Quote from: caffinated on Today at 03:17:57 PM

Yes i know the btc might go up yada yada but i might as well put money into btc directly instead of mining hardware which is far less complicated..?

But even if the bitcoin price drops if you have a lower power cost you can still make money while buying bitcoin directly would lead you to a direct loss, right? It's getting the timing best, either by knowledge or by stepping in a lot of poo, Grin

That aside, it's not the small guy home miner who is buying thousands of miners, the culprits are huge companies, with cheap electricity prices, enough money to order miners and get discounts for large MOQ, that have favorable taxes in the countries and they can claim a lot write-off, deductions, and far more important, they are paying for all this with investors money, not from their own pocket.
Do they file for bankruptcy, yeah, all they need is to find a new job, not like they are losing anything major!

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With the current pricing of hardware even after the drop, the ROI has gone from <1 year to 5 years on paper

5 years, but not if you do it like the big guys at 3-5 cents
S19 Pro, $7700 (spot), 14$ revenue, 3$ in electricity at 3cents/kwh and pool fees, $11 a day, and here you go, less than two years.
Let's factor all the mentioned above and yeah, it's a big guys playground right now.

Quote from: caffinated on Today at 03:17:57 PM

why is anyone even purchasing hardware at this point?

Some of the gear that is being installed now and driving the hashrate up has been has been purchased or ordered a year ago:

Mara:
https://ir.marathondh.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1251/marathon-digital-holdings-purchases-30000-s19j-pro-bitcoin

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Based on current delivery schedules, Marathon anticipates all 30,000 newly purchased miners to ship from Bitmain between January 2022 and June 2022. As a result, the Company’s mining operations are expected to consist of more than 133,000 Bitcoin miners, producing approximately 13.3 EH/s once all miners are fully deployed and operational.

Or Riot:
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/05/10/2440292/0/en/Riot-Blockchain-Reports-Record-First-Quarter-2022-Financial-Results-Current-Operational-and-Financial-Highlights.html

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As of April 30, 2022, the Company had 46,375 miners deployed with an additional 7,240 miners staged for deployment.
By January 2023, Riot anticipates a total self-mining hash rate capacity of approximately 12.8 EH/s, assuming full deployment of approximately 120,150 Antminer ASICs.