ASIC vendors who sell with reputable escrow?

[Juan]

Are there any ASIC vendors who sell their products where the Bitcoins are held in escrow until the product ships?

Do any of these ASIC vendors sell their products where the consumer has a fighting chance of a ROI with a realistic figure of expected 20% average difficulty rise per month?

Do not mention Cloud mining options as I don't want to run the risk of supporting a ponzi scheme or contributing towards the centralization of mining.

Thank You.

 

[Cristian]

Ok, so if it looks as if my suspicions are correct and it is almost impossible to mine profitably for the average user.

Next question is :

If me and my friends crowd sourced 100k together to make a large ASIC mining purchase would any companies provide escrow and price the miners appropriately so we had a fighting chance of turning a profit?

If not than what is the minimum price point would ASIC manufacturers entertain this offer....100k, 500k, 1 million?

 

[Jair]

If you purchase $100,000 worth of hardware I'm willing to bet that some companies would be able to offer discounts. They probably wouldn't accept bitcoin because of their reputation though. For example Bitmain has a good reputation and wouldn't run off with your coins.

 

[Ahmir]

If you purchase $100,000 worth of hardware I'm willing to bet that some companies would be able to offer discounts. They probably wouldn't accept bitcoin because of their reputation though. For example Bitmain has a good reputation and wouldn't run off with your coins.

Ok, so they don't want to trust an arbitrator. That's fine.
How about the possibility that any would be willing to sign a contract agreeing on a ship date and if not simply offering the client a full refund or negotiation at the clients discretion?

How much would need to be invested to get something somewhat reasonable where we have a fighting chance of possibly breaking even? 100k, 500k, 1 million?

I understand that mining has become more centralized and the margins are really thin, but this question is mainly attempting to access whether it is hypothetically feasible for many of us to perform a group buy and have any hope for a ROI.

The other day I saw a scam post where the black Friday discount was 40% off if the users bought 700 miners. So one would have to spend over half a million to get the opportunity to break even if one had free electricity and the difficulty stayed below 16% for a year, and this was for a "too good to be true deal" that turned out to be a scam!

Are we in a position where we are resigned to the fact that we can only mine altruistically for huge losses if we want to support the network or not?

 

[Dhruv]

I'd recommend contacting bitmain directly and see if you can negotiate a contract. I'm sure they'd be receptive towards a legitimate deal.

 

[Seven]

The average difficulty change over the past 12 months isn't 20% its 14.7%

For the past six months the average is 7.68% and dropping.

Also it depends enormously on what your electricity price is.

14.7% Difficulty increase at 10c/kwh 1TH would have to cost:
$120 @ 600W
$150 @ 500W
$180 @ 400W

But at 7.68% difficulty increase at 10c/kwh 1TH would have to cost:
$235 @ 600W
$285 @ 500W
$345 @ 400W

Lower the power cost to 8c/kwh and 7.68% difficulty and 1TH drops to:
Cost $295 @ 600W
Cost $345 @ 500W
Cost $400 @ 400W

So get your electricty prices to a minimum or get the most power efficient miners on the planet, or the cheapest, or preferably all three

 

[Aayan]

The silence is golden and tells a lot about the creditability of the industry?

Most legit companies {Not Mining related} would jump on that deal, why not with ASIC vendors?

I was involved with a small fiber cabling deal, a while ago, and we got 34 companies who tendered for way less than that. {They jumped through the hoops to get at the dollars}

 

[Yadiel]

The average difficulty change over the past 12 months isn't 20% its 14.7%

For the past six months the average is 7.68% and dropping.

I'm willing to entertain different scenarios where difficulty would be 5%, 7%, and 15% with these deals.

Unfortunately, the math doesn't show an expected return even with these new levels of difficulty.

Lets take this deal as an example -
https://bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020141129151711180IEnkaYyy0700

16 units of ANTMINER s4 and selling at 13088USD

Even if you assume free labor, free rent, 8c kWh, free security, no pool fees, and no hardware failures... you still need to maintain less than 5% difficulty increases for almost 7 months straight to break even.

Is this realistic?