... 1. they can raise from private investors.. in which case they wont be selling their asics as its more profitable to mine with them.. ...
Sorry for nitpicking, but selling chips is more profitable than mining. AsicMiner is case in point, with business model involving sales of demonstrably unprofitable gear.
thats ok to nitpick. i really dont think its as clear cut as that.
if you are building a secret mine.. your boxes dont need to be user friendly. they may not need their own controllers or power supplies cos you can build out shared facilities. they might not even be air cooled.. as you can use facilities' water to cool them externally.
building a secret mine, you dont need a sales department nor a customer support department. you need minimal skeleton staff to keep your mine running and you dont need any externally facing employees at all.
building a secret mine, you can overclock and overdrive your own hardware much harder than you would allow a customer to do it.. since if it blows up, its your own fault and you can take the risks you wouldnt let your customers take. In fact, the hardware can be more bare bones... you may not even need a case for it.. you can simply slot bare boards in racks.
and ultimately, selling hardware requires you to have a markup to justify selling it. whereas, if you are buying at cost price, you get to mine at a lower cost.
thus, i argue that operating a secret mine could well be more profitable and controllable, than taking pre-orders and selling boxes to customers. It all depends on how easily you can sell and at what price you can sell to customers. Since Cointerra is selling their TH's at a lower price than anyone else, i think its safe to say that they arent making the same profit per box that the other guys are selling, so you cant exactly accuse them of profiteering.. can you !?
(edit) Actually, to nitpick a bit further and take your words literally, you said Selling CHIPS was more profitable.. and i think thats the key. Selling CHIPS is indeed much more profitable. But most of the new guys dont sell chips... or, tried and didnt find traction.. maybe these new 28nm chips are too complex and require too sophisticated a board.. or maybe they need to try harder, as clearly, if they were to sell chips, they dont have the huge box costs associated with them and its a much better business to sell chips than to sell fully built working boxes.