Just to re-iterate, home miners who already have hardware can mine today in expectations of higher BTC prices in the future. They do not even have to break even today if they base their mining on a future BTC price of, sat, $900.
The prospective miner needs to balance the cost of the mining capacity against the cost of just buying the BTC. That is because mining capacity is a rapidly depreciating investment. In general, at BTC < $400 and 10% difficulty increases, you are better off buying the BTC.
This is in contrast to the situation for industrial miners who, at some level, must cash flow. So they have to sell their BTC.
Actually, it doesn't matter if BTC price is at $900 or $400, you will still not ROI your mining gear in term of BTC. If the price is $900, the difficulty would increase faster..... So you are still better of buying BTC directly..
Can you please quantify these claims. I'm a bitcoin newbie and what you're saying contradicts online mining calculators. What am i missing here? I'm confused. Just trying to learn here.
If i buy an S4 which does 2 TH/s for 1500$ the online calculators say i can make 328$ per month at the current dif. and 318$ at the next. Wouldn't i break even at 5-6 months. My power costs are close to nil where i am.
Thanks in advance.