

ASICMiner Blade Prices Reduced 65% After Shares Crash - CrunchyJams
http://thegenesisblock.com/asicminer-blades-reduced-65-to-3-5-btc/

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joosters
3.5 bitcoin is roughly $450. If you bought one now and started it running in
September, you will likely never break-even or make a profit:

[http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/a/a65c154190](http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/a/a65c154190)

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a-priori
Someone with a better understanding of Bitcoins please correct me here if I'm
wrong. But if I understand things correctly, mining is one way (the only way?)
to get untraceable Bitcoins because they're created out of thin air by the
network. By paying your electricity bill to run a miner, you're effectively
converting your local currency into Bitcoins.

As as long as you credit the mining reward to a wallet that has no connection
to your real-world finances, and take other safety precautions, those coins
would not be traceable to you. So this could be used to launder money through
the Bitcoin network. The only evidence that you were doing something would be
an abnormally large electricity bill.

Mind you, without this turning into Office Space, I'm sure there's more
effective ways to launder money...

But if that's true, then I would expect the supply of mining capacity to
settle above the point where it's profitable, because some fraction of miners
don't really care about being profitable as long it's a reasonable loss.

~~~
jessaustin
It's my impression that obtaining BTC isn't the interesting problem for most
would-be launderers. After all, you just have to sell some CC #s or provide
custom DDOS services or do whatever nefarious shit you do that makes
laundering a good idea, and _presto_ you have BTC. The real problem is trading
those fat stacks of BTC for fast cars, palatial mansions, the intimate
attentions of beautiful people, etc. _without_ the fuzz connecting those
riches back to the nefarious shit that earned them. That is, as for regular
money laundering, the trick is make dirty funds clean. It's actually
straightforward to obtain dirty funds in the first place, for a criminal.

See here for more on this topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6291546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6291546)

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jevinskie
> After reaching an all-time high of 5.15 BTC per share on July 3rd they have
> dropped 48% to 2.71 BTC per share as of today.

Pardon? Is there a stock market that trades in BTC?

~~~
ramchip
Yes of course:

[https://btct.co/](https://btct.co/)

[https://bitfunder.com/](https://bitfunder.com/)

[http://mpex.co/](http://mpex.co/)

[https://www.havelockinvestments.com/](https://www.havelockinvestments.com/)

It's all risky and low volume, as you might expect. Then there's also OTC with
people doing auctions on forums, etc.

~~~
tveita
> * This is a virtual stock exchange using virtual currency. Virtual goods
> utilized on this site are for entertainment and educational purposes only.

So the favorable interpretation would be that this is a toy exchange... The
other possibility being a conveyor of unregistered securities.

~~~
ewillbefull
> The other possibility being a conveyor of unregistered securities.

ding ding ding

BTCTC also announced they were considering blocking all U.S. users to avoid
confronting the SEC, even though I believe they run in another country.

~~~
cgi_man
A few days after they posted they were considering it, they said they decided
not to and will be continuing operations to US citizens with an added
disclaimer.

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dfrey
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
I 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
I 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.

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jacquesm
Funny how even bitcoin hardware producers can get caught out by the volatility
of everything associated with bitcoin. Tip: Don't price your stock and
inventory in btc.

~~~
joosters
It's not the bitcoin volatility that has triggered this price drop (BC has
been _relatively_ stable recently), it's the fact that they were overpriced.

~~~
wpietri
Oh, I'd call them correctly priced.

During the gold rush, eggs were selling for the modern equivalent of $83 each.
Cheese was $700 per pound. And this was paid by miners who were making the
equivalent of a few hundred bucks per day.

When crazy people want to give you a lot of money, you raise your prices. When
they get over their madness, you can always lower them again.

~~~
joosters
But the price is still too much. High prices, great. Higher prices than the
potential reward, not great. It is like trying to sell those same eggs for
more than the miners' daily wage. You need extra-crazy customers, not just
plain crazy :)

~~~
wpietri
That's what happens in bubbles. Prices get higher than the rationally expected
reward. Now that the bubble is popping a little, they are correctly dropping
their prices. But I think it's fair to say that bubbles make crazy people
extra-crazy, so maybe that's exactly what's going on.

