Mining question???? Neptune release.

[kodiak250]

I am fairly new to mining and have never posted on this board so I hope I dont get blasted but here goes......There is a lot of chatter about how mining will never return ROI so you should not do it so is my math off?  I honestly dont believe that a $10,000 investment could gross ~350,000 dollars in a year but even looking at it conservatively you are looking at 5-10 times your money.

I have 7 red fury miners hashing away at a steady 15.5 ghash.
I am currently mining, on average, about ~.005 btc/day.
Divide that by the 15.5 ghash = .0003225 btc per day per ghash.
I am about to pull the trigger and preorder a Neptune for delivery 2nd qtr.
Assuming that the difficulty does not change (which it will and I will address that later)....
If my Neptune mined at the same btc/ghash rate, you would take .0003225 x 3000
That would mine .9675 btc/day
.9675 btc at the current exchange rate would gross you about $900 per day thereby returning investment in about 12 days (not including power bill)

Pretend that the difficulty doubles by the time I get my miner and my efficiency is cut in half, I am still making ~.5 btc per day and will have ROI in no time.

As I said, I am a new miner so everyones (especially the veterans) thoughts and opinions on my calculations are encouraged.....lay it on me and blast away. 

Till then Thank you everyone for the knowledge in the forum and happy mining

[Bitconorama]

Welcome to the forum!

You don't deserve to be blasted ..you're approaching this with an open mind and applying a good thought process to determine ROI feasibility.

That said, I think a simple doubling of difficulty (by the time these Neptunes are released) is an extremely optimistic hope. As you seem well aware, all we can do is only slightly more educated than throwing darts at a board. What we need to remember is that, while we've seen a large run up in network hash speed in the last ~5 months, we should expect an even greater increase in avg miner hash speed with new, more powerful machines coming online in the next couple months. Forget BFL ..but KnC's 'monster' machine was capable of ~500-600 Gh/s. The new miners coming from HF, Cointerra, Black Arrow, KnC's newbs, ...etc ..are all now in the multi-Th range and set to be dropping in the first half of this year. By the way of actual delivered machines, well, we haven't seen the kind of mass production of miners that we will see very soon. From my math, I'm expecting a Batch 1 Neptune to produce somewhere between .2 - .3 Btc a day and dropping from there fairly rapidly.

Also, depending on your situation, it would be a good idea to consider electrical costs. These Neptunes will likely be 2,500+ watts per unit ..likely forcing the average US miner to spread the load between more than one circuit.

[choose_username]

The problem is that difficulty can easily double each month from now, while you are waiting for your miner. And when you start mining difficulty will jump enormously, because when you receive your xThash miner, everybody else will also and the network hashrate will make an enormous jump. And then there is the exchange rate risk. If you have the BTC now and you will pay the machine in BTC there is no risk, but if you pay in fiat, what will happen to your ROI if the BTC goes to $500 while you are waiting for your machine? The difficulty will still soar, because everybody has their pre-orders in already and will try to make as much BTC as possible.

[kodiak250]

Thank you for the input!

So the difficulty is what will determine the true profitability of the machine.  In that mindset though I have to think....If the monster machines coming out are going to jack the difficulty sky high, then my little red fury's are going to be good for nothing more than a nightlight =/

[choose_username]

Yeah that's exactly the point! And that's also why you should only pre-order if its a revolutionary device AND you are in the front of the queue. The second batch will never ROI, because the first batch already picked all the low hanging fruits.

[darcimer]

Like previous posters have said, you're on the optimistic side wrt difficulty.  But, you never know, you might be right in the end.  Hashfast is already looking like they won't deliver, and Cointerra is now late as well. 
Here's a fairly realistic view of difficulty:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Auya3iRE6az1dDc0UVgwMU52YVpTazVjSHByOGNiWHc&usp=sharing#gid=8

So far it's pretty close, but I think it's using some kinda trigonogeomalgebra to get those numbers.  The reality is that difficulty rise is very simply based on how much hash is added to the network, which means how much new hash is hitting the market less ones that are burning up or lost.  That number is tougher to gauge, although they are trying to game it over here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=387533.0
which basically says that Hashrate will be anywhere from 40 Petahash(5.6b Diff) to 170(23. Petahash (if I am not mistaken, by the next 6 months)  So today it's 1.4b difficulty, and in 6 months, anywhere from 5.6-23.8 difficulty.  You can mess around with those numbers in your favorite calculator. But if btc stays where it is, I can tell you that if KNC delivers sometime in Q2, and a worst case scenario, it could be 6 months before you get a positive ROI. (Actually worst case is they deliver really late, like past August.  But the upside, from what I've read, is that they have a reputation to deliver on time and over what was promised)
In the meantime, miners are kinda in a strange time.  Nobody wants to see their friends get burned by scam artists/vaporware(cuz it coulda been you), yet every hash the isn't created is more btc to those currently or soon to be mining.

[kodiak250]

wow bitcoin miners are way more friendly than the other boards i am on (duck hunting forums!).....Those guys blast newbies for every question they post lol.  After listening to you guys, I feel like its a fairly safe investment that I will get my money back but I might not make 300 grand like everyone would hope.  In this business it seems that if you are stagnant then you lose money do you have to be progressive and willing to put down in order to even break even.  Im leaning towards the preorder right now, even if it is 2nd batch......now to figure out how to get power to this thing without burning my house down!