I was speaking hypothetically in the realm of "if BFL was able to ship right now in volume"
This would rely on the assumption of two things: that they could fill their existing orders of $125/$275 quickly, and that every new order placed could be priced at roughly 14-15x the current price - and people would pay it (following that people paid that much per mh/s on the USB miners)
It's very simple to logically believe that IF BFL could ship right now, they would, because they would have a monopoly on ASIC sales given their hash rates... and they could charge a LOT more for each unit.
The money they could make in BTC a day would be nothing compared to the $ they could be bringing in and then just converting to BTC
Sure, assuming they could price their product 15x and ship in bulk right now, then they would be better off shipping product.
However, I don't believe they can do either.The ASICMiner product is not really competitive. Even so, it and the Avalon chip sails have already sucked up a lot of capital that would have otherwise gone to BFL. Also, both products are being sold at inflated prices. If BFL actually enters the market, Avalon and ASICMiner could revise their prices down to compete.
Right - so since we agree given those assumptions, doesn't that contradict this statement?:
That is exactly the sort of temptation I would expect that BFL could not resist. They are already way behind in the marketplace to Avalon, and ASICMiner is adding a large amount of hashrate to their operation (their retail product is not competitive). Avalon batch 2 is shipping, and the secondary market for Avalon boards+chips is due to mature by the end of summer. However, there is no indication that BFL has added any significant hash rate so I don't think they are mining to any great degree.
I get that a lot of people are pissed about BFL's delays, but the accusation that they would be mining with their own product instead of shipping if they could just doesn't hold up to business logic. It reeks of bitterness about the prior missed deadlines or issues with their PR.
The assumptions are not really valid and therefore it does hold up to business logic because they cannot raise their prices 15x nor can they ship in bulk. Also, they need to clear all the orders at the original prices before they can sell ones at 15x. So it makes more sense to mine with a few units than to ship them at this point.