Why is it even an option to liquidate and shut down?
Where is the option for liquidate and switch to a better datacenter+better hardware?
That would only be wise for in hand hardware. Any waiting around would be very costly.
The data center is a big part of the problem but the exchange rate is the killer.
At $270/kWh/month running 1 unit at 1.6 TH/s costs ~ $540. At today's rate, that is 1.2 BTC
At a difficulty of 6 billion (next 2 weeks) and 7.2 billion (the following 2 weeks) that miner will produce 3.44 BTC.
This leaves us with a profit of 2.24 BTC per unit for the next month.
If the exchange rate goes up or we can find cheaper hosting, Cognitive would be in a better position.
In the slightly longer term, reinvestment is going to be the decider (court cases and pissing contests not withstanding).
If we had deployed 30 TH/s on Feb. 18th (when the first CT machines arrived), over the course of three months we would have paid an average weekly dividend of 1.3 mBTC per share and had over 200 BTC available for reinvestment. Now we only have ~20 TH/s with ~10 TH/s waiting for delivery. Recovering from Cognitive's current position is going to be tricky.
Thanks for your maths here. I know Cognitive can pull out of this and I will push for the remainder of the units to ship out tomorrow and next week.
Also your calm approach is appreciated. I wish everyone could be rational and discuss things in such a matter.