cross-post because the posts were moved:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=276692.msg3029775#msg3029775In short: everyone who tries to convince you that pricing mining hardware in USD instead of bitcoin is proper, is either misguided or tries to deceive you. Caveat emptor. What matters is the amount of bitcoin equivalent you spent at the time of purchase.
Really, so you're claiming that 20 * 13 = 1500? Wow...
the typo is irrelevant for the conclusion. It didn't lead to vastly false numbers.
But lets go back to the USD assessment. The only way your figures work out is if you have 100% prediction ability or you use hindsight, neither of which are considered acceptable investing methodologies.
No. An investment into bitcoin mining is a way to buy future bitcoins at current market price. Buyers of the August 2012 minirig bought the prospect of earning future bitcoins (>3000BTC) by spending bitcoins (3000BTC). The fact that they may have spent USD is irrelevant, because it is a different savings vehicle and looking at BTC/USD is only relevant for overhead costs (rent,electricity) which are not priced in bitcoin.
Due to delivery failures that prospect has shrunk to less than the bitcoins spent for buyers who haven't received any hardware to date. On top of that, buyers of ASICMINER now have the alternative to spent 420 BTC on an equivalent amount of hashing power - and that's where the profit loss becomes apparent, because hardware on hand is usually sold around prices similar to the expected ROI.
Once again, your entire premise is flawed. If you (or anyone) were so good at predicting the bitcoin price back then, why are you not a multi-billionaire? If you knew BTC was going to go up, especially as much as it did, why were you not mortgaging the house, selling your mother and pimping out your cats and dogs to buy BTC? You'd be an @#$%@% idiot not to... yet you didn't, why?
Hindsight investing is great, except it's a bunch of shit, which is why comparing the price in BTC of anything in August 2012 to something in 2013 is a bunch of shit.
I understand that you would like to discredit the validity of DeathAndTaxes' assessment. However, this is not hindsight investing. That is market forces at play. Would the USD/BTC be $10/BTC right now, the eruptor blade would still cost 420 BTC, because that's what the expected ROI is in terms of future bitcoins.
I urge you, please don't try to misguide new people coming into the mining game by playing on their insufficient understanding between the relationship of the exchange rates vs. the viability of mining investments. Your company has done enough harm to the mining community by trapping/destroying a vast amount of capital with unfulfilled promises.
ADDENDUM: topic was moved:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=283286.msg3029211#msg3029211This is a completely disingenuous market that is predicated on completely ludicrous assumptions. Lets look at a few of them, but this list is by no means comprehensive:
1. If the bitcoin price had tanked and bitcoins were worth $2 per coin in August, September, October, November, December etc... do you really think there would be as much hashrate on the network right now as there is? Of course not, so you'd be earning more from your purchase. So your argument that you've somehow "lost out" on funds because of the delay to the tune of thousands upon thousands is false.
2. Ok, you say, but there is SOME loss because of the delay! Yes, you're right, for some people there is indeed some loss of potential revenue. However, what most people, including you apparently, seem to assume when you make your calculations is that you would be the only individual purchasing a unit and everyone else would still be mining on GPUs. This is a false assumption. There are many, many people who purchased before you and there are many, many people who have purchased after you (though these are less impactful in the short term, but very impactful in the long term), because of this, the difficulty would ramp up before you get your unit. The actual loss you may or may not have incurred is far, far less than you want others to believe. If BFL had shipped in November all of the units we intended to ship, the difficulty would be far higher in January than it is right now, thus your income would actually be less. Under certain circumstances, depending on what you were mining with in mid 2012 and assuming you kept mining at that point, you actually may have made more money than if we had shipped in November. None of this makes it right that we missed our target ship date, but the simple fact of the matter is your losses are not measured in the thousands you think they are.
3. Bitcoin price - You paid ~$10 per bitcoin in August 2012. You were unable to predict the price (since if you were, you'd be a multi-billionaire right now), so you elected to purchase mining hardware as a hedge against bitcoin going up. This let you lock in your price of bitcoins, and if it went down you'd be making back many, many more bitcoins than you spent. If it went up, you'd make less bitcoins, but you'd make more fiat...
that is the whole point of mining hardware. It locks you in at a bitcoin value and gives you the potential to derive more wealth from the unit than you had previous, be it in BTC or fiat, depending on market trends.
Personally, I'd rather have spend $30,000 in USD to purchase something than $54,000 in BTC, just because it's priced in BTC. Maybe that's just me, but I find the value of $24,000 USD to be signifigant, whether it's valued in USD or BTC. Maybe you don't, which is why you think comparing 3000 BTC in August 2012 to 420 BTC in August 2013 to be a logical comparison. However, I'd wager than the vast, vast majority of people on this forum would rather have someone give them $54,000 in USD than $30,000 in BTC.
None of this even considers the fact that the power consumption of the 120 blades would be 3x that of the minirig. That the blades are sold out. That the space required for the blades would be significantly more and we won't discuss the aesthetic aspects because I don't think many people care about that as long as it mines, but there are some people that do care.
So here's the real tally:
Minirig: $30,000, uses less power, takes up less space
Blades: $54,000, uses 3x more power, takes up lots more space
Neither can be purchased off the shelf (as it were) at the moment, so there's your comparison.