With the current price of 0.58 BTC for Batch 8 Delivery on 9/20/14, and given their minimum quantity of 2 Units, recouping your money = Impossible. (Almost)
Factor:
(2) S3+ Units at .58 BTC 1.16 BTC = $585.00 USD
(1) Corsair 850w PSU $140.00 USD
TOTAL HARDWARE: $725
Now, IF you are lucky enough to have power at a rate of 0.08 kW/hr (unlikely); and
IF Bitcoin difficulty only rose 11% per increase for the next 3 years, never more, (highly unlikely), and
IF you are lucky enough to get units that hash at the full OverClocked speed of 500 GHash; and
IF you are lucky enough, to within that 3 years, not have 1 single technical issue, pool outage, internet issue, power failure, hardware failure, and so on; it can be assumed
You will have made back your initial investment, and broke EVEN, on April 18, 2017.
Strato
Two flaws:
1. Equipment salvage value. Try the calculations selling the equipment at different time periods. You assume equipment worth $0 at end of time period, and that is not true.
2. No account for increase in BTC value. An increase in BTC value will probably increase the value of equipment.
Two flaws
1. Do you think an s3 will have any value after 3 years? I mean any value besides scrap?
2. You say accounting for bitcoin value increase? Possible, could go 1000,2000,10000. Problem with that is the nethash would keep up and surpass any gain as we saw. we already saw this in the honeymoon period of the last dramatic bitcoin increase.
That is if we see spectacular jumps. IMO more likely to go sideways until electric is just slightly less then profit made from mining and difficulty starts going up only a couple percent per adjustment.
Crypto world moves too fast and the guys example was being very very very very generous in the input values.
Bottom line is hw prices still have a long ways to catch up and make the distribution of wealth between miner and equipment manufacturer/cloud service more equitable.
How long have the Ant S1's been out? They are still going all day long for $125 on eBay, not worthless.
An S3 might not have value 3 years from now, but do your calculations for 1-2 years out when they still have value.
You can't ignore the increase in BTC value. Say I buy an S3 today for 0.7 BTC (about $350US) and with it mine 0.5 BTC over a couple of months (at current BTC valuation) at which point Bitcoin shoots back up to $1000. I now have $500 worth of BTC in my account, an S3 with a projected estimated value of $150-250, and I am only out $350 and the electric cost.
There is ROI there, it is not as bleak as you want all to believe.