Why isn't mining hardware plunging in price?

[DieJohnny]

It seems Antminer and Spondoolies are still too high. BTC price is down, difficulty is up.... is having a bitcoin mining hobby that much fun that it keeps the price so high???

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[NeuroticFish]

The hardware can be used to produce BTC until it's sold. You know, "testing" 
When the hardware doesn't even worth for them to mine... only then the price *may* drop.
And you know.. a lot of businesses prefer to throw away their products instead of lowering the price too much, maybe it's the case here too sometimes.

[RoadStress]

It seems Antminer and Spondoolies are still too high. BTC price is down, difficulty is up.... is having a bitcoin mining hobby that much fun that it keeps the price so high???

Because all the components (except the chip which is really cheap) have fixed costs and manufacturers are already approaching the cost production. Multilayered PCB are usually expensive and unless you produce them in thousands then you will not be able to get a better price than the regular price. Do the math for yourself and start adding PCB, case, fans, components, heatsink etc. You can't really expect to have an SP20 or S5 under 100$ because it's simply impossible.

[philipma1957]

It seems Antminer and Spondoolies are still too high. BTC price is down, difficulty is up.... is having a bitcoin mining hobby that much fun that it keeps the price so high???

Because all the components (except the chip which is really cheap) have fixed costs and manufacturers are already approaching the cost production. Multilayered PCB are usually expensive and unless you produce them in thousands then you will not be able to get a better price than the regular price. Do the math for yourself and start adding PCB, case, fans, components, heatsink etc. You can't really expect to have an SP20 or S5 under 100$ because it's simply impossible.

he is asking the wrong question.  The question is why are bitcoins at 275 usd and not 400 usd or 500 usd or 600 usd.

The answer is ?

[wpgdeez]

Supply and demand.

[mwizard]

I would suggest that mining hardware is still gradually falling in price.

For example the Bitmain Antminer S5 is very suitable for the hobbyist. 

It costs $341 USD plus power supply, gives 1,155 Gigahash and has power efficiency of close to 0.5 J/Gigahash.

It will even ultimately be profitable if you pay under about $0.10 USD per kWh for your electricity.

For most people mining is not likely to be profitable even if the bitcoin price rises.  If the Bitcoin price rises the difficulty will just increase further as the big mining farms in low electricity cost areas expand.  This was always expected to occur.

The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale.  That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server.  The design supports letting users just be users.  The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be.  Those few nodes will be big server farms.  The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate.

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[Jamphone]

Good question, here's my attempt at a good answer:

Mining hardware is falling in price, albeit slower than the bitcoin price would suggest, due to the relationship between the people who make parts and the people who sell miners.

However, the reason it is not plunging is a commercial/legal issue you see in all manufacturing. When you manufacture, you do so largely on credit from the parts manufacturers.  (I'll call Spondoolies/Bitmain "Apple" and the parts supplier "Foxconn" since that's an obvious example of this relationship, although there would undoubtedly be 4 or 5 Foxconns doing different parts for each Apple.) That is to say, no one gets paid until the product gets sold.

While Foxconn knows it has to be patient, it will not wait forever. Typically 90 days after "Foxconn" delivered it's part for the miners to "Apple", "Foxconn" can exercise a "security interest", which is to say that all unsold inventory has a lien in favour of Foxconn. Foxconn likely won't exercise this lien (send the equipment to auction by court order) because court ordered auctions usually bring in only bargain hunters. Also, court ordered sales mean the buyer has to speak the language of the local court, have a local lawyer, arrange shipping themselves, the miners come with no warranty and they can expect zero customer service. Absolutely buyer beware. Foxconn knows that Apples miners are worth more if Apple still exists.

So instead, they start watching Apple sell the miners closely. They don't want sales below the cost of production, because then they won't get paid. They also want to make sure that all of the money from those sales (or almost all) go to Foxconn. If Apple is going to start selling at a price where Foxconn never gets paid back, Foxconn would sue Apple, take control of the miners through a court ordered sale and then battle them in court for the rest that is owing. Obviously, no one wins in that situation, but when it appears everyone is going to lose to some extent that is what will happen.

Also, the Foxxconns tend to be less leveraged and exposed than new technology upstarts to market dynamics, which is to say, they have more disposable assets and less debt due to their business model. If no one wants miners and mining is not profitable, Apple is bankrupt (since this is all they do) while Foxxconn makes parts for someone else's whatever machine with their general purpose manufacturing facility that they already own. Foxxconn can be patient. Something unknown to Apple and the mining world.

I would suggest we're near the bottom of prices where the Foxxconns will let the Apples sell the mining inventory.

Developing and producing 28nm and 20nm chips and equipment would have cost in the very rough range of $40 to 50 million or more per generation, including all overhead.  Roughly half was for R&D, which was largely funded from equity sales and prior profits. The other half is the cost of producing the miners, since this can be done on credit. From my numbers, which are ballpark figures only, these companies have not recouped the development and production costs from sales of miners alone. The absolute cost of production per machine is definitely not yet below $300 per TH, perhaps not yet below $400 per TH or higher.

Mining was supposed to make up the difference and the profit. 12 months ago, hosting at 20 or 25 cents/kwh (all-in, electricity plus cooling, facilities, employees etc.) was the norm, and there was still lots of profit leftover for manufacturers. At those prices you could air condition and still make a profit.

Now the miners can barely break even. At this difficulty and $282 bitcoin, 1TH a month will make you $105 a month, but use more than 360 kwh per month. An S4 will use 504KW. If you air condition to cool, you will not cover your costs. Right off the bat, you are losing at least 1/4 of your production ($25/TH) to the cheapest, warehouse size hosting.

However, with next weeks 15% rise, things get scarier, as that only comes from mining profit. You make $91 a month per TH, at a cost that is still $25/TH. So your profit went from $80 to $66 in one difficulty jump. Suddenly 1/3 of your production goes to costs. In a month it may be 50% or more.

(And frankly, that is extremely cheap hosting. Works out to about a nickel US/kwh. I doubt anyone has this great of a price.)

Don't get me wrong, some of these manufacturers deserve to get squeezed for how they treated their customers. (Albeit, some are great.)

KNC can't produce their equipment at a profit. (Why else would they stop selling it? Why haven't they managed to produce bonus miners long since promised?) KNC even started layoffs. Black Arrow appears to be insolvent as do several others. Times are tough. The weak are failing.

Of the big four still standing, Bitfury, Bitmain, Spondoolies and KNC, I predict one, maybe two, will either go bankrupt or be "bought out" from the brink of insolvency.

[xstr8guy]

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Of the big four still standing, Bitfury, Bitmain, Spondoolies and KNC, I predict one, maybe two, will either go bankrupt or be "bought out" from the brink of insolvency.

Great explanation!

I just wanted to add... ASICMiner is still producing hardware as well as Avalon.

[neegeeboo]

+1  Cloud doesn't make sense unless you're one of the manufacturers.

[Jamphone]

Cointerra can't even make money running cloud mining: they're trying to negotiate an orderly bankruptcy now and have stopped paying their cloud miners. (By my math, their chips are so inefficient, and their decision to host in Texas was so dumb, that they cannot break even when mining for themselves, let alone for other people.) Anyone who doesn't have 0.7 watts/gh or better technology will be bankrupt shortly. Even with more efficient chips, some will still go bankrupt.

[Bananana]

It seems Antminer and Spondoolies are still too high. BTC price is down, difficulty is up.... is having a bitcoin mining hobby that much fun that it keeps the price so high???

Actually the price has drop a lot, it is only 0.24$ per GH/s as compare to 1$ per GH/s few months back.

[Jamphone]

I'm not saying the price hasn't dropped, but it hasn't dropped enough to make up for the drop in price and rise in difficulty.

Also, only Bitmain has gone that low. Spondoolies is still selling for twice that: a sign that secured creditors may be taking action.

[Voltarius]

I depends on where you buy.
I was browsing on Craigslist near my area and this guy is selling a 1.22 TH/s btcgarden miner (without PSU) for around $200, just because he got two 2 TH/s spoondoolies, and that he just wanted to pass it down to someone who may want to start a mining farm.
However, if you were to look at ebay or amazon or so, I am seeing even just 1.00 TH/s antminers going for $800+ still...

[nwfella]

It seems Antminer and Spondoolies are still too high. BTC price is down, difficulty is up.... is having a bitcoin mining hobby that much fun that it keeps the price so high???

One very simple reason:

Because people are obviously still willing to pay.  I suspect the majority of home-users purchasing any kind of equipment for mining are more than likely relatively new to bitcoin.

[Grix]

Because they can't go much lower, ASICs are expensive to design. Why would manufacturers sell miners at a loss?