Quote from: DickMS on October 20, 2013, 07:12:53 PM

Z, the point of the ROI comments is to show that Bitminer has an unworkable pricing schedule, and to try to convince them that it is in their best interests to modify it. So, since they aren't looking in the speculation threads, and since Giorgio is deliberately ignoring that the advance and retreat of BTC to USD conversions does not affect our estimates at all, much less invalidate them, I thought that this was the place to change his mind... it didn't work. Oh, well.

His ignoring the numbers doesn't really affect the numbers: he prices his chips in BTC, regardless of the exchange rate. So, we can calculate the expected return for any given difficulty, in BTC, and compare it to the cost of the chips. The numbers say that for every BTC spent on a chip that is sold at 0.85BTC, and put into operation in January, it will return only about 0.3BTC over its entire lifetime - ignoring the cost of the boards, power supply, and power.
Edit: According to Mining Dashboard, assuming current difficulty increases continue without the rate increasing, the lifetime return for 1BTC is 0.33 BTC (0.6617 loss), regardless of whether you price the BTC at $100 or at $200. No shipping, no power, no boards, no case... only chip costs considered. Check for yourself.

Like I said - a very expensive hobby, and Bitminer is making things that can't be considered anything but toys for rich men.

I thank you heartily - you have been extremely polite in your responses, and I appreciate the civil discussion. Since I can't, evidently, be convincing, I won't push the point any further.

That is a fair assessment.

We will be buying chips anyhow to 'prove' the concept we are working on. Potentially the chips could come down in price still, and those savings are going to be passed along to us as has already happened with the 15% just in the past week. I would agree that it makes little sense to buy bucket loads directly from bitmine at this point if you are prototyping, or for any chip given the length of time and the exponential rise in difficulty pushed mainly on the back of KnC shipping their units nearly on time and in volume and potentially more with HF coming online before the A1's drop to us. The bubble will burst and I think this is that watershed moment when the money going out for more chips and miners starts to dry up. Figuring out when that bottom comes is the next point to looking for opportunities because right now it is all up hill to then the crash.

Time could force bitmine's hand to a certain extent given your evaluation and I suspect most people are not going to throw down for 500 chips or more and fabricated miners that is just not in the cards which ultimately means chip prices will be slashed if there is stock available. HF, BA and Bitmine pretty much all the same in regards to offering a lower price but you would need to outlay 100,000 USD or more just to get on board for earlier delivery and cheaper prices for chips. The alternative is to buy miners which also have low prospects for btc to btc return. The bubble will burst at some point as it did with other tech CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs and ASICs.

......

On topic: Weren't more A1 specs supposed to drop today?