I was speaking hypothetically in the realm of "if BFL was able to ship right now in volume"
This would rely on the assumption of two things: that they could fill their existing orders of $125/$275 quickly, and that every new order placed could be priced at roughly 14-15x the current price - and people would pay it (following that people paid that much per mh/s on the USB miners)
It's very simple to logically believe that IF BFL could ship right now, they would, because they would have a monopoly on ASIC sales given their hash rates... and they could charge a LOT more for each unit.
The money they could make in BTC a day would be nothing compared to the $ they could be bringing in and then just converting to BTC
Sure, assuming they could price their product 15x and ship in bulk right now, then they would be better off shipping product. However, I don't believe they can do either.
The ASICMiner product is not really competitive. Even so, it and the Avalon chip sails have already sucked up a lot of capital that would have otherwise gone to BFL. Also, both products are being sold at inflated prices. If BFL actually enters the market, Avalon and ASICMiner could revise their prices down to compete.
But they're not capable of or willing to ship in quantity either. A couple hundred units from Avalon? So what? They aren't capable or or interested in shipping in quantity.
1 Avalon unit is 66GH/s, more than 10x the performance of 1 BFL Jalapeno (the only BFL unit that has left their facility). Each Avalon unit has 3x88 chips in it (IIRC) so that is (300 batch 1 units + 300 batch 2 units ) x (3 x 88) = 158,400 chips. That is volume. Also, they have sold another 400,000+ chips to the DIY and group buy crowd. That is shipping ASICs in volume. BFL by contrast has moved maybe 3 dozen ASIC chips.
And neither is ASIC Miner. They've said several times that the only reason they're actually selling at all, is that they can't bring more equipment online until there's mor hashing power out there, to prevent 51% of network share. So they're only selling in the mean time. Once BFL comes online, full-force, Avalon is toast, because they can't produce at speed or quantity, and ASIC Miner are gonners too, because they don't even want to be in the retail game in the first place.
BFL miners compete with both ASICMiner retail and ASICMiner mining operation. So the ROI on BFL units does not distinguish between ASICMiner chips.
If BFL starts shipping in quantity, difficulty is going to SKYROCKET, and that will create even MORE demand for their product. Anybody who spends more than a few cursory seconds on this realizes that there's WAY MORE money in selling the 'shovels' than there is in mining.
Guaranteed, there's nobody who wants BFL up and producing (and shipping) at maximum capacity more than BFL does.
The facts do not bear out your statement. $2700 per day per 500GH/s for mining in the short term vs $5000 to $10000 profit per 500GH/s selling. It makes more sense to mine first, then ship. Only after the difficulty rises or the price of USD/BTC falls will the tide shift. Don't forget, BFL can mine and ship, they do not have to choose one or the other.
Per chip "quantity" isn't relevant to tapping the market, because the majority of the market doesn't need or want an $8000 mining machine that consumes 5 times as much power and costs 2-4 times as much to purchase. ROI on BFL units does not distringuish between ASICMiner chips? What does that even mean? ASICMINER will NOT be selling units, as soon as they've got some competition. Meaning the ONLY "ROI" that will be factored will be the buyers of BFL (and a few Avalon) units.
What do you mean it makes more sense to mine first and then ship?
Mine with how much, for how long? If they're mining, where is the hashing power hiding out? Where's your evidence that they are (or even intend to) mine with their customers' products before shipping them?
Shy of having direct proof that such is or will occur, there now is a way for BFL to mine with their units prior to shipping undetected. How? Since a myriad of other ASIC-base miners are in the wild, they can easily connect to other reputable pools not their own anonymously, get paid bitcoins from various sources. There would be no way to track them short of the pool owner(s) disclosing private information like an IP address, etc.
Xian, how BFL found out your order details? I mean dude, what do you thinking when writing post in such tone if you knew they know your info and that they could easilly do this?
I made the mistake of thinking they wouldn't stoop to that level. It's non-trivial for BFL to link this username to their customer database. Another mistake of mine for using this moniker.
It's telling that they decided to punish me for calling their COO out on admitting these forums were not important to their business, along with other vitriolic nonsense. I guess that was another lie as apparently these forums are important enough to cancel disgruntled former customers' order, for expressing their displeasure.
It's almost like they have something to hide, and I just can't get the image of Josh Zerlan as "The Soup Nazi" out of my mind.
*shrugs*
If you happened to bug the shit out of BFL via emails, then I could possibly see a slight reason for their actions. But if you're telling me that you only once or trice complained via email, but they reversed engineered your user account ID on this forum (and/or possibly their's) because of your critical posts toward them, then BFL has severe mental issues.
That tells me that they took the time and energy that could have been used elsewhere to punish you by refunding your money, and now they don't have to worry about the trade in you were planning on sending them (gleaned from your post history).
Please enlighten me as to which is the case: too many emails to them or they purposely hunted you down. Please be as straight up as possible with your answer, bud.
Also, aren't there several others hyper-critical of BFL who have orders on the books? Aren't they, too, now is danger of having their order(s) canceled simple due to their post history?