Here's the thing that makes me laugh. A while back, AM USB's are 2BTC. Then 1BTC. Then .55BTC. Then .32BTC. Let's say the cost for AM is around $10. They've been capitalist-robbing folks with their markup because they were the only shipping vendor, meaning they were able to do this. This is how business is traditionally run, but people continually fool themselves into their purchases thinking it is a good value.
I want a new car because it is new, but it loses X% value the moment you roll it off the lot. You order a BE USB today, gets delivered shortly before the next dif increase, by the time you're running on a full diff change the price dropped again. K1 Nano w/ Avalon chips was exciting... until the price vs. availability question comes into play, and especially with Avalon delays and AM price drops there is no hope of them getting off the ground.
Sadly, Butterfly Labs is the story of Bitcoin today. Lofty aspirations, continual delays, poor customer service, wacky cast of characters, and by the time most of their customers have hardware in-hand it'll be a tough bet if they will pay themselves off. Still, we are an industry of "pre-orders". Still, we fund companies who mutually assure that the hardware they deliver will never live up to the dream.
Yes the explanation "It is a huge up-front cost, nobody will fund that themselves in such a risky business" holds a lot of truth, but why? People are banking off of mining hardware, if someone offered hardware tomorrow that shipped next week the community would dive headfirst into it as long as a few hero/senior members could verify units worked. This would be the Hashfast sponsor "people will cancel their pre-orders" moment. As-is, people can cancel pre-orders for pre-orders, hoping that people with a refund policy actually refund, and hoping their newest pre-order delivers when it will still make some cash back. It's like the abused wife who keeps saying her husband really has good intentions and only takes advantage of her because he loves her.
Venture cash is out there, internet startups doing basically nothing can get enough funding to run the whole ASIC design/development/testing/fabrication process. But nobody is doing it. That doesn't speak well long-term for Bitcoin as we know it today. Here's the other problem - the only people who really give a damn about Bitcoin today are traders, miners, optimistic geeks, and manufacturers. Mining will become a zero sum game sooner than anyone is willing to admit, so the primary reason for adoption (profit) goes away. This means the network is only running and growing because people can continue to profit from it. When that goes away...
+1
What I wish would happen ... would be an honest ASIC supplier who prices according to their costs and comes out and says "ok, this is our price no matter the diff, its x% above our cost to make"
Cost per piece w/ initial cost of mask & R&D .. prorated over every piece. I dont know w/e you guys get my point.
An honest fucking ASIC supplier would be nice.
Im willin to bet bitfury initial costs were paid for in the 100th machine. Its insane for them to charge 25k on a 400GH machine for "the rest of us miners" ... that damn thing probably cost like 1000$ .. hell probably not even that.
Bitcoin mining landscape will eventually look just like the banking industry. A select few mining corps control significant hashing power and can decide to do w/e they want with it. I hate the thought of centralized mining...but thats where its headed. Its not the ASICs thats what to blame. Its the suppliers who are at fault because they werent willing to keep the ASICs available to everyone(because of insanely high up front cost requirements as I mentioned in my first post in this topic)
+1
they told me that If I can't afford an asic it doesn't mean that is expensive, I said If you can pay 5000-25000$ for it that doesn't mean it is cheap.
I was looking in the bottom of things, I work in production, we could do the same thing , but our initial profit never goes more than 25%, our customers have the first and the last word, simply because they are the only ones who matters, if we lose them we lose our business.
and yes I am happy that I am not the only one who thinks this way. this is why I started this thread .