The Genesis Block is false as it claims an exponential rise that won't occur.
exponential curve has been a pretty darn good fit so far.
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-small-lin.pngOf course it wont last forever, but its only the next ~6 months or so that are truly relevant for a purchase decision today. Either way, its a much better tool than what asic vendors give you, who will gladly calculate and publish your monthly profits assuming
no difficulty increase whatsoever.
What will occur is one monstrous leap by the first significant production run fulfilled in a two week window.
Yeah, so we agree; by using previous growth to predict future growth, in the coming months it may well even be
far worse than what TGB predicts. They are not scaring miners nearly enough. Is that what you meant to say?
Though personally I doubt all these asic vendors will have a supply chain in place thats actually capable of living up to their promises and ship products as fast as consumers buy them. KnC may or may not, and I hope they wont all falter as badly as BFL and avalon, but in reality there will be shipping delays and production ramp ups, which would translate to continued exponential curve. No one expects that curve to be a perfect fit, but that its exponential does make sense because of production ramps and one other thing you are not factoring in : price drops. These will be inevitable.
To me its simple: difficulty curve will follow the production ramp of all those vendors combined. Whatever they produce will be sold or deployed, until market price approaches production cost. We are miles away from there. Once we get close to that, exponential growth will end and taper off, but not before. The resulting curve wont be a perfect exponential curve, but the bumps we are about to experience will flatten out and become invisible over time, just like its impossible to spot the bumps in the current charts, that we had in the past due to BTC fluctuation or the CPU to GPU and FPGA transitions
ASICminer structured a whole business around selling items in hand for gross premium compared to what they could mine. I don't know who buys them, but someone does, so the market exists.
Whether the market is ebay or direct doesnt matter. Yes higher prices are achieved on ebay for now, but that makes no difference to the overall picture. There is only a demand on ebay because there is an (incorrect) assumption of profitability. Exploiting that ignorance for as long as it exists is a valid though risky business model for individuals, its not something you can count on when producing those miners. You think Apple cares about ebay premiums?