ASIC miners - frustrating?

[guytechie]

Since I have to post a few before I can get out of Newbie jail (I have to PM someone to fix something... and now I can't... grrr).... I want to ask...

Is anyone frustrated by the current situation of ASIC miners out for some people but you can't actually buy one right now?  I understand they preordered and waited, but I just found out about this kind of stuff, and now I want in, lol.

Oh well.  On with my GPU, then.

[MrMochi]

Same. Newbie jail.
Have been lurking for so long.

OT: just don't mind it too much.
It's like saying "I should have invested in Bitcoin when it was $10" when it reached $40.
But you didn't invest then because you thought you were late to the party.
And before you knew it reached $100.

Same now with the ASIC's.
You missed out on an early bird spot.
And right now investing in a miner seems daft.
Might as well wait for the next generation of ASIC chips.
And make sure you're first in line by then.

I think you'll always be late to the party somehow.
Unless you take a risk and invest now in hope it reaches higher.

[jackinloadup]

If you think bitcoin is a worthy investment you should just buy in at a comfortable pace. Just like what MrMochi said. you will always feel late the the party.

Obviously if you are going to mine. Have a plan. Difficulty is going to change and your profits will drop. You don't want to get stuck with a whole bunch of GPU's you can't use.

[guytechie]

The risk right now is BFL taking your money for a year or so.  Those people who did deserves to make bank on their faith in BFL.

The frustration comes from the fact that I can't really do anything now.  I can't just go buy a Single (and I really want to) and have it in a couple weeks.  And do you trust the people on eBay?

Send money to the ebay seller and now YOU have to wait.  As you wait, Paypal will no longer help you after a certain date if the seller decides to keep the thing for himself (assuming he actually even ordered it).

[Bitcoin-QT]

I don't like how 80% of the hashing power is controlled by a handful of people.

[J35st3r]

Its just a case of supply and demand. The ASIC suppliers are in a monopoly position, and while there is no Intellectual Property barrier to admisssion (unlike many other markets), there is an upfront cost and leadtime that seems to have deterred new entrants (but not scammers). In other words its not currently working as an "Efficient Market".

To give them their due, ASICMINER and Avalon seem to be behaving quite ethically in not abusing the bitcoin hash chain (the 51% problem), but they do seem to be out to maximise their profit, and are pricing their products to match. As for BFL, to put it kindly they have overpromised and underdelivered.

The market will clear eventually, but as I see it there is no point buying equipment for mining at this point as the return on investment simply is not there. As for why there is such enthusiasm for ASIC's (you only have to trawl through the mining / custom hardware threads), perhaps because its the next big thing (and it will dominate mining, sooner or just a little later). But the profit is going to the equipment suppliers, not the miners (as always, Klondike anyone?)

With hindsight, being an early adopter has paid off handsomely with ASICs, and who knows. perhaps some of the luck will trickle down to the following herd. Or perhaps not. Personally I have no skin in this game.

[lithiumfinn]

If you think bitcoin is a worthy investment you should just buy in at a comfortable pace. Just like what MrMochi said. you will always feel late the the party.

Obviously if you are going to mine. Have a plan. Difficulty is going to change and your profits will drop. You don't want to get stuck with a whole bunch of GPU's you can't use.

I agree, but want to point out that GPU's can be resold or repurposed at least. That fall back doesn't exist for asic hardware. 

[kinger1331]

Do the USB miners from ASICMiner appeal to you? I am looking into those, small USB powered miners. 300MH on a USB? not bad, its worth it just on the basis of saving electricity costs, if you have to pay for that

[Thalum]

I think that it's a bit crazy how far pre-orders had to be made and quite a lot is being asked by purchasers to front up the money before anything concrete has come out. That certainly seems to be a common thread in bitcoinlandia.

[J35st3r]

Do the USB miners from ASICMiner appeal to you? I am looking into those, small USB powered miners. 300MH on a USB? not bad, its worth it just on the basis of saving electricity costs, if you have to pay for that

Do the math on the ROI. Cost 2BTC, 300MH/s currently earns 0.01BTC/day, 200 days payback. BUT difficulty is increasing at 20% per two weeks. So your return halves every six weeks (42 days). So in the rest of eternity you will only mine the same amount as you mine in the first six weeks. It never pays for itself. (Figures approximated, do your own math with your own projection of difficulty).

Of course a positive ROI is not the only reason for mining, but I'll leave that for another post (silk road anyone?)

[tinus42]

ASICminer shares are the way to go right now. You can buy 1/100th TAT.ASICMINER microshares right now for about $3.

See the Securities subforum: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=78.0

Maybe buying your own miner will become profitable once more in the future but right now the prices are a bit steep.

If you want to buy a GPU miner I suggest mining altcoins such as Litecoin and GLDcoin. They can't be mined with ASICs.

[cp1]

Just take that $5000 or whatever you were going to spend on an ASIC and buy coins.

[steelcutoatmeal]

Major problem with solving such a situation. If all the manufacturers were to suddenly flood the market with their miners the difficulty would go crazy and the market would just implode from confusion. I respect BFL's method of sending off their early mining rigs to a variety of patrons. Also, once they do pick up production it would be good to steadily ship products rather than all at once to avoid market disintegration.

[td services]

My guess is that the ASIC chip manufacturers stalled the delivery while mining themselves up to the end of the bubble in mid April. It's pretty coincidental that deliveries started trickling started shortly after. It could be the ASIC sellers were doing this but more likely, the suppliers to the sellers.

[J35st3r]

Major problem with solving such a situation. If all the manufacturers were to suddenly flood the market with their miners the difficulty would go crazy and the market would just implode from confusion. I respect BFL's method of sending off their early mining rigs to a variety of patrons. Also, once they do pick up production it would be good to steadily ship products rather than all at once to avoid market disintegration.

BFL are not in the driving seat here. Yes they are pulling in the orders (the fruit of aggressive marketing), but they just have not delivered. And look at their most recent ploy of selling their chips directly (at a tiny discount to Avalon's chips).

No, ASICMINER (and to a lesser extent Avalon) are the ones in charge here, and they do have that dilemma of flooding the market. But they are all slaves to the silicon foundries lead times (typically around 3 months, as evidenced by the chip order timescale). Plus the need to buy expensive mask sets (they limit the rate of production, and they do wear out, though that is probably not of any great concern here).

[J35st3r]

My guess is that the ASIC chip manufacturers stalled the delivery while mining themselves up to the end of the bubble in mid April. It's pretty coincidental that deliveries started trickling started shortly after. It could be the ASIC sellers were doing this but more likely, the suppliers to the sellers.

The suppliers to to sellers are the silicon foundries, and given their long lead times (and debugging the chips, as BFL found to their cost), this is the bottleneck. Avalon/ASICMINER/BFL have to order chips months in advance so no wonder there is just a trickle of supply so far (and this also explains the need for pre-orders, you need the money in advance to pay for the masks and the foundries' production). But the pipeline is loaded and deliveries will ramp up as soon as the chips start to flow out. And the bare chip supply operates on a completely different model (cutting out the middle man), hence the predictions for difficulty of 100M or more by year's end.

Interesting times.

[AsicBite]

@J35st3r

Whats your opinion on investing eg $10K on ASIC when they are publicly available or buy BTC now for same amount?

[J35st3r]

@J35st3r

Whats your opinion on investing eg $10K on ASIC when they are publicly available or buy BTC now for same amount?

Its pretty much the same deal. ROI on ASIC (bought with USD) will only profit if BTC appreciates sharply. There is certainly no return on ASIC bought with BTC. So either way you gamble on BTC futures.

But IMHO mining is sexier, so you'll want to buck the herd mentality and go for BTC purchase directly.

But what do I know, I'm just a newbie (or I was just 12 hours ago, at this rate I'll be a Full Member by Wednesday and a Hero by the end of the month). So do you trust me, (punk) ... Clint Eastwood for all you youngsters.

Anyway, bedtime. CUL8R!

[ralphte]

ASIC or bitcoin mining in general is more about how much bitcoins with be. Not how much they are now.

[teek]

we have asics  that you can buy  _right now_ at wtcr.ca.   blades are in stock,  usb's just sold out but will be back in stock within 1 week.

teek