[yebyen]

That's incredible, I remember when it was impossible to get ASIC miners from ButterflyLabs and we were all up in arms because of their inappropriate behavior. That was a niche vendor producing items that had basically no other uses.

GPU makers didn't sign up to build machines that print money. But it turns out when you do make machines that can print money, people tend to buy them at a rate faster than you can make them! Right away, whether or not you did it on purpose.

(I did get my ASIC Jalapeño miners from BFL before they were busted up, I did order more when they came around and offered to let everyone order more, and I still did manage to earn a pittance over and above my initial investment on both batches, regardless of the absolutely ridiculous production and shipping delays.)

[iak8god]

Hah, I remember the BFL fiasco. When my Jalapeno arrived five months after ordering, I looked at the hashrate, etc, and turned right around and sold it for twice what I'd paid.

[yebyen]

That's about what I made mining with it overall before the limit approached zero. Maybe twice what I paid *if you count cash dollar values only (keeping the BTC I spent would have obviously been a much better deal, if I held them til today!)

This worked better than it would have otherwise, because my employer had electricity priced into the rent at a flat rate, and told me he wouldn't mind if I threw these things into the server room.

(I got two early batch and four 10GHash later on for a total of about 50GHash. I don't remember exactly how long, but I am sure I waited a lot longer than 5 months.)