When looking at scrypt miners for LTC under the "as of right now market" what would would be a good price per MH to have a decent ROI shot.
Ex. If looking at BTC miners, paying say $4k for 1Th is being off your f'n rocker where as say two months ago, if not more it might have been ok or a lil easier to understand.
The short answer is none of them (unless of course you have access to hardware at substantially reduced price, like you are a manufacturer getting them at cost or something). 83 dollars per Mh/s is a good deal in the sense that it will lose you less money than most things on the market, but it will still lose you money.
Long answer: Looking at SCRYPT historically, we see that this time in march (I'm picking march because that is when SCRYPT ASICS first became readily available for the general public), returns were around .01 per Mh/s. By this time in April, they were down to around .005 to .006. This time in May they were down to around .003. This time in June, around .0015 ish. July now, we're around 0.00085 If you graph this, it is a remarkably steady decline of right around 2% per day. Now, it is obviously a pretty big assumption to assume that things will continue on that same rate of decline, but on the other hand, there isn't any real obvious reason to think it will change, either (other than of course wishful thinking). If things continue at that same rate, this is what we're looking at:
This time in August, .0005. September, .00025, October, .00012, November, .00008. Draw up a little amortization type schedule and you can see that 1 Mh/s will earn, from now until the end of the year, and ignoring electricity costs, somewhere between 0.036 and 0.041 BTC. Which at current exchange rates is around $22 to $26 USD.
Conclusions? Well obviously things could change. None of this is set in stone. LTC could rebound and head to the moon, or some ALT could knock off BTC or something. Realistically though, we have every reason to think things will continue on exactly as they have been. Which means anything over $30 per Mh/s has virtually no chance to ROI or even come close. Under $25 and you stand a decent chance. You really need to get down below $20 per Mh/s to have a really good chance of making more money than you spent, and the only people getting prices like that are companies who make their own machines.
