BFL and affected difficulty rate

[ovoon7]

So with BFL hitting us in late october/november, where do you suppose the difficulty will be?

Also, when do you think everyone will have their current orders up and running? I'm thinking February or March. By that time, what do you think the difficulty will be at?

Someone was predicting somewhere around 136,000,000.  I found that to be absurd, because nobody would be able to mine anything at that rate, and if nobody is able to mine, nobody is going to power their machines to let the difficulty stay impossibly high.

One thing to add to calculations is the drop in difficulty after nearly all mining GPU's will be rendered useless.  With that many pulling out that has to help flatten the difficulty a little bit, right?

Another question:
Why has BFL not announced the specifications for their new products? Like the wattage and such? What with the release window so close, I find that odd. I have yet to make my order, if the place is actually legit I'm immediately buying 5 of the singles, but I'm finding something seriously sketchy.  It's too good to be true. 

If I can get ahold of them on the phone today, I'll have some questions for them.

[gollum]

Assuming that 5000 BFL single SC will be in the market within 6 months we will have about 5000 x 40 GHash/s = 200 000 GHash/sec = 200 THash/sec
That is 10 times more than today (20 Thash/sec)!

In combination with halfing the mining dividend from 50 to 25 BTC/block GPU mining will be eliminated, only FPGA and ASIC will survive after dec 2012

So to get 1 BTC/day in spring of 2013 you will need 20 times more hashrate than today, I guess that number will rise to 50 to 2014.
That is actually beneficial for the Bitcoin-network in the long run. But it kills profitability for the ASICs.

I guess the only miners making good profits are the early adaptors of new technology.. otherwise you might get a few percents per year in profit when the difficulty rises.

[Jebus]

This was a big issue for me as well. Currently the entire bitcoin network hovers around 15-17 TH/s total. All of the GPU miners dropping out can be replaced by just a few of the new SC Mini-Rigs. I then started wondering what kind of sales BFL was actually having. If i had one of those SC Mini-Rigs right now it would pay for itself in like 6 days but once 200 of them are in circulation the difficulty will go through the roof and it'll be back to making very little. I've rationalized getting a few of the SC Singles a few different ways. 1) 30k is a huge chunk of money to wire to a company 6 months before you even have a chance at getting the product. I'm guessing there's not a lot of people that will dig up 30k on what is in reality a pretty risky investment. I'm imagining a bunch of the Singles getting sold but their output into the real world will probably fairly slow. 2) Since I'm currently pulling about 1GH/s and the SC Single is supposed to pull 40, as long as the total network hashrate stays below 600 (15TH/s now * 40) I should be effectively mining faster/more productively. 3) If we look at other mining operations, like gold, it started out with a bunch of scrubs with shovels and sifters. Then someone came along and said, "Hi guys, this is an excavator. Now show me your tits!". Gold mining was changed forever. Then newer-more productive methods with additional hardware were invented. It's hard to justify being out there with your spoon and strainer when everyone around you is strip mining. This is just the way things develop. The market has said there is a need for higher hashrates so someone is going to make it happen and the people with the money to get in early make the most. Rich stay rich, poor stay poor. Of course BFL could just give us all the middle finger and hit the road with our cash. Someone once invested money into Uncle Willy's SuperSweet Invisibility Tonic and lost as well and that shit made you invisible!