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Comment by erikpukinskis | Hacker News Reader

Because difficulty increases to the point where the folks with the cheapest electricity are breaking even. And the cheapest electricity in the world is free (dorm rooms, cubicles, etc).

The only money to be made in Bitcoin mining is in making fairly strategic investments during the leading edge of advancements in efficiency, or changes in miners' understanding of the economics.

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It's getting more complicated than that. Expect financial deepening to occur when it comes to mining. http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2013/02/financial-deepening-and... I would also keep in mind that lots of people are thinking about harnessing the bitcoin network for a plethora of applications. http://qz.com/84056/the-bitcoin-network-is-now-more-powerful...

One notable point is that one mining company, Asicminer, has a bitcoin-denominated stock that dramatically increased in value over the last several months.

It IPOed at 0.1 btc per share, now trading at about 2.5 btc.

Along with the increase in the value of btc relative to the US dollar, Asicminer now has a market cap (on paper) of about $125 million, from an IPO that raised about $200k.

They're based in China, Shenzhen I believe, and have been making the most of their self-designed asics. They currently represent about 18% of the entire bitcoin network, as measured by hashrate.

http://www.asicminercharts.com/live/

Yes, quite the success story.

Only possible because of the ineptitude of other market participants utterly failing in deploying ASICs.

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