The better long term investment is always a GPU rig. ASIC's are at best a short term investment where you hope to make ROI before they become obsolete. Even if BTC goes to $50K, once the new more powerful ASIC's come out, your S9 becomes a door stop overnight. Especially with BTC, which is dominated by huge players with cheap electric. Even if ETH tanks to $150, you can still mine other coins, turn off the rig until it becomes profitable again or resell the hardware to recoup most of your investment.
I hear this argument alot, but it seems like the S9 has been out for a long long time hasn't it? It seems whoever got in on it is making a very nice profit now.
You hear it alot because that has mostly been the case for as long as gpu rigs and ASIC's have been around. You can't just look back at this year, if anything that's even more reason to go with a rig. The last time GPU mining became unprofitable was at the end of 2014 when ASIC's and multi-pools took over when the marketcap was less than $5B. Those with rigs that kept mining at a loss made the up it 1000's of times and they can still mine profitably today, while the ASIC's from back then have long been sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
You are wrong now.
Basically gpus were state of the art and using current chips.
Asics were several generations behind. with the s-9 the asics are now using state of the art chips so they won’t go out of date quickly. My batch 1 s-9 is still working. June 2016 to dec 2017.
All ASIC's are sate-of-the-art when they come out and become obsolete once better manufacturing technics become available. It's true the first BTC ASIC's had lots of room for improvement in chip density. Current chip manufacturing technology has reached a limit as to how small it can go, but as soon as improvements are made, as they always are, the S9 will become obsolete just like all the one's before it. At least now you might be able to mine some BTC chain forks. A new GPU rig from today will be able to mine profitably for much longer than a S9 bought today and as such, is a better long term investment.
