but have you asked yourself why you just have ONE miner and not like 200 of them?
I am sure you asked yourself that and the answer is easy
1)you do not have money to buy more of them since they are rediculously expensive
2)even if you have the money to make a big investment by the time you will get the gear you pre-ordered (if you get it at all) it wont do crap or it will have a very considerable decrease of income...
No, it's because even if they were free they wouldn't make money. I turned the one that I have off. The new generation of ASICs are so much more efficient than the previous generation that the difficulty has risen to the point where first generation ASICs cost more to power than the value of the Bitcoins they mine.
So why not instead of buying like ONE rig that costs 5000 usd and does 2TH/s and will ship Q2 2014 not ordering like 1000 pieces 5$ each of industry available chips reporgram them and have them ready to mine TODAY at lets say 800 GH/s rate... and when difficulty is get higher with the profits that you accumulate from TODAY since the then buy some more chips that will be ready to ship at virtually the same day!!!
Because that rig would be less efficient, and even the very most efficient rigs of just a year ago are barely profitable, if at all.
The up front cost of the miner is irrelevant it if costs more to power it than it can make in mining.
The key point is this -- the ASICs of a year ago, purpose built to be maximally efficient miners, are already too inefficient to be worth operating if you expect to make a profit. The ship has long ago since sailed on anything not purpose built to be a maximally-efficient Bitcoin miner.
If $7 for 1/3 of an ASIC is a good deal, will you give me $672 for my ASICMINER blade? It has 32 ASICS. 32*3*7 = $672. All you need to do is plug it in, connect it to Ethernet, and it does 13GH/s. I'll even throw in a power supply. Oh, it mines about $2/day worth of Bitcoins and costs about that to power it.