Unless price of BTC doubles in short order after halving (
http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/ ) of Block rewards early adopters are screwing themselves paying these initial asking prices for S9.
Curious to see what the S9 will be selling for in August.
No technically everyone who buys this is screwing themselves, even if BTC price doubles. I think the doubling will happen (well 400>800) but the point is you'd be better off buying 3.4BTC and HODL rather than spend 3.4BTC to make 2.9BTC back in the future!
so buy and hold..
I did both I am holding coins . I am buying s-9's.
I will let you know which does better.
and once again all buy and hold predictions are wrong if this happens below.
Nov 05 2014 39,603,666,252 10.05% 283,494,086 GH/s coin price was 368
Oct 29 2015 62,253,982,450 2.25% 445,631,364 GH/s coin price was 295
so buying an sp20 on nov 5 2014 mining it for just under 1 year
vs buying a few coins on nov 5 2014 holding it for just under 1 year
If that happens you'll have 2.5 coins from this miner and I'll have 3.5 from holding. We both lose with price drop, but I lose less.
If you can't ROI in BTC there is absolutely no scenario where the miner is better than holding. You gain less on BTC rise and lose more on BTC drop.
And that's if your gear makes it a year. Remember, you've got all the risk of mining.
The numbers change a bit depending on how you run the math with the difficulty near but less than doubling in a year. Does it drop first then grow exponentially and slow down, or does it drop significantly and then grow steady, or simply grow steady? (rhetorical questions) It looks like you could ROI BTC in a year if the difficulty is friendly and you have access to good power rates. I know you're at $0.05, which is definitely good (for not having access to Chinese hydro-power...)
This would put best case scenario as mining and holding equivalent return. The only difference then is the risk involved with mining.