That's not merely ROI, which is in fact ANY income generated, it's a profit ABOVE breakeven, even given the cost of electricity. That time frame of breakeven and positive ROI is an accountant's wet dream, not a pessimistic outlook. Three months to see a profit above breakeven on expensive equipment is stupendous. You aren't merely spreading FUD here, you are showing a complete lack of any sort of business sense.

That is in addition to the other less tangible profits, such as making bitcoin more secure, more available, and more tradeable. All of these are possible, even likely outcomes of the massive influx of ASIC based mining equipment. I personally would be happy to hit breakeven or a bit above in six months on ANY fuckin' investment, let alone something as speculative as this. And as has been pointed out repeatedly, those are rather pessimistic numbers.

On the subject of Return on Investment, I have to say that most of you are misusing the term rather badly. Even those who I agree with Return on investment is simply making an income from your investment, whether or not it reaches breakeven or profitability. Breakeven seems to be the term most of you are referring to as ROI, whereas anything above that is profit, or positive ROI. There are basically three scenarios in which these devices will make zero ROI.

1. You give up and never plug the bitch in.

2. It's a total scam. Just a box of fans, in which case it won't mine.

3. It's broken on delivery. In which case a reputable company will try to make you whole. Given the nature and declining profitability of such devices, I would hope they offer some additional boards for the loss of time in such a case. Not all companies are BFL, and unlike many here, I don't think even they started out with the intention of fraud.

I consider it a good day when I manage to piss off a Democrat and a Republican in the same sentence. It usually involves logic

Ok. I asked this in another thread already, but HERE, I particularly do not understand where a lot of you are coming from.

First off, no matter what you WILL achieve ROI, so I have to assume you mean POSITIVE ROI. But even given that niggle, there is virtually no way these machines will not reach break even in a fairly short time, after which your only ongoing expense is electricity, which is not that great of an expense on these devices.

So, those of you crying "no ROI" over and over again, WHAT FREAKIN" TIME FRAME ARE YOU TRYING TO BEAT?

I mean really. An ivestment that is likely to break even in less than a year??? That's insanely positive by most any business metric you care to apply! There are many investors who do not intend to break even for decades in other areas of business. I think the doom and gloom shows a deep lack of belief in the long term viability of bitcoin itself. I don't know how representative you are, but if you, the hardcore miners, are this concerned about the short term, then perhaps the experiment has already failed.

Or you just aren't thinking it through.

In the long term, bitcoin will succeed or fail based on just one thing. Acceptance by the markets.

THAT is what you ALL should be focusing on. If the coin does not purchase anything, it is worthless. If it does, it is not. The wider it's acceptance, given it's built in scarcity, the greater it's long term value. Thus, if you get declining returns from your miner (somewhat inevitable) but the market grows, then your ROI is directly positively affected. OTOH, if a lot of miners throw their hands in the air and their machines in the dustbin, the difficulty drops, and the miners that remain grab buckets full of bitcoin, it won't matter at all if the markets do not accept it as a viable unit of exchange.

Personally, I think it's really only a few short sighted individuals making a lot of noise, but do think about what you are saying about the long term of this experiment before deciding that break even has to occur the day after tomorrow or there is no profit.

Yeah, this is where I'm coming from. I don't expect to pay off my investment the day after tomorrow, but over a term of a year or more. Which is still fantastic from where I sit. Of course if you catch the leading edge of the new tech, you might ride the imbalance and make a killing, which would be cool, but investing solely on that paradigm seems... naive, to be polite.

exactly. The FIRST requisite of liberty is universal armament. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, even if you want to. Guns have existed for the better part of six centuries, and the knowledge to make them, from crude to amazingly precise, is easy to come by. The most common rifle in the world was designed to be able to be built by a blacksmith if necessary, albeit at significant cost to accuracy and longevity.

If only the rulers have guns, then you have a populace of slaves. Contra what some keep spouting, all the stats I've been able to find over many years show exactly the opposite. The most armed places are the least violent.

Consider, since school shootings are ALWAYS the "disarm everyone but the criminals" groups' main focus, that it is illegal for ANYONE to have firearms in a school, now. Wasn't true in my youth, and we didn't go around shooting each other either. But I digress. ALL of these mass shootings happen where it is illegal to defend yourself. And no, to you liberals, cowering in a corner waiting to be shot doesn't count as defense. These shooters KNOW they face no opposition, and they have a field day. One man with a handgun would have stopped them cold in just about every one of those shootings.

Also, think on heavily armed societies such as Switzerland. They do not have much of a violent crime problem, and it is required that their male citizens have a military rifle on hand. Not the "badass lookin'" semis that Americans get so upset about, either, but the real deal. Full auto at the flick of a switch. The criminal element is well aware of this, and so does NOT invade the home of a man that is likely to shoot them dead.

Why? Are they that ugly 

Ok, six months I see as a reasonable time frame. On the low end of diff rise we are talking DAYS on some of the projected devices, so I failed to see the gripe. Six months is still pretty damn good. Thanks for clarifying that. My background is the restaurant business, where a positive ROI is often measured in decades, so this seemed a bit off to me. 

You missed my point. Or perhaps I wasn't explicit enough. I did kind of get sidetracked in that I feel quite strongly that too much emphasis is placed on mining and not enough on developing general acceptance of bitcoin as a viable transactional instrument.

What I am failing to understand is WHAT TIME FRAME are you (and the many others who are complaining) are you expecting to break even? I run calculations based on both optimistic and pessimistic numbers rather often, and it still seems that the bigger devices will break even in a few months on the worst end of the scale. That's pretty damn good. Better by orders of magnitude than you would expect from successful gold mining. What, if anything, am I missing? Or is this all just a quick scheme to get a quick buck to a lot of people? I tend to look at investments in the middle to long term, rather than tomorrow.

Oh, FWIW, I intend to live forever

EDIT: I failed to cover your other point. I agree fully that ASICMiner devices are vastly overpriced. They are not going to be the only game in town much longer, however. I view this particular device as a toy. I probably will buy one, if the price drops a bit more, just for the sake of the history of it. I wouldn't expect it to break even, but it's cool looking. The problem I'm seeing is people are saying the same thing about devices that very well should break even in a very reasonable amount of time even if difficulty increases by an order of magnitude or more.

uh...

If you are talking about using large power drain electromagnets, you are quite correct. But the EMP from a nuclear explsion at or above 5000 feet AGL covers hundreds of miles and is capable of destroying MOST active and unshielded electronics. Also can damage or destroy a great many inactive and unpowered devices. This is NOT new information. I was aware of this in the late seventies, and I am not in any way associated with the military.

Devices called "neutron bombs" do this and put out a great deal of lethal but short lived radiation, leaving buildings and non electronic infrastructure intact. These devices are known to exist, at least in three national nuclear inventories, and probably more than that. This is not a trivial weapon by any means.

Ok, I'm missing something. I see lots of people talking about "never" making ROI on miners varying from these little toys up to 400 GH/s ASIC array devices. What timeframe are you people looking at? The ONLY reason I didn't preorder a KNC mining device is I was unable to raise the cash in time. Extrapolated over a year, difficulty would have to rise to close to a billion for me NOT to make a positive ROI. Not saying that necessarily applies to the USB block eruptor, which seems to me more of a novelty item, but still!

You want a good ROI in bitcoin? Start promoting it to folks who might use it as currency. The transactional end of things is sorely neglected at this juncture. In the long term, mining for bitcoins WILL CEASE. Then the only profits to be had from the network are transaction fees, and the coin itself rising in value against other currencies. THESE are the issues we should be focusing on, as if they are not addressed, Bitcoin will end when the last coin is mined.

If you're looking to make ROI in a day or two, you are better off going to vegas, where the odds are against you but the possibility exists. If you are interested in promoting the idea and ideology of Bitcoin, then a year or more to realize ROI is not egregious.

My weapon of choice would be the current "curriculum" as it will drive the greatest number to suicide.

As far as weapons go, "assault" rifle is a meaningless term. The difference between a civilian model AK-47 and ANY other semi automatic rifle is only caliber and a variance in magazine size. The most "bang for the buck" would be a .22 semi. That being said, long guns are rarely used in armed assaults unless perpetrated by governments. Handguns are more likely to be used for the obvious reasons. Disarming the lawful just invites the lawless and the ruler. No matter who presents them, the stats bear this out. Highly armed segments of the populace have low violent crime rates for obvious reasons: Criminals are opportunists. One can only defend against the true psychopath. I believe that MOST of these mass killers are NOT true psychopaths as they are too risk averse to carry out their malfeasance where there is a high likelihood of an armed response. It is no accident that mass shootings ALWAYS occur in officially disarmed places.

No. A Fiat is a decree by a ruler. Thus fiat currency, or "legal tender" if you will, is a promissory note decreed to be lawful money in lieu of any actual backing.

In truth, and I am sure to ruffle a few feathers here, bitcoin is similar in several aspects, but due to it's unique properties and decentralization has a good shot at becoming a better alternative.

Enjoy! I've spent a lot of time in the mountains along the Montana/Idaho border. Beautiful and plentiful if you know what you're doing. As an added bonus, this time of year it's not deadly if you don't!

Yes there is! All of them can potentially be purchased with bit coin!

No, but they do occasionaly pass out due to system overload

My understanding is that they will just go in to continuous production, clearing the pre-orders first.

You say that like it's a bad thing:====#~~~

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232852.0

Methinks you are mixing up companies.

Tonight or tomorrow, from me :-)

Just unboxed my PC yesterday. My client is syncing. I love my tablet, but Android can be very limited at times.

these are Klondike boards. Look in that thread under custom hardware.