What ?? NO. I think you are seriously misunderstanding the situation.
Share price had absolutely nothing to do with this deal's ROI (even though its volatility may have helped some to hedge out as stated above) and the same goes for Bitfunder's closure. In fact, some people (like me) didn't even bother going to BF, so the share price doesn't even enter my calculations.
It's pretty simple actually, difficulty rose (a lot) more than people expected, and the miners started mining 1.5-2 months later than expected. There was no ROI to be had.
On papers, KNC seemed a lot safer than BFL. In reality though, all miner companies have proven to be the same border-line scam. They all delivered (and continue to do so) equipment that is absolutely incapable of achieving ROI.
This boggles my mind.
Who is being profitable in the mining business (and how)?
Has it become something where only AM, KNC, BFL, etc., themselves make money?
I tell you.. it's blatantly obvious we're all being used. This 2nd gen wave was simply scandalous all across the board. Not a single product capable of mining itself out. In any other business they would've all gone bankrupt. Here, they are the only ones making money. Sad shit.
It does seem bad in hindsight, but the ASIC miner manufacturers chose prices that seemed reasonable at the time, given what was expected to happen to the difficulty, delivery dates, and hashing power of the units.
KnC actually delivered significantly higher spec equipment than people paid for, and pretty close to on time.
Everyone who invested expected that they would get more BTC out of the deal than they put in, or they wouldn't have gone ahead, but unfortunately the difficulty rose faster that we all expected, and so we will all lose out.
KnC's business model would have depended on selling hardware at higher prices initially, so I'm sure they can't just refund, or give our extra hardware to make sure their customers.
It's an unpredictable world, and unfortunately the only way to make money from mining seems to be making mining equipment. You can't really blame the ASIC producers for our loss, as we decided their price was good enough to take a chance on.
They should not start to produce the 2nd batch.
Instead offer 2nd batch customers a BTC refund or make them the first preorders in line for their second gen miners.
Delivering 2nd batch now will hurt both batch 1 and batch 2 for obvious reasons(and maybe delay 2nd gen production because of the time spent on 2nd batch production).
KNC earned a lot till now. I assume they can afford to wait for a while with their sales.
KNC stated they will not forget their costumers. Here is their chance to prove it! (which they won't, of course).