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Who buys this crap? If I a company builds hardware that can profitably mine bitcoins, it will keep the hardware and do the mining itself rather than selling it
by dfrey 13y ago
Who buys this crap?
If I a company builds hardware that can profitably mine bitcoins, it will keep the hardware and do the mining itself rather than selling it into the market.
- DerpObvious 13y agoI don't know that this automatically follows: lots of companies produce equipment for other companies to use on making profit in markets they themselves don't work in. It's entirely possible for a company to want to manufacture ASICs/boards and not want to run a server farm and deal with that level of IT for bitcoin mining.
- marvin 13y agoI think the intersection between such hardware companies and companies with enough domain knowledge of Bitcoin to make a bitcoin ASIC, is zero. The most plausible explanation I've heard is that these hardware companies need deposits to pay the development costs, then plan to run the chips themselves. Anyone who doesn't use such a strategy, is not expecting their customers to break even on their investment.
- ewillbefull 13y agoASICMiner does run its own mine: http://asicminercharts.com/ http://asicminercharts.com/
- sp332 13y agoFor example, Butterfly Labs built their first big batch of miners using money from pre-orders. By the time the devices existed, they already owed them to customers.
- smackfu 13y agoGenerally they are selling pre-orders in order to fund the development and production costs. In theory, they could use investors instead, but maybe they couldn't find one.
- SilasX 13y agoKinda like how nobody sells mining drills because "if using that drill were profitable, they would use it themselves"?
- chollida1 13y ago> Kinda like how nobody sells mining drills because "if using that drill were profitable, they would use it themselves"? Which is a really awful comparison as real world mining requires things like: - mining rights - land title - skilled workers - processing plants that will take your ore - government connections Mining bitcoin requires only a computer or specialized gear. Or in other terms, its an awful comparison as anyone can mine bitcoin, while only a very few select folks can mine in the real world.
- SilasX 13y agoThere's a different degree of specialization, but it's still there. And just because you can do something doesn't mean it's in your comparative advantage to do so. In his case, someone who mines the bitcoins is implicitly making a bet on the future return, whose desired risk profile may be different from the hardware maker.