Quote from: velacreations on November 09, 2013, 05:37:49 AM

They paid the highest dividends EVER on hardware sales, not mining income. Mining made up the majority of the dividend back then, but that changed very quickly, until now, the majority is hardware sales.

Quote from: jimmothy on November 09, 2013, 04:54:31 AM

FC started selling hardware the second BFL began shipping because the asic monopoly was broken.

You're mistaken.

AM was selling hardware long before BFL was shipping in any quantity to be a threat to anyone. Hardware sales were making those big dividends back in May/June, and BFL was BARELY shipping anything then.

BFL did not cause AM to start selling hardware, profits did.

"Profits" did not make AM start selling asics? Let me ask you why, when you have a steady income of 20% of the hashrate, would you randomly decide to start selling your machines ultimately making your piece of the pie less? You wouldn't. AM only began to sell right before BFL began rolling out their massive amounts of TH. Why? because FC knew that with current gen hardware nobody would buy for such a high price after BFL begins shipping/raising the difficulty. The massive profits came from a "gold rush" of people thinking they would make money from those usb asics which we now know will never reach ROI.

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Quote from: jimmothy on November 09, 2013, 04:54:31 AM

So you think that AM can make more money from selling hardware than mining? If they had and held 20% they would be making 1/5th of 7200 so 1440 btc per day. Lets assume AM is making cubes for dirt cheap and somehow has profits of up to 50% per cube (which is unlikely) then he would need to sell 1440 cubes per day or 50th/s per day.

One of the biggest complaints people have about AM hardware is that it never meets ROI, or takes ridiculously long to do so... That automatically makes it more profitable to sell it than to mine with it.

Your whole "if they had 20% of the network" is irrelevant, because they don't have the hardware to maintain 20% of the network, nor the datacenter to house it.

Not only do I think they can make more money from hardware, their financial records prove it.

Profit margins on those cubes are likely 60% or better. Their cost is likely less than $2/GH to produce them.

I know that they don't currently have the hardware to maintain 20% but that doesn't change the fact that mining is more profitable in the long run than hardware sales. Current 144nm will likely never reach ROI even at your overly optimistic guess of $2/gh so yes with current gen, AM or anyone will never make a profit from this current gen so why do you think there is a huge group of people that for some reason want to buy asicminers useless hardware? There is no such group and what will happen is the development of next gen hardware. And when this superior hardware is produced, why would FC rush out to sell the devices instead of holding his grip on 20% of the network which brings in 500k USD worth of bitcoins per day. I honestly doubt that FC or any asic company will be able to maintain 500k USD worth of asic sales profits.

Also I think AM does have a big enough datacenter to house 20%. If next gen chips could be made for something super cheap like $0.50/gh it would be relatively inexpensive and with immersion cooling it would require only a fraction of the space normally needed for a shitload of asics.