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![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fv6Yeu.jpg&t=665&c=BB4KINWGmFxejA)
I don't think the shovel metaphor is that unreasonable - at least not to be told to STFU (I hope
![Wink](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/wink.gif)
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First there are still some who don't use pools so there is definitely a significant element of luck.
More significantly though, and something meowmeowbrowncow didn't mention is the fact nobody knows how many ASIC are going to hit and when. Even the number of ASIC manufacturers who will actually end up providing the goods is up in the air so even without USD/BTC exchange variance there is I would say a massive element of luck in whether ASICs will be profitable or not and for how long.
If there were just one manufacturer with the capacity to dwarf and drive out a significant proportion of current mining capacity I guess they'd have a reasonable chance of making a good prediction as to how much they're likely to make. However by taking cash up front (and I'm not talking in the pre-order sense but in the sense of not having to wait for coins to be mined) these risks are mitigated. The difference in risk might even make the difference between getting VC or not. I would venture to suggest it would be a lot easier to convince a VC with projected sales on physical units versus 'The hardware will produce so many hashes which, depending on who else is out there will give us so many Bitcoins which, depending on what happens on the exchanges, may give you x return on your investment'.
@myself: I'm not saying I'm right. Just that I don't think it's as retarded a point of view as you appear to think.