It was a risky gamble, but not a massive one. I think the expected payback time (assuming the price stayed the same - which it didn't) was something like 6 months. One advantage of GPU based mining was that the GPUs, motherboards, RAM etc were general purpose computer parts, so they held more resale value than say a 3 month old SHA256 ASIC miner. If BTC had completely fizzled (or a fatal flaw had been found) he may have come out with a $10k net loss.
My single mid-level GPU created about 1 BTC per week so I'd say his table full of motherboards and high end GPUs would have been pushing out at least 20 BTC per week.
I hear ya.
1. I planned to buy $100 worth of BTC (at about $3ea) via Paypal, but decided it was late and I needed to sleep on it. When I got back up, Paypal had changed the rules. At the time sites like localbitcoins didn't exist, so it was difficult to purchase BTC. I literally just missed the boat.
2. As detailed earlier, I stopped mining too soon. I didn't consider the residual value of the equipment, nor the fact that I could write off the electricity cost, so the break even point was actually further down the track. It was just something fun at that time, nothing really too serious.
3. About 18 months later I realised the price of BTC was going up, and thought it was going to crash, so I sold off my entire balance at $44 each. If I had waited another year, I could have sold for $800 each, and if I'd sold at the top point, $1000+ each.
So if I'd been able to make that initial test investment, I had mined a couple of months longer, and had waited until the price went high, I could have realistically netted $50k+. Instead I made about $500 from selling my BTC, plus another hundred or so from selling my used GPU on ebay.
