Quote from: frankenmint on September 25, 2013, 06:02:14 PM

I'm am of the Jurassic park school of thought (Life finds a way and adapts to seek advantages with the resources available) - With the amount of dollars thrown into mining hardware - the participants of the system will find substitute methods to realize a return on investment wether it be through mining an alt-coin or through a different mechansim where Asics could be utilized for something else that generates virtual or real revenue. There will be incentives to foster the creation of these mechansims so that "new" pool operators, "new" services providers, and "new" opportunities to realize a potential ROI are necessary...this incentive remains true both for small time fish like us individuals as well as for someone like bitfountain or ICEdrill who has the ability to have large amounts of hashpower that would be electrically not cost effective if they were to continue to mine as they currently do.

I could be totally wrong here....but if I'm not, then all of us who bought in early, all those who bought in onto the block erupters, all those who got their bfl hardware very late or their avalon K16 hella late will be able to recover their initial investment and who knows perhaps see a gain. I PROMISE you guys that who acted as naysayers to those who still took the risk will feel like an idiot for doing such.

Gotta love the internet, it amazes me to see the posts from back in 2010 and 2011 of people speculating to want to dump a quick 300 bucks on BTC and those who said don't bother its just a fad and you'll just lose like any otc stock...those naysayers also happen to be "these naysayers" albeit moreso reasonable with all the mining calculators and leigons of hardware vendors and diy folks comming around.

If history were to repeat itself and we were to see the same linear rate of growth as a function of percentage, wouldn't it be reasonable by BTC track record to expect a price to break the 1000 USD barrier? Would that change the argument of buy and hold vs buy a miner, HELL NO (you still lost your ass if you bought a miner with BTC or cash in hand that could be used to buy/hold btc).

Finally, I'd be willing to bet that many of you, like me, used a line of credit, something that couldn't be used to secure btc to hold, to be able to pay for mining hardware. I don't know about you, but a line of credit is much easier to use than to have built up cash in hand that you would be willing to invest onto buying BTC and holding.

When someone says ROI, ask yourself, if I put in 100 dollars onto a bet and I won 100 dollars, did I see a return on my gamble? NO I just got my money back!

Yeah, cause there's just so much real world applications for double SHA256, the possibilities are endless! You might as well go and buy a few tulip buds.