That was a good read, especially to someone like me who is considering buying some ASIC equipment.
It's a tricky decision. Do I invest some BTC into mining hardware, or just buy/sell BTC to reach some profitability targets? For me, your last point hits what will likely sway my decision. I'm more interested in tinkering with the hardware than trading on Mt Gox or some other exchange.
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.
Remember that unlike GPU mining, ASIC miners will have very little remaining value after you have completed your operation. You could always sell your GPUs or keep using your equipment for regular work or play, but an ASIC is basically worthless beyond the collectible value after their profitability has reached 0.
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But it should be okay. Even if we hit 40-50 million until august, the rigs will pay themselves off in 30-40 days.
I am currently developing theory on the correlation between difficulty and price. Do you have good numbers on this?
If I had a weekly datapoint, or daily datapoint for the last years, that would be enough.
For the large investments yes. If you bought a 5GH/s rig from BFL it would still take ~50 days to pay off, whereas the larger rigs would pay themselves off in nearly the same amount of time based off of the difficulty and fast they are. Granted profitability will decline for large machines unless the trading cost from BTC to USD jumps up significantly.