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On May 4th, Friedcat, CEO of ASICMiner, announced the worlds first ASIC USB miner: operating at 300 MH/s for 1.99 BTC. As he refined the hardware, he was able to increase performance to 336 MH/s before shipping in early June. ASICMiner has listened to customer concerns on the forum, requesting smaller minimum order quantities and lower prices. They have lowered the price for each USB miner to 0.89 BTC on cumulative orders over 1,000 (this total includes any previous USB orders), or the option to buy at 0.99 BTC with a minimum order size of 50.
The original pre-orders began arriving on June 3rd. Miners who received one of the first shipments would have netted a 0.27 BTC return over those 23 days, assuming 100% uptime and no electricity costs. Given that the new USB miners use the same hardware, it is reasonable to think that these lower priced units will begin arriving soon. Unfortunately, the 1.1 BTC difference in price to start mining a month earlier does not seem to have paid off for the early adopters, and will likely result in a loss compared to if they had waited to order.
This announcement follows Friedcat’s post last week that they are temporarily halting orders of the 10 GH/s Block Erupter Blades while they prepare an upgraded model for release in July. Given that the last Blade/USB set priced for the same bitcoin cost per GH/s, it seems reasonable to expect that the new blades will debut around 4 MH/s per dollar. This would make them significantly less attractive than other options, such as Avalon’s ASIC chips.
ASICMiner shares have continued their relentless rise. When Friedcat first announced USB Miners in early May, shares were trading at 1.2 BTC. As of June 25th, shares have been trading in the 3.3 BTC range, a 275% increase in valuation. Additionally, these shares have provided a significant dividend return. Over the last two months ASICMiner shares have returned 0.187 BTC in dividends, or 15% per share. Their mining operation only accounts for around 0.015 BTC per week, so a significant portion of this dividend was due to hardware sales. ASICMiner share holders should watch closely to see how competitively priced the next round of Block Erupter Blades will be.
What are the odds that these will pay off before the price gets lowered again? Anyone have an estimate for what a fair value for these things are?
Zero….
No way…looks like they will make you some money but not enough to make you your money back – it is fun for thrills but not very cost effective whatsoever…unless btc shoots up to something crazy like 500 bucks a pop and you hold onto it
Now that the chips are masked out, marginal production costs should be between $7 and $20. Most likely toward the low end.
i’m not buying asicminer crap anymore… they may have the lead but they are also the greediest bunch out there who care less about bitcoin community. Name me one notable thing they’ve ever done for bitcoin community?
– Lower priced miners to keep blockchain even more decentralized? NO
– Open source initiatives? F..ck NO
– Sponsor bitcoin development? NO
i admire Yifu of Avalon for just being the only and only stand up guy for bitcoin community. look at their initiatives and you’ll understand why.
ASICminer owner just keeps hiding and looking for fools to buy his equipment at inflated prices that will never ROI thus making him rich and his customers poorer…
Price is now $15 per unit. It seems that it should be $7 for those things. I’ll buy them. I started buying at $15. I watched them fall from $40 and keep falling. With this type of thing, you never know. You have to start somewhere. $15, let me in.