Hexed is wrong, Mezzomix is right.
My reply was:
There is zero speculation involved. We do not need to consider exchange rates. He paid 200BTC for a product that is supposed to create BTC. In October 2012 (according to your stats), the device would produce 300 BTC per month. Unfortunately, due to delay in shipment, it may not generate 200BTC in it's lifetime. The only reason for this is the difficulty has risen over the intervening period.
We do not need to consider why difficulty rose. We do not need to consider alternative investments like Avalon or ASICMiner shares. We do not need to consider exchange rates. Nobody has yet explained why getting less than 200 BTC back was good for Mezzomix.
ahhh yes, as I had mentioned...
...They are basically saying that the exchange rate has absolutely nothing to do with their investment in BTC. So yes, I agree that if your sole purpose was to mine BTC and hold on to BTC with no regard to how much they are actually WORTH in USD.. then yes, you will not get back an equal amount of BTC....
..but that is ok, k9quaint will continue to argue a point even though the other SEVERAL factors I included make no sense. It's like saying..
Mezzomix said he wants to be launched into space duck taped to a homemade rocket! It is possible so you are wrong!!! When the actually premises of the idea is true (yes, if you had a nice enough rocket, you could certainly launch yourself into space).. but the truth of the matter is, he will die before he gets there.. since you know.. there are other FACTORS at play there. But instead of seeing how ridiculous the idea is, you just argue the fact that it is possible to prove a point. A point that most people would not care about.
If Mezzomix thought that when he ordered the BFL device, that you would be able to mine MORE BTC than what you purchased it for, then in the words of the Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.. "He chose... poorly".
When I ordered in August 2012, I thought "No matter if I get my device now, or later, I'm betting on the price of BTC to go up when the reward halves so I think I will still make a profit." Now I had done my due diligence and found out that they were notorious for late shipping, over promising and under delivering.. so I personally thought that the shipping would be late. Of course I didn't think it would be THIS late. Whether or not the price went up because of the reward halving, I am still going to profit. In fact, my 3 GPU's I have are still mining away making anywhere from $150-$250 a month, and they only equal ~1.35GH/s. If I can still profit with them, then I'll be just fine with ~40GH/s of devices.