Quote from: BuildTheFuture on September 20, 2014, 02:49:39 PM

Quote from: smooth on September 20, 2014, 02:26:13 PM

Quote from: BuildTheFuture on September 20, 2014, 01:59:44 PM

If you search around you can find pretty good estimates of current mining costs

No you really can't because the biggest share of costs is the mining gear and it has been very difficult if not impossible for anyone to buy such gear at prices that don't lose money. The reason of course is that ASIC developers themselves mine in large farms and their costs are totally opaque (and likely quite different from one another). The way the competitive mining market works is the least efficient miners break even or lose money. That's basically everyone in the public. How much everyone else (ie ASIC developers) make only they know.

I've seen chip production costs mentioned in the "ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It" thread of between $0.25/GH and $0.35/GH in the past few months.

Production cost (measured per chip) is not an equipment mining cost (measured per hash), because the latter depends on useful lifespan. No ASICs have had very long lives (more than a year or so), but they certainly vary depending on efficiency, underclockability, electricity costs, reliability, etc. Other designers ASIC designs will have a different set of tradeoffs, aside from some just being overall better or worse (remember, only the least efficient lose money in this market, so every design but the very worst is viable; they need not be comparable as is the case in most other competitive markets). As I said, all over the map.