The $210/day for $1,300 only holds for a single incremental device. Since the network produces a mostly fixed number of bitcoins per day regardless of the hashing power thrown at it, there are severe diminishing returns for running a lot of these devices. I think the current math is that if you ran 300 of these, each would only be producing $100/day. 600 and each would be producing $70/day, etc. (Pre)selling them scales much better and is far less risky since it insulates them from the fluctuating BTC/USD exchange rate and the possibility of competitors diminishing their share of the network down the line.
300 at 100 a day is $30k/day. If they're selling them for $1.3k, let's assume a 50% markup; it would only take about 6 days to make back their investment. 12 days if they're selling them at cost.
Presumably they want to sell much more than 300 devices (enough that running them themselves would be less efficient than selling them) and turning on these 300 for themselves would make customers much less willing to buy more from them in the future.
> Presumably they want to sell much more than 300 devices (enough that running them themselves would be less efficient than selling them)
That still doesn't make sense to me. If these machines work, they're money trees. You build them, run them, and use the ridiculous proceeds to build and run more of them, or to get out before the market becomes too crowded.
At scale you could fill racks with these things for a relatively small outlay.
> ... and turning on these 300 for themselves would make customers much less willing to buy more from them in the future.
Comments
The $210/day for $1,300 only holds for a single incremental device. Since the network produces a mostly fixed number of bitcoins per day regardless of the hashing power thrown at it, there are severe diminishing returns for running a lot of these devices. I think the current math is that if you ran 300 of these, each would only be producing $100/day. 600 and each would be producing $70/day, etc. (Pre)selling them scales much better and is far less risky since it insulates them from the fluctuating BTC/USD exchange rate and the possibility of competitors diminishing their share of the network down the line.
300 at 100 a day is $30k/day. If they're selling them for $1.3k, let's assume a 50% markup; it would only take about 6 days to make back their investment. 12 days if they're selling them at cost.
I don't really follow the maths here.
Presumably they want to sell much more than 300 devices (enough that running them themselves would be less efficient than selling them) and turning on these 300 for themselves would make customers much less willing to buy more from them in the future.
> Presumably they want to sell much more than 300 devices (enough that running them themselves would be less efficient than selling them)
That still doesn't make sense to me. If these machines work, they're money trees. You build them, run them, and use the ridiculous proceeds to build and run more of them, or to get out before the market becomes too crowded.
At scale you could fill racks with these things for a relatively small outlay.
> ... and turning on these 300 for themselves would make customers much less willing to buy more from them in the future.
The truth outs. In a gold rush, sell shovels.