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.