Quote from: philipma1957 on October 18, 2014, 03:42:46 PM

Quote from: allcoinminer on October 18, 2014, 02:58:55 PM

Quote from: aurel57 on October 18, 2014, 01:29:10 PM

Quote from: ckolivas on October 18, 2014, 11:39:37 AM

Speaking purely from investment terms, it's a curious phenomenon that in the history of bitcoin, you could always convert dollars into more bitcoin than any mining machine you could buy with those dollars would generate over its lifetime, yet people inevitably choose to buy bitcoin miners because of the concept of buying a "money making machine". It is the most expensive and technically challenging way to convert dollars into bitcoin. By far the most money anyone ever made off ASIC hardware are those who purchased avalon generation 1. At bitcoin prices when the avalon was first announced, there is still a chance they'd be better off just having converted their dollars into bitcoin at that time. When the avalon actually arrived they were a steal at 60GH @ 1500$=80BTC but you could not order them any more since they were always preorders (how much is 80BTC worth now?). I think bitcoin was worth less when they made their Avalon preorders so they were much more than 80BTC. They may have been the one exception and ironically the first ASIC ever so they capitalised on the diff at the time.

It's funny because for years people would happily expand/extend their hardware for reasons that had nothing to do with making money, like having the best gaming machine, or the best Mprime or setiathome or folding@home results or whatever. Yet the attraction of bitcoin mining has been that the hardware expansion you've been doing has been in the quest for return on investment. It has clouded people's judgement and brought in a different population of miners compared to the population it grew from. Somehow people lost sight of the fact that bitcoin mining moved from the former group of enthusiasts to a massive money making venture and the former group unintentionally became part of the latter group unwittingly, and then started complaining that they would never make a return on investment (which strictly speaking is incorrect, they mean they would never pay off their hardware). People got caught in the bitcoin mining wave and unintentionally converted from hobbyists to real money investors, and that's the real crime here.

As I read this I can see myself as I am sure many others can as well. Looking back when I started with buying my first 30 Bitcoins @$130 each so I could get 15 USB miners in a group buy to spending my mined coins until I had 75 of them running, then selling moving on to BFL singles selling them for the S1's and now down to 4 S'3 in the basement still mining .... It's been like catching a falling knife but I am done. Thinking of right now to sell off two of my miners and turning the last to "out to pasture" in your solo pool.

The bold type needs correction from always to mostly. While I admire ckolivas as a person with a brilliant mind there have been spots where buying gear is better then buying coins. The batch 1 s-3's are a true btc roi . that is more coins out then in. But this is the exception. it is also not true if your power is 25 cents a kwatt or you paid a big vat or you need a shitload of psu's. But I am willing to say many batch 1 buyers of s-3's have done btc roi.

I would say less then 1 in 10 pieces of gear were more btc out then btc in. So if ckolivas changes that to 90 % of the time and not always it would explain why miners take a shot as they hope to grab that small 10% + btc roi . rather then the more certain 90% roi faliure of most gear.

Case in point my 2 s-3 from batch 1 cost 1.5 btc.
I was given a refund of .15btc so the true cost was 1.35 btc

They have earned 1.526 BTC they have earned 2.276 NMC

That is true btc roi. But of all my gear purchased and I have purchased 50,000 usd worth of gear. this is one of very few tru btc roi gear I purchased.

My 2 units have resale on ebay at 225 usd each that would cover any psu cost and power cost. So I took power and psu out of the calculations.

But frankly this is rare for the home miner. I think a lot of us chase the what if coins go to 1000 or 2000 or 3000 usd. dream .. the spring 2013 and the fall 2013 runups keep miners chasing.

I'd like to add that for me personally, I bought a lot of mining gear when BTC was between $800-1100. The equipment was continually bought whenever I had mined enough BTC to get new gear... Mostly Bitfury stuff that was shipping from stock at the time (and still running!).

I managed to stay well ahead of the difficulty and earned positive ROI several times over and continued to reinvest some of my earnings until recently. No one can tell me I'd have been better off buying $1000 BTC and holding, lol. I quickly earned my cash investment back, reinvested earned BTC in new equipment, sold BTC and paid a lot of bills for several months when my business suffered a setback, continue to cash in BTC to pay electric bills AND still have BTC in my wallet. I even lost 5.5BTC in the Lunamine scam, lol.

Would I have been better off if I had stopped reinvesting BTC into new gear 6-8 months ago? Absolutely! Will I ever buy another miner again? Never! I was just very lucky with the BTC market rising and choosing good hardware at the time. I honestly think it's impossible to repeat that success now or ever again.