although AM just started pricing in BTC. this drop will hurt profits a lot, unless prices are rebased.
As someone not informed with this, how does pricing in BTC cause profits to drop?
Hardware is priced in BTC, BTC profits remain the same, USD profits suffer because of lower BTC/USD value since Friedcat made the announcement.
EDIT This also makes AM hardware more attractive to fiat holders wanting hardware.
BTC profits do not remain the same. Regardless of whether AM prices its products in fiat or BTC, the expenses--foundry, assembly houses, parts suppliers, electricity, etc--those are fiat expenses. BTC has to be converted to fiat to cover those. Obviously one has to pay more BTC (for the same amount of fiat) when the exchange rate is lower, by definition. If you pay more BTC, less BTC gets left over as profit. Why does this even need to be explained?
What makes you think that Friedcat would not have already paid for this when he was planning to sell hardware. The chips for this round have long been paid for and I'm not entirely sure what else has but it doesn't seem likely that they are just starting to think about "foundry, assembly houses, parts" for units that are being sold as we speak. So you are correct so long as there are bills remaining for hardware relative to the proportion of costs still to be paid.