You know, you can just admit "You are right, there are no BITCOIN MINING ALTERNATIVES" to <BITCOIN MINING ALTERNATIVE>
You don't get have to get butthurt and defensive and say "B-BUT EVERY OTHER INVESTMENT EVER!"
THIS JUST IN! People who bought Tesla stock instead of BFL made more money than people who bought BFL stop the fucking presses!!!!
I already said, if you're myopically only capable of focusing on bitcoin mining, you're going to have a bad time. There are PLENTY of mining equipment alternatives. The fact that they might all end up sucking too isn't a good reason to ride this one to the bottom, when the writing is on the wall.
Once again, if you're unwilling to abandon a ship that's going down, because the lifeboat isn't headed directly to another cruise ship, then I feel bad for you, son. I'm guessing bitcoin mining is your first attempt at making money work for you, instead of the other way around. I see a bumpy ride in your future...
Sometimes the best "Investment" is to stop your losses by pulling out, and then reevaluate when you're not being driven by emotion and stress. The sunk cost fallacy is a powerful one though, and if you're a n00b to the money game, it's a lesson some people will just have to learn the hard way...
You do realize that the "refund" is a guaranteed 50% loss, right?
PCB assembly costs were higher than the chips.
break even ROI is 50%, not 100%.
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And this is the Group buys subfourm, of the hardware subforum, of the mining subforum, of the bitcoin forum, on a website dedicated to bitcoins. The scope of discussions here is, in theory, limited to custom hardware for mining bitcoins and directly related topics.
There are many, many investments that paid back more than any given bitcoin mining investment. To start including these in every single discussion, comparison and thread about bitcoin mining would be absurd. It would become "Economics and Investing : General" and quickly "Offtopic general".
The issue at hand is that Avalon chips had by far the most margin between "Best Case Scenario" and "Cannot even break even". Best case was absurd, on the order of 1000% ROI.
all the other alternatives? "Best case scenario" is maybe 200% ROI or similar. So what happens when something goes wrong for THEM?
I would argue there does not appear to be an investment in mining hardware with enough possible reward to be worth the risk -- in this regard, you're right, it probably makes sense to not buy anything and get out of the game. But the way people calculate hashing rate projections (exponential growth that never ends, as opposed to a sigmoid function which is approaching its inflection point) is fundamentally wrong and flawed, and the fact that you already have a 50% loss for assembly costs means that your break even is lower. Admittedly it looks very dim as it increases, but people need to run calculations for the tail end of the curve, where you WILL be beating electricity costs, but the rate it makes money will also be very low.
All of this notwithstanding a raise or fall in $/BTC, which affects all profit on all hardware equally.
