Hacker News Reader

Comment by lectrick | Hacker News Reader

Bought 2 FPGA miner rigs from BFL. One of their first customers to take that risk. Cost about 30 grand. Liquidated 2 of my 6 underperforming retirement funds to pay for it as I was unemployed at the time (yes I am a little crazy and obviously have no dependents).

I now have about 330 grand in BTC. After paying off the original investment (and then some) by selling off 1/3 my holdings when it was $230. I also paid off the upgrade to 3 ASIC mining rigs (4.5TH) which should ship... Imminently actually.

I also have a 6 figure developer job but Bitcoin has made me far more money so far (on paper) this past year.

I'm still bullish on it. Welcome to Internet Gold 2.0.

View on HN

The key here is that he got in early and sold at a great time. Right now asic miners are not profitable unless the price of bitcoins goes up substantially (1.5-2x). Then you have to factor in the fact the there are a lot of people out there willing to put down serious money on asics regardless of the current profitability. They have and will driven up the difficulty.

Buying ascis is very much a gamble at this point imo.

I made around 110 BTC mining primecoin, about 60 BTC of that is profit. I got in early and went hard. I consider the fact I did that well to be little more than luck.

Good for you and your brass nuts, man. However, I think what you risked underscores the reason why small miners will never be profitable - small risk, small reward. Big risk big reward. Those with capital to invest will leverage, those with modest investments should not be expecting huge returns.

Thanks. I knew it was a pretty big risk at the time but I spent about 2 weeks obsessed with it and doing my homework. Pored over the source code, forums, docs, concepts etc. (it probably helped that I'm a programmer). By the time I was done with that "homework" it felt less like a risk and more like a sure thing... although BFL at the time was also a big risk.

It took MANY emails with Sonny and Josh over there, back and forth, before I felt comfortable forking over that amount of cash. (They ended up giving me a discount, too.) The tone of the emails and the seriousness and some voice calls helped reassure me a lot that they were serious. I don't think that aspect of it can be discounted.

Pretty bold move. Nice to hear it paid off.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com