Let's roughly look at the arithmetic:
At the current Bitcoin difficulty today, now, 200GH/s yields about 0.055 BTC, about $46.
So today that is about $46. Obviously $200 for $46/day is a good deal.
It's hard to take 1Gh/s for $1 as being creditable because if it's wildly profitable, there will be "shipping delays" and everything will be sold on top of that.
Very roughly if the BTC difficulty is increased by a factor of 10 by the time you sell your magic miner, then you are looking at a few dollars per day.
In summary, I really find it hard to believe that the average schlub will be able to make any money, because by the time this device is widely available, the ROI will suck, pretty much like every miner on Ebay.
The most interesting thing about your mining is what it will do the the ROI of the current monster installations. If your 1GH/s per $1 is not scam, I wouldn't be surprised if your competition doesn't try to hire away an engineer or 2.
This is a conundrum that I can never understand, If you miner can be this wildly profitable, you should be able to get investors to build this equipment and form a wildly profitable private mining syndicate.
Cynically, a profitable alt coin biz model these days appears to be to build an advanced miner and then market it when its reached about 70% - 80% of it's useful life to an audience that can't do math.
Thanks for taking the time to post this. I understand your concerns, particularly with the possible increase in difficulty a $1/Gh miner might bring, but there's an underlying point here - dedicated mining companies already have very cost effective hardware and can deploy said for around $1.5/GH (or less).
That's what you're up against, so like it or not the difficulty is going to keep going up whether or not we make rigs, although not anywhere near as much as some of the more extreme posts would suggest. By August, our behavioral model reckons it to be about 20-22000 MM, about 10x where it is today (or 140,000 TH). At that level a 250GH setup would earn about $150 a month, or $5 per day, and pay for itself in about 8 weeks. If you can get a better return for that on your investment then go for it.
The average schlub who can't even get a seat at the mining table right now might see it as being a rather good deal for his $250.
There's nothing magic about our miner, just good design and a good dose of research. The engineers behind this are all in their 50's and want to do this as a professional challenge, money is not their primary goal and so the notion of a competitor luring one away is unlikely. They already have been offered a stellar deal by a VC group, but turned it down because the VC wanted to keep it 'in -house' and do exactly what you said and use it to mine for their own enrichment. The engineers didn't intend this design to make more money for those who already have it, they genuinely want to democratise the mining process and open it up to everyone.
Ultimately, like every other potential buyer, you pay your money and make your choice. I do hope you might consider us when you get to that point.
