I am expecting the price to go up quickly when they start to upgrade to the next gen miners due to be released imminently.
Unless they plan to convert shares from 1 GH/s to 2 GH/s or 5 GH/s or something like that, you won't benefit from the upgrade.
Why wouldn't I benefit?
Question, where are you mining 0.02 BTC with 1 Gig?? Are you sure you didn't mean 0.0002 BTC?
I estimate that the difficulty will rise an average of 60% per month for 6 months, after which the difficulty will rise around 15% per month. According to this, the total amount of BTC that 1 GH/s will mine in a year is 0.018 BTC. Realistically, the difficulty is likely to rise much faster, and the total mining revenue is likely to be less than 0.015 BTC. BTW, a price of 0.044 BTC per GH/s implies a increase of 20% per month, and the average over the last year has been about 75% per month.
Ahh, that was based on a yearly estimate, I would have been very impressed if you found somewhere that was doing 0.02 a day! Anyway, I don't expect mining to last more than 2 years (is there anywhere we can do a year by year comparison of blocks found versus difficulty level?) the number of pools are rising rapidly, and once the popular pools cap themselves because of the 51% attack, more pools will pop up, the amount of hashpower is rising far too quickly, I've seen apps that are estimating the next difficulty level only to be beaten by twice if not more of a hike.
The small increase on cexio was a big decider for me, why would you pay 55% more for equipment that depreciates in value far faster than you will make from it?
You have misunderstood my point. On cexio, it's currently 0.044 BTC per gig and in order to make a reasonable return quickly, you need to buy big, you won't get anywhere with 1 gig. Buying big means you get more bitcoins far quicker, the difference here is that instead of buying your own equipment, you can sell your gigs to get back some of what you have invested, even if the price drops.
Also, the major factors you refer to do not apply to profitability, they only apply to the process of mining. The difficulty has gone up, but so has the hashing power, I have seen a notable increase in the number of blocks solved on cexio compared to everyone else over this past week despite the rapid difficulty rise, so no, as I said, the difficulty rating does not bother me, it should however bother all of those that have small rigs.
A share represents an income that is proportional to the difficulty. It does not represent a portion of cex.io's capacity. Even if cex.io doubles its capacity, a share will still earn the same amount. Regardless of how many shares you own, 1 or 1000, when the difficulty doubles (as it does every two months or so), your income will be cut in half.
You are correct about the ability to sell your shares back. That is a major convenience; however, the value of a share drops faster than the amount that it mines. So the longer you hold a share, the more you will lose. That is why some people write that cex.io shares are for trading and not for mining. But if you know anything about investing, you know that is a fallacy.
Like I have said before, there are a lot more factors to consider, such as external influences beyond the mining community that affects prices and value of the Bitcoins.
IMO it is better to both trade and mine, as you can offset one from the other.
P.S What do you think is going to happen once the difficulty starts to get too high on Bitcoins?? Even with the massive hashing power racked up, by then there will be too few coins to look for, and those that have joined over the past 4 months or so will just leave and most likely move to altcoins and you will see the value of Bitcoins plummet... Unless Bitcoins become the way of the world, though I doubt that will happen by the time mining Bitcoins hits its upper limit.
As the difficulty rises, equipment will become obsolete and be replaced by faster and more efficient equipment. That is what has happened since 11/2012 (and look at what has happened to the price). The price of a bitcoin does not depend on the cost of mining. In fact, the opposite is true -- the cost of mining is limited by the value of the bitcoins mined.
I have only been mining for a very short period of time and my understanding of Bitcoins is very limited, but from what I understand so far, if the equipment is getting more powerful, blocks are being found more and more quickly, so mining will end very soon, in a year or two at the most.
The price of Bitcoin is two fold, what it means in value to someone trading goods with it and secondly, what someone is willing to pay for it. That is what has driven the surge of people to mine, nothing else.