Comparing BFMines to Alternatives

Earlier this week, in preparation for the IPO of BFMines, I published an article outlining the risks I saw as most relevant to my BFMines mining contracts. That article sparked some comments in various forums, including one comment from Bitcoin investment luminary Deprived where he requested that I posted a comparison between BFMines and other mining investment opportunities.

I’ve been hesitant to post specific numbers on both comparisons to other investment opportunities as well as difficulty speculations. The reason is that both of these numbers will be relevant only at the very minute the article is written, and changes almost on a daily basis. This is why it is very important that you run your own numbers.

However, as more and more people are requesting this, I’m going to comply with the following disclaimer: The numbers presented in this article are current as of this moment and change on a daily basis.

Make sure you review the numbers when you plan your investment.

Assumptions and Method Used

In this comparison article, I’m comparing numbers only. I’ll write a brief statement about each asset compared, but those statements have not been taken into account beyond what is explicitly stated.

For example, I may say that “Asset A has a risk of default” or “Asset B has a larger than normal volatility”. These statements focus on opinions only, and you should review them as part of your investment decisions. However, they may or may not make a favorable impact on the asset or on BFMines, depending on how you evaluate the statements.

For east asset, I’m focused on one number only; the price per mhs. BFMines is effectively denominated in mhs, so to have a reasonable comparison, this should be your main focus.

I’m providing some additional figures as well to give you some indication of the profitability potential. I am also using the highest sale price over the previous 24 hours as reported by BTCT.

Finally, I’m basing the price of BFMines on that everything goes according to schedule and that there is an average difficulty increase of 15% per month from now and until mining begins. After that, every asset denominated in hash power will have the same profitability evolution, so difficulty speculation beyond that should not affect which asset in which you invest (only whether you invest in mining at all).

Mining companies are assumed to keep their current percentage so dividend calculations are based on today’s dividends from mining. This means that although ASICMiner and Cognitive will increase their hash rate, I’m using the decline in profitability due to difficulty increase to counter this. As such, I have not included price adjustments for the mining companies.

Asset Comparison

I’ll compare BFMines to two classes of assets; mining contracts and mining companies. The difference may seem subtle, but mining companies may have better protection against difficulty increases as they may increase the hash rate to stay at the same relative rate, whereas mining contracts in general will not.

I have chosen two mining companies and two mining contracts from BTCT. The mining companies are ASICMiner and Cognitive and the mining contracts are TAT.VirtualMine (TAT.VM) and PAJKA. For Cognitive and PAJKA I have included their projected upgrades as well, as these may affect your calculations.

ASICMiner

Statement: The engine of top bitcoin exchanges stock markets is ASICMiner. ASICMiner has plans to keep their current percentage of overall mining, but will likely not exceed 35% of the total network. Note that dividend estimates are based on mining alone, not hardware sales. I have based returns on their purchased 62THs, not today’s rate (which is just 30THs)

Cognitive

Statement: Cognitive is a mining company with more incoming hash power, but also with some issues related to the trust in the issuer. Will likely increase hash power further and has a dedicated fund to support such increases.