Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
So if I'm a company that's going to sell hardware that can be used to make money mining bitcoins, why am I selling them? Shouldn't I just make them and use them?
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So there are 2 things that I think are important here:
1) The butterfly labs products, were preordered and the final development process was completed with that money, ala kickstarter. Without those funds, they might not have a product. Even now, they are having trouble meeting the power consumption promises. Actually just checked
the site and they revamped thier product/prices - The previous 4.5 Gh/s unit for $150 is now a 5Gh/s machine for $274.
2) As soon as the hardware gets widespread use it increases the difficulty to the point where a machine doing anything more than paying for itself is a lengthy and possibly uncertain proposition, hinging on the value of the bitcoin.
If I put $150 into my pocket (or into dev costs) for a unit that might generate me $150 in a year after paying for electricity/facilties, I would consider that being ahead.