Buying any hardware before the halving is just a big unnecessary risk in my eyes. Best case is you get to mine for 2 weeks on the gravy train and then everybody else catches up. Nice, you just made probably less than $100 more than somebody who had no risk of the halving. (claps)
With increased risk comes possible increased profit. It is not a sure bet in any means, mining is getting harder and need cheaper electricity. But if price rises (and it depends how high it goes) getting rewards before having could be much more profit. I would guess it's more then 100 and in the hundreds... how many hundreds hard to say though.
We just don't know it is hard to say how much btc hopefully will go up to. But in this game it is normally the ones that take a little risk that profit. If you are looking for a sure bet not sure mining has been that for a while. But I know many people including I have managed to do it and enjoy it very much.
The price of BTC going up has no impact on profitability. We are talking BTC ROI. If I rely on BTC increase to fiat ROI, I could have simply held the coin and made pure profit on the increase with none of the risk associated with mining. I can buy this miner for ~$2,200 today and have it return 2.5 BTC in a year. Or I could buy 2.5 BTC today for $1,450...
The only variable affecting BTC ROI besides downtown and power is network difficulty. I see no scenario in which difficulty allows this miner to ROI. BTC in < BTC out. There is no high risk, high reward. Only imoossible ROI, donation to Bitmain.
I'm not sure how you don't see BTC price impacting mining. It HIGHLY can impact it. I have X operating cost in USD per machine per month in electricity. The longer the BTC stay's above that amount to run the longer I can mine. Eventually.. I have to sell my miners as I do not have "free" electricity.
I see your point of buying 1 BTC = 1 BTC a year later even. But BTC price highly impacts me as far as how long I can mine profitable.
Ok, let's try again. This machine costs 3.5 BTC. It returns 2.5 BTC in a year. You lose 1 BTC.
I can just buy 3.5 BTC and then not buy the miner. In a year I still have 3.5 BTC. No matter what the cost of BTC is I have more $$ than if I bought the miner.
Yes, BTC price increase will affect your fiat ROI. But look above. If you can't ROI in BTC you would have done better to hold the coin. If BTC goes up, you have more fiat if you hold the coin. If BTC goes down you lose less money if you hold the coin. Mining at a BTC loss is willingly increasing the risk to your fiat while simultaneously diminishing the returns of your fiat. You make less for higher risk.
Would you buy 4 gold bars to trade for digging equipment designed to dig up 3 gold bars and then hope for the price of gold to go up? No you wouldn't, you would just hold the 4 gold bars. Why should BTC be any different? Why would you pay more BTC than a machine returns?
This is why you run ROI in BTC. If you can't recoup BTC, hold the coin. If you can recoup coin plus more, decide if the 'plus more' is worth the risk (will the machine and variables hold up).
And that is a valid argument that buying BTC is better for some then mining. I'm not saying mining is for everyone with cost's going into it. But as you I think see BTC price is HUGE for mining to keep going. The higher the value should be the longer I can run the miner. And should effect how much BTC I mine hopefully a profitable amount. But I admit speculating 6 months out is kinda impossible at this point.
But for miners that are not free BTC price is going to be huge. If it drops it could directly effect me in mining less day's before I sell the miner. If it goes up it could directly give me more day's of mining, which should mean more BTC mined. Which is huge as far as ROI.