9.13 ASIC choices: ASIC earnings 17 April 2013

17th April, 2013

Previous posts in series

0. Introduction
A number of recent updates (and reader requests) have prompted me to write an update post.

Avalon update:

"... We are ramping up and the shipping of batch two has indeed begun, albeit not up to speed, we expect this situation to improve in a week or so once the equipment finish installing and the new, additional crew get use to the process. we are in also the process of merging many earlier problematic orders, if your order still does not show up in the store by Friday of the 19th please open another ticket."

BFL update:

"... We've been working on getting the software and firmware nailed down. Things are mostly stabilized at this point and with our current boards (we do not have the redesigned boards in house yet), power usage exceeds the 1w/GH, unfortunately, but it's much better than anything out by 40 - 50%, at the wall. We are gearing up to start shipping out some dev boards and a few Jalapeno's most likely this week (at least a few dev boards) and then as more chips roll in we'll be shipping out the Jalapeno's. When the new boards land in KC, we'll start shipping Little Singles and Singles at that time. I don't currently have a time frame for those, but I should have something later this week in regards to that."

ASICminer update:

"DeployingAt the same time waiting for the new place's power supply system and our second batch's assembly, we have tested the fully enclosed rack approach, which turned out to be denser and has better cooling over the devices.
The projected earliest date to start installing new hardware and releasing brand new hashrates is 22th this month. The whole deploying process will take at least two weeks, with the final hashrate decided by how much we are going to sell to consumers and how much we will keep for ourselves."

The dates for BFL and Avalon are almost in line with my assumptions last post, and ASICMiner seems to only have 7 Thps at the moment, so that also needs to be added. Details in section "1. Assumptions" below.

So, Avalon have started shipping. My order has not yet been added in my store account, so I don't think I'll be one of the first. Thankfully, since BFL has not yet shipped I could still earn 1.569 BTC per Ghps (up to 105 BTC at 67Ghps, no downtime) by the end of July, if mine arrives by 12th May.

Changelog:

• A Summary table of results for charts to help with interpretation of charts.
• "Cumulative earnings by start date" added as a facet on chart 3.
• Extension of the forecast to August.

Dataset of the earnings estimates for more detail.

1. Assumptions
Updated information plus my current guesses and estimates:

• Arrivals are constant. Rather than modelling arrival times, I'm assuming a constant rate of hashes per second added to the network for each of the batches.
• Batch 1: COMPLETE. (I know it's not quite, but near enough for this analysis).
• Batch 2: 600 of 67 Ghps units delivered from 1st May to 1st June.
• Batch 3: 500 of an even mix of  67 and 85 Ghps units, delivered from 1st June to 1st July
• BFL delivers 2000 Ghps per day (~35 SC Singles per day) from 15th May to 1st August.
• ASICMiner delivers 5 Thps  until 30th April.
• ASICMiner delivers 50 Thps  from 1st May to 1st July.

2. Charts

Chart 1:  The dots are the daily average hashrates, the blue line is the hashrate estimate, the blue shaded area the bootstrapped 95% confidence interval for the hashrate estimate, and the red line is Difficulty.

Chart 2: This group of charts show the expected hashrate, difficulty and blocks per day given my assumptions. Data prior to the dotted white line is historical data.

Chart 3 shows:

• Expected cumulative BTC earnings per Ghps, when starting mining on the Friday of each week, from 1st February.
• Daily BTC earnings from 1st February.
• The amount earned by August 1 2013 as a function of the date the device was switched on.

Charts 4 and 5 show the cumulative electricity costs and daily electricity costs for all known ASIC devices, separated into 220V and in 110V countries. Note that the BFL results are incorrect - their devices are known to be less efficient than originally thought. However I won't update this until BFL devices have been delivered and independently assessed.

3. How to estimate earnings

1. Decide when you think your ASIC will arrive and what the US$ exchange rate will be. Read the btc earned from the cumulative earnings chart (or table),  multiply by the hashrate of the device you wish to assess. Multiply by your  estimated USD$ exchange rate to find an earnings estimate in US$. 
2. On the appropriate cumulative electricity costs chart, select on the x axis of the number of days mining of which you wish to estimate the cost, and on the y axis your electricity cost per kWh. The estimated cumulative cost of mining can be read from the colourbar on the side.
3. Subtract the electricity costs from the US$ earnings.

Example: You're just waiting for your batch 2 Avalon to arrive, hopefully by 12th May. The cumulative btc earned by 1st August (the maximum x axis value) is ~ 1.569 BTC / Ghps, so you multiply that by 67 Ghps to get 105.12 BTC.

You estimate the exchange rate will rise back to US$100 per BTC by then for a gross earning of $10512.

You live in Australia with 240V main and your electricity costs are US$0.25 per kWh. From the upper cumulative electricity chart, you mark the intersection of 81 days (x axis) and US$ 0.25/kWh (y axis) and by matching the colour from the colour bar, estimate a total cost of ~ US$300 (click on the chart for a closer view).

In this case, the net amount earned will be US$10212.

If you dont want to use the charts  the cumulative earnings can be found in this dataset, and the cumulative cost will be:

cumulative daily electricity cost = device watts * cost per kWh / 1000 * days * 24

4. Conclusions

Earnings estimates are again a bit better than previous estimates - all shipping is a bit delayed compared to my previous best guess, I hadn't counted on ASICMiner dropping their hashrate back to 7Thps. extending the forecast to August (still assuming no batch four from Avalon ) shows that an Avalon that cost 75BTC and starts mining on 23rd May should almost have paid for itself by August - about a 2.5 month ROI.

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