Thinking this should be in mining speculation forum.


My opinion.  It is not fully correct to equate selling pick axes to gold miners to selling btc mining gear.  It is correct that mining subsidy is always present.  What is not always present is a profitable USD/BTC exchange rate.

It is less risky and quite profitable to sell btc mining equipment despite the option of a profitable self mining operation.  Less risky by offloading tail risk/future risk of BTC/USD exchange rate to mining gear consumers rather than self mining.  In order for self mining to be more profitable than selling btc mining equipment such a large capacity of private mining equipment would need to be brought to bear that it risks undermining confidence in Bitcoin itself.  So, it is unfavorable to self mine, at large capacities, due to those two risk factors.

However, there is such a great advantage to deploying at cost ASIC equipment the risk of a self mining operation being unprofitable is very narrow.  So, yes, it's profitable and without serious risk to self mine at moderate levels compared to the overall network capacity.

For thought.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=130457.msg1412144#msg1412144

People actually fall for panhandler stories anymore?  I'm shocked.  I would think there would be too few gullible enough to scam to make it worth it.


When I was 17 a friend answered an ad in the paper for a job.  No experience required.  My friend dragged me along to the 'interview.'  It was a warehouse full of cheap ass speakers.  The scam operation was to drive vans around full of these speakers, stopping at random pedestrians to state that the speakers were left overs and if they'd be interested in buying on the cheap.  For truthiness these guys carried around a fed ex overnight pouch (empty lol) to wave around if questioned about their legitimacy.  The truly bizarre thing is at the end of the 'interview' day of a ride along with the scammers the 'boss,' as he sat at his very large (expensive) desk and with all of the scammer drivers (kids) lined up behind him, with a very intimidating disposition asked if we were interested in becoming part of the 'family.'


So, the other day at the drug store as I was getting in to my car a guy pulls up in a non descript van to 1.  ask directions (lol) 2.  Asked if I wanted to purchase TV's where the 'customer' would not take delivery.

It was an older gentleman scammer driver.  I guess the economy is pretty bad.  The scammer kids were the worst pieces of sh*t I'd met.  I have no sympathy for scammers - whatever their motivations.

*If* taking an ideological position a position that appreciates the intended design outcomes of bitcoin neither mining corporations or corporations that sell *overpriced* mining gear are good for bitcoin.  For varying reasons.

Being able to invest or hold equity (which ASICMiner really isn't a true equity stake) in a mining corporation is 'a good thing' only in so far as the individual being able to capitalize on a phenomena that degrades the anti-trust model that proof of work supports.

In the simplest terms:  never miss a chance to take a shot at a competitor.  


Is this true?  Errr, maybe.  I think of it this way.  Some people expect you to write with bias because of your affiliation.  When you show up in competitor threads to offer negative guidance it's very easy for some to perceive the message as a disingenuous attempt at a balanced opinion.

Troll spotted.  Shields up.

Meni.  What is the degree of this TotC problem?  That is to say what percentage of self-interested miners (or I suppose successful blocks solves) would sufficiently degrade the position of a loose affiliation of miners enforcing a sustainable tx fee?

 

Hours and hours of absurdist delight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIEVqFB4WUo

BFL shills mystify me.  I don't understand the psychology. 

Agree with con.  Incentive was a very pragmatic part of the design.  Though, getting rich shouldn't be possible.  Making a modest profit should be possible.


If someone is put off by the idea that miners would 'get rich,' one's concern and criticism should be focused towards those that indeed stand a very good chance of becoming rich - BFL, ASICMiner, et. al.


A community sourced, crowdfunded ASIC project would have eliminated concentrated riches derived from mining incentive.

Nice. 

I'm not really looking at BFL's statements.  Just the data.  BFL's revenue will drop and they will be faced with a decision to remedy.  This will likely be at least a couple of iterations of dropping prices.

My point, based on the data, is that the initial offering of ASIC's are priced at such a level that, while NRE needs to be recovered, is so high that revenues will be maximized for a short period of time.  
But this comes at the expense of ROI (in real terms) going up proportionally.  So, the end of the first revenue cycle is achieved so quickly that BFL's revenues will drop to near nothing.  Playing around with the data if unit prices dropped by 50% the mfg revenue and ROI curve would be much more linear.  BFL makes 1-2 million USD a couple of months later and customers have ROI that remain under 300 days for 3 months longer.

Of course, this all assumes a relative lack of volatility with exchange rate or other dark horse event.  Big if.


I'm actually kind of surprised you haven't come to this conclusion yourself (data).  More over I'm surprised that anyone would place complete trust with any company that exists only to be profitable.  A lot can transpire with a company that doesn't directly place them in conflict with their customers, but still is to the advantage of the company to the degree that customers could get a better deal and the company would still have a healthy bottom line.  Hopefully competition will remedy this.  


Seems like a pretty mindless defense of BFL.  Do you have data to contradict this?  Or is this a 'gut feeling' based on BFL's 'truthiness?'  (for the Cobert fans)

Call me old fashioned, but if I heard a rep of a company with any status speak in this manner in any public forum, for whatever reason, I would think poorly of the company by association.


I'm curious if only the select few common participants of this thread are here just because others realize this is not a thread where any serious dialog occurs between BFL and it's customers.

I'm just curious what the magical date is for many of the people who ordered in June/July to lose faith and pull the plug.


I wonder if that date even exists and the delays could stretch on for another 6 months.  Hmmm.

I couldn't resist.


YMMV with steroids.  It's quite possible to rage out even on a moderate ramp up dose.  Each body has it's unique tolerances.  It's also quite easy to underestimate the effect steroids have on the twitch activity of the muscles.  It is sooo easy to walk in to a gym and cause severe tears in muscles if you don't know what to expect.  

Nothing like feeling a muscle rip apart, lol.  A strange sensation and painless until awhile later.  Massive swelling.


edit:
If you are concerned about keeping your hair (all of it), don't use steroids.

Not sure if this is the same incident or not, but cgminer lost the pool for half an hour.  Cgminer was stuck.  Bitminter alive, but no work.  Wouldn't fail over.  Going to get the new version and see what happens.

Assuming exchange rate remains steady and hashpower is not vastly oversold in a short period of time.

The example vendor, BFL, could drop retail price by 62% and still net (not including staff) over 1 million USD in a two month period.

The bitcoin ASIC business is grossly profitable at all points in their output curve for the next year and a half.  At the expense of miners and the bitcoin mining subsidy.


It's a 'pump and dump' like strategy.  Pump out, drop the price, pump out for many iterations.

My 2 cents.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=130457.msg1412144#msg1412144

I needed a relevant thread in which to plop these graphs and reference in other places.


These are rudimentary estimates of manufacturer profitability for those that self mine vs. a model of complete consumer sales.

Considerations

1.  Maximum aggregate manufacturer output of 4.5 TH per day.
2.  Self mining manufacturer output / re-investment at a constant rate of .75 TH / day.
3.  Manufacturer ramp-up/loading period at accelerated output through end of 2/2013.
4.  Consumer sensitivity to a 7 month maximum ROI period.  Resistance to purchases/output increases above 7 months with retail unit price break near 10 months.

And the important ones

5.  Does not account for unit price resets and capacity gains due to new, better hashing gear.
6.  USD/BTC constant.

And finally

7.  The point in time ROI vs. real ROI chart is an example of a worst case scenario.  When both the majority of consumers base their decisions on point in time profitability thereby underestimating future growth and vendors deliver at maximum output.  I believe miners will be smarter than to purchase at the rate shown, but we'll see.

This chart contrasts point-in-time ROI (based on forecasted network difficulty of a point in time) with real ROI.
Real ROI is the sum of profitability per difficulty period from purchase date forward to pay-off. 
The more consumers consider future difficulty increases in their purchase decisions the less accurate this chart will be.
If majority of consumers base their purchase decisions on fairly accurate difficulty projections a more slow, steady (linear) ROI will manifest and as a result asic retail price breaks will be delayed



This chart compares revenues of sales models of bitcoin asic manufacturers with the total daily mining subsidy.
The purpose is to examine robustness of each model and attempt to discover how much of Bitcoin's mining subsidy is effectively transferred to mining equipment makers.
The sawtooth pattern seen with consumer sales reflects profitability/PIT ROI as difficulty adjusts.
The large spikes in consumer sales revenue reflects mining equipment retail price drops as max ROI/market saturation is reached.

Gah, you are taunting me with your asicminer ownership.  Get these shares on an exchange already.

While taking advantage of privileged information is bad this is getting overblown.

Let's stop the masterbatorial frothing.