Creative, I believe you are one of the most communicative and capable members around here who run a bitcoin mining related company. Unfortunately, I do not believe that simply buying hardware from 3rd parties in an attempt to maintain network percentage can be profitable in the wake of monstrous difficulty increases. Have you ever considered expanding from simply scouring the internet attempting to find cheap 3rd party hardware to actually taking the step in taking part in the manufacture of your own ASICs?
Thank you FloatesMcG, kind of you to say. It saddens me somewhat to have to disagree with you after such a nice lead-in.
While obviously nobody can keep up with difficulty increases step for step right now(not even FC), nor should they beat themselves to death trying, we all know this kind of expansion cannot go on forever. It will go on until the market is saturated, pre-order queues dry up, and mining margins thin significantly. If you take the pulse of the forum just now it's easy to see attitudes changing from "ASIC ANYTHING = TAKE MY MONEY NOW!" to "2Th/s for $16k? pffft...overpriced". Remarkably that vendor quickly lowered their pricetag in response. For now I'm just holding on and trying to make decisions that ensure we at least break even on every purchase.It was never my intent to build a company based on scavenging gear, it's just my mechanism for adapting to the current market forces. There just isn't a reliable supplier of in hand original equipment that's priced in such a way that there's still enough meat on the bone to justify the risks. This will change in the near future IMO, and the people with dry powder will benefit. Love what's going on over at bitfury for instance.
I work and travel a lot in addition to this gig, which has btw, consumed a whole lot more of my time than I'd originally intended, but it's also been mostly fun. I'd consider doing something closer to the source if I quit my day job. I could see the benefit in ordering raw chips and assembling my own boards at least.
Cheers.