There was a time when Bitcoin mining hardware would sell out in days, just for preorders, now supply has seems to be outpacing demand. Some companies, despite not even fulfilling past orders, continue to offer more miners.
It is sad for those who preordered months ago and calculated their returns based on past prices, but we are in a volatile market and one shouldn’t assume continuous upward price growth; although, customers couldn’t predict that some companies wouldn’t deliver.
The Bitcoin network was about 10 petahashes at the start of the year and now is over 60 petahashes. Some companies are offering units shipped in the same week. CoinTerra announced daily spot pricing last Monday to join Bitmain who changes their prices when difficulty changes. This has caused prices to cool down.
It can be pretty frustrating for miners who want there to be less miners so they have a larger share, while mining equipment manufacturers want to sell more miners and Bitcoin enthusiasts want a larger, more secure network. At least now miners are able to get units at a market rate, just like some mining contracts.
The pricing of mining equipment also has to make sense to sell, if the ROI is fast, it makes sense for companies to use the miners instead of selling them. It’s a business.
As production becomes more streamlined will we see companies try to innovate and bring the chip sizes to 14nm; although, most companies are still at the 28nm level and some even saying that the 28nm makes the most economical sense, who knows?
It does appear that the exponential growth of the network is slowing down, judging from the last several months have averaged sub-20% increases in difficulty. In comparison, the network was growing 30% every ten days from mid August until early November.
[textmarker color=”C24000″]Source[/textmarker] Difficulty CoinTerra