I DONT GET IT!!!

[myxomop]

Ok somebody help me out on this.
I see ASICs listed everywhere, prices are absolutely ridiculous. Any BTC calculator shows that they will never ROI. And the explanation that I keep finding is that if BTC price keeps rising, it will all be worth it.
Here's a pretty active thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=370260.0

People can't wait to buy this 200Gh/s  miner for £2,800.

Somebody PLEASE explain why?? And how??

[GarbageName]

Its called speculation (or gambling). It is an addiction. We have banks, and markets set up to legalized gambling, with no underlying value. Welcome to the human race.

See the tulip bubble, housing bubble, etc...the asset can never go down! Until it does...

--GarbageName

[IngmarHehe]

oh~no

[myxomop]

Its called speculation (or gambling). It is an addiction. We have banks, and markets set up to legalized gambling, with no underlying value. Welcome to the human race.

See the tulip bubble, housing bubble, etc...the asset can never go down! Until it does...

--GarbageName

Right. Still though, can anyone chime in with some calculations? If this miner will never mine as many bitcoins as were spent to buy this thing, what dies it matter if bitcon will jump to 10K per unit? You still lost bitcoins in the end??
There's gotta be a catch here.

[babaji.ca]

Its called speculation (or gambling). It is an addiction. We have banks, and markets set up to legalized gambling, with no underlying value. Welcome to the human race.

See the tulip bubble, housing bubble, etc...the asset can never go down! Until it does...

--GarbageName

Right. Still though, can anyone chime in with some calculations? If this miner will never mine as many bitcoins as were spent to buy this thing, what dies it matter if bitcon will jump to 10K per unit? You still lost bitcoins in the end??
There's gotta be a catch here.

It's simple; if that miner that cost you £2,800 only mines you 1 BTC before end of life and the value of 1 BTC rises to £20,000 sometime in the future, then it was worth all the effort.

[GarbageName]

Its called speculation (or gambling). It is an addiction. We have banks, and markets set up to legalized gambling, with no underlying value. Welcome to the human race.

See the tulip bubble, housing bubble, etc...the asset can never go down! Until it does...

--GarbageName

Right. Still though, can anyone chime in with some calculations? If this miner will never mine as many bitcoins as were spent to buy this thing, what dies it matter if bitcon will jump to 10K per unit? You still lost bitcoins in the end??
There's gotta be a catch here.

It's simple; if that miner that cost you £2,800 only mines you 1 BTC before end of life and the value of 1 BTC rises to £20,000 sometime in the future, then it was worth all the effort.

And he is saying, why not buy 4 2/3 bitcoins at current price and make 20000 * 14/3?

You are right it doesn't make sense. Originally (and still with some scrypt and cpu coins) you could use off the shelf hardware that you might already have or could use anyway to do the mining. In some sense it was a way of using equipment, the general public arleady had, to secure a currency, the general public would use.

At this point; its just speculation, but even then it doesn't make sense. The idea with off shelf equipment is you can sell it back when you are done. A graphics card a year from now, is still a graphics card that you can sell and recoup some your initial costs. A bitcoin miner? Nope.

You might as well just buy the bitcoins, because the miner will be worth the same as the currency if it all goes down in a blaze of glory.

--GarbageName

PS No, you are right see my post.

(with reference to next post)

[myxomop]

But don't you have to spend almost 8 bitcoins now to get this miner. So if sometimes in the future one bitcon that you're able to mine, cost £20,000, that means that you LOST 7*20,000=£140,000?
Correct me if i'm wrong please.

[myxomop]

GarbageName, so we just have to admit that there are large quantities of grown(?) men with large sums on their hands, eager to spend it on something that will surely return negative profit? And they cheering each other while they doing it?
I'm kinda surprised, really

[GarbageName]

GarbageName, so we just have to admit that there are large quantities of grown(?) men with large sums on their hands, eager to spend it on something that will surely return negative profit? And they cheering each other while they doing it?
I'm kinda surprised, really

From a man's perspective I'm not surprised (not sure your gender, but I'm kind of leaning toward female only because you used grown men).

To your post, isn't that how Casinos thrive? Where I live there are five ways out of this city. In four directions there are four casinos. Most weekends they are packed. Mega Millions anyone? 99.99999999% (enough 9's) of turning a loss. Sports betting? Very common.

In our society (this world) with so much affluence in the first world, is it really all that surprising. People have money to burn and their bored. Its a bad combination.

--GarbageName

[Kluge]

Buying a miner is effectively buying coins, just in a slightly different format, and has the benefit of not requiring equiv. of AML/KYC/BSA crap (and a bank account) or a local seller.

[Skoupi]

Because people want to believe in magic boxes that make money for them when they sleep.
They want to believe so much that they don't have time for stupid things like mining calculators etc. 

[CMBSilver]

What if you take something really high end (aka expensive), like the KnC Neptune. They just sold out of 1200 of those suckers at U$ 13.000 a piece.

Supposedly you got one of these and put it to work, how could you NOT make coins???

At the end you'll only make cash (or loose cash) when you decide to sell your coins. Or am I wrong here?

[lw8]

It's simple; if that miner that cost you £2,800 only mines you 1 BTC before end of life and the value of 1 BTC rises to £20,000 sometime in the future, then it was worth all the effort.

For £2,800 you could buy 7.57 BTC (@369.84BTC/GBP right now).

If BTC rises to £20,000 (!) you would have £151,414.61. I think £151,414.61 is greater than £20,000.

Buying miners is for the fun, not the profit. Or you are dumb.

[DrG]

At present no mining hardware is a good investment (unless you're buying stolen eq or the seller is crazy).  The only reason to mine are:
1) You want untainted coins
2) You enjoy seeing CGMiner flip all those stats and like hum of your machines mining away
3) You want to support the network
4) You believe you are lucky and will beat the odds solo mining

If you want lowest risk just buy the coin outright.  This may change next year once difficulty hopefully stops going parabolic.