Topic: I ordered a BFL 50GHs - and THEN did the ROI math... (Read 1561 times)

True.

Right, but you have to compare it to how many coins you could just buy outright for that investment.  Apples to apples.  If I could buy 25 coins for 2500 vs. how many coins can we mine?  It all depends on that ramp up of total hash rate.  I'll break even on my box but a few months out, it might no longer cover the cost of electricity.

Well, you could ebay the miner once you get it.

In the long run, you might still be profitable. There was a time when GPU mining was not profitable (if you immediately wanted to sell the coins) but if you hold on to the coins, it might be worth it later.

http://www.btcguild.com/index.php?page=pool_stats

I didn't see that they were only going to add 1.5.   But hard to imagine they're particularly constrained for any reason.   The avalon/bfl folks have to deal with all that shipping nonsense, whereas ASICMiner can just ramp up as fast as possible.

Good try.

Aren't they only saying that they're going to add another 1.5THs in the near term?  The BFL equipment will add 1000's.  And if you order a unit today by the time it ships the network could be 1000THs.

From the calculations in my blog...

http://mineshaft.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/growingHashrate.png

Yah, I don't think BFL will be the problem, I think it'll be ASIC Miner that will probably develop some pretty massive hash rates pretty soon.

Thanks.  I have a couple of other posts I'm working on.  I redid the growth rate at a weekly basis, added in the BFL reported initial ship date and the fact that they're saying that all current orders will be shipped by June - to estimate the flow of new ASICs.  For that one we just used the assumption of the mid-line from all of these calculations.  And then charted it.  When I have time I'll post the rest.

Here's the one take away though.  For 2500$ you could purchase X BTC today, right?  Today that would be about 25 bitcoins.  So the break even point on the cost of the miner is 25 bitcoins.  But your time, effort, and electricity have to be worth something too.  If over the life of the miner you can't break even on all of that combined, you might as well just purchase the coins outright and watch movies.

I find the whole thing very interesting.  Because the whole market of BFL miners was that for a relatively low cost you can process a lot of hashes.  But then if everyone buys them, at a fairly quick point they become worth less than that low cost.  BFL responded to the frenzy by doubling the price.  But by our estimated this only encouraged more people (including me) to buy.

Here's a good question...  Would BFL be willing to tell us the total number of THs in all of their orders?  Because this directly relates to the value of their boxes.  If not, why not?  Avalon didn't hide how many THs they were going to be adding to the network.  They let the community know.  But BFL isn't talking.  Their silence makes some think they're not going to ship anything.  I don't believe this.  I think they'll actually ship in a couple of weeks.  I think they are silent because they know they've already reached the saturation point.  And coming out with the info now would stop their sales and maybe get some sales cancelled.

My theory is that instead of saying "hey stop buying" they raised the price to try to get people to stop buying.  But it sort of backfired in one way and not in another, because orders shot up from 600 a day to 1000 a day.  Maybe they need to double the prices again.

Thanks for your work and thoughts on this trance. Will look forward to your analysis as the days and weeks go on, because I'm sure you can start comparing the daily hash rates and see just how quickly they increase and once you've got that statistic plotted you can overlay that to your numbers and see a few things; like: "Does the hash rate increase seem to match your proposed new ASICs influx?" or "Does the influx of new GPU miners account for the more gradual build in the hash rate"?

Wishing you the best!

I like your approach. You are a very scientific person

I hope that BFL ASICs is the big scam I think it is and the hash rates will stay down for a bit. That would mean GPU's are in for awhile longer...

That was a very interesting read.

Thanks 

never mind you addressed this in your webpage I decided to actually start reading the whole thing lol

Thats if you get one right out of the blocks.  Take into consideration the large amount of ASICs that will be sent and will be mining (if BFL ever ships anything).  This means the difficulty is going to skyrocket.  If you get one in the "gold rush" period youll make alot of money.

I wanted to post this in a more appropriate place but I don't have the forum cred to do it yet.  Admin feel free to validate me and move it where it should go.
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I should have probably done the proper math before ordering the miner.  But instead I did some quick calculator math and thought that I'd be able to mine a reasonable amount of coins with a 50GHs Butterfly Labs box.  So I placed my order.  THEN I did the full math.  Wow what a difference.

I just started a blog this week where me and a buddy or two will post our mining experiences.  I posted my first round of math there and all the info that backs up my conclusion.  Please check it out and give me your feedback here.

http://mineshaft.me/2013/04/initial-roi-estimates/

Thanks!  Looking forward to the discussion.