Well that email is quite the confidence boost... Let's buy some PETA shares... NOT
I used to own some PETA shares. I bought into the original business model, where part of the mining income was reinvested for future equipment. This made a lot of sense to me, since I was planning to keep this as a long-term investment. Unfortunately, the difficulty rose relatively quickly, mining income was falling, the share price was falling, and the operating costs and loan still had to be paid. If the loan had been paid off as scheduled, there would not be enough significant income to save up for future equipment. Being able to purchase replacement equipment is required to sustain the mining operation. As a result, I don't think shareholders will ever break even unless CRYPTX reveals a good new business plan.
In my own situation, my PETA investment had lost 50% of its value, and I didn't even buy the IPO! I ran the numbers on July 16th to project the sum of all future dividends. That number was lower than the value of my shares at the time (0.00262BTC), so I sold them. I know that some shareholders hope that the PETA share price will rise again, but in the long-term, the value of owning the mining power of 1GH/s will continue to decrease as difficulty increases, especially now that the share price is directly tied to owning 1GH/s of mining power. Also, the share price does not include operating costs, which are deducted from the daily dividend.
I looked into buying mining equipment, but that costs 2USD per GH, plus shipping, plus electricity, plus having to monitor equipment. More importantly, it didn't look profitable (
https://tradeblock.com/mining/ ). Someone mining at home is at a disadvantage to those who purchase equipment at volume discounts and operate it in a data center in an area with cheaper electricity.
I was about to give up on Bitcoin mining altogether, but then I found a cloud mining company that offered an excellent deal. For 0.0029BTC a GH/s (currently 1.71USD), you could buy a 5 year mining contract with all expenses included. In other words, you pay a flat upfront fee which includes all operating costs, and then you harness the full power of the mining equipment. The weekly dividend that I receive is exactly what Bitcoin Wisdom projects.
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficultyHere is a comparison between PETA's dividends versus the cloud mining contract dividends for the period of July 27th-today, August 11th:
PETA: 0.00022992BTC
Mining Contract: 0.00042905BTC
If I controlled 2,000GH/s, my dividends for the period would be:
PETA: 0.46BTC
Mining Contract: 0.85BTC (that's 86% more)
Let's do a quick comparison of PETA vs the cloud mining company:
Buy 2,000 shares at 0.00188 on 7/27 = 3.76BTC (in reality, the shares were worth at least 0.00285 on that date)
Amount of dividends to expect through 8/10/15, assuming difficulty increases 13% every 2 weeks, and that PETA fees also decrease 13% every 2 weeks (unlikely): 3.46BTC
Loss from holding onto PETA shares: 0.3BTC (or more)
Buy 2,000GH/s cloud mining contract at 0.0029 on 7/27 = 5.8BTC
Amount of dividends to expect through 8/10/15, assuming difficulty increases 13% every 2 weeks: 6.44BTC
Profit from contract: 0.64BTC
