4 ms·

Any company that could build hardware capable of turning a profit would use it themselves, instead of selling it to the public. Don't try to buy a money printer

Any company that could build hardware capable of turning a profit would use it themselves, instead of selling it to the public. Don't try to buy a money printer. Life isn't that easy.

redox99 4y ago
People have been saying this literally since the first ASIC came out. And guess what. People have made a lot of money buying these money printers.
jabits 4y ago
Not so sure, what about a machine like a slot machine? I think you make money making something you know how to make
vikingerik 4y ago
There is arbitrage. It's possible that a hardware company might be located where electricity is expensive, or in an unfavorable regulatory or tax jurisdiction, such that they wouldn't directly profit from running the mining equipment, but someone in a better environment could. But yeah, this would be a small minority of situations.
amelius 4y ago
Solar panels are money printers. Yet no company is offering to put them on my roof at their cost.
- catlifeonmars 4y ago
  Why not?
- betamaxthetape 4y ago
  This used to be the case in the UK. There were a few companies that would install solar panels on your roof, at no cost to you. You could use the electricity generated by the panels at no cost. The catch was that the companies took the feed-in tariff (the government subsidy for generating renewable electricity), and that you needed to commit to having the panels on your house for a minimum number of years (making it unviable if you rented, or planned to move in a few years). In the mid-2010s the UK changed how the subsidies worked, changing from the feed-in scheme where you were paid per unit of electricity generated (regardless of if you consumed that energy or sent it back to the electricity grid) to the Smart Export Guarantee, where you are only paid for the electricity that you sent back to the grid. According to Wikipedia [0] this caused many of the companies operating the "free solar panels" schemes to go out of business. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_tariffs_in_the_United_Kingdom#Free_electricity_schemes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_tariffs_in_the_United_...
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  There's big risk that legislation will be passed that allows utilities to pay wholesale price for electricity generated by home solar instead of retail price. It's not profitable at that rate to put it on roofs, building solar farms makes much more sense.
- vkou 4y ago
  Utility solar deployment is a money printer[1], residential rooftop solar deployment is an expensive[2] fashion statement. The reason solar panel manufacturers don't go into the power generation business is because building a solar plant is a political problem, while building solar panels is a technological problem. It's not their core expertise. [1] In locations that need more electricity, have regulators that will favor you over coal-burning and gas-burning incumbents, and where you can deal with the NIMBYs. [2] It should be obvious when you consider that economies of scale mean that utility solar will always be cheaper than rooftop solar for on-grid homes.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    > residential rooftop solar deployment is an expensive[2] fashion statement. Not really. Panel lifetimes are measured in decades and the break-even point is usually around a decade, less if daytime utility power is expensive. They're not high volume money printers but they'll eventually pay for themselves (including their carbon usage during production). Solar works mathematically because the Sun is constantly bombarding the Earth with energy. Rooftop solar increases the efficiency of otherwise wasted acreage of rooftops of buildings. Not only can they offset energy use of the stuff inside the building but the rooftop shade is that much less cooling needed for the building.
    - vkou 4y ago
      > less if daytime utility power is expensive. My point is that daytime utility power that comes from a solar farm will always be cheaper then rooftop solar. Because it takes a lot less labor to deploy solar at utility-scale, than to bolt it to your roof. The only reason rooftop solar can currently be cost-efficient[1] is if its competing with expensive sources of energy generation. If it has to compete with cheap sources (utility solar), it's not cost-efficient. [1] Or if you're receiving subsidies for the energy you sell back to the grid.
      - freemint 4y ago
        > My point is that daytime utility power that comes from a solar farm will always be cheaper then rooftop solar. If you ignore the cost of maintaining the grid between A and B, yes and if you ignore the value of people having storage in their house being able to optimise their in house consumptions to match the solar production, yes (this would be possible with pricing signals but it is not done, also there are slight psychological differences for the user) and if you ignore communities having access to power in case the electricity grid is under attack due to foreign invasion, yes.
- dleavitt 4y ago
  This was/is exactly the business model of SolarCity and a lot of residential solar. The more general concept, sometimes called "Savings as a Service" or "Efficiency as a Service", is pretty ubiquitous in the energy space.
- rr808 4y ago
  If no company will do it your numbers are likely wrong.
paxys 4y ago
Going by that logic, why does any company sell anything that can be used to make money?
- giantrobot 4y ago
  It's profitable to sell shovels to gold miners. Mining the gold takes time, resources, and luck to be profitable. Selling just the shovels means you can make good money with far less luck. You can optimize costs, it's much harder to optimize luck.
bee_rider 4y ago
The companies could be located in an area where electricity is too expensive to turn a profit (and they might be relying on the fact that the end users are individuals, and distributed, so maybe they expect the end users to slip between the cracks and find subsidies not intended to go to bitcoins). Also, if one company was making the majority of bitcoin ASICs, they'd be at risk of gaining the ability to do a 51% attack, right? Which would reduce confidence in the network I guess. I don't own any of this stuff because bitcoin seems fundamentally bad for the planet and a pain to manage, but I don't think we should assume these things are necessarily irrational purchases just because we don't like them.

Any company that could build hardware capable of turning a profit would use it themselves, instead of selling it to the public. Don't try to buy a money printer. Life isn't that easy.

redox99 4y ago

People have been saying this literally since the first ASIC came out. And guess what. People have made a lot of money buying these money printers.

jabits 4y ago

Not so sure, what about a machine like a slot machine? I think you make money making something you know how to make

vikingerik 4y ago

There is arbitrage. It's possible that a hardware company might be located where electricity is expensive, or in an unfavorable regulatory or tax jurisdiction, such that they wouldn't directly profit from running the mining equipment, but someone in a better environment could. But yeah, this would be a small minority of situations.

amelius 4y ago

Solar panels are money printers. Yet no company is offering to put them on my roof at their cost.

catlifeonmars 4y ago
Why not?
betamaxthetape 4y ago
This used to be the case in the UK. There were a few companies that would install solar panels on your roof, at no cost to you. You could use the electricity generated by the panels at no cost. The catch was that the companies took the feed-in tariff (the government subsidy for generating renewable electricity), and that you needed to commit to having the panels on your house for a minimum number of years (making it unviable if you rented, or planned to move in a few years). In the mid-2010s the UK changed how the subsidies worked, changing from the feed-in scheme where you were paid per unit of electricity generated (regardless of if you consumed that energy or sent it back to the electricity grid) to the Smart Export Guarantee, where you are only paid for the electricity that you sent back to the grid. According to Wikipedia [0] this caused many of the companies operating the "free solar panels" schemes to go out of business. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_tariffs_in_the_United_Kingdom#Free_electricity_schemes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_tariffs_in_the_United_...
colinmhayes 4y ago
There's big risk that legislation will be passed that allows utilities to pay wholesale price for electricity generated by home solar instead of retail price. It's not profitable at that rate to put it on roofs, building solar farms makes much more sense.
vkou 4y ago
Utility solar deployment is a money printer[1], residential rooftop solar deployment is an expensive[2] fashion statement. The reason solar panel manufacturers don't go into the power generation business is because building a solar plant is a political problem, while building solar panels is a technological problem. It's not their core expertise. [1] In locations that need more electricity, have regulators that will favor you over coal-burning and gas-burning incumbents, and where you can deal with the NIMBYs. [2] It should be obvious when you consider that economies of scale mean that utility solar will always be cheaper than rooftop solar for on-grid homes.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  > residential rooftop solar deployment is an expensive[2] fashion statement. Not really. Panel lifetimes are measured in decades and the break-even point is usually around a decade, less if daytime utility power is expensive. They're not high volume money printers but they'll eventually pay for themselves (including their carbon usage during production). Solar works mathematically because the Sun is constantly bombarding the Earth with energy. Rooftop solar increases the efficiency of otherwise wasted acreage of rooftops of buildings. Not only can they offset energy use of the stuff inside the building but the rooftop shade is that much less cooling needed for the building.
  - vkou 4y ago
    > less if daytime utility power is expensive. My point is that daytime utility power that comes from a solar farm will always be cheaper then rooftop solar. Because it takes a lot less labor to deploy solar at utility-scale, than to bolt it to your roof. The only reason rooftop solar can currently be cost-efficient[1] is if its competing with expensive sources of energy generation. If it has to compete with cheap sources (utility solar), it's not cost-efficient. [1] Or if you're receiving subsidies for the energy you sell back to the grid.
    - freemint 4y ago
      > My point is that daytime utility power that comes from a solar farm will always be cheaper then rooftop solar. If you ignore the cost of maintaining the grid between A and B, yes and if you ignore the value of people having storage in their house being able to optimise their in house consumptions to match the solar production, yes (this would be possible with pricing signals but it is not done, also there are slight psychological differences for the user) and if you ignore communities having access to power in case the electricity grid is under attack due to foreign invasion, yes.
dleavitt 4y ago
This was/is exactly the business model of SolarCity and a lot of residential solar. The more general concept, sometimes called "Savings as a Service" or "Efficiency as a Service", is pretty ubiquitous in the energy space.
rr808 4y ago
If no company will do it your numbers are likely wrong.

paxys 4y ago

Going by that logic, why does any company sell anything that can be used to make money?

giantrobot 4y ago
It's profitable to sell shovels to gold miners. Mining the gold takes time, resources, and luck to be profitable. Selling just the shovels means you can make good money with far less luck. You can optimize costs, it's much harder to optimize luck.

bee_rider 4y ago

The companies could be located in an area where electricity is too expensive to turn a profit (and they might be relying on the fact that the end users are individuals, and distributed, so maybe they expect the end users to slip between the cracks and find subsidies not intended to go to bitcoins). Also, if one company was making the majority of bitcoin ASICs, they'd be at risk of gaining the ability to do a 51% attack, right? Which would reduce confidence in the network I guess. I don't own any of this stuff because bitcoin seems fundamentally bad for the planet and a pain to manage, but I don't think we should assume these things are necessarily irrational purchases just because we don't like them.