Fortunately for us, ensuring the continued success of Bitcoin is exactly what WILL maximize BFL's bottom line,
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which means they should and will do everything in their power to maximize miners' revenue.
Sounds like someone is starting to make some sense around here.
Does that quote
really make sense to you? If you truly think any ASIC providers' interest align completely with a miner's interests, and they will "do everything in their power to maximize
miners revenue" rather than their own, then you are not the intelligent guy I took you for.
Well, I guess in a way they do have the same interest: their own bottom line. But after the first asics will begin having an effect on difficulty, the asic provider and the miner will have diametrically opposed interests: one will want to keep selling as many as possible virtually free to produce chips to pay back
his NRE, thereby constantly dropping prices to adjust for, and as a result, increasing difficulty - potentially by orders of magnitude; while the miner would like to achieve an ROI on his investment, and wont be able to do so if difficulty goes up any faster than what he had planned for.
Ive asked the question before: what payback time would you look for to buy an ASIC? And what happens if BFL then sells ASICs twice as fast as you expected?
Pity all the naysayers don't just do their due diligence (I've said this multiple times and I'll keep saying it) and get to know the guys over at BFL. I have, and they are some pretty smart guys who believe in Bitcoin's potential.
I got no problems with BFL. The issue is not BFL, its with asics in general; it will be the same with any company that would enter this market first and effectively obtains a dial that can turn up difficulty at will and must turn this dial to make a profit. I can think of some ways they could mitigate the miner risk, but none that wouldnt collide with their own bottom line.
Again, miners should do what makes the most financial sense to them. They should be sure to calculate any expected price drops into their equation, and decide when the best point to purchase (if any) is.
What you are describing is ASIC miners being priced high to start with, then as time goes on and competition is introduced, the prices will drop to the equilibrium of supply and demand. That is typical of any product. Any miner who does not take this price curve into account has only themselves to blame.
BFL wants to maximize the revenue of the miners, because the miners are their customers. If they can increase the total revenue of miners, they increase their customer base and potential revenue. That's why I keep saying they won't do anything that will harm the Bitcoin price, because that reduces their potential sales, as sales will be capped by the difficulty.
For some reason, you seem to assume that all miners are idiots, and won't take difficulty increases and price drops into account. As the ROI is stretched to longer periods, you WILL see a decrease in the number of purchases, as no one wants to hold on to a risky, volatile asset for a length period of time in the hopes that it will pay off. But BEFORE it reaches the point of being unable to return on the investment at all, people will stop buying them.
I hold to the position that, as long as BTC price doesn't drop significantly, ALL ASICs that are purchased will eventually pay back. It might take a while, depending on the price point at which they are purchased and such, but the market can judge at what point the risk outweighs the potential revenue, and at what point the ROI is not worth the investment.