here's just how screwed ASIC buyers are - READ THIS if you have a preorder

[Frequency]

Gpu users who think ASIC is screwed up are in trouble.

How are they in trouble? Most GPU miners have mined more Bitcoin than the average ASIC miner ever will.

You're not comparing apples with apples here.

Maybe you don't understand the comparison then. I am just wondering why or how a GPU miner who thinks that "ASIC is screwed" is in trouble. As I said, most GPU miners have already mined (lots of) Bitcoins. ASIC miners have not. GPU miners were the real early adopters and ASIC miners are the wanna-be early adopters (caveat: an overlap will exist). On average total earnings of an ASIC miner will never exceed that of a GPU miner.

It's like a poor guy with a lottery ticket for a million dollar jackpot saying to a rich guy, that he is screwed because he has less money than the poor guy might win.

Yuuuuuuuuuuuup +1

[strideynet]

What I mean is some gpu users are too wary of the ASIC. Most of them believe th ASIC will never come. They could ahve point. But when it does. Most gpu miners will need to move to ASIC.wha to mean is this post is a load of rubbish. ASIC miners areant screwed. Lol what did the CPU miners think of it when gpu mining became possible?

[molecular]

What I mean is some gpu users are too wary of the ASIC. Most of them believe th ASIC will never come. They could ahve point. But when it does. Most gpu miners will need to move to ASIC.wha to mean is this post is a load of rubbish. ASIC miners areant screwed. Lol what did the CPU miners think of it when gpu mining became possible?

Why do they need to move to ASIC? They can just say: screw mining. If they want coins, they can just put a risk-free bid on one of the markets.

[hardcore-fs]

What I mean is some gpu users are too wary of the ASIC. Most of them believe th ASIC will never come. They could ahve point. But when it does. Most gpu miners will need to move to ASIC.wha to mean is this post is a load of rubbish. ASIC miners areant screwed. Lol what did the CPU miners think of it when gpu mining became possible?

Why do they need to move to ASIC? They can just say: screw mining. If they want coins, they can just put a risk-free bid on one of the markets.

Why even bother with bitcoins..... shove your money into the stock-market for the day when you see an opportunity.

[bcpokey]

What I mean is some gpu users are too wary of the ASIC. Most of them believe th ASIC will never come. They could ahve point. But when it does. Most gpu miners will need to move to ASIC.wha to mean is this post is a load of rubbish. ASIC miners areant screwed. Lol what did the CPU miners think of it when gpu mining became possible?

Why do they need to move to ASIC? They can just say: screw mining. If they want coins, they can just put a risk-free bid on one of the markets.

Why even bother with bitcoins..... shove your money into the stock-market for the day when you see an opportunity.

Why even bother with the stock market and money, sink all your currency into some raw material and try to barter it for some other valuable resource.

[bobitza]

Maybe you don't understand the comparison then. I am just wondering why or how a GPU miner who thinks that "ASIC is screwed" is in trouble. As I said, most GPU miners have already mined (lots of) Bitcoins. ASIC miners have not. GPU miners were the real early adopters and ASIC miners are the wanna-be early adopters (caveat: an overlap will exist). On average total earnings of an ASIC miner will never exceed that of a GPU miner.

That's exactly what I understood. And that's the reason you're not comparing apples with apples. GPU miners were the early adopters and had an "unfair" advantage that ASIC miners will never be able to catch up with.

[deeplink]

Maybe you don't understand the comparison then. I am just wondering why or how a GPU miner who thinks that "ASIC is screwed" is in trouble. As I said, most GPU miners have already mined (lots of) Bitcoins. ASIC miners have not. GPU miners were the real early adopters and ASIC miners are the wanna-be early adopters (caveat: an overlap will exist). On average total earnings of an ASIC miner will never exceed that of a GPU miner.

That's exactly what I understood. And that's the reason you're not comparing apples with apples. GPU miners were the early adopters and had an "unfair" advantage that ASIC miners will never be able to catch up with.

If you care to explain more precisely what you mean by the above please do, because I still don't follow the apples vs. apples argument. I agree that is a simplification, for arguments sake, but I don't see why I cannot compare the situation of these two different kinds of miners.

I also disagree with it being called an "unfair" advantage. GPU miners took a big risk by investing time and money into this project at an early stage. (By the way, all information was public and everyone had the same opportunities, could have joined in at an early stage.) Do you also consider it unfair that early shareholders of Microsoft, Apple and Google made much bigger profits than later investors? And would you also find it "unfair" if GPU miners had lost money and time?

[Korbman]

GPU miners took a big risk by investing time and money into this project at an early stage.

Though I agree with the rest of your argument, I don't agree with this statement. If we're talking riskiness (on a scale of 1 [least] to 5 [more] risk), then I'd scale it like this:
CPU - 1
GPU - 1
FPGA - 4
ASIC - 5

The reasoning behind this is because CPUs and GPUs can easily be used for other things besides mining. It was [is] super easy to just set up some software and mine with whatever current hardware you have in your system. Even if you invested quite a bit into GPUs specifically for mining, you can still quickly and easily resell the hardware when you're done with it because it serves secondary purposes.

FPGAs can still be used in other situations besides mining, but they require quite a bit of work to reprogram them for another task.
ASICs, on the other hand, serve one purpose. If they're developed specifically for hashing on the bitcoin network, then they will be completely useless if bitcoin disappears. Reselling them requires pandering to a specific niche market.

[molecular]

GPU miners took a big risk by investing time and money into this project at an early stage.

Though I agree with the rest of your argument, I don't agree with this statement. If we're talking riskiness (on a scale of 1 [least] to 5 [more] risk), then I'd scale it like this:
CPU - 1
GPU - 1
FPGA - 4
ASIC - 5

The reasoning behind this is because CPUs and GPUs can easily be used for other things besides mining. It was [is] super easy to just set up some software and mine with whatever current hardware you have in your system. Even if you invested quite a bit into GPUs specifically for mining, you can still quickly and easily resell the hardware when you're done with it because it serves secondary purposes.

I did that and it gave me 2 mhash/s on my nvidia onboard card ;>. Wasn't viable so I bought a fat GPU plus PSU and stuff I needed. True about the resale possibility with GPU.

[deeplink]

GPU miners took a big risk by investing time and money into this project at an early stage.

Though I agree with the rest of your argument, I don't agree with this statement. If we're talking riskiness (on a scale of 1 [least] to 5 [more] risk), then I'd scale it like this:
CPU - 1
GPU - 1
FPGA - 4
ASIC - 5

The reasoning behind this is because CPUs and GPUs can easily be used for other things besides mining. It was [is] super easy to just set up some software and mine with whatever current hardware you have in your system. Even if you invested quite a bit into GPUs specifically for mining, you can still quickly and easily resell the hardware when you're done with it because it serves secondary purposes.

FPGAs can still be used in other situations besides mining, but they require quite a bit of work to reprogram them for another task.
ASICs, on the other hand, serve one purpose. If they're developed specifically for hashing on the bitcoin network, then they will be completely useless if bitcoin disappears. Reselling them requires pandering to a specific niche market.

I think we agree about that. It was in response to the "unfair" statement of bobitza. Note that I am saying big risk, not bigger risk, because I wasn't comparing GPU and ASIC risk. But if you insist: I also think ASIC miners are taking an even bigger (actually huge) investment risk, more like a gamble, one which I certainly wouldn't take at this point. But I see nothing unfair about it.

But your scale is not complete, because you only look at monetary risk of depreciation of the assets needed for the mining operation but you neglect some other important risks. If you look at a larger picture: Two years ago it was even harder to predict the future of Bitcoin and it is certainly not rocket science, but not trivial either to get a GPU farm running => Time invested in learning about Bitcoin, plus the time and money needed buying, building and tuning the mining rig, electricity costs and depreciation (hardware minus reselling value) could have easily been completely lost from a profit perspective.

[creativex]

While I agree that ASIC purchases are a sizable risk, those early adopters that chose the right supplier could potentially receive a large payoff for their gamble and that to me made the risks worthwhile.

At this point I'd rather be allocating fiat toward direct investment in cryptos than any purchases of mining equipment, though that wasn't the case when this thread was started.

[bobitza]

How are they in trouble? Most GPU miners have mined more Bitcoin than the average ASIC miner ever will.

... so you can't actually compare the two because the GPU miners have that headstart. So they can't be screwed. Perhaps the GPU miners that just jumped into mining ...

I'm actually agreeing with you. Perhaps the fact that I'm using an expression (apples to apples) that is usually used to disagree with someone's statement is confusing. I apologize for that.

[deeplink]

While I agree that ASIC purchases are a sizable risk, those early adopters that chose the right supplier could potentially receive a large payoff for their gamble and that to me made the risks worthwhile.

Absolutely. If you are voluntarily taking a risk with your own money you are free to do so. And if in hindsight you have made the right decision, nobody should call that unfair, because they could have taken the same risk and earned the same payoff.

So it seems in the end we all agree, isn't this great?  

[creativex]

Must be a first!

Let's get Inaba in here...there's entirely too much goodwill in this thread.

[thoughtfan]

How are they in trouble? Most GPU miners have mined more Bitcoin than the average ASIC miner ever will.

... so you can't actually compare the two because the GPU miners have that headstart. So they can't be screwed. Perhaps the GPU miners that just jumped into mining ...

Not meaning to pick on you this morning bobitza but with the impression there may be too much agreement going on here I'll stick my oar in...

I disagree with the idea that GPU miners 'can't be screwed' by ASIC investment.  I'm guessing you mean GPU miners who already broke-even and are re-investing profit.  But by no means does this apply to all GPU miners - i) because they may have been late to come on board and are yet to break even; ii) because they may be investing way more than they've profited, out of overconfidence arising out of profitability to date, out of fear of being left behind or simply because they conclude it's a good time to be risking more.

More to the point I would venture to suggest those who look at losing money earned by one means differently to the way they look at losing money earned by another means are seeing things from a hobbyist perspective.  Serious business folk who want to remain in business, once the money is earned, look at it simply as money.  How it was earned does not affect the risk involved.  Of course there is a difference between money already designated to risk for further gain and money 'borrowed' from safer projects it might originally been intended for (such as retirement funds etc.).  But it matters not whether the money came from a nice severance deal, from speculation in other fields such as shares or property or from GPU mining.  For those who have money designated to risky ventures, just as for everyone else, the risk is of losing it.  Losing it just has a much lesser potential impact than it does for those risking money they maybe shouldn't be (regardless of whether or not they have a history of GPU mining).

Maybe the distinction between who is potentially screwed or not could more helpfully looked at as those who are risking what they can afford to lose versus those who are risking more (maybe way more) than they can afford to lose.  I would suggest it is the latter who have, depending on which of the various predictions put forward in this thread come to be, a reasonable chance of being screwed.

[bobitza]

I disagree with the idea that GPU miners 'can't be screwed' by ASIC investment.  I'm guessing you mean GPU miners who already broke-even and are re-investing profit.  But by no means does this apply to all GPU miners - i) because they may have been late to come on board and are yet to break even; ii) because they may be investing way more than they've profited, out of overconfidence arising out of profitability to date, out of fear of being left behind or simply because they conclude it's a good time to be risking more.

Yes, I'm referring to those that already broke-even.
Yes, it does not apply to all GPU miners, especially the ones that arrived late on board or the ones overconfident in the future profits.

I know ASICs pre-orders started 5-6 months ago, which means ASICs were talked about even earlier. Any serious GPU miner that likes to keep himself updated with the news in the Bitcoin world would have considered the scenario that this might be real  and would have made appropriate plans such us: do not buy truckloads of GPUs and/or pre-order the ASICs as future replacements. Even if you started 7-8 months ago (just prior to ASICs announcements) I think that would have been enough time to recoup the investment made (especially since ASICs keep being postponed, lol).

Now, if you just joined teh mining community and blindly bought GPUs and FPGAs when everybody was talking about ASICs and how they are x100 times more efficient ... you deserve to be screwed.

[m3ta]

(especially since ASICs keep being postponed, lol).

^^this.

[tvbcof]

...

Now, if you just joined teh mining community and blindly bought GPUs and FPGAs when everybody was talking about ASICs and how they are x100 times more efficient ... you deserve to be screwed.

If someone ends up sitting on your 'asic pre-order' for several years before getting something out the door which is pretty capital intensive and at least as high-risk as Bitcoin itself...you deserve to be screwed.

[bobitza]

...

Now, if you just joined teh mining community and blindly bought GPUs and FPGAs when everybody was talking about ASICs and how they are x100 times more efficient ... you deserve to be screwed.

If someone ends up sitting on your 'asic pre-order' for several years before getting something out the door which is pretty capital intensive and at least as high-risk as Bitcoin itself...you deserve to be screwed.

Lol, that too ...

[jermwerty]

Since ASICs are finally *shipping* (I guess?) should we update this with new calculations?

I'd be curious to know more actual payoff examples and how people come up with their network hashrate figures, etc...  I saw the graphs in the other thread just need more reasoning!