ROI

Is Neptune money funding the farm? No doubt for me, but KnC Cole states otherwise. Impossible to find out unless you sue and go through discovery. I don't intend to do that. In fact, it all depends when they can give us 3Th/Neptune order-if in early April, I would say that it is very reasonable. If it is on July 1, then it is a very crappy deal indeed and it is not worth it. I think that they should formulate the plan very soon.

Wall Street Jornal piece shows that KnC made 15mil profit on 75 mil in sales last year.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/06/cold-virtual-cash-a-bitcoin-mining-center-for-sweden/
These are strange figures because they collected 28-34 mil on preorders, but hardly expensed anything yet on Neptune. If it is so, then they were $20 mil "in the hole' before collecting Neptune preorders. Alternatively, they were probably already in the black with Jupiters and then used at least half of Neptune money to make a prepayment or payment on the datacenter and/or unreleased Jupiters.

If it is so, it would mean that  plan B was their original intention all along.
I will wait until i hear about hosting arrangements, then decide.

I agree that trend will decrease, but to what and when? I don't think that it is very predictable. Difficulty was on a rampage in Dec, Jan and still going strong with few of the stated majors shipping (cointerra and hashfast just started). Do you know chinese shipping capacity? What are 21e6 doing? What some other "smart" governments or private individuals doing? It is unknowable.

Not perfect by any means, but gives rough estimates for 2-3 months plus it is easier to compare different machines. You can adjust difficulty rise manually as well.
I get it that it cannot adjust difficulty at varied % going forward, but as a short term tool it is OK-gave approximately correct projections for Feb14 in Nov13.
I tried several other calculators-they all work to some degree-coinplorer and bitcoinx.com being probably the best.

I pity highschoolers who have to call others names in order to make a point.
That said,  three months projection is NOT a 3 year projection, duh!
70-80% monthly projection made 3 months ago by the referenced site turned out to be pretty accurate, but go ahead, make a better one....crickets.

I played with mining.thegenesisblock.com calculator
The only way this would be profitable in $$ terms (forget about bitcoin!) would be if bitcoin price rise to at least $1500 and mining starts in April or price to $2500 and mining in May or price to $4000 and mining starts in June. All of this with 72% difficulty rise in a month that we are currently at (for the last 3mo on average).

The debate would be about what Neptune is?

Is Neptune a 3th/s of hashing power in Q1/Q2 or is Neptune necessarily a box with 3th/s hashing power.
If it is "just" hashing power, than delivering on plan B is OK.
I am sure that it is agreeble with some people, but not with everyone.
If you ordered sea bass sushi in a restaurant, but was brought equally priced smaller amount of salmon or even caviar-would you agree to this transaction?

I think that their intention is OK, just wording was not the best.
As I see it they are saying the following:
1. Neptune will be delayed (most likely-duh!)
2. KnC will build a bunch of bare bones Jupiters (or call them Io or Europa for obvious reasons), connect them to data center, hopefully, before q2 end. Using these machines, KnC will GIVE us 3th of hashing per Neptune order.
3. This arrangement will be in effect until 20nm Neptune is ready, at which point (Q3 or even Q4) you will have a choice of getting a physical machine (20nm Neptune) or a 28nm to 20nm replacement cards at the data center.

the latter, not the former.
I will press on with a dividend and "rights offer" idea. We already have a precedent for this in ASICminer.

If data center will be essentially built with "neptune" funds, then an idea to give us an ability to get a dividend stream from data center expansion makes sense

A simple read on plan B: Knc will give people with neptune orders 3Th of mining power that would be hosted in Sweden (probably/hopefully sometime in Q2 and NOT on July 1!. Once Neptune (20nm) is produced in Q3-Q4, they will give you an option to replace your 28nm chips with 20nm hashing chips while maintaining your hash rate (or slightly increasing it) in lieu of sending you the actual machine.

I have a radical proposal to KnC that will decrease chances of order cancellation:

1. Issue a "Neptune rights offer". Each right (only for those with current and valid Neptune orders) will represent an ability to receive propotional bitcoin dividend stream (I suggest at least 70-80% of all bitcoins mined that come after expenses with 20-30% left that include management bonus, etc.).
2. A person with a valid Neptune order will be entitled to one right in lieu of already purchased Neptune and additional rights (for extra cash) if facility will be expanded in the future. A Neptune purchaser can refuse additional rights or keep them and maintain similar proportion of the expanding mining facility.

This rights offer will be a perfect solution to finance future expansion. If so, it will be also a perfect vehicle for steady increase of $ (or €) to BTC conversion, which many might seek as I do.

That said, I am keeping my Neptune orders, even with understanding that my inner geek was hoping to play with the actual machine  

If you refer to me who is the author of the original post....I am JPS, LOL 

Not sure if I get your point. How was it obvious?

Well, it can work in reverse too. If you order from a company that does not ship on time (or for a long time like BFL), you get less income from mining and would not be able to compete with more successful miners who happened to order from more reliable companies. Basically, darwinian evolution of miners based on random factors. I think that CT is OK, mind you, in comparison with some other actors.

What is the most plausible theory for more than two months of silence re Neptune despite apparent discontent of customers?
Here is my speculation on possibilities (from the most probable #1 to almost impossible #5):
1. They are experiencing significant difficulties with Neptune design and want to overcome those problems before updating.
2. They are positioning to change their business model from selling individual units to the "fair shake" cloudhashing model, where customers will be buying slots in the icelandic super-mine managed by KnC. Everyone who ordered Neptune would be offered a slot with a modest increase in hashing power (to 3.5-4TH), but will have to pay extra for "hosting".
3. They were bought by someone or majority bought by a third party (perhaps even by a government-controlled entity).
4. They were bought/invested into by 21e6 (or merged with 21e6). Alternatively, they were supplying Jupiters to a single unknown party (cloudhashing?).
5. They are resting on their prior success and "taking it easy".