I have deludedly convinced myself to take the plunge with this recent price drop but...
@ US$310 (without taking into account shipping cost, future network diff variances and BTC volatility), it would take an S5 about five months to recover such a price at the current exchange rate (US$215):
.01 BTC per day S5 yield * USD215 = US$2.15 per day S5 yield
US$310 S5 price / US$2.15 = 144.19 days
144.19 days / 30 days per month = 4.81 months or about
5 months rounded up...
...again, not considering shipping cost, diff variances and BTC volatility.
That water is still too cold for me to jump into.
I look at it this way: There is about zero probability that the currently plunged price, of $212, at the moment, will remain the price for the next 5 months, right? On the other hand, I can personally guarantee you -- there a 100% probability! -- that it will either go up, down, or stay about the same :-)
So, lets look at each possibility, and see if we can come up with a plan for each eventuality, including the worst-case scenario:
1. starting with the easiest: the price could go up. Maybe steadily, maybe suddenly, maybe only slightly and maybe, just maybe (say a 1% likelihood) retaking all the ground it lost this year and then some, to $1100 after the yen or the yuan or the euro undergoes some scary crash-ey volatility, maybe the ruble crashes and 143 million Russians take their savings and flee to bitcoin for safety, all on the same day :-) Then all the $200 bitcoins you mined this month will be worth much, more (assuming you save them, and don't spend them on playthings!) and you will experience what I call "Retroactive ROI". This happened to me last year. My mining gear was barely earning the price of a cup of coffee a day (and I drink much, much more coffee than that). But the few thousand dollars I'd accumulated became many the week of Thanksgiving. I cashed out most of it, paid off a bunch of credit cards (made the wife very happy) and when the price tanked, and then kept tanking, gradually lower and lower, each month, all year long I chose to look at that as a buying opportunity. I plan to have a lot more bitcoins -- much of them purchased at today's prices -- the next time the universe comes together with a few different pieces of synchronicity, from a few different directions. Some economy somewhere "corrects" the day after some new commercial giant suddenly embraces crypto-currency publicly, and some bureaucrat televises a much-anticipated regulatory hearing about bitcoin that doesn't go badly. So, when I say the price could go up, I really believe that over the next 5 -15 years it *must* go up. A lot. I just don't know when :-)
2. it could stay about the same. Or, more realistically, fluctuate maddeningly without getting anywhere too far away from today's price. In this scenario, your calculations (maybe adjusted to take difficulty adjustments, PSU's and fan mods, and power costs into account) bear out. So it's June and your miners have finally paid for themselves and now, although they don't earn what they used to, its all profit until they can't even pay for their electricity, which is still a ways off. So you can keep running them, and make a little more. If you believe as I do that, over the long haul, btc will take over the world, then keep banking those bitnickels and bitdimes every day, and be sure to leave them alone, and let them add up...
3. the BTC price could continue its current plunge and be god-knows-how-low by June of 2015, and then the $310 plus shipping that you spend today would be mostly lost. But, like they say in the stock market, you don't "lock in the loss" unless you sell while the price is low. You're loss on June 19th is just 'how you're doing". You still have mining hardware that is still mining a little each day. You have all the bitcoin you've mined in 5 months, if you're smart and you've saved it! You don't "lose" until you give up and sell low. Be smart and hold those coins long term -- things will turn around sooner or later.
Mining is like dollar-cost-averaging. You add bitcoin to your portfolio, gradually, completely independent of the whatever "the market" says they are worth at this moment or that. I invest in mining equipment when it is proven and not as expensive when first introduced, mine like hell and then sell it before its resale value is completely lost. Sometimes the product cycle forces me to keep equipment longer than I'd like, or sell it too soon. But I roll my eyes when people say "it will never roi". They are predicting that the coins you mine with it will never appreciate in value. They are basing their calculations on the assumption that you will not sell it when it still has some resale value They are looking at the extremely short term only. They are the ones who sell their btc the moment they mine it. If you take a buy-and-hold approach, you will buy steadily, only what you can afford to lose (or leave in an investment for 3 - 5 years), a little more each week or month, when the price is low, maybe less when the price is higher. You will relax and remember, especially when the price drops, not to panic and sell your bitcoins as if the price may drop to zero -- it never does -- it rebounds, fast or slow. You will remember that, like Warren Buffet says, wise investors "get scared when everyone else is being greedy, and get greedy when everyone is getting scared" -- that simply means buy low, and sell high. And don't let the headlines fool you.
thanks,
-dave
Thank you! I have similar considerations as you do and I'm sure a lot of us in here share the same thougths. As I have always stated, it's all "relative and subjective". In the end, it really boils down to how one justifies it as each individual has a unique situation and sees things differently than others. Personally, I can't justify purchasing S5 units at $310 + shipping cost at this time. That's all I've been trying to say.