Any thoughts of how the MPP might lick our wounds?
I agree with Cevadid analysis upthread. Essentially the MPP will be +400% hashing power but hashing power alone is irrelevant. What matters is hashing power / current difficulty. If difficulty growth averages ~27% per adjustment then difficulty will roughly quadruple between 1 Jan and 1 March. So 4x the hashrate for "free" but at 4x the difficulty means the additional hashrate will produce ~ the same amount of BTC (before electrical cost which is now 400% as much) as the original unit did.
TL/DR the MPP will probably roughly double your lifetime revenue (whatever that might be).
In Cevadid numbers it comes out to ~9 BTC for a BabyJet and ~8 BTC more for the MPP in lifetime revenue.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3932737Now like any projection the output is based on the input so a couple caveats:
a) It assumes you have your Batch 1 rig delivered on 01/01/2014. A delay means less revenue and an "early" delivery means more revenue (~0.2 BTC lost/gained per day before/after 01/01).
b) It assumes you have your MPP delivered on 03/01/2014. A delay means less revenue and an "early" delivery means more revenue (~0.2 BTC lost/gained per day before/after 03/01).
c) It assumes that difficulty growth will average 27% per adjustment at least in the short term. In reality difficulty can't keep doubling every month forever but so much of the revenue is front loaded that difficulty slowing 6 months out doesn't have much of an effect. By Oct you are down to 0.1 BTC anyways so lets say difficult slowed to only 10% per adjustment and thus doubling every three months. That would only add another 0.6 BTC lifetime revenue. Still if you want to be a little more hopefully you can probably pad Cevadid's numbers by 1 maybe 2 BTC so say 20 BTC total for original unit & MPP.
d) The MPP is completed boards only. So you will still need to supply a case/rack/frame/cardboard box, power supply, some controller (rPi, BBB, dedicated atom based system, or your home PC/laptopt would work fine), and cooling system (Corsair HydroCool is retail version of loops that HF is using). So there is some additional expense, but the parts are "off the shelf" and shouldn't be too expensive. I estimate maybe $600 (for 4 boards, 1,600 TH/s using 1400W or so) if you are a DIYer. Not sure if HF will supply kits but I would just buy parts yourself and have them ship "naked boards". I wish I could do that for the ordered product as well.
Hey HF how about you ship me just the boards on my Batch 1 order and refund $500? I mean in BTC terms you still come out ahead (I paid ~50 BTC so 0.5 BTC refnd would be 1%
).
e) If you wanted to wash your hands of the whole thing the value of the MPP really just depends on what you think you can sell the boards for in March. What will (ready to ship not pre-order) mining hardware be worth in March? 2 mBTC per GH/s? Well that would be 1,600 * 2 /1000 = 3.2 BTC. 3 mBTC per GH/s? That would be 4.8 BTC.
f) Of course all this assumes HF can actually deliver, doesn't go bankrupt, or the chips have some as of yet unannounced flaw. At this point nothing really would surprise me.
g) (only if you want to hope against hope and have your heart crushed by the HF sledgehammer again) technically the MPP should be delivered by in Feb not March. HF has such a bad track record to date I think March ("only" a 30 day delay) is more realistic but difficulty is going up so fast if they actually got their act together and did something to ease the pain of their customers (which built the company BTW) a delivery on time would roughly double the lifetime revenue from the MPP (16 BTC vs 8 BTC)
http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/a/0eea988786. A delivery "early" when the ship Batch 1 order on or around 1 January would double that again to ~32 BTC. If you consider 8 BTC for the original unit that puts lifetime revenue around 40 BTC and the closest anyone could hope for break even. Of course HF won't be doing that but dreams are nice.
* since revenue is front loaded the first 3 months are the most important. If difficulty grows ~27% for 3 months then slows down it won't matter much. Difficulty can't keep growing exponentially forever but lifetime revenue is so front loaded the difficulty falling off or even flatlining for some time doesn't really matter if it is on the tail end of the curve.