They are not passing on the benefit to old customers. I am two months into a 12 month contract - am I an 'old' customer? But I am excluded from the upgrade.
All you people who have just 'benefited' from the latest price drop and upgrades need to know what to expect because I know you are all, like vaisajne, feeling like you just got a great bargain. I felt the same way two months ago when I bought my first GM contract and had it almost immediately upgraded from 4 to 9 MH/s - just like what happened last week. That inspired me to buy another larger contract a week after the first one - I now have 59MH/s. It felt great to have all this money coming in day after day. I always understood that the rate of returns would drop off, but what I was not prepared for was the RATE at which they would drop off. To put it simply the payout in BTC is roughly halving every month. After two months I am getting less than a quarter the payout I was getting when I started. GM announced last week that they will be bringing online a new datacenter and new ASICs. Undoubtedly there will be much competition in the space for the foreseeable future. I believe we can expect the monthly halving of returns to continue for some time. I am not even going to come close to breaking even. If I get back more than 50% of the BTC I invested I will consider myself lucky.
Here is another chart. It shows my accumulated GM payouts in pink. The black line is an exponential which shows the break-even level. If the pink line is above the black line I will make a profit at the end of the contract.
I know my opinions may not be popular with people who have just bought contracts (you will be in denial), but I am really talking to people who are on the fence, about to commit. Think again - you will probably only get half your BTC back. I am not saying GM is a scam. I am just saying that the reality is that under present conditions their business model is uneconomic for us customers. GM have stated very clearly that they will not be upgrading 'old' customers like me, so basically everybody who has a GM contract is going to lose money, at least until the network hashrate stabilises some time way in the future. The only people who are going to make money are GM.
All you people who are feeling smug about the 'free' upgrade you just got - you will be feeling like me in a month or two when history repeats itself - and even worse when your contract expires and you have lost half your BTC.
If the rate of returns suddenly improves and I turn out to be full of BS I will not only have egg on my face - I will also have a big smile on my face! I have 18 BTC in the game.
Well, under present conditions, yes, things are not looking bright, but I don't know how long you've been around, but the present is never a good measure for the future. Things can change and will change. For better, or for worse. That's all in the game. My suggestion to everybody who's just in it for big profit, carefully consider what you are doing.
From my point of view, yes, profit is nice, as that will allow me to invest more, but I'm also in it for the greater good. Keep the mining going on, keep the coins alive (though I wouldn't mind if over half of them go extinct), even at a loss. And that's not something I want to do at home, so I'm grateful for the excellent service GM is providing (and they're not the only one) since, amongst other things, they allow me to point my hashrate where I want it (Megacoin of course...). Sooner or later things will evolve to a different level. Never a dull moment in cryptoworld
