Quote from: kokojie on January 27, 2014, 03:26:22 AM

Quote from: empoweoqwj on January 27, 2014, 03:18:21 AM

Quote from: kokojie on January 27, 2014, 03:15:14 AM

Quote from: cczerouno on January 26, 2014, 06:30:02 PM

I'm a Bitcoin noob, and I was digging ebay auctions (mainly EU).
I don't understand why ASICs sell at a price well over profitability.
I used this calculator: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

Each bid price always escalate, with tens of bidders. People currently ends buying Red-Fury 2.5 GH/s at 80 Euro, Bi-Fury 5 GH/s at 160 Euro, and so on. For example:
http://www.ebay.it/itm/Bi-Fury-BiFury-USB-Bitcoin-ASIC-Miner-bis-wahnsinnigen-5-GH-s-Sofort-Lieferung-/251434458313

Assume having already in hand 5 GH/s. With difficulty increment step of only 30%, zero electricity cost, zero pool fee, it will never gain more than 40 Euro maintaining current BTC/EUR exchange rate.

IMHO:
1. ASIC buyers feel BTC will skyrocket to more than 10,000 USD.
2. ASIC buyers mine some weeks, and then resell the hardware, so they hope to end with a profit from sell+mining-buy.
3. Buyers are antique collectors Grin

Or maybe there is something a noob can't understand.
Any hint?
Thanks,
Piero

Difficulty increment of "only 30%"? why would you assume that? it's impossible to perpetually increase difficulty by 30%, in fact we may see significantly lower difficulty increases soon.

1) Why is it impossible? At least for the next year or more, 30% is easily attainable and IMHO, very likely.
2) Where's the evidence to suggest lower difficulty increase "soon"?

We are already nearly at the maximum performance of the asic hardware development, 20nm is pretty cutting edge. There can be no more significant improvements after this point.

If we increase by 30% all year, at the end of the year, a 3000GH asic miner, will be making $20 a month at current BTC prices. It won't be enough to cover electricity.

Also, last 3 diff increases were:

Jan 24 2014    2,193,847,870    22.59%    15,704,175 GH/s
Jan 13 2014    1,789,546,951    26.16%    12,810,076 GH/s
Jan 02 2014    1,418,481,395    20.12%    10,153,885 GH/s

In fact, I think we may NEVER see a 30% diff increase again.

1) Lots of people don't pay electricity
2) Whilst faster machines *might* be more difficult to make in the future, and that's a very big *might*, people can always make lots more chips with current technology
3) Mining equipment is going to come out that is a lot more energy efficient than current gen.

If you learn one thing from technology, is that it never stands still. There are always innovations when there is money to be made and people competing for that money.