What type of reg would you build for 120k?

[DobZombie]

what type of rig would you guys build for 120k ?

I wouldn't put it into hardware. I just buy bitcoins. I could nearly guarantee that in 5 years time it'll be over $100 a pop.

Use it in short trading?

[1715194619]

1715194619

[crazyates]

what type of rig would you guys build for 120k ?

I wouldn't put it into hardware. I just buy bitcoins. I could nearly guarantee that in 5 years time it'll be over $100 a pop.

Use it in short trading?

I have no problem dumping 120k into the Bitcoin economy, but if you're looking at a 5 year timeline, is that really the most profitable? Do you have any particular reasons why you think buying BTC is more profitable? Here are 2 scenarios:

Option A: You buy 120k worth of BTC, and sit for 5 years. That's ~3500BTC at today's price, and if you hold on to them for 5 years, they're worth $350K. $120K -> 350K isn't bad.

Option B: You buy 4 BFL ASICs. I don't care if it takes 4 months to deliver, you will have a 100% ROI within the next 8 months. A 100% ROI means you will have mined back what you spent, which would be the same 3500BTC. You then have the next 4 years to mine BTC before you cash out. Lets say the network doubles, and you earn half as much per year. So in the 5 years, you earn 3500, 1750, 875, 437, and finally 218 BTC. At the end of the 5 years, you end with almost 6800BTC. Assuming the same increase in price, you just went from $120k -> $680K.

You can't tell me the cost of power is going to make up the difference between $350K and $680K.

[fulepp]

And one more thing to consider. As far i know these rigs come with 6 month warranty. Let we assume they start to give trouble after 1,5 years... your 5 years plan is gone...

[crazyates]

And one more thing to consider. As far i know these rigs come with 6 month warranty. Let we assume they start to give trouble after 1,5 years... your 5 years plan is gone...

BFL comes with a lifetime warranty, meaning the lifetime of the product. If they still sell it, they will warranty it. This might be for a year, or more, or less.

[mrb]

what type of rig would you guys build for 120k ?

I wouldn't put it into hardware. I just buy bitcoins. I could nearly guarantee that in 5 years time it'll be over $100 a pop.

Use it in short trading?

I have no problem dumping 120k into the Bitcoin economy, but if you're looking at a 5 year timeline, is that really the most profitable? Do you have any particular reasons why you think buying BTC is more profitable? Here are 2 scenarios:

Option A: You buy 120k worth of BTC, and sit for 5 years. That's ~3500BTC at today's price, and if you hold on to them for 5 years, they're worth $350K. $120K -> 350K isn't bad.

Option B: You buy 4 BFL ASICs. I don't care if it takes 4 months to deliver, you will have a 100% ROI within the next 8 months. A 100% ROI means you will have mined back what you spent, which would be the same 3500BTC. You then have the next 4 years to mine BTC before you cash out. Lets say the network doubles, and you earn half as much per year. So in the 5 years, you earn 3500, 1750, 875, 437, and finally 218 BTC. At the end of the 5 years, you end with almost 6800BTC. Assuming the same increase in price, you just went from $120k -> $680K.

You can't tell me the cost of power is going to make up the difference between $350K and $680K.

I speak as a miner who has been making decisions (mining/buying/holding/selling) since when the whole network was ~100 Ghash/s... and I have told you this before, but you grossly underestimate how fast the network is going to grow in the next few months and years. "2x per year", yeah right. For reference, the network's mining speed was growing by 100x every ~6 months when GPUs were introduced. Yes. Not 2x, but 100x.

(I also think you overestimate BFL's ability to ship in merely 4 months IMHO). Because of that I don't think that anybody can assert with good confidence that one of the options is definitively more profitable than the other.

[ralree]

what type of rig would you guys build for 120k ?

I wouldn't put it into hardware. I just buy bitcoins. I could nearly guarantee that in 5 years time it'll be over $100 a pop.

Use it in short trading?

I have no problem dumping 120k into the Bitcoin economy, but if you're looking at a 5 year timeline, is that really the most profitable? Do you have any particular reasons why you think buying BTC is more profitable? Here are 2 scenarios:

Option A: You buy 120k worth of BTC, and sit for 5 years. That's ~3500BTC at today's price, and if you hold on to them for 5 years, they're worth $350K. $120K -> 350K isn't bad.

Option B: You buy 4 BFL ASICs. I don't care if it takes 4 months to deliver, you will have a 100% ROI within the next 8 months. A 100% ROI means you will have mined back what you spent, which would be the same 3500BTC. You then have the next 4 years to mine BTC before you cash out. Lets say the network doubles, and you earn half as much per year. So in the 5 years, you earn 3500, 1750, 875, 437, and finally 218 BTC. At the end of the 5 years, you end with almost 6800BTC. Assuming the same increase in price, you just went from $120k -> $680K.

You can't tell me the cost of power is going to make up the difference between $350K and $680K.

I speak as a miner who has been making decisions (mining/buying/holding/selling) since when the whole network was ~100 Ghash/s... and I have told you this before, but you grossly underestimate how fast the network is going to grow in the next few months and years. "2x per year", yeah right. For reference, the network's mining speed was growing by 100x every ~6 months when GPUs were introduced. Yes. Not 2x, but 100x.

(I also think you overestimate BFL's ability to ship in merely 4 months IMHO). Because of that I don't think that anybody can assert with good confidence that one of the options is definitively more profitable than the other.

CPU to GPU was also when bitcoin started to get noticed by the entire community, so it's not really a fair comparison.  I think the estimates of a 10x to 40x increase in hashrate from the first BFL shipment are more likely, and maybe doubling per year after that.  We're just going to double when Avalon actually arrives.  ASICMiner is going to do something similar to that. 

On the other hand, it's impossible to predict whether buying bitcoins is better than mining in the future.  There are way too many unknowns.

[milly6]

Tough question. If I were contracted by a company with a 120 kUSD budget, I would either first look to acquire a company like Avalon or put the money in a bank account. Buying a rig now is pretty much a waste of money, as the ASICs will arrive far to late to be profitable.

Avalon took in $25million for preorders... good luck getting them to sell for 180k   

[Node]

Tough question. If I were contracted by a company with a 120 kUSD budget, I would either first look to acquire a company like Avalon or put the money in a bank account. Buying a rig now is pretty much a waste of money, as the ASICs will arrive far to late to be profitable.

Avalon took in $25million for preorders... good luck getting them to sell for 180k   

Your math is off

300*1300 + 600* 1500 = 1,290,000

or roughly $1.3million.

Unless you know of a secret batch # 3?

[mrb]

I speak as a miner who has been making decisions (mining/buying/holding/selling) since when the whole network was ~100 Ghash/s... and I have told you this before, but you grossly underestimate how fast the network is going to grow in the next few months and years. "2x per year", yeah right. For reference, the network's mining speed was growing by 100x every ~6 months when GPUs were introduced. Yes. Not 2x, but 100x.

(I also think you overestimate BFL's ability to ship in merely 4 months IMHO). Because of that I don't think that anybody can assert with good confidence that one of the options is definitively more profitable than the other.

CPU to GPU was also when bitcoin started to get noticed by the entire community, so it's not really a fair comparison.  I think the estimates of a 10x to 40x increase in hashrate from the first BFL shipment are more likely, and maybe doubling per year after that.  We're just going to double when Avalon actually arrives.  ASICMiner is going to do something similar to that.  
unknowns.

You are in for a big surprise... BFL's first 100k chips are only the tip of the iceberg. A low steady increase of 2x per year after BFL ships this amount would be plausible (1) if the BTC exchange rate stayed mostly constant; (2) if competition between ASIC vendors had stabilized; (3) if there was a point in the near future where we could imagine demand stop outstripping supply; and (4) if ASICs had reached the current 28-32nm process node with no more obvious room for improvement.

But none of these points are true. The exchange rate increased 5x-6x year over year from March 2011, to March 2012, to March 2013. There are only 3-4 ASIC designers in a vastly under-supplied market. The most advanced ASICs (BFL) are only 65nm.

[Zedster]

OP edit your title.

Just sayin'

[milly6]

OP edit your title.

Just sayin'

yeah the number wasnt accurate by any means

[cdog]

A 3G mobile hotspot, a Raspberry Pi running as host and a single BFL Jalapeno all operating from the cigarette lighter in an Italian made sportscar.
Now that I think about it the first three components are optional.

This thread really doesnt need any posts beyond this. Well played sir, well played. Although $ for $ a corvette has pretty nice performance, and save the rest of the $ for hookers and blow.