those guys are just grasping for straws right now, offloading as much risk as possible to the suc..err buyers, given the difficulty gap.
ladies & gents we are now finally in the endgame, expect to see many asic hardware manufacturer to start losing money by next year and fold shop. unless you have a very thoroughly understanding of what is going on and what is happening in the next few months, your best bet is just to buy bitcoins directly instead of asic hardware if want to be in the game. Personally i am just holding cash and waiting.
By fold up shop you mean mine like hell, right? :-)
I mean the r&d, manufacturing, and shipping cost basis of those hardware will no longer support a profit with the difficulty increase and instead cost more than income. Look at the asic blades, their cost basis is probably 1-2 btc, it was selling for 50 btc, now it's around 4 btc. In a few months this will no longer be profitable to manufacture.
Now look at a new manufacturer such as cointerra who has not made any profit yet from the first few asic waves like am already done, they are just hitting the market at those stressed prices to begin with and the situation will only get worse, for them it's not only the hardware cost but also the r&d cost. Yes the chips will be cheaper to make as they pack more gh, but the endgame is still bleak with THs of difficulty all coming online from various late comers trying to make the final wave.
Bitfury barely made it in to squeeze out a good profit, anything new coming out dec+ will have a very difficult time unless btc/usd increases drastically which looks doubtful.
The writing is on the walls.
EDIT: for anyone confused i am talking about asic manufacturers only in above post, for small retail miners the game is already up.
I'm going to have to disagree on several points.
First, the cost to manufacture chips is pretty miniscule. The initial cost is development, and making the mask. Once that's done, it's pretty much just the cost of the silicon and the manufacturing run. Once the NRE is out of the way, they can lower their prices substantially. If they are smart, they will do it incrementally in response to market conditions, thus making enough profit to repeat the cycle on a higher order chip next time round without having to do the pre order thing. Face it, AMD, Intel, and their ilk are NOT selling 'obsolete' chips at a loss. They have recovered their R&D costs and have continued to manufacture the chip on it's actual cost basis, then market it for what they can get. I doubt they ever get below 100 percent markup over all costs before discontinuing a line.
As for the game being up for the small operator?
I think not. I think the game for the small operator RIGHT NOW is wait and see. You are looking at an arms race for who can deliver better, faster, and cheaper $/BTC/
per GH/s or even TH/s. Sit and wait a few months and you'll see all sorts of first gen hardware in the secondary market for satoshis on the BTC initial price. Just like in the PC world, today's Badass is tomorrow's dumpster treasure. If you can get it damn near free, it WLL give you a positive ROI fairly quickly unless the cost of electricity skyrockets. Every gamer, whether in business, life, or chess, has to be able to adapt to changes in the game. This one has so many variables that I think there are still many MANY winning strategies for the little guy. You just have to fake patience.
