Quote from: AmazonStuff on June 29, 2012, 09:06:03 AM

Quote from: Meni Rosenfeld on June 29, 2012, 08:58:51 AM

It's BTC50 and BTC25, and it's unrelated to the difficulty.

In the first few days of the ASIC being out they can be quite profitable, but the difficulty will quickly increase to diminish the profits.

Yes BTC, not $, my bad, sorry, but it's connected to difficulty.

No, the block reward will become BTC50 starting with block 210,000, regardless of what the difficulty will be at the time. Variations in the network hashrate can have an effect on the date of this, but only a minor one.

Quote from: Ultimist on June 29, 2012, 09:08:22 AM

Quote from: Meni Rosenfeld on June 29, 2012, 08:58:51 AM

In the first few days of the ASIC being out they can be quite profitable, but the difficulty will quickly increase to diminish the profits.

In a way, that's a shame. It seems that these new ASIC machines will quickly make it nearly impossible for the little guy to mine enough BTC to make it worth the effort. Something like this could turn BitCoin into something that benefits those who already have the BTCBTCBTC or $$$, and the little guy gets the tiniest, tiniest scraps that are leftover... and that sounds too much like a monetary system we are already too familiar with.

Bitcoin isn't communism or Robin hood. It's not supposed to stop people from being able to use their earned wealth. It's "just" a much better way to store and exchange this wealth. And, ASIC isn't changing the situation one bit, the amount of rigs you can buy is exactly proportional to your wealth whether they are based on CPU, GPU or ASIC.

Quote from: Ultimist on June 29, 2012, 09:08:22 AM

Anyway, hopefully I can build a small Jalapeno army rather quickly within a few months, and then start buying the $1299 ones that do 40 Gh/s... and slowly work my way up to the 1000 Gh/s monster.

You do know there's a 4 month waiting list, right? If you use the profit from the first Jalapeno to buy the second, you'll be waiting for a long time.

Quote from: Ultimist on June 29, 2012, 09:08:22 AM

One good thing, though... I doubt many people will invest in the more expensive ASICs right away... They'll likely want to see the results (and consistency) delivered by the Jalapeno before plunking down a huge investment for the (supposedly) more powerful units.

You'll be surprised.

Once the units are materialized and proven to have the stated specs, there will be an even greater stampede on orders, and possibly a longer waiting list (during which the difficulty will soar). Either you wait out and lose the opportunity for big profit, or you take a risk and either win big or lose big. For you it may seem a lot to spend $30K on this, but there are people with sufficiently deep pockets and enough experience with Bitcoin to do this.

I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't invest - I'm just saying it's not the get rich quick scheme you seem to think it is, you need to study this, make an informed decision, and own up to it.