Are ASIC's worth the investment?

[rilesbriles]

I have done quite a bit of research on these ASIC's that Butterfly Labs is going to release here soon and my number one question is "Is it worth it?" Right now I am thinking yes. I believe that during the beginning phases of releasing these units will 1.) be beneficial to people who preorder and 2.) make the difficulty of mining sky rocket for those who do not own ASIC's. I am curious on what everyone else thoughts are on this.

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[CoinPay]

In my opinion, ASICs are worth the investment if your looking to make a profit long term, There are a few reasons for this but I will just list a couple

1. At the current rate of ASIC Manufactures actually getting a product into the consumers hand if you are only just placing an order be prepared to wait a long time to receive your unit.

2. Only those that receive ASIC's from the first batch's released will quickly recoup there investment because the difficulty will increase and the evolution from utilizing Graphics cards for mining switches to ASIC's as it did before from CPU to Graphics cards. So ASIC's will become the "Norm" for mining.



Now you may want to ask yourself this... based on the current increasing value of bitcoin, would you make more of a profit buying bitcoin now and selling once the price of bitcoin rises? or spending your money on purchasing an ASIC which you may not receive for sometime?

[rilesbriles]

Excellent I was thinking the same thing, however I've never thought of actually buying and selling bitcoin stock and I do not know if I'm ready to enter that whole mess. And as far as pre-orders go, I wonder how long it will take to receive a unit once they are shipped. They are supposedly suppose to release the units soon.

[vuli]

what, they still didnt relaese those Japaleno stuff?

[rpgman1]

We got other companies entering and making their own ASICs. I should've bought BTC last year when the rates were really low. ETA for BFL ASICs is suppose to be this week, but that might be delayed. I was thinking about buying a BFL Jalapeno.

[andytoshi]

If you order an ASIC today, it will be several months before it ships. In that time, the difficulty of the blockchain will have increased by several times (since there are ASICs shipping now and turning on now). I suspect that by the time you finally get it, you won't have much of a chance of getting your money back.

However, if you have electric heat, your ASIC will be able to take some of the load off of your heater, and therefore run for free. In that case, you only need to wait and you will eventually get your money back (maybe after several winters).

[alphaguru]

so given all the statements above, would it be better to join in on services like the "pryamining" and leverage their already exisiting hardware and piggback off their resources in hopes of getting a nice cut from their group mining

[tribble222]

I ordered an asic because I think it will be fun but I have no delusions of recouping my money. If you just want to make money I'd buy bit coins and hope the price goes up.

[Doctor Mushies]

I think they are worth the investment, in the same sense that everyone thought that GPU miners were making a good investment until they weren't anymore.  This currency rewards the early adopters heavily.   

[btcsql]

They will be if you can get your hands on them quickly enough. Otherwise, it's going to be a nice conversation piece for the kids when they are digging through the garage and find a gargantuan box with a bunch of fans, which looks eerily similar to a computer, but is simply not quite a computer. 1.75 jiggawatts

[Doctor Mushies]

Now I might buy one just so I can tell my kids about it...  now I just need to work on getting that girl friend... 

[bitcoins...BIIITCOINS]

I don't think so.  If you weren't one of the people who placed a preorder, but the time you place your order for an ASIC and receive yours, the ASIC bubble will have burst. 

[wiggi]

I don't think so.  If you weren't one of the people who placed a preorder, but the time you place your order for an ASIC and receive yours, the ASIC bubble will have burst. 

Next window of opportunity will be when they are available to ship within 24h.
Or perhaps not, depends on their price vs how many new ones are produced per month
to drive difficulty up.

[Parazyd]

I'm thinking of ordering a Jalapeno myself... Who knows

The thing is... GPU mining could still be profitable, it just depends on what hashrate are you getting. The people that have <4 GHash, will probably have to stop mining, but the stronger miners could still have some profit.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I bought a Jalapeno not out of any delusions of striking it Bitcoin "rich" but because someday it will be a "classic".  Like the commodore 64 of Bitcoin miners.   In the future when the first datacenter installed petahash scale rack mount mining clusters is available from Dell*, my Gen1 Jalapeno will look quaint sitting on my desk.


* Just kidding (kinda) but that probably is the end game.  A full datacenter rack of 3U or 4U mining chassis connected to a redundant pair of management servers. 

[wdmw]

I'm waiting until I the shipping time lowers.  I don't expect to get rich from a Jalapeno, but I do expect to be able to generate some bitcoins, help secure the network, and contribute to larger scale adoption of BTCs.

There are quite a few threads in this forum about the profitability.  One variable that I didn't see mentioned much was the exchange rate.  Many of the calculations were done a month ago, when the BTC -> USD was in the area of ~$13-$14.  It's currently ~$21.

The new network power is only going to increase the difficulty, and not the creation rate.  Therefore, if the increasing adoption (demand) of BTC continues, the value will continue to increase, which affects profitability.

Otherwise, it's just cool, and the cost is about equivalent to ~3 dinners out.

[blockgenesis]

One thing to consider with ASIC is that you cannot resell them for any other purpose. All the opposite of graphic cards.

However, if there is a better time to buy ASIC, it is clearly now. Because ASIC are about 50x more productive. This gap is not likely to reproduce in the future.

I never found any estimation of how many BFL ASICS are about to be shipped. It's then pretty hard to calculate the impact on the final hash rate (and to evaluate the real potential incomes). Also not to forget that Bitcoin value changes it all. If it rise of drop, your incomes will follow.

My bet is that it will clearly be worth. However, I could be wrong.

[b!z]

ASICs are a joke, none of the companies will deliver.

[Parazyd]

ASICs are a joke, none of the companies will deliver.

Avalon delivered 300x60GHash.

[Bitsaurus]

If you consider the sheer number of ASICs reportedly in queue the difficulty rise will be large enough to diminish returns to the point of never achieving return on investment.  Say you currently mine 25GH which is about 1/1000th of the total.  That probably costs about 20K in GPUs and boards.

Now to have 1/1000th of the hash after ASIC stabilizes you would probably need to spend well over $20k.

Unless you got in very early on the ASIC batches you're probably screwed as people will keep tossing money at it in hopes of getting rich.

I think the only ones who will see guaranteed profits from ASIC are the manufacturers (like a gun dealer arming both sides).