Quote from: jjdub7 on September 02, 2014, 12:25:30 PM

Quote from: RoadStress on September 02, 2014, 12:19:38 PM

Quote from: jjdub7 on September 02, 2014, 11:58:53 AM

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That being said, the pricing of the tubes, even given the slight miss in performance, is absurdly phenomenal. I'm not sure we'll see anything close with SHA256-based hardware at this price and scale for years, and possibly ever again, and certainly not after the next block reward cut.

While I agree with the rest of your post I can't agree with this statement. I don't think that you really believe that you will not see this price for years! YEARS!!? Really? Why years? Isn't it a bit too much considering that the competition is somehow close to those prices?

Because the R&D costs to develop and manufacture 20nm architectures and beyond (technology that big name corporate players like Intel and Sony currently have) tailored to a single cryptographic algorithm will be enormous, and the markets they're selling to aren't always willing to shell out $4k for the then-equivalent of a 5.5 TH/s miner. If you consider the residential (hobbyist), enthusiast, and industrial customer segments, ASICMINER has shown itself scalable enough to cater to all three segments with its focus on vertical integration and secondary markets, while from my vantage, Spondoolies' range of products (if you can call two distinct products a range) maps only to the last two markets.

AM could have priced lower, but why bother as long as you're undercutting the competition? Take a microecon course - pricing any lower is just throwing away profits. Grin

To follow up on my previous post, in order to stay buoyant in the mining space, AM needs to do this: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/after-much-speculation-bitmain-announces-p2pool-bitcoin-cloud-mining-service

Yup, the more products, the better.