Rampion is correct.
Asicminer claims altruistic goals of sharing hashrate and expansion of BTC.
I call bullshit.
Very few people will share these with family and friends at 2BTC.
At cost + reasonable profit margin, every one of my family members with a PC would have received one this Christmas.
Imagine if everyone currently into Bitcoin would do something similar.
Imagine millions of folks first hearing about BTC by receiving such a cool little gift.
"You mean this thing makes money?"
The only folks that can say that now are AM shareholders.
I understand your reasoning and I can
feel what you are saying. But I don't think ASICMINER is taking the wrong decision, in fact I'm sure they are getting a very good return with their strategy, without having to commit to huge production volumes and avoiding entering complicate tasks as looking for worldwide distribution in traditional channels. But I still think about the big picture, on how huge could be to see grandmas all over the world asking "you are really saying this thing generates enough money to buy bread every day?", and I'm sure that a mini USB miner could be the BEST way to spread the BTC word all over the world, it could be really HUGE.
Unfortunately, 2 BTC per piece (for wholesalers
) is too high to envision such a widespread adoption - but still it's a first step and I can only congratulate Friedcat for achieving that. I always dreamt about such a tool because it's incredible potential, and now it's a reality