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Bitcoin mining machines bring up one of the most challenging business ethical questions of all time:
If you can make more money by keeping (or at least withholding for a time) your product from your costumers, would you ship them or keep making money with them and screw your costumers???
Why do you call this an ethical concern? Unless you are selling a life saving product, I see this as simple supply and demand - if people demand it enough, the price will rise and I will supply it. Otherwise, I may just keep it for a while.
well, it is an ethical problem, you might be not familiar with the issue:
1. The costumer prepaid for the miners, this prepayment made it actually possible to do the research and make the machines in the first place, so there is this huge ethical issue.
2. The miner is ready to ship, it is paid for, so the only reason not to ship it is greed, to keep it "for a while" and make money while the costumer is actually losing money by not being able to use it.
3. Once the miner actually is shipped the bitcoin mining difficulty could increase so there is a chance that the costumer can't even make the money back on it. So the costumer loses money 2 ways:
a/ By not being able to mine now.
b/ When he can start to mine the difficulty is so high that the machine is actually worths much less.
So, do you see the ethical problems now? Would you still keep the machines and for how long, after all at this point in time, if you are BFL, you could just give back the money and keep the miner for yourself, or mine until the difficulty rises and ship then, either way you screw your costumers who helped you to develop the product...
I looked at buying some of the buy "500 GH/S" $22k units.
I did the math using the current difficulty factor, the linear regression of the curve over the last 6 months, the average BTC price for the last 6 months, and the projected delivery dates.
In the end, it was not a good return on investment so I decided to pass. I also emailed Butterfly Labs and asked them why they were selling them instead of keeping them, but did express my genuine interest in buying multiple "500 GH/S" $22k units. This was before I completed my research. They never replied to the email.
This is basicly and unknown and even unknowable factor (since BFL can't be trusted), thus a would be buyer can't really calculate return on investment. Unless you use Avalon, they actually ship. The BFL situation is like the store manager at the Gold Rush in Alaska withholding shovels while he is digging for gold like crazy...
In other news, BTC is falling, currently under $90 just bounced back from $86...