We are all dancing around the issue... the question isn't "Is Asic Mining equipment overpriced?"
The question is "Are Asics a good value?"
If you want an Asic miner today, get in on 1 of the many AM USB Block Eruptors on this forum and you should have your trinket in a matter of days. So... there is an ASIC miner in your price range. It just isn't a good value... especially because we all see and know the difficulty is going up... WAY up.
Avalon by themselves have produced/are producing 100Th/s of miners among Batches 1 2 and 3 of miners.
They have also sold 64,000 BTC ($8.3M USD) ~ 230+Th/s of chips... and you can believe that they will for the most part get turned into active miners before the middle of October (hey... a B3 miner orderer can dream
).
http://blockexplorer.com/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sUSo... there is difficulty coming from Avalon to the tune of 300Th/s (lets assume that ~30Ths of B1 and B2 has already been deployed soo... 10%).
There is also AM who will be able to deploy more of their own hashpower now that the network has matured enough to support it. I think I read they have 250Th/s planned as well.
Remember we are at about 120Th/s right now.
http://blockchain.info/statsThat puts 4 to 5 times the current hashing power onto the network in the next couple of months of the guys who have stated their intentions. There is also AsicGarden (100Th/s ?), BitFury (100Th/s?), Blofeld/SPECTRE Mining (500Th/s --- trying for 51% attack of course)... etc.
Anyway... this brings us back to the question... are Asics a good value?
And I think we can answer... with current prices and the long term projections... they are a horrible value if you receive them when the difficulty is going to be 5x to 6x higher.
Someone mentioned that mining hardware is a suicidal business... every sale you make, makes your future sales less appealing. What we are seeing is that statement made real. Kudos to Avalon for finding a way of making a go of it.
Personally I think their chip sales was a checkmate move against the rest of the mining hardware makers. It solved a couple of problems:
1) Allowed for decentralization of mining at a massive scale achieving one of their primary goals
2) Crowd sourced/distributed the production capacity of mining to the "private sector"... reinforcing goal 1
3) Put all other hardware manufacturers on notice that their is now a ticking time bomb of difficulty that they need ship before... frankly, Avalon's chip sales may be the best thing that ever happened to BFL customers. BFL now has to ship big quantities in the next 10 weeks to stay relevant/solvent.
4) Provided a funding source for their next generation of asic
Avalon is positioning themselves to be the Intel or Apple of asic mining technology... not a bad place to be positioned.
Soo... will your asic pay itself back before
DIFFIPOCALYPSE.
If it does... then yay! you have have an asic that is a good value. If not... then it is overpriced... no matter how cheap it is.
Right now I would argue that the probability of AM's products are unlikely to return over the course of a year, with the very generous assumption that the difficulty will average 3.5x the current difficulty (we know the difficulty is going to be 6+x but I am being generous). If you think the avg is going to be less steep... I point to exhibit A:
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/That graph is just the excitement over BTC... it doesn't come close to showing what Asics are going to bring ---
DIFFIPOCALYPSE I calculate that with only and avg 3.5x increase in difficulty over the course of the next 365 days... the 10GHs AM blades will return 43BTC. Not a good value. USB miners are about the same... 1.75 BTC over the course of a year at avg difficulty of only 3.5x. Avalon most expensive miners (B3) are able to breakeven upto 12x over the course of a year... but that ignores power costs.
One final thought:
Bitcoin mining was never meant to be an anti-capitalist, meritocratic, socialist utopia. Sorry to burst your illusions but bitcoin mining is darwin in high relief It is a zero sum game, meaning if you eat... someone else starves -- sad but true. And this isn't new. When CPU mining was all there was... folks with resources "outcompeted" those without... i.e. those with Xeon and CoreI7 processors outcompeted those with crappy cheapo celerons. When GPUs came out... those with the ability to power up 6 5790s with a giant powersupply and water cool them... out competed those with single nVidia whatevers (and CoreI7s). Asics are doing the same, but we shouldn't shed a tear. This is progress! And as always... those who are able to "capitalize" on it... will outcompete those who can't. It isn't sad... it is just how system with people work.
Anyway... this has gotten way too long...
TLDR; --- Currently available Asics are most likley a good value if receive it before Avalon chips ship (
DIFFIPOCALYPSE). Asic Miner Asics probably aren't a good value unless you already are in possession of it ... but possibly not even then.