Quote from: willpower101 on December 07, 2013, 05:41:52 AM

Quote from: Damnsammit on December 05, 2013, 12:43:34 AM

Quote from: dzarmush on December 05, 2013, 12:41:11 AM

This is one more thing I don't get. I also read about it in group buys. They say: "when our group miners are no longer profitable we sell them and share the money". But who is going to buy non-profitable miners?

Here ya go. People are always buying non-profitable miners... I have no idea why.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=75.0

and

www.ebay.com

They buy unprofitable miners because they suck at using the calculators and bias them towards profitability on accident.
I have a 5x9 whiteboard full of economic equilibriums (based on excel, I just like to visualize my data by hand too) that tell me exactly what is profitable and what isn't based on every factor I can think of.
Mining is profitable in only a select few scenarios today, and profitable in the future only if estimated conditions based on no less than three different variables are met. It's a gamble, but I could put my money in stocks at 12% return all day long. (Most years I average 23-24%)
Very few calculated risk investments can offer 100 - 400% returns in time periods of months.

Equipment not only holds value, it shifts with the price of BTC. As BTC goes up, worthless equipment becomes more... haha, worthless technically. But by that, I really mean the price increases and you can sell it for plenty.

This mining calculator does a really good job of estimating the worthlessness of machines actually. http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php

Would you be willing to share these mathematical insights here / in private?