but in spite of the silly speculative doom and gloom that has swept over this thread, there still might be reason for optimism among those with outstanding Neptune orders.
Silly speculative doom and gloom? I normally respect what you have to offer on these forums but I find this comment slightly insulting. The lack of information from KNC is the root cause of all the "silly speculation" and now that we're finally getting more information the doom and gloom is quite justified IMO.
I'm trying to understand why anybody would still be holding onto a Neptune pre-order instead of refunding to simply buy more BTC than their Neptune could ever hope to mine.
To be clear, I am definitely not the beloved KnC Orama.
It was never meant to be insulting to anyone (though those that have completely written off any chance of a profit might find it insulting) What has been insulting is the last 2 months of this thread where it's become so incomprehensible that anyone would be keeping a preordered Neptune as if they haven't run any figures or are simply relying on others to tell them what to do.
To give a very quick and rough example:
-Let's say the first Neptunes are delivered in May
-Difficulty is now at 10 billion (~65% increase per month between now and then)
-Neptunes run at 4.5Th -completely reasonable based upon the information we have from the tapeout announcement
-Once the miner is received, difficulty increases 1.5 billion each week (meaning a mining farm approximately the size of KnC's datorhall comes online every week)
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A Neptune will return ~12 BTC over the course of 3 months-Now, let's just add a correcting 10 billion increase at the end of those 3 months to make difficulty ~30 billion in September and adjust to 2 billion increases each week
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That same 4.5Th machine will now return an additional ~5 BTC over the following 3 monthsFor me, that would be a 7 BTC profit. (power costs not included)
There's also risk assumed in a 10 day window between the initial request for a refund and the opportunity to buy BTC. Some might even find some level of altruistic value to the Bitcoin community by maintaining a miner at home as opposed to forfeiting every hash to these massive farms.