Will be interesting how much the difficulty spikes when these all come online.
I think this needs more insight from BFL. And I have an open question about that to the forum BFL Engineer. BFL-Eng will try to get some more details. The reason it is importnat is kinda obvious, if they keep these prices, the ROI's will eventually take too long. So, I personally would not order any more equipment until I get that insight. Order numbers start around #1600 and I know they went over #2300 about mid week. Assume 800 orders, and average of 200GH per order on average (yeah that is random...but also the point is that we don't know where the hash rate is going). Anyway, that is 200GH/order x 700 orders = 140Thash to be added to the network hash rate just from initial to midweek orders. So, that could easily go to 300TH. Current difficulty is based on 12.5TH. So, difficulty will fly when network hash rate hits 312TH. So, go figure how long it will take you to pay off any BFL equipment if that is the case 1.5years? 2 years? Will the equipment even be warrantied for that long? So, it
might be better to just buy bitcoins with current BFL hardware pricing. Orders in the first week or two are probably safe, but Im skeptical. Anyway, let's see what the engineer has to provide if/when he ever gets some details.
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The average order is 200GH/s?! That's assuming we go by the data in this thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/wait-list-bfl-sc-pre-order-information-monarch-orders-too-89685At current there are about 900 orders (into the 2500s). That thread has 38 listed orders. That's a pretty small sample. But here's what those 38 orders have listed:
6 SC Mini Rigs
65 SC Singles
53 Jalapenos
That's (6x1000) + (65x40) + (53x3.5) = ~8.8TH/s.
8.8THs/38 orders = ~230GHs/order, which is about your estimate.
However, almost half of that is one order for 4 SC MR, so that will skew the scale a bit high.
Now lets be more realistic and subtract Gigavps's 4 SC MR order, and assume that there are not 25 people willing to put 120,000 USD for multiple rack mount rigs. that brings us down to:
(2x1000) + (65x40) + (53x3.5) = ~4.8TH/s.
4.8THs/37 orders = ~130GHs/order.
Our sample rate is about 4% of the total orders placed to date, so lets assume all 900 orders average the same as these 38 (not likely, but it's all the numbers we have).
25x8.8 = 220TH/s. Close to 20x the current difficulty. Or
25x4.8 = 120TH/s. Close to 10x the current difficulty.
You're talking somewhere between these two numbers.
There's another thread with data:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/what-asic-did-you-order-89538Assuming each order was for only one of the relevant type of unit, we have 18460 Gh/114 orders = 162 Gh/order minimum. So the two sets of data roughly agree.
We have to keep in mind though that neither sample is representative since each consists of people enthusiastic enough to report their orders, and these people may be disposed toward larger orders. For all we know, the unreported orders might be dominated by orders for 1 single or a couple of Jalapenos. As a rough number that's easy to work with, I'm going to go with 100 Gh/order, with the assumption that this could be off by a factor of two or more either way (but is most likely on the low side). If they can cover the first 550 orders in the first production run, that's 55 Th +/- 2x coming online more or less at the same time. Yikes. I hope the pools will be ready for this.