The difference I think the earlier post was addressing is claymore getting a percentage of the mined coins from every single user of his miner without paying for any electricity at all. It is assumed he just dumps those. No way to know for sure, but isn't an unreasonable theory.

No, it's plausible this theory stands perfectly true. I *still* think that after GPU mining is dominant, things for XMR will have to change. I currently mine with my i5 @ 80H/s while a GTS450 mines with 150H/s. If the AMD cards kick in I think those will be rendered obsolete. I still got some ancient gear from the old bitcoin times for historical reasons, but if they're up to a factor of 4x as it's being circulated, then I just might have to go all in into new gear and replace the current setup... Or I just might get some more right now...

In my opinion, it all makes sense when you compare what the network production/equity is now, with the one that will be, when the Asic miners come in. If you think about it a bit; the current exchange rate is about $12 for 1BC. That means you need about 100BC or $1200 for a BFL, SC and 40GH/s. You need about 100 days, to produce 100BC at a rate of 1BC/day with an average setup that sets you back about $1000 to $1200 (a couple of 5970s, a couple of 6870s, and some 6950s) and gives you 2.5GH/s.

Now, lets project this for a while to after 6 months to 1 year. By that time, lets asume that EVERYONE (who can afford it) will mine with an asic by then. The difficulty should respectively rise to actively produce an average for 40GH/s lets say 1BC/day. This means on a direct comparison that your (future) 40GH/s equals with the (today's) 2.5GH/s. Respectively you will be at the same position minus the initial 100BC you gave to buy the asic, minus the cost of the videocards (if you don't manage to sell them, or want to keep them anyway).

It's all about the Benjamins gentlemen. My advice is (that's what I'm gonna do) to quit mining and while the price is still low; I'll prefer buying 1BC per day. When this won't be feasible anymore, I will have a fair amount of BCs to buy myself a couple of asics at 1/3 or even less of the current price... and won't mind about the loss. Of course I'll stand out from mining for a fair amount of time, but what is time? Isn't money..?

I think the real takeaway is that regardless of whether you mine or buy, get some..
  
If you could go back to 2012, would you haggle between the pros and cons of mining vs. buying?  No.  You would say, "I don't care what you do - get some bitcoins, keep them safe, and start thinking about building a business or service that will use them."  
  
Even by reading these words you are a player in a very complex game, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to win (regardless of easy winning may be).  So pull a Shia LaBouf

What is the purpose of compare Monero in 2015 to bitcion in 2012? Now its totally different crypto environment than before. For once, there are like 500 coins, and in 2012 one or two, and a tone of scams between then and now. I doubt that comparing xmr to bitcion from 2012 has any prediction value for what future holds for xmr.

So i think that speculations whether to buy or mine xmr should be based on current xmr status. For example, are there any new services in the development or planned that would use xmr? When we will see onion version of xmr.to or monero block chain, if ever? When i2p will be integrated and what benefits it will bring? etc...

Still plenty of things to consider. My main concern would've been the electricity costs vs profitability. More miners mean more coins, thus higher difficulty. Bye bye CPU miners. I'd guess the distribution will actually remain the same; the only difference would be that one single individual will have to decide either if he sells now or hold for later. I'm not sure this is bullish, but I'd say it's not bearish either. OTOH, options are always better than a single choice.

We'll see.

Difference of opinion.  
  
I feel like the rise of Monero is inevitable, with a very small chance it might be some other implementation of
CryptoNote.  

The world is not going back to fiat, and cryptonote offers the best digital form of money we have ever seen.  Whether it consumes the world economy remains to be seen, but I feel that a paltry $2000 per Monero is inevitable during the next wave of cryptospeculation (coming soon, possibly 2016 - 2019).  It may go much higher.  
  
The world is very different now, and that's exactly why I feel so confident about Monero.  That it costs 40 cents each is utterly absurd.  I'm waiting for my bonus check to come in soon so I can pad out my holdings a little bit.
  

I was thinking, if monero is a better anonymous crypto compared to bitcoin... and bitcoin mainly got it's popularity and price hike in the world of darknet markets, why hasn't the darknet adopted Monero as an official payment and drop bitcoins all together?  Even though I feel like this would "sell the soul" of Monero to the devil in a sense, it would get the word out about the benefits of anonymity and just how good it is.

Idk, I don't think the Monero community would want this to happen... but it would sure boost popularity.

I was thinking, if monero is a better anonymous crypto compared to bitcoin... and bitcoin mainly got it's popularity and price hike in the world of darknet markets, why hasn't the darknet adopted Monero as an official payment and drop bitcoins all together?  Even though I feel like this would "sell the soul" of Monero to the devil in a sense, it would get the word out about the benefits of anonymity and just how good it is.

Idk, I don't think the Monero community would want this to happen... but it would sure boost popularity.

There are few reasons why xmr is not used widely (maybe there is some limited use, i dont know) in darknet. In my view, the top reasons are:

1. People still think bitcoins is anonymous and private, or at least anonymous and private just enough.
2. There is fair amount of onion websites for buying bitcoins, block exploring, mining pools, etc. For monero, there is none.
3. You can get/sell bitcions relatively easy for cash in real life as compared to xmr, without using exchanges or any websites.
4. These days, much darknet might be either scam or run by feds. Scamers just want to get your most valuable coins, and for feds, bitcion is just perfect.

Let's add:

5. There's an expertise cost with implementing Monero that while not steep for most DN Operators, it would be steep for for their clients and most likely would be considered steep given the limited use of Monero--I'm basing the latter part of this statement on the administrative cost reasons for not adopting Monero cited by some of the companies and organizations I contacted on the latest donation push.

6. DN Operators might not know enough about Monero. Anyone who has spent a few months in this space is bombarded with claims, counter-claims, white papers, FUD, paid media, dirty media..... It will take some time for everyone to separate fact from fiction. There's still two coins with some of the worst privacy attributes imaginable holding spots above Monero in market cap, so it may take some time for the perception to catch up with the reality.