Topic: ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It - page 1033. (Read 3917058 times)

precisely; why do people/shareholders care about the hashrate (as long as it's not close to 50% of course)?

hoping for a serious answer unlike last time

I agree that ignoring fixed costs is hard/impossible/unreasonable/unwise for a consumer purchasing a miner.

I may have made myself misunderstood, because the point I was trying to make was slightly different: I was thinking more about the power efficiency of the current-gen technology, and at what point mining no longer pays for the electricity consumed. When mining revenue no longer pays for the electricity consumed, then I would consider the technology obsolete.

So that if you have, say 30 TH of mining power, with this technology already deployed, it makes financial sense to continue mining until network hash rate reaches 30 PH. At that point, the technology will be obsolete and only more power efficient devices should continue mining.

It means there is plenty of room to expand, even with current-gen technology.

I think the point is not about hardware sales vs self-mining. The point is that right now, at this very moment, the profit margin on ASIC mining hardware is huge, almost regardless of the technology used. And when this happens, competitors will be working on taking a piece of that pie.

But in that light it doesn't matter whether ASICMiner sells hardware or mines itself; both approaches will render current-technology hardware useless over time, because of better technology. But the thing about hardware sales is that we have not, in any way, reached saturation. That's evident from the price in the secondary market (buyers of ASICMiner devices re-selling devices). Self-mining is saturated, at the time. Not much room for improvement, if we want to stay comfortably below 51%.

But it would surprise me if ASICMiner weren't aware of this. And weren't working hard on producing hardware to sell.

A 6-hour average for the hash rate is not reliable. But I'm sure you know this.

The 24-hour average has varied between 25 and 15 Thash/s in the past ~24 hours: http://runeks.dk/bitcoin/



But in any case, the shareholders earn money for every block that is found.

I think most people would regard profitability as the amount of income they receive after costs.

If you're disregarding the amount you paid for the device, then of course they will earn you more btc than your ongoing costs, and for a long time.

The point is, will enough btc ever be earned to pay for the device? Hard to say, but it might not happen.

My calculation shows that marginal revenue exceeds marginal costs until network hash rate reaches 30 peta-hash (using current prices). It has nothing to do with an ROI calculation, which is quite different, because I disregarded (sunk) fixed costs.

Not necessarily. If income is limited by device lifetime or user patience, (say ~ four years) then with increasing difficulty an ROI may never be reached.

Double negative statement is false.  Your ROI will take longer when diff increases, but eventually it would be reached. 

Why some people are mining on 20+ or 30+ USB sticks?
Isn't it better idea to be mining on 12gh/s ASIC Blade?

I agree that it's commercially prudent for AM to keep their cards close to their chest. However I think the competition knowing in general what AM are up to won't help them much. AM's natural advantages are:

• proven IC design competence
• low cost of manufacture
• low cost of operation
• operational excellence
• strong cashflow and balance sheet
• reputation as a company that meets or exceeds customer expectations

Knowing what AM have in the pipeline won't matter much if you can't match them in those areas, and they are hard to execute or achieve.

BFL are flailing. They are in a death spiral at the moment; which is likely to take a couple of months to complete (either cash flow dries up or legal action puts them out of business). They are not experts in IC design and manufacture and the price for that will be corporate death.

I've been following KnCminer closely for a few weeks. I started off excited at the possibilities (28nm process, 350GH/s flagship product for $7K). However what I've seen in the last few days has persuaded me they're unlikely to even be as much of an annoyance to AM as BFL is today (i.e., nothing much at all). I doubt they will get any ASIC product to market unless they can fund their NRE cost.

100T/H / Metabank may yet provide some competition, but they sound a couple of months away from having any product so it's hard to predict where they will get to. I think even if they get their 65 nm product going AM will be able to match them fairly quickly. But doing so would put a bit of a dent in earnings, so their threat can't be ignored.

Avalon seem to be happy to be the vanguard of the open-source movement. I think it's a smart idea on their part; it means they don't have to try to compete head-to-head with AM in building finished products. They get to grow a market that will sit beside the finished product and mining markets.

AM are the only company of any substance exhibiting *any* professionalism at the moment in building finished products or mining.

Also known as the apple strategie 

Come on guys, ASICMINER is still the only company selling gen 1 ASICs in any quantity, let's roll in that dough before we start thinking about gen 2. I hope for the sake of keeping the competition in the dark that friedcat doesn't mention a thing about the next gen devices until they are days away from shipping. Ideally that will be right around the time that BFL figures out how to put together a working device, and/or the companies using the Avalon chips come to market.   

It must be some error in your calculations, usb miners can't never be profitable unless diff drops.

Not that I know of, specifically. There are usually Thursday updates from Friedcat however he has been busy of late with keeping things running smoothly. When he does post the update any relevant information on hardware and anything else ASICMINER related will be available for digestion.

Was there an announcement on when gen 2 devices would roll out?

I hear that brother, those bills never stop.


Word on the street is The Fried One is around so perhaps we will get an update on those 2nd gen chips and much more soon.

I like to see other experts opinion. I'm no expert btw.

Been doing both But i got bills to pay.

I am just waiting for news on Second Gen Chips

Feels even better rolling them into more ASICMINER 

I love the weekly payout, it feels better to convert that to USD, than selling shares.

Seems odd for you to ask this question when your profile indicates you are associated with/run this website: BTC.re