Topic: Is it even worth it to buy/order an ASIC single now? (Read 13881 times)

I think it is worth it

Yeah, well they are giving Beta software too much credit too, which is how this whole thing with trying to build an economy out of an experimental proof of concept happened in the first place.

I think individuals are giving Beta silicon too much credit.It "MIGHT" happen but it will definitely take time and several willing "beta-testers" before anything is taken seriously.I think if one is wise into holding onto BTC one should not also be in a rush to adopt another way of mining for it as well.

I think they will come out.  When? I have no idea.  I didn't have the money to pre order one of the medium/higher rate ASIC's and now I don't want to invest in any till we see how well/reliably they work.

My hope is to have a medium rate device that can operate unattended for years at a time without having to worry about it.  GPU's certainly did not live up that that kind of standard but my hope is that one generation of ASIC will.

Does anyone have an idea/theory how long and reliably one of the FPGA devices would have worked?
Sam

I'm the original poster, and went back to see old threads. This post started in September 2012 and here we are, end of January 2013 and those good ol' ASIC's aren't even tangible yet. It does still amaze me how long people will wait while someone has their money. Seriously, everyone think the ASIC's will even come out before March 2013? And if you are solely responding to the information you get from BFL, well then, that doesn't say much right now.

@OP
I don't think its worth it to buy now...

No matter how you twist it though, ASIC will happen.

I agree that the timing may/will be off by a few months but it will happen.

As for an ASIC flooding market, this will exclusively depend of the value of BTC as said in my previous post. On a mid term perspective it should at least double to ~$20/BTC but this would be logical and as many of us realized by now, the market is often irrational.

Al lot of writing and u are completly right.. only IF ASIC,s are for real..and deliverd in 3 or 5 months ..there is still zero proof out there and it is already November....

ASIC fabs promise to make 900 devices a day.. . so if u jump in after u be good to... without the risk of getting ripped of..

The ones with the most money to invest will keep doing the most BTC.. not the early adopter...getting some titbits..

The ones with the big GPU farms have the means to change to big ASIC farms when needed.
They have the space and place to get even more devices hanged on the net, with less electr. costs
They are formiliar with hardware and software issues big time
They will try the keep getting the most shares
They will be on top after the big ASIC rush, fever or what ever ..

IN 3 OR 5 MONTHS AS U SAY IT WILL BE SAME HAVING A GPU@800MH NOW VS ASIC@60GH then.

So not that much is changing besides the network security...right??   

I disagree with these earlier statements. I think that ASIC adopters will, in the end, be the only one hashing away by the end of 2013 if they play their card right by reinvesting judiciously their earnings. Sure, late comer will join the group but this will come at a cost. It is not like ASIC miners are going to drop in price! There is no economic reason this would occur, if only it will go up. GPU mining will be dead as it will simply be impossible to keep up with ASIC rigs for their huge Hash/$/kW. Even if somebody with a large GPU farm would be able to increase its Hash rate 10 fold for free, the electricity consumption would make no sense.

As of today, there will be approximately between 100 to 200 Th of power added to the bitcoin network in the next 3-5 months (this is 5 to 10 times the current network strength with a 3 million difficulty). With the difficulty increasing to at least 10-25 million and the reward halving, the only viable option will be ASIC. Anything below 50-200 Gh/s rig will be irrelevant.

Anyway, while all this is predictable, the BTC exchange rate is not. And this is where the whole story will be decided. In the end, the number of people joining, after the early adopters, will be directly correlated to BTC value to other currencies. If it increases, then you are going to have some very profitable operations and more people purchasing ASIC rigs. If it drops, ASIC early adopters will be the only one mining away until BTC price increase again.

As always, time will tell.

At this point I am waiting on the sidelines. BFL turned me off with their lack of information and bASIC failed to release any information when they stated they would. I've sold off most of the GPUs and am just running enough GPUs and FPGAs to heat the apartment for this winter.

I'll wait to see the fallout of the ASIC releases and perhaps pick up some miners from whichever company has the best offer. In the meantime I'll keep checking my btc balance and crossing my fingers that the price increases a bit in the next few months. Daddy wants another car.

Yep. It seems to me that mining business is currently overcrowded - lots of folks jumped in driven by simple excitement about ASICs, without due dilligence. There will only be 25 coins every 10 minutes to compete for. Soon, the weak will realize what they've got themselves into, and start selling off their ASIC rigs to minimize the losses. Interesting thing about ASICs is that, for the first time, we've got a mining technology that is absolutely exclusive to mining, and cannot be resold or repurposed for other applications. Therefore, difficulty will never decrease like it used to in the past when GPUs were sold off to gamers, and now that FPGAs can be repurposed (at least in theory). ASICs will simply change hands and keep hashing.

OpenCL on Altera FPGAs is in beta.

I'm a newswriter for a popular technology website, and we're running a report on exactly this topic. If you're a long-time miner who's either getting into FPGAs and ASICs, or one who's thinking about dropping out of mining because of them please contact me, as we're looking for interviews.

Thanks!

PS. We take anonymity very seriously.

you are late.. you know that.. so i say just wait untill they are out there in the wild and not just in an nice marketing concept or you WILL lose money u cannot afford..

OpenCL is purely graphics.  No other processing device of any kind can touch a GPU's performance on it.  They specifically designed their FPGAs and ASICs to not be able to crack passwords.  They'd need to design a brand new ASIC specifically for password cracking and they're not going to do that.

P.S. ASIC = Application-specific integrated circuit (it's designed to have 1 specific application and password cracking isn't it)

I'm thinking of buying an ASIC single. I'd probably do so today if I could find a use for the unit outside of mining for bitcoin, however, BFL's website seems to suggest that these things will never run opencl.

Just BTW, I'm more interested in getting a function like parcellfun to run faster than in cracking passwords.

So, if you know of any asic's that are developing for opencl, I'm all ears.

Otherwise, it just seems like too much risk at the moment.

Yes, but the timescale is not as critical as I used to think.

covering your costs/obligations is to be expected.

I've thought about this and was initially obsessed with the notion of obtaining the shortest possible break-even period in strictly fiat terms, since the interest on my debts is about 1,5%/month on the ASIC miners. But in the longer-term, grander scheme of things it doesn't really matter that much: what matters is the investment in Bitcoin because I believe in it. If it develops positively - and with portals like Bitpay expanding, among others, things are looking positive - the exchange rate, rather, purchasing power of a BTC should rise so much that mining BTC will obviously be profitable (even while paying 1,5%/month on debts incurred to invest in ASIC mining!).

Like a few have already said, a major future regret could well be having sold out too many BTC into bankster paper far too cheaply. I'll try my best to follow Charles Vollum's advice of not being obsessed with fiat as a reference point, and take it from there. I really like RodeoX's attitude of never even dreaming of selling out to the banksters below $100/BTC.

ETA: essentially, it's clear Bitcoin is not just a "get rich quick scheme". But this is the point: it's not meant to be. It's just sound money. If any of us are, or become rich from it, well, that's a fringe benefit I guess. After all, it's only money.

YMMV.

(1) SOMEONE is going to get the idea to invest a hundreds of thousands of dollars and will drive up difficulty if someone has not already sunk that money in.

(2) Reward assumes price will hold steady or go up when reward is cut in half. Logic would dictate as supply dwindles and demand increases, price goes up. However, that's just nonsense as there are many outside effects that can occur to a money system and affects on users of a money system. Since users do not rely on logic but a mixture of logic and feeling, basic economic principles of value do not apply without lots of leeway.

(3) What are the market manipulators attempting to do?

Figure out number three and then you'll know what action to take.

(4) Opportunity cost is the way to determine worth. What is your goal in buying the ASIC single? To mine bitcoin, to make money on bitcoin, or to be "cool" or what? That's how you determine whether something is worth it.

This.

...people with very little money, people that don't know bettah, people that are just getting their nose wet with mining, people that don't pay for electricity, people that live in cold climates...

Sure, but there was no technological jump ahead as with the ASIC. Back then difficulty actually dropped for a while.

This next transition will be a totally different ball game and is reminiscent of the CPU to GPU switch. Who mines with CPU these days?

I made 2-3x the money by not doing that when the GH/s fell like crazy, I was still at it "mining at a loss" as they said but then I held the BTC from $3.50-ish to $5.22 and sold em should have held em until $12 but after the majority of a year at about $4, I figured $5.22 was the best I could hope for.  That did prove to be true for a couple months at least

You could have made the same and probably higher profit without mining and simply by purchasing some bitcoin and selling them at a later point.

Even if the price of bitcoin increases (as it should overall over the next years), GPU mining will still be less profitable (if at all, and I doubt this very much) than ASIC. The main question is how long would you mine at a loss.

Personally, as soon as GPU mining is non-profitable I would immediately switch off my equipment.

I was mining when the price was $2.50, cuz by the time I spent them, they were up to $6. And then I kept mining when the price was $6, cuz by the time I spent them again, the price was $11. I shoulda bought when the price was $2.50, but I was too poor.

well..people were mining when btc against $ was $6,- if blockreward halves @ $12+ not much have changed isn,t it..asic will arrive but not as soon as marketing tells us ...i guess gpu isn, t dead for at least 6month or so...

More than likely, they had no idea what I was talking about, thought it sounded like a risky investment I was making, and didn't think I could pay it back if the investment didn't pan out.

I should have just told them I wanted to buy a car. 

Banks do not need to mine bitcoin, if they need some they will simply buy them, like probably most people if bitcoin becomes more wide spread. In the end, mining is only an infinitesimal side of the bitcoin economy, as it should.

The next 6 months are going to be interesting with the tsunami of ASIC rigs that will go online. In effect GPU mining is on death row. The switch from 50 to 25 BTC reward was already bad enough but ASIC is the last nail in the GPU coffin. With at least a first wave of ~100 to 150TH/s of total network hashing rate (up from ~20TH/s today) from early ASIC adopters, this will have some significant consequences on bitcoin difficulty.

Anyway, we will see how this will shape up. However, second wave adopters will still be able to get reasonnable returns I would think.

Banks could make plenty from Bitcoin, but they must hate that they'll have to follow the same rules as the rest of us!

HAHAHA that took balls man, good show. Would YOU finance the very thing that could destroy you?
But really I'm sure bitcoin and banks can co-exist fruitfully. But banks must hate it at this point.

What university do you mine at, and who approved the use of university computing hardware for mining?

Before you go and label me as one of "those" people. I actually started mining about 2 months ago. started with a small gpu rig about 700 Mhash/s (friend's PC). Now im roughly pumping 2 ghash/s and adding each day. I so far spent absolutely NO money on mining.. I mine with my university's electricity and friend's hardware. I'm sorry you cant be in my position, nor do I care about your current situation. My question was generally out of concern.. Didn't need a smart ass pointing out my sig and depict me as an outsider.

As for my investments on 2 BFL Single SC, a jalapeno, and perhaps another ASIC units. I'm generally on the same page and want clarity like everyone else.

I hope to be on the same page. I might be still new to BTC but this is not rocket science.

I want to believe that if you cant afford it, then don't bother doing it. I guess it is just the risk. Ultimately, more power to those people who are willing to take risk and can afford it. F*** what others think.. haters gon hate.  

Option 4a: Continue mining with no F***s given. Order ASIC (a few quantity per month. perhaps from other companies besides BFL). Sit back, relax, and puff puff pass.

Well.. i adjust as i do now..and i do have some bucks left to keep beeing a medium miner also if everything U say will come true...

and i am in it for the long run..and If asic will be around by the 2nd q of 2013 no skyrocket has been taking my 10,5 gh down to $100,- as u predict for at least 3+ months... but any way we still can be friends you know.. i am just more sceptical then you are thats all...

OK So you've got 10.5GH/s. That is $1000+ USD a month, like you said. In 2 months, thats going to go down to about $100 USD a month. What are you going to do then? Mine on your GPUs, paying more in electric than what you're getting in BTC? Sell your GPUs, and wait 2 months for ASICs while the difficulty (and hopefully price) go up?

Which one will have more coins 4 months from now?
Option 1: Mine on GPUs for next 2 months -> Continue to mine on GPUs for 2 more months, in spite of skyrocketing difficulty -> In 4 months, still mining with 10.5GHs.
Option 1: Mine on GPUs for next 2 months -> sell GPUs when ASICs hit, order ASICs, and wait 2 more months of no mining -> After 4 months, just starting to mine with 200GH/s.
Option 2: Sell GPUs now, and not mine for 2 months -> Get ASIC preorders, and start mining at 200GH/s for 2 more months -> After 4 months, I've got 200GH/s, and enough from the initial profitability to order more ASICs with ease.

i sure know you do.... but u are wrong informed about me .. find me@ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110752.20

Have you looked at his sig? He's one of "those" people. You know, the doubters? The ones who'll be making about 0.06BTC/day in about 2 months?

                        ^  ^  ^
look 5 posts up   I   I   I

could u please explain?

I think we need to break this down in 1 post.  Here's what makes it a good or bad idea:
1. will the devices actually ship from the vendor you're considering and in a reasonable timeframe - probably, except the ones that say Q1 or Q1 2013 which will be waaaaaaaaaay too late to make the most money

2. will the device operate for 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, years without breaking? - nobody knows.  They're 1st generation experimental devices backed by small companies without any warranties.

And here's the winner right here
3. Almost all devices, at current difficulty rates and BTC prices, will pay for themselves in like 14 days.  But that's the way idiots calculate it.  From that baseline, what will be the total increase factor in the total computational power of the system which will scale the difficulty accordingly? - Well, according to just the total number of pre-orders that are publicly known, if every device works instantly, ships out all at once, and fires up perfectly, we're looking at a bare minimum of a 20x increase, likely closer to 50x.  It's the high end rigs that are really driving it up but the 14k Jalapenos aren't helping either.  50x is a 700 day break even period.  The bitcoin block reward is about to drop to 25 instead of 50 so that puts it to 1400 days.  So, everyone who doesn't start mining with an ASIC before the first difficulty increase is screwed.  So for everyone who has a pre-order right now, I'd say on a scale from 1 to 10 on how screwed you are with 1 being money money money green dolla dolla bills y'all and 10 being royally fucked, I'd say 10 - royally fucked

So no, don't buy any ASICs and if you can get your pre-order refunded, do it, unless you're very confident your vendor and your pre-order will be filled before anyone else's.

I might make a separate thread about this for all the people here (everyone apparently) who can't do math.

no

i have 2 BFL single SC and a jalapeno on the way. Thinking about getting a bASIC 54 some time this week too. think it's a good idea?  

It's definitely still worth it...

U are right about that... i am sceptical about this issue to, lots of people put there savingings into this, strange but we will see in about 2 or 3 months, if it is for real then i need even more questions to be askbefore putting my btc or money in to it... how about the reliability of these divices are they tested for this, how long can they do 24/7 how about spare parts ect. ect. what are the guarantees of these products...it,s al unknown yet thousands paid ahead for them..smart or naive??

Amen, Sam!  Hurray for us poor people! If you've got the money for massive hardware preorders, you've got enough money! Just buy the bitcoins, don't mine them, lol.

I was wondering if you were going to return or not.  Now you've posted something I agree with.  It is strange and a bit of a leap of faith.  But that has been the nature of Bitcoin from the get go.

If you can afford a couple $1.3K SC's your much richer than me, so I hope if they come to fruition that they help you get richer.  I'll muddle through with a couple Jalapenos when/if they come through.
Sam

One thing I have going for me is free electricity and Internet service. I could operate my mining rig remotely. I've never seen so many people put out thousands of dollars for something that hasn't even been made yet. It brings a whole new meaning to the word "pre-order". I guess when dealing with money, people certainly act different. Just the lure of making some money in the first few months when the new ASIC's drop apparently makes people drop a ton of money to some company with no guarantees. Nothing else exists like that in the world, except with drug dealers maybe.


I guess I may order a couple SC's when they are actually available. I left BFL a couple of messages weeks ago and have not heard a peep from them. Just imagine a few of their employees, getting those first ASIC units, taking them home. I know I would.

I seriously doubt that.  The payoff period would be around 3 months tops and that's at almost 9x the current total hashing power of the network (so 9x difficulty).  No GPU or FPGA that I know of past or present could beat that.  So I think $149 is where the low end ones are staying.

People need to remember that Bitcoin is still in an experimental beta phase. If Bitcoin survives to version 1.0, make your educated guesses then.

OP, I think you're right. you can wait for the sharp price declining of the ASIC mining rigs.

No. Hobbyists will still have a place.

You have to understand that when you spend $1 on an ASIC product, whether it is on a tiny Single SC, or on a large MiniRig SC, you get roughly the same amount of mining performance: respectively 31 and 33 Mhash/s. Therefore, large or big miners generate similar amount of profits.

And in fact, small miners are generally more profitable than large miners, as they don't have overhead costs. Eg. the teenager mining on the family PC does not pay directly for electricity (his parents do) and does not have to rent space in a datacenter to host his hardware.

So really, they are selling "shovel futures"....

and the best part is.. in modern day the "shovels" were bought and paid for months ago

A couple things you are missing in your quick analysis:
1) New ASICs will come out, and they will be more efficient.  But they will NOT make current ASICs "just as obsolete" as the latest FPGAs will soon be.  The jump in efficiency between FPGAs and ASICs is projected to be along the lines of going from 100MH/watt to 1,000MH/watt - about a 10x increase in efficiency.  The jump in efficiency between current-gen ASICs and future-gen ASICs will be wholly due to decreased process size, and would likely see no more than a 45% increase in efficiency over the course of a year, if Moore's law is to be believed.
2) Your statement also assumes that mining income will stabilize to the point where revenues = no more than 200% of the variable costs, if they would be obsolete by a 100% increase in efficiency over the course of two years.  The volatility of the price of Bitcoin (and thus, the profits from mining) makes such an assumption completely unreliable.

i have free electricity.  planning to get 1 bASIC and a SC Single and run them at my company. 

You told them the TRUTH?? I told them mine was for my poor mother who needed a hernia operation ... 

Thats assuming ASIC's are delivered on time and history shows us they probably won't be...

I would only mine if I had free electricity

Don't believe that for a second. The current round of ASICs are good for maybe 1 year. 2 years tops. By then newer, faster, cheaper, more efficient ASICs will be available, making these 1st gen ASICs just as obsolete as the latest FPGAs will soon be.

Do the ASICs only work for the main branch of the block chain. If it there is a major fork down the road, will that cause everyone to pile into the branch that the ASICs don't work on and thereby fragment the whole bitcoin system?

1) Wel maybe ONE picture of some kind off production line would say more to me then all these words..

2) This is so true 2 me... 

With a 10x increase in difficulty and a 50% pay cut. You'd still make a profit in a reasonable time frame with asic

You're going from 350mhash/s for 150$ to 3.5ghash/s for 150$.

Just multiply everything by 10 and you'll get a good idea of what the network will look like. Total hash rate would be somewhere around 200 teraflops.

350mhash/s now pays out about .1 bitcoins per day (give or take). That would be reduced to 0.01 bitcoins and divide that in half for the block decrease to make it 0.005 bitcoins per day.

3500mhash/s now would pay out about 1 bitcoin per day (give or take). That would be reduced to 0.1 bitcoins and divide that in half for the block decrease which makes it 0.05 bitcoins per day. That's 18.25 bitcoins per year x 4 years to give 73 bitcoins (during the 25 coins per block period). Assuming value stays the same you would have gone from 150$ input to 875$ a profit of nearly 600% in 4 years (at 12$/coin). So, I'm not sure why you're saying that you only have a "fighting chance". Or are you expecting to get a return on investment of 1 day?

It's also logical with the reduction in circulation that the exchange rate of coins will increase. I would not be surprised to see the exchange rate at 25$/coin (steady).

So uh, if you get some asics going now. You're good for the next 8 years or so while it's 25coins/block and you can continue mining at 12.50 a block and earn some additional profit on an investment that was already paid off long ago.

As long as nothing happens to sha256 itself (vulnerabilities) you can also switch over to another block chain. I would not be surprised to see an inflationary coin network pop up. The deflationary nature of bitcoin doesn't really make much sense from an economics perspective. Unless of course you wanted a deflationary system so you could get the original coins and cash them out when it's 100$/coin. I would favor a chain with a steady 2% per year inflation on the chain. (10% increase in bitcoins per block every 5 years or so.) To me, I find it more logical to have a block chain that increases its supply with age so that as the population of users grows, so do the amount of coins available. A steady increase in the coin supply would also help the "lost accounts". I myself accidentally lost a wallet containing 5 btc never to be heard from again. (Accidentally deleted my old windows install before copying my wallet files over ) Not to mention the other inherent flaws (such as the large transaction database).

No, don't buy one. When you use one, the difficulty goes up for me. I am selfish.

I had an nvidia miner @ 20mhash/s get lucky the other day and score a block.

Then you aren't middle class.

If you're looking to make a profit off a bitcoins why would you even bother with nvidia? It's only worthwhile if you've got 1000 of them and only if you dont need to pay for electric.

Yeah, just imagine the boost when webcam strippers/sex performers get wind of bitcoin!  BOOM!

I look at it this way: can you afford not to?

What we should be worried about is a post initial delivery flood of ASICs.  Consider this.  Approx. 3 small time operations, 2-3 individuals each, outside of BFL contributed to FPGA options for Bitcoin mining.  Only two of the small FPGA operations will move to providing ASIC products.  These small operations will rely on electronics assembly companies to produce units in rather small batch quantities.

With BFL having confirmed 22 employees, purchasing PCB SMT assembly equipment typically found in high volume assembly, we must consider BFL's capital and operating expenses, their need to make a profit and what impact that will have on Bitcoin.

Once BFL's capital investments are recouped, e.g. assembly equipment and ASIC NRE, BFL will be free to produce ASIC's at an estimated cost of 10-20 USD, including the PCB and housing.  Then we should add on operating expenses such as labor, executive compensation, facilities, etc.

With all of this in mind the smart miner should keep in mind that Bitcoin is BFL's only market.  That said, with BFL's sole profit center being Bitcoin there is a large incentive for BFL to sell as many ASIC's as possible at whatever cost the market will bare.  The Bitcoin mining community may be faced with a harsh reality that BFL would be the only party that would make a profit with certainty.


BFL has advertised their high volume assembly as a boon to miners, so that they can get their hardware fast - now.  Looking forward, it is another indication to how BFL is poised to saturate the mining market at whatever price point.

edit:
If I did not already have BFL equipment on order I would not invest.  This seems to me to be a very questionable time in Bitcoin mining.

I agree with pretty much what everyone is saying...you have a couple of choices.

1) Buy some GPU cards and use them to mind with the intention to keep them for gaming or sell them to gamers later
2) Buy into ASIC now so you are not 6 months behind everyone else
3) Quit BitCoin and send me all your coins...

Choices...

The biggest unknown here is how quickly the ASICs ship.  If the majority of preorders (up until the end of October) can be filled within a few weeks then you have a fighting chance of recouping your investment.  Otherwise it's anyone's guess (and the odds aren't great).

Butterfly Labs says in its FAQ they're in the hardware business therefore don't keep the ASICs and mine for themselves.  Complete nonsense.  They're just following the age old example of gold rushes where the only people guaranteed to make a lot of money were the ones selling shovels, and other mining related hardware.  Most prospectors went away empty handed.

We're the miners and BFL is selling the shovels.

I usually use the calculator on the right side of this page: https://deepbit.net/stats
Also it's the pool I mine at

832 MH/s is the exact stated speed of an fpga single from BFL.  Their calc says 0.26BTC per 24 hours.  You can multiply that by 30 days and get 7.8.  To be super precise, instead multiple the MH/s by 30 so 7.89.  See, 0.09 extra due to an otherwise unknown rounding error

There is a huge market of gamers who would love to buy those cards used. They're still quite decent for gaming. The price might go down though sure.

I'm getting more than 3.5 per month on less than 800Mhs.  I wouldn't call 8 or 9 per month nothing.
Sam

Should be a bit more, like 8-9 bitcoins, but yeah. 800mh/s is nothing these days.

I'm a bit confused here.  Are you saying a current BFL single, which produces around 800Mhs, gets 3.5 bitcoins a month?

You know, it's strange to say "only the big guys will make money fast" seeing as how let's say 1 Jalapeno for $149 will pay for itself in 3 months after the difficulty goes through the roof.  Then 2 Jalapenos for $298 will pay for themselves in 3 months and so will 50 Jalapenos.

The reality is nobody is going to make money since they'll all screw each other over from driving the difficulty up Butterfly labs will make money though, lol.

I'd say go for it. Buy yourself a raspberry pi or similar low powered computer to operate it.
When ASICs will be available the network hash rate will double every few months for a year at least. I won't try to predict more than 1 year development. In july the estimated preordered mining hardware was 40 ths, twice the current or recent total network capacity. It seems reasonable to expect from BFL (or whoever moves first to market) that they would ship that much hardware to miners within few months.
let the back order queue be 6 months and will slowly decrease to 1-2 months (as observed with fpga bfl products).
if you keep it mining 24/7 since the purchase than you will have fun operating it and watching the payouts. A BFL singe mines 3.50 per month today. It was surely more in february and will be less in the future. jalapenos should perform as well. maybe the payout will decrease faster and never start at 3.50 in the first place, but you'll have fun for sure mining at home with a small number of units. choosing a pool, responding to incidents, watching mining luck & variance or not care about mining as long as it will just work.
I'd wait for first independent reports and then order.

The time for building a GPU rig has passed. You won't have enough time to recoup a fraction of your costs, and the market for used 5970s and 7970s is going to be flooded in about 2 months.

You got two months to put together gpu rigs for about 1500 and you can get some btc fast. Then sell the hardware to recoup some costs. If elect costs are low you will come out ahead.

well said Sam

Plus there is a whole Bitcoin economy out there waiting to be developed, plenty of money to be made in non-mining ways.

Cheers
Graet

Why this self defeating "only the rich get richer" attitude?

Should there be any guarantees?  Is the whole point of mining bitcoin to get rich?  Does it take a high end rig to get some bitcoins?

No, no and no.

I have a fairly low end rig and if the ASIC's do come to fruition I will again have the low end version of those too.  I too don't have allot of spare cash to invest in the highest end mining gear.  But I am mining consistently, earning bitcoins for an investment over time.  When bitcoin starts becoming a mainstream currency and increases in value then it will have been a useful endeavor.  I'm not going to get rich, most likely, but that's not my goal in life.

Loosen up, quit being envious of those who have more than us, rich people have their own set of problems, usually worse than the problems we have.
Hope I wasn't too preachy ,
Sam

Then buy a $150 ASIC.  You should be able to participate in this idea, maybe make a little money, and have fun.

I just love the whole bitcoin idea and the freedom it gives. Since I'm more of a technical person I wanted to try mining out at home. Then reading about how ASIC will change that forever stopped me from pre-ordering a couple single units. I basically wanted to participate in this idea, maybe make a little money and have fun.

Well, you can still get your nose wet with a GPU, you just won't pay the cost of it back.

You could always mine on test net.  Or namecoins, etc.  You'll get plenty of coins there.

I guess I am unsure what you really want.  You are sad you couldn't get in on the earlier mining opportunities that were profitable, so you are looking for ways to open up new mining opportunities that are profitable?

But why grab singles when you probably won't even be able to pay them off in a decent time frame? I only heard about bitcoin a few months ago so I missed out on all the reaping or I should say raping that went on to accumulate coin. I can live with that but like someone else wrote it seems like only the big boys will earn enough to stay in the game. I think they should open up a new type area/network for the hobby guys, just our network tied into the main big boy network so we can all get our noses wet.

I thought about this, and in essence it amounts to requesting a loan for de-facto gambling on a commodity market. I still love Bitcoin though and am seriously contemplating investing in a few BFL single SCs. I even spoke to Josh briefly at the London conference and he seems ok - then again, his sales pitch was hardly going to start "sorry but BFL still sucks at delivering on time", so it's not a straightforward issue. Anyway, given that I'm a bit of a n00b, and that my copy of Ubuntu 12.04 isn't even bloody installing on my lappie right now, I need to keep a cool-headed stock of everything!

These ASICs are special-purpose, bleeding-edge technology that is depending the success of a paradigm-shifting innovation -- decentralized digital currency.

If you want guarantees, consider looking elsewhere.



Yup.

In 70 days, the block reward is going to drop from 50 BTC to 25 BTC, or about $43,000 per day worth of bitcoins issued at the current exchange rate.

Competing for those $43K worth are existing GPU miners, existing FPGA miners, new FPGA miners (and maybe a couple new GPU miners where electricity is cheap or free) , and a few ... well, more than a few ... perhaps a ton, of ASIC miners:

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#ASICs

Nobody knows whose will be first.

I tried - they asked what the loan would be for, I explained mining, and they promptly sent back a professionally courteous email saying my laon request had been denied.   

Surely, profitability is a function both of the network difficulty level and also the exchange rate if you're cashing out into fiat immediately. Obviously, early adopters are rewarded for having taken the risk of the early plunge.

If I could dig up the $30k I'd be seriously tempted by the ASIC minirig. Somehow, though, I can't see any bank lending me that.

No guarantees anymore.  No more easy money.  No more paying off computer hardware by mining.  Sorry, you missed out on those boats.

If I hadn't already preordered, I'd be waiting on the sidelines right now until I saw how quickly BFL makes it through the preorder list.  If they made it through quickly enough, and there was still enough profit in it to pay off the unit in 6 months or less, I'd probably buy.  Otherwise, I'd probably stay out of the mining game, and instead, buy up a few bitcoins here and there, and wait for those to appreciate.

I think the days of the hobbyist miner are gone. The next generation of miners are going to be a more serious lot. Their motivation will be to get some bitcoin and to add muscle to the network. Bitcoin's going pro, it seems.

After reading the speculations on what is going to happen it seems the only people that will benefit from the new ASIC hardware is the first users to get the hardware and of course the mega/large mining ASIC rigs out there. I've seen no good news about a guy that just wants to run a single rig at his house to have some fun, make a little BTC to pay off the rig...but it seems that poor guy won't even get a return good enough to even pay off the rig (only $1300) itself. Does everyone agree with this? I mean its like me buying an Nvidia GTX 480 single video card right now. It just won't make any money even with it running 24/7. Since I'm middle class here I can't afford to spend $1300 on something that may not do anything. I wish there were guarantees here....