Quote from: crumbs on August 30, 2013, 01:55:50 PM

Quote from: jmw74 on August 30, 2013, 01:45:15 PM

Quote from: crumbs on August 30, 2013, 01:32:15 PM

Quote from: jmw74 on August 30, 2013, 01:16:20 PM

Quote from: crumbs on August 30, 2013, 12:58:54 PM

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Do you understand what pre-order means?
Once you placed your pre-order*, you lose your choice to "not buy" if the price makes no sense. You either mine, or put your miner into a Hefty garbage bag & set it on the curb. If, by the time you receive your miner, it becomes blatantly obvious that said miner will never ROI, wat do?

*KNC pre-orders made through PayPal leave open a refund option, but that's not the case for most pre-orders -- those are locked in.

Huh? Your point now is that if we'll never get ROI then we'll... what? Never get ROI? Thanks for that brilliant tautology.

The question here is about odds of achieving ROI which I said is very difficult to predict. Do you want to address that or not?

No. My point is people will continue to mine as long as the price of BTC is greater than the cost of electricity burned to produce them. This doesn't suggest anything close to ROI.
My secondary point: I'm willing to answer your questions, no matter how silly they are. What would you like me to address, now?

Ok that is at least a legitimate point, but one I already knew. Yes, miners will be plugged in as long as they produce more btc than they cost to run - it doesn't matter how much the owner paid for the miner. But it doesn't make ROI any more predictable.

The reason I originally gave still holds. If (as you say), nearly everyone who mines takes a loss, it won't take long for everyone to realize this is happening. You don't have to wait until the miner is shut off to know if it will see ROI. It's clear pretty soon after receiving it (2 months, max?), if not much sooner. Heck, some people get ROI after a few weeks, others know they will never get ROI even before they receive it.

So, if, (as you say), nearly everyone is taking a loss, after max two months, everyone will know that the mining equipment pricing is too high and stop ordering them. Can you see the feedback loop here? Too high prices -> unprofitable -> reduced sales -> reduced difficulty -> lower prices -> profitable -> increased sales -> increased difficulty, etc.

What i'm pointing to is *pre-orders break the feedback loop*. The miners that will be coming online in the predictable future are already bought & paid for. There is no feedback loop involved -- no governor, the buyers are locked in. All the way into next year. The only choice is unloading the gear to a greater fool, or mining as long as possible to recoup some of the wasted money. The difficulty will keep going up as more pre-orders are built & put online.
Something like that.

Yup, that is true, there is a delay between paying and beginning to mine. However, there has been a market for people selling their pre-order place in line so that should mitigate the effect you describe. They weren't locked in.

I do agree though that with KNCMiner you *are* locked in. You can't sell your place in line because a) you don't know it and b) it's not clear that being first in line will result in receiving your order significantly earlier than anyone else. That's a big mistake on KNC's part, IMO.

That's one thing BFL did right - they at least allowed a secondary market to exist.