Sustainable mining in the long run, but in the short run a KnC delivered in Oct will likely pay itself off before Cointerra even ships.
Agreed on this point. However even if KNC does ship in Oct if someone hasn't already ordered and did so today they would be lucky to get theirs by November. Even a small delay and it could easily be December.
So for those who ALREADY have a KNC order well there is absolutely no reason to cancel and buy one from Cointerra. Those who don't already have a unit? Neither look particularly attractive.
Now if KNC drops the price for future sales and gives a firm commitment for Nov delivery well that might be different. It will be interesting to see how the different players try to maneuver around. Only so much capacity can be sold before we hit break even on electrical cost so there is some strategy on how companies will handle sales. You can keep your prices high but if another player sells units then the difficulty is going up regardless and your units just become even less attractive. On the other hand since only so much capacity can be sold you don't want to cut margins to the bone.
Once we get to the the point where electricity is the main cost, then prices ill have to be much lower. Like $1/Gh or less for people to buy them.
Not sure on this point. If units were shipping in volume with no/short backorders I would agree but I wonder how much hashing power has already been preordered?
500TH/s? 1 PH/s? 5 PH/s?
In other words lets pretend that every single unit people have paid for is delivered tomorrow. What will the network hashrate be? Ironically long delays to delivery are good for those selling ASICs and bad for those buying them because the committed but not yet deployed hashing power WILL eventually raise difficulty but it isn't visible in the current difficulty. That makes units look cheaper than they already are.