Quote from: creativex on May 28, 2013, 04:27:40 AM

While the increase in the exchange rate has enabled many that would otherwise have shut down to keep mining with GPUs, it seems likely that Avalon batch 1 shipping(20Th) as well as ASICMiner bringing 3Th online in February had more than a little to do with the rapid rise in network hash rate and therefore difficulty. While ASIC deployment has been slower than expected due to slipping delivery dates by some, ASICMiner's hash rate has gone from 0 to over 20Th since February plus they've sold 60 blades at auction and more directly.

This kind of huge increase in hash rate is typical when newer more efficient technology takes over. A similar period of increased network growth occurred when GPUs took over from CPUs. This period of increased network growth will not stop until mining is again marginally profitable. The cost to produce ASIC mining chips is heavily front end loaded so why would ASICMiner and Avalon, who have proven they can produce large numbers of working chips, stop producing inexpensive chips until something more efficient supplants them?

Cheers.

I know i'll never win this battle and that's fine. it's what makes a democracy and i might not be right in my thoughts. I just feel like the direction at this point is that we'll wait for a great opportunity arrive and like you said better tech will come, but i feel like when that happens it will be a replay of these asics all over again. And i'd just like to say this. when GPU's took over people may of thought it wasn't a profitable means at the same point in the process and that was the wrong opinion. We may be in the early stages of a boom, but we have time to get some profit and hash power before it gets out of hand. It's obvious that everyone's predictions of hash power dating back to 2012 have not come true in the least. And the way the network is looking now we may see a retarget below the 8% I gave in my prediction this retarget. This will be the last post on the issue as it's obviously not anything anyone is considering or even has any desire for. So i'll just sit back and see where this heads. But I really don't think hording 1k BTC is a great strategy.

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