Re: ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It
I've been thinking about the discussion that was going on here yesterday. Essentially there was a consensus that probably FC will only sell hardware, not adding anything to the ~60TH/s (in house or with franchisee) mining, until Gen2 (~December). The assumption was that we make more money that way. Now I think we were wrong to assume nothing will be added to the mining farm, and here is why.
FC released the public plan for the near future rather recently. I'm speaking about the statement where he mentioned 200TH/s to be deployed in September/October, and 1PH/s for the end of the year. I am too lazy to search for it, but it was less than a month ago.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that FC had such a plan less than a month ago, and then just changed his mind "oh, wait, after all, no! Forget 200TH, forget 1PH, let's completely change the plan and just sell for several months, leaving our hashrate droping close to zero". No way, they must have many projections of the near-term future, in terms of competition, difficulty rise, mining market, etc. Nothing unforseen has happened over this time period that would explain such a plan change. Especially for things that FC made public; not exactly something he does lightly.
Now I'm sure that we will get our 200TH/s soon (actually I came to write this and then discover it looks better than yesterday! yeah!).
That will be above 10% of the hash rate again.
And there will be hardware sells on top of that, because there is no reason to stop them.
FC released the public plan for the near future rather recently. I'm speaking about the statement where he mentioned 200TH/s to be deployed in September/October, and 1PH/s for the end of the year. I am too lazy to search for it, but it was less than a month ago.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that FC had such a plan less than a month ago, and then just changed his mind "oh, wait, after all, no! Forget 200TH, forget 1PH, let's completely change the plan and just sell for several months, leaving our hashrate droping close to zero". No way, they must have many projections of the near-term future, in terms of competition, difficulty rise, mining market, etc. Nothing unforseen has happened over this time period that would explain such a plan change. Especially for things that FC made public; not exactly something he does lightly.
Now I'm sure that we will get our 200TH/s soon (actually I came to write this and then discover it looks better than yesterday! yeah!).
That will be above 10% of the hash rate again.
And there will be hardware sells on top of that, because there is no reason to stop them.
It is pointless to pile up hardware, that can not earn profit. If the cost of chips+all the expenses can not return profit, % from total network is irrelevant.
Question is, can AM rigs, built at close to "cost", still earn more than it wastes on energy and other expenses like keeping it running etc.
If answer is No, then sell what you have at any price you can get and move on.
The cost to build and run them (maintenance/electricity) is still ridiculously low compare to earning. It would be a mistake to believe thath because 55nm are out there and soon 28nm, our gen1 is obsolete in terms of just being profitable. The only reason to sell is because you earn even more, not because you're doomed to never break even. You'll see that from how low the price of the blades will be in the next few months.