9.14 ASIC earnings 23 April 2013

23rd April, 2013

Previous posts in series

0. Introduction
This is a "mini update". I was referred by bitcointalk.org forum members Minor Miner and Viceroy to a few posts ASICMiner / Bitfountain representative friedcat about their plans for mining hashrate and mining device sales, and also to posts by Avalon representative BitSyncom about their plans for chip sales.

Despite a large amount of fuss about these announcements, based on previous announcements I have assumed a much lower rate of hashes added to the network than some analysts. I've outlined my guesses in section "1. Assumptions" below. Also, since it seems that a number of readers don't read the assumptions I've added handy summary table of  assumed hashrate additions per month, by manufacturer.

Changelog:

• A table of assumed hashrate additions per month.

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 31st May.
• Batch 3: 500 of an even mix of  67 and 85 Ghps units, delivered from 1st June to 30th June.
• BFL delivers 2000 Ghps per day (~35 SC Singles per day) from 15th May to 31st July.
• ASICMiner delivers 1.15 Thps per day for a total of 100Thps until 31st 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 column five of the 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 11th May. The cumulative btc earned by 31st July (the maximum x axis value) is ~ 1.483 BTC / Ghps, so you multipy that by 67 Ghps to get 99.36 BTC.

You estimate the exchange rate will rise back to US$100 per BTC by 31st July, for a gross earning of $9936.

You live in Australia with 240V main and your electricity costs are US$0.25 per kWh. From the upper cumulative electricity chart, you mark the intersection of 82 days (x axis) and US$ 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$9636.

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

Adding an extra 100 Thps to the network by the end of July only adds an extra one third to the total, so the impact isn't as large as you'd think. If you look at last week's estimate, the earnings per day and cumulative earnings aren't reduced by a very large margin.

Any devices that arrive after 18th May are probably unable to obtain a complete return on their investment by the end of July.

Dataset of the earnings estimates for more detail.

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