I think 2 X2 compensation units per X1 makes it worthwhile.
IDK, its almost to the point that any compensation just isn't worth it. Sure it may pay out more bitcoin after many months, but you still have to be able to run them. If someone purchased 10 X-1's back in 2013, they were expecting .55 watts or even .75 watts at the wall (as that is what is still advertised on their website) which would be between 550 and 750 watts, now, for those same 10 X-1's, we are looking at each one using 120 watts ish (I think that's what it was), which would be 1200 watts total. Now if you start adding compensation on to that, and for the sake of argument they really under deliver on compensation and only give 2x the number ordered, now you have 30 X-1's and are using 3600 watts of power. That is a much bigger cooling bill, and you have to find some place that you can spread 30 of these things out (since they do not stack and their is no immediate design/plan to stack them), while still being able to supply almost 4 kw of electricity to the space. It just isn't practical unless you want to pay for hosting, which seriously diminishes returns and guarantees no success of a positive ROI.
I have to agree. the difficulty shooting up to the extent it has has killed this. We all knew this was coming as other ASIC manufacturers came online, I think, but thought BA would deliver before it happened (February was conservative - HAHA) and we could squeeze some profit out before the difficulty did what it has done.
They blew it, big time, and at this point it seems impossible that they could compensate enough to make up for the difference. they may disagree, although I don't know how anyone can believe a thing they say at this point.
I stopped listening to their BS months ago when it became obvious they were going to miss the May 1 deadline also and asked for a refund then, which I still have not seen. I get nothing but excuses and kicking the can down the road on that front also. Everyone is just too busy to go to the bank apparently. In four months no-one has had the time to go to the bank or mail a check. Give me a break.
If they were half as good at building miners as they were at concocting excuses we'd all be rolling in bitcoin.