It's so hard to figure out what a practical price for this hardware is. Using the last five difficulty increases as a measure for upcoming difficulty (which, in my opinion, is VERY conservative), it appears that this unit will generate 128 BTC in the next 12 months. That's assuming free power.
In addition, if difficulty continues increasing at a rate similar to what it has been recently (~10% per week), difficulty will be 2.4 billion by the end of the 12 month period, making this device practically worthless at that time.
Granted, no one really knows what difficulty will look like (again, I personally believe the above estimates are conservative), but it appears that if buyers use logic when determining what to bid on this auction, they should bid no more than 128 BTC ... much less if they don't have free power!
EDIT: well I see the auction is now well beyond 128 BTC so apparently logic does not apply! (or some people disagree that difficulty will continue to rise ~10% per week for the next 52 weeks)
yep, people are failing at the basic math.
the risk involved for the margins is so thin, I can't believe people at willing to drop so much for a used unit.
I still can't believe someone bid 185 for ONE 3module avalon on another thread. that fella will never see a return.
it's the asic USB miner mentality, only with a lot more money. lol
Yet some people called GPU mining to be dying during fall of 2012. I lost a huge amount of potential profit listening to them when I sold my mining rig expecting the market to get flooded by used GPU and canceled a 300GPU farm project. There is much factor involved that attempting to estimate potential profit is speculation imo.
Less than 22H left.well, spread sheets don't lie.
the margins are razor for 70g/hash machines assuming this scenario
10% increase every 11days, no electrical costs, no pool fee, no unforeseen consequences. you start mining today.
over 1 year period, you will accrue 210BTC.
@ 15% you accrue 151BTC.
keep in mind, we won't plateau on network hash as BFL will keep churning out their units, avalons sold 500,000 DIY chips and KNC w/, supposedly, 23nm chips. bitfury has a working 120g/hash machine @ 2100usd.
once the dust settles, I can see a asic farm making good money. but the arms race hasn't even reached an armistice yet.