Suppose [insert ASIC producer here] has manufactured 10,000 units. Among their choices are to either sell those units, or, use them directly to mine bitcoins.
Which path would be the most profitable? There's not enough variables here to answer this question, so we would need to fill in some blanks.
Suppose they have a full 2016 blocks before the next difficulty adjustment. That's 50,400 bitcoins (25*2016), $5,797,000 USD at $115 USD/coin.
Suppose that each of the 10000 units is capable of running at 5GH/s. That would give them an effective hash rate of 50 TH/s.
Current estimated network hash rate is around 88 TH/s, giving a total network hash rate of 138 TH/s.
According to
allchains:
MH/s: 50,000,000 (5000 * 10000)
Watts: 300,000 (30 * 10000)
$/KwH: 0.10
Cost/Day: $720
Difficulty: 11171715.45
Coin/Day: 2250.837
$/Coin: 114.01
Total profit: $255897.916 (per day)
Per unit: $25.6
A block is ideally generated every 10 minutes. That's 144 blocks per day, or 3600 bitcoins.
The next difficulty adjustment would occur in approximately 8 days. Per unit profit for that difficulty period would be about 8*25.6 = $204.8.
Assuming the network hash rate stays around 138 TH/s, the next difficulty adjustment would be about 19 million.
They would be pulling in about 1311 coins per day @ $148816 total profit, or $14.8 per unit. Assuming a full two weeks before the next adjustment (unlikely), that would result in $192.4 profit per unit.
Total per unit profit for the two periods is close to $400, assuming a lot of factors including the bitcoin price remaining steady and no other ASIC sellers doing the same thing.
Managing and configuring 10000 units is not a free exercise. At 5 minutes per unit, that's 34 full days of work, or 104 eight-hour days. Suppose that you could hire 104 people and pay them 20 an hour and get it done in a day, costing you about $16640, or about $1.66 per unit.
If the 5GH/s units were being sold @ $500 each, that means $500
now versus
potentially $400 in a few weeks time.
Of course, BFL isn't selling for $500, they are selling for $274. Why might that be? I suspect it's because units aren't being shipped as they are ordered. Instead, anyone who orders now may not get a unit for several months. How much would you pay for a 5GH/s unit if you could get it in a couple days? $500? $1000?
