1. How is charging .049 BTC for a 24-hour Dragon 1T rental justified?
i think it is fair because of the following reason
1) if you buy a miner with huge of money, it is fair to pay a little high price if you just want get a small share, bulk order always get discount
2) you need not pay host fee when you rent the machine
3) you can pay it via paypal, it is a fast way to get btc
2. Are these rented Dragon 1T units eventually going to get shipped to fill in customer orders for "brand-new" Dragon 1Ts?
as a matter of fact, i never ship the miner that is already in my data center, i usually ship the miner from factory. i have shipped more than 200+ unit out without any issue about used miner, i cannot promise that every miner i ship out is brand new(the factory is also get the miner running when they are in stock), but i have tried my best to let the customer get new miner
Your reply is fair enough except for the fact that there is no profit incentive to rent a Dragon 1T at .049 BTC for 24 hours when a 1T of hashing power currently and practically only makes around .045 BTC in the same period of time. That's .045 BTC (practical yield) minus .049 BTC (rental cost) equals
-.004 BTC (a loss). That's less than breaking even; and even if it breaks even or thereabouts, it's not worth it to go through all the motion of renting them. There has to be a discernable profit margin to justify going through such a process. Otherwise, it's akin to fooling oneself by denying reality.
ok, if it is profitable for the renter then why would he rent the dragon out. He would mine the dragon and keep the profits. So the only reason you would rent this out is because of using paypal.
In other words, if I have a miner that makes me .045 BTC per day mining for myself, why would I rent it out for less than or equal to that amount per day? Of course, it only make sense for me to rent it out for more than .045 BTC. Otherwise, it's pointless to do so unless I'm in the charity/non-profit business. If someone does rent it anyway for more than what it is capable of producing (.045 BTC per day), who's left holding the bag? A very good question indeed. Is that about right?
Visdude I appreciate you watching out for the community. But some of what you say are guesses and off base. You assume the worst, which I can understand in the Bitcoin industry.
Mining profit varies it cannot be exact with so many variables including pool, everyone should always do their own analysis. To show your profit analysis can be wrong here is my Dragon 1T (not hosted but at my location) with me playing with settings and showing even when i had a slow down (my fault i do make mistakes
)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f1mwm32d8xaac3o/proof.JPG that was taken within past 20 minutes. Payout is higher then your personal analysis. Mining varies for everyone there is no guarantee of profit with any miner. People have also rented miners for other reasons then just pure profit, such as trying a Lee hosted miner, trying a long custom period of a Dragon. Or in some cases using PayPal to ultimately convert to BTC.
And a reason to charge less then possibly could make just running should be evident. With group buy
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/wwweasy2minecom-340-the-group-buy-of-antminer-s5psu-included-514758 there is a hope rental customers might like the product and possibly want one of their own. Just as 4 hour promo, it makes zero mining profit but it actually did make a few sales and was a fun way to do a promo with bitcoin community. All fun excpet that 4 hour timer I have going to remind me to go to next person on list
It's been a lot of work, but fun as-well.
I will let everyone look at Mr. Lee's post as far as justified. And I think the Dragon rental's selling out speaks for is self.
With that out of the way I want to again thank the customer's who made this a successful launch. And always happy mining.
