I am confused and haven't really been following what is going on a whole lot, can someone explain how they went from being big bad company to now these are a great deal?
Here's the summary:
- Bitmain listed the first two batches of the L3+ for a very low price, with a seemingly fast ROI time.
- Instead of shipping the first batch on April 15th, they lied about a "firmware bug" and used the massive hash power to block LTC segwit signaling for this period.
- Charlie Lee and the miners met and there's an agreement now to signal segwit.
- Bitmain is one of the companies who have agreed to segwit, but as of yet the new hash power is still in their hands and is still being used to block segwit this period.
- The price of the L3+ has gone up, presumably because the urgency of smashing segwit is gone.
- Predictably the difficulty went up (nearly 30% in the last period).
So as things stand, if you bought machines from the April 15th batch, you potentially got screwed because Bitmain used your money to pursue their own agenda. That said, they supposedly offered compensation (minus electricity) or a refund.
If you bought machines from the May 5th batch (like I did), then you got a good price. But they haven't shipped yet, so it's anyone's guess what might happen. They could claim some other made up problem and offer a refund rather than honor the bargain price.
The fact that Bitmain would stoop to faking a good deal, taking early adopters' money, and affect the protocol development of a coin, lying about it the whole time, really points just how evil they have become.
I know there are people who will always buy from Bitmain if they think they can make a profit. But remember that the only guaranteed winner in that relationship is Bitmain. They have proved that they can do whatever they want with your money.
After this, I'm not playing Bitmain's game any more. Hopefully what I have will keep running. And if I get itchy, there's always other alt mining.
