Just a point.. the average investor would kill to get their entire investment back in 1 year.. just saying.
With bitcoin mining, you either break even in a few months, or you never will. With "average" investments, you may have to wait longer, but eventually you'll break even.
^that is not at all true. 6 months ago it looked like antminers and anything drawing >1w/GH would be useless by now. however, it now looks like they have another 4-8 months of profitable lifespan ahead of them.
additionally untrue is your second statement. not all investment vehicles break even. equipment can burn out or break, the market can change, or the value of your product can dive. There is never a guarenteed break-even. but bitcoin miners stand a good chance
You can construct any fantasy you wish and justify it by examining a time frame where bitcoin exchange rates increased by a factor of 15.
The reality Syke is explaining to you is that in the current environment a miner earns as much BTC in the first 60 days of operation as it will in the remaining life of the machine. If you don't break even in that time frame, odds are you will never see a reasonable risk adjusted return on the investment.
And bitcoin is as likely to return to $20 / bitcoin as it is to revisit $1200.
clearly there are miners who think otherwise in order to be buying all the current equipment to the point of batches being sold out.
I am not talking about bitcoin going to $3000 or $7000. Im talking about bitcoin rebounding to $700 which I think is a totally fair value to use in my calculations, and with difficulty starting to taper a bit (we were doing 30% jumps back in november) towards 15%/jump average over the last month, I see a window to make a 10-20% gain per machine by the late 2014 (breakeven around july/august, 120% by november) and with a $10,000 investment that is a pretty good outcome.
bigger picture - im bullish. I think we are right near the bottom of the charts right now (might push to $525 at the lowest) and that a rebound to $650 will happen in the next 14 days, and sometime around may/june we could rally back past $1000. if this happens the bitcoins invested/mined will be worth even more than the power costs.
^yes, that last statement is speculation. But if it comes true, my 20% gains will be much closer to 30-40% gains. Not bad for a 6-10 month investment