What I don't understand is the big risks and doubling down by Canaan and Bitmain on 5nm chips for the next set of ASIC miners, supposedly out in Q1 of 2020!

I mean from what I read, this is supposedly a 15% improvement in speed vs electric use. So at current BTC prices, this makes little or no sense to me.

Also, I'd imagine when they come out they will be in the $3k range and a 3 month pre-order too boot. This most likely will be after the BTC Halving before they arrive,

IMHO, so 'what'? Does this mean you are going to pay this kinda $$ for the same lousy ROI as you can get now with the current 7nm machines?

Really, why bother?

With no risk/pre-order/$$$ etc, etc, for every $1 BTC you get now 'supposedly,' you would get $2 BTC mining after the block reward downturn from

12.50 BTC a block to 6.25 BTC a block. I mean it seems a lot of development costs and effort just to find out once the units arrive you are basically

running in place!

So did I miss a memo? Why is everybody from Bitmain to Canaan to whomever, losing their frigging mind and buying ASIC's at these 'dubious' prices?

Are folks really, really, that frigging sure that the halving gonna DOUBLE the BTC price in a manner that makes these 5nm ASIC units make sense?

This is like the very wealthy in the Bitcoin Universe have just lost their minds after drinking the kool-aid and are running a amuck on the sugar high.

Again, for my above reasons, what the heck are they seeing that is escaping my notice on all this?

later

Brad