No mining hardware is worth buying

[Herp]

I've done some math and research into all ASIC producers and this is the conclusion I've come up with. I truly think only those Chinese guys next to the foundries, who are the first to get their hands on the new technology, can really make money. All those who buy mining hardware even from companies like KNCminer end up losing more than they've invested.

Just enter the values here http://www.coinish.com/calc/# in Expert mode and you'll see what I'm talking about.

It's way more profitable to just buy BTC than mine it.

I'd like to hear the counter-arguments on this topic.

[Humax]

I've done some math and research into all ASIC producers and this is the conclusion I've come up with. I truly think only those Chinese guys next to the foundries, who are the first to get their hands on the new technology, can really make money. All those who buy mining hardware even from companies like KNCminer end up losing more than they've invested.

Just enter the values here http://www.coinish.com/calc/# in Expert mode and you'll see what I'm talking about.

It's way more profitable to just buy BTC than mine it.

I'd like to hear the counter-arguments on this topic.

+1!

[cowandtea]

I've done some math and research into all ASIC producers and this is the conclusion I've come up with. I truly think only those Chinese guys next to the foundries, who are the first to get their hands on the new technology, can really make money. All those who buy mining hardware even from companies like KNCminer end up losing more than they've invested.

Just enter the values here http://www.coinish.com/calc/# in Expert mode and you'll see what I'm talking about.

It's way more profitable to just buy BTC than mine it.

I'd like to hear the counter-arguments on this topic.

Agree, hoarding lots of Bitcoin, have been long since Bitcoin price rise rapidly..

[smoothie]

This is correct but is also short-term thinking.

[Herp]

This is correct but is also short-term thinking.

Care to elaborate a bit?

It's true that if say price of XBT doubles or triples, currently unprofitable mining operations can suddenly become profitable. This doesn't change the fact that you're better off buying XBT than investing in mining operations.

You can try and make the case difficulty can normalize but I don't see that happening any time soon. It will most likely just keep going up because I see XBT value skyrocketing in next 2-3 years and willingness to mine coins should increase accordingly. What we've seen in terms of computing power since the early 90s was nothing but pure exponential growth and I think we'll see the same with XBT mining.

[pedrog]

Yap, you're, probably, right!

Unless people have free electricity, mining at home doesn't pay off.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Then don't buy ... and if enough people do that prices will go down.

[darkmule]

This is correct but is also short-term thinking.

Since the lifetime of any mining unit bought today is going to be measured in the short term, that is the only timeframe worth considering for whether to purchase a mining unit now.  There may be some future time when it is again profitable to mine, but without being able to shove off the externalities (electricity) on some other party, that time isn't now for most people.

[Herp]

This is correct but is also short-term thinking.

Since the lifetime of any mining unit bought today is going to be measured in the short term, that is the only timeframe worth considering for whether to purchase a mining unit now.  There may be some future time when it is again profitable to mine, but without being able to shove off the externalities (electricity) on some other party, that time isn't now for most people.

Thing is, leaving electricity issue aside, assuming you'd have free electricity, it's practically impossible to get a ROI on all these ASICs with current projected difficulty increase unless there's significant increase in XBT price. Probably the only exception to this rule are those +1Terahash units but only IF and that's a big IF they're shipped in timely fashion. Who knows how landscape will look by then. Most likely savvy Chinese or Taiwanese entrepreneurs, close to those foundries, will be once again ahead of the curve, passing leftovers along to gullible western "savvy" tech crowd.

[stromma44]

Then don't buy ... and if enough people do that prices will go down.

Well, I believe the opposite will happen. When the difficulty will be very high and even the most ignorant peoples realize these miners cant pay off, instead of buying miners people spend USD on Bitcoin, thus increase buying BTC demmand

[frankenmint]

Its time for me to step in here:

Its all about Cex.io Cloud mining.  Lease from Ghash.io instantly and get paid...do it quick get in get out and right now with zero fees you will earn ROI.  
ZERO Electricity
Zero Maintenance*

*Obviously you should look everyday to see your earnings...you could convert your earnings into more mining power and convert your earnings into a savings account.  make sure to cash out quickly though because the cost per GH is expected to decrease especially with their referral program for which I have linked above.  It's fair you know that I myself would like to gain from sharing this information which is why I Converted this into a Promo Link.

[Herp]

Its time for me to step in here:

<a href="https://cex.io/r/0/frankenmint/0/" title="CEX.io - Bitcoin Commodity Exchange" target="_blank"><img src="http://cex.io/img/b/728x90.jpg" width="728" height="90" border="0" alt="CEX.io"></a>

Its all about Cex.io Cloud mining.  Lease from Ghash.io instantly and get paid...do it quick get in get out and right now with zero fees you will earn ROI.  
ZERO Electricity
Zero Maintenance*

*Obviously you should look everyday to see your earnings...you could convert your earnings into more mining power and convert your earnings into a savings account.  make sure to cash out quickly though because the cost per GH is expected to decrease especially with their referral program for which I have linked above.  It's fair you know that I myself would like to gain from sharing this information which is why I posted the banner above.
  

Have actually checked Cex.io also. They do have decent gigash/$ prices but you'd still lose. Not as much as pre-ordering some November 500giga ASICs, but you'd still lose nonetheless.

Just enter all the numbers here http://www.coinish.com/calc/# in expert mode. At 0.1850/gigahash, you'd still make a loss even with zero electricity costs. Price of hashrate is going down so in 12 months time what now costs 0.18xbt might be worthless so resell value is also questionable, though I have to say seems better deal than buying ASICs and have them delivered to your home.

[itod]

Have actually checked Cex.io also. They do have decent gigash/$ prices but you'd still lose. Not as much as pre-ordering some November 500giga ASICs, but you'd still lose nonetheless.

Just enter all the numbers here http://www.coinish.com/calc/# in expert mode. At 0.1850/gigahash, you'd still make a loss even with zero electricity costs. Price of hashrate is going down so in 12 months time what now costs 0.18xbt might be worthless so resell value is also questionable, though I have to say seems better deal than buying ASICs and have them delivered to your home.

cex.io beats every preorder because you get GHs mining for you *now*, which is the most important thing when you look at constant difficulty increases before you get your preorder delivered. Another thing going in cex.io favor is that you can easily sell GHs and get the most cost of it back, which may not be true for in-hand hardware.

[Herp]

Have actually checked Cex.io also. They do have decent gigash/$ prices but you'd still lose. Not as much as pre-ordering some November 500giga ASICs, but you'd still lose nonetheless.

Just enter all the numbers here http://www.coinish.com/calc/# in expert mode. At 0.1850/gigahash, you'd still make a loss even with zero electricity costs. Price of hashrate is going down so in 12 months time what now costs 0.18xbt might be worthless so resell value is also questionable, though I have to say seems better deal than buying ASICs and have them delivered to your home.

cex.io beats every preorder because you get GHs mining for you *now*, which is the most important thing when you look at constant difficulty increases before you get your preorder delivered. Another thing going in cex.io favor is that you can easily sell GHs and get the most cost of it back, which may not be true for in-hand hardware.

Yeah, was basically saying same thing, however buying bitcoins is much better deal. Not only is it more profitable but you avoid the 3rd party risk of trusting these guys run a legit business or of them just vanishing into thin air. You also have to trust that hash power you buy is actually the real power used in paying those dividends. There's zero auditing and zero accountability, so no one would know if they're really trading unbacked ponzi paper contracts or the real thing.

Given the number of Bitcoin sites going offline just like that, I'd say risk is pretty high.

[integrity42]

+1

If the hardware was profitable to mine with, the companies would just plug them in themselves.

If you buy mining hardware, you are purchasing a fixed amount of bitcoin which can be calculated using btcinvest.net

If you pay more for those bitcoins by buying the mining hardware then you would to buy on an exchange, you're an idiot.

[ralree]

Ug another calculator that locks you into a daily percentage increase of hashrate.   
I'd like one that lets you predict the hashrate/diff for each month yourself, since there's going to be big bumps from each manufacturer release.  We're seeing the end of the BFL bump and the beginning of the KNC bump at the moment, with hashfast in there as well, and a few others.  Eventually, BFL will stop shipping the SC units.  KNC will continue shipping, but IIRC they only sold 500TH or so - perhaps this number has changed.  At this point, buying much of anything would probably be a bad move until someone else announces pre-orders that are reasonably priced.  Holding an ASIC order that's sufficiently early will probably work out fine though.

[itod]

Given the number of Bitcoin sites going offline just like that, I'd say risk is pretty high.

Which other Bitcoin sites sell the currently mining GHs on exchange? I thought the cex.io is the only one, if there are any others I would like to know.

This exchange are part of Bitfury business network, which were extremely reliable up to this point. They are the only manufacturer which delivered hardware to the day as promised. Don't know how you came to conclusion that the risk is high buying anything from them.

[stripykitteh]

Have actually checked Cex.io also. They do have decent gigash/$ prices but you'd still lose. Not as much as pre-ordering some November 500giga ASICs, but you'd still lose nonetheless.

Just enter all the numbers here http://www.coinish.com/calc/# in expert mode. At 0.1850/gigahash, you'd still make a loss even with zero electricity costs. Price of hashrate is going down so in 12 months time what now costs 0.18xbt might be worthless so resell value is also questionable, though I have to say seems better deal than buying ASICs and have them delivered to your home.

cex.io beats every preorder because you get GHs mining for you *now*, which is the most important thing when you look at constant difficulty increases before you get your preorder delivered. Another thing going in cex.io favor is that you can easily sell GHs and get the most cost of it back, which may not be true for in-hand hardware.

By any reasonable expectation of the short term difficulty increases cex.io is still overpriced. We're about 3 days out from a 40% difficulty increase. If you say that the next few increases after that are 30%, the correct price for a GH *right now* is about 0.097BTC, i.e., about half of cex.io's prices.

Getting it now doesn't save it as an investment.

[itod]

By any reasonable expectation of the short term difficulty increases cex.io is still overpriced. We're about 3 days out from a 40% difficulty increase. If you say that the next few increases after that are 30%, the correct price for a GH *right now* is about 0.097BTC, i.e., about half of cex.io's prices.

Getting it now doesn't save it as an investment.

This is not true. After the last difficulty update a week ago CEX.IO price for GHs hardly blinked, it stabilized very quickly at around the same level as before the difficulty update. Why? Because you keep forgetting you are not renting GHs the owner can opt you out on his will, you are buying GHs which you can sell at your will and regain the majority off the profit from that sale, not only from mining. If you would rent mining rights that would be another story, like you described, but that is not the case. Your GHs are mining for you even when you issue a sale order and your account shows 0 GHs in your possession, all the way until somebody accepts your sell order.

[GodHatesFigs]

The risk-adjusted return on miners has been absolutely dire since at least April of this year; this is still the case today. I am glad that miners are securing the network even at a loss, though.