aerobatic, Competitor pricing is irrelevant to my statement that Cointerra is overpriced.
I will sell you 4 TH in December of 2017 for $13,999 if you pay now. Now I have the cheapest offering $/GH, half the price of Cointerra, what a great deal! Of course, it is not a good deal and even more overpriced. Difficulty at the time you receive the unit must be weighed in to your equation as well as buyer protection and other factors.
Their policy so far allows them to miss their advertised deadline by a big margin, which could very well be the difference between profitability and loss for the miners. It is not protection at all and, in my opinion, should either be done away with or strengthened if they want to advertise a protection plan. They do not even get their chips until December. A lot can and has gone wrong after that stage. How many months did Avalon and BFL have chips prior to shipping "en masse"? These things need to be considered by an investor.
When they launched, a unit cost about 150 BTC. A week later calculations showed a loss of $4,000+ if you bought one. In all of my preorders, NONE has ever shown a loss (or even close) when calculating shipping on time. I'll bet all of the other equipment you say you bought showed the potential of remarkable returns if shipped on time. Cointerra does not even have that potential unless you are counting on difficulty slowing down, which is, in my opinion, not a smart thing to bet on between now and whenever a Cointerra hits your doorstep.
I'm not trying to hate. I want several of these, I just believe that miners will need more meat on the bone to gamble on Cointerra. Cointerra seems far riskier than even Avalon's hyper-inflated batch 3 units.
My point is that the past is the past and you should let go of it now. Its too late to go back in time and buy some hardware miners that were previously incredibly good deals because the network hashrate was low at that time.
we're not talking about a distant future offering thats cheaper than current competitors. we're talking about similar products from similar companies in a similar timeframe, and even factoring in the discount or net diff rise, you can compare to some extent the price per GH between one company and another.
But today, we are in a different landscape. The days have long gone of 10 or 20 day roi. And all of the mining companies are out in the marketplace selling hardware for nov/dec (or beyond) deliveries at this point. Its almost impossible to buy any hardware at a reasonable price for delivery any time before nov/dec, and when i say reasonable price, i mean absolutely extortionately expensive.
And my point is that for the nov/dec delivery dates, the cointerra products seem well priced simply because they are the lowest $/GH for delivery in december. You cant argue with that? saying that you dont want to buy in december is a luxury that many people dont have. Some people, in fact, many people DO want to buy in december. For some, its adding to their fleet of existing miners, of which their re-investment policy dictates they keep buying new hardware to stay ahead. For others, its getting into mining for the first time. Either way, there WILL be people buying mining hardware in december, and there will be people looking at the different options available to them and deciding which is the best value.
no one can argue that if you go back in time, you can buy avalons or even bfls (if you ever got any.. im still waiting for mine!) that are much more expensive per GH, but because the net hash rate was lower, that they are actually more profitable than anything you can buy today. its nice to wear rose tinted glasses and fondly remember the recent past when mining was insanely profitable.
but, on the assumption that we are where we are today, and anyone who wants to buy NEW mining gear, will be buying in today's landscape, then your options are limited to those that are delivering in the nov/dec timeframe. And of those, well, im just saying, that even though its a december delivery, a 2 TH box for $14k is actually pretty good value compared to a November delivery of a 400 GH hashfast at $5800 or a knc box at $5000, or a Feb delivery BFL 400 GH box thats $3900. you do the math and it really doesnt work out that expensive when you take into account what else is available.
or, are you saying that no one is going to buy any more mining gear, ever, just because the net hash rate is continually rising?
changing the subject slightly... i do not agree with the simplistic forecasting tools that many people are using. the ones that just look at the last 30, 60 or 90 days, and see what % the net has grown, and then multiply through that percentage for every month for the rest of the next 12 months. Thats just insane forecasting. We're in a transition here. The network is transitioning from gpus & fpgas to 1st gen asics, and then from 1st asics to fast asics which have a huge leap in performance this latter part of the year. once all the fast asics are in use and we have say 4 or 5 petahash on the network at year end, there is absolutely no way that the network can keep doubling every month forevermore. do the math, dont blindly watch your mining calculator double the net hash rate every month for a year, cos we both know that is physically and mathematically impossible. The people who claim the network will be a trillion in 2014 are deluding themselves. a trillion difficulty is 7,000 Petahash. Just who is going to make 7,000 petahash in a year? and who, more importantly, will pay for 7,000 petahash to be made? its insane to think that just cos we've had a very quick growth spurt, that it will continue at the same rate ad infinitum. it cant possibly!
ergo, people will still want to keep buying mining gear for the forseeable future. but mining gear is sold at market prices.. ie: the market - the customers - decide the price. its not sold at cost, clearly, and its not even sold at cost plus margin. its simply sold at market price. And the market price is probably at a price thats a chunk less than the asic companies could make for themselves doing solo mining with their own progeny instead of selling their mining hardware. otherwise why would they sell their hardware if they would make more, by not selling it ? everyone is rational in this market. the mining hardware companies will only build, and sell hardware that they have paid customers for, and the customers will only buy if they think its profitable. the minute it stops being profitable, everything will slow down (or even reverse). And of course the ones who will sell for the highest prices to end users are probably the ones that have already made their fortune earlier this year (avalon, asicminer, bfl and to some extent knc). its the new 'hungry' guys like bitfury, hashfast and cointerra that HAVE to sell their hardware at a more competitive price, because they dont have the luxury of having already made a fortune in the previous generation.
-- Jez