Long time since last posted here, quite a lot has happened since. Basically the asic manufacturers have used revenues from sales of their mining machines to fund super sized mining farms, driving the difficulty up and up and then to add insult to injury, stopped selling their wares to consumers.

Don't want to say 'we told you so', fact is that we did but that's history, with the way things are going just now the only way for home miners to make any money is either to get 'free', (stolen, for want of a better word) electricity where essentially they are monetising the power supply or buying a new rig, running it for a few month then selling onto someone else. The rise in difficulty is going to make life harder and harder for miners and I suspect you haven't seen the worse of it yet, think 1,700+ PH by halving time next June. 

The only way individual miners are going to be able to compete is by working together, I know it's an idea that's been touted before and failed but what's needed is a community solution, one that's owned by the community and can't be abused. We tried crowdfunding and failed but that doesn't mean that it's a bad idea, especially if it was project managed by a respected figure like Gregory Maxwell, for instance. There are lots of different crowdfunding models nowadays and many of them allow for equity ownership, to fund an all new 28nm asic program - forget about 16nm for now - and use it to build a competitive super farm would cost around $20 million delivering around 300PH using 2 cents per kWh electricity. Even at 1700 PH with halving in place it could generate net profits of over $2 million a month which could be used to build more chips/systems which equity holders could buy for their own use at cost prices or add to the farm to boost their earnings.

No VC's to pay back or interfere, no manufacturers shutting off supplies just when you need more hashing power.

$20 million is a lot of money, but when you consider the number of existing and potential[/i ]miners out there that might be willing to pony up $1000 it's achievable, and many miners might want to put in a lot more, especially if they know their money isn't being used against them as it were.

Comments?