So you guys really think there will be an additional $92,000,000 (give or take 10,000,000) invested in mining by the end of the year?
Yes.
No, a 10x increase in the network hash rate from today's rate, results in roughly a 2 year payback for K16s if BTC stays stable around $100.
Based on network growth during the FPGA/GPU era, the hash rate growth quickly slowed and then stopped when the payback reached around 1 year.
This is logical, when it takes over 1-2 years of mining just to break even and there are risks that some new technology will disrupt that, why not just buy BTC? Maybe now with professional mining companies a slightly longer payback will be accepted, but I don't think we're ever going to see network growth when payback exceeds 10 years anytime soon.
Network BTC/day $/day profit/day payback (months)
Thash/sec
200 0.1008 $10.08 $9.95 0.92
400 0.0504 $5.04 $4.91 1.87 <<-- We are almost here & going up quick
600 0.0336 $3.36 $3.23 2.84
800 0.0252 $2.52 $2.39 3.83
1,000 0.0202 $2.02 $1.89 4.86
2,000 0.0101 $1.01 $0.88 10.44
4,000 0.0050 $0.50 $0.37 24.48 <<--- Hash rate growth will stop here
6,000 0.0034 $0.34 $0.21 44.41
8,000 0.0025 $0.25 $0.12 74.89
10,000 0.0020 $0.20 $0.07 127.31
20,000 0.0010 $0.10 $(0.03)
40,000 0.0005 $0.05 $(0.08)
60,000 0.0003 $0.03 $(0.10)
80,000 0.0003 $0.03 $(0.10)
100,000 0.0002 $0.02 $(0.11) <<-- Need quantum hashing or $10K BTC to get here
Assumes the board costs ~$275, each chip is overclocked to 350MHash, draws 45W at overclock range, electricity costs $0.12 & BTC is $100.