Buying & marketPublished by Cipheron
Pre-order or in-stock units – where the risk really lies
Pre-ordered miners are cheaper but only arrive in weeks or months. With Bitcoin the risk of the waiting time is low, with altcoin miners it can cost the entire revenue.
New miner generations are first sold as pre-orders: you pay today and get the unit from a later production batch. In the shop these offers are labelled “Futures”, and the expected date is stated on the product.
What you get for the waiting time
- Price: Pre-orders are usually cheaper than the same unit from stock.
- Efficiency: You get the latest chip generation before it is available as in-stock units.
In return your money earns nothing until delivery, and the market keeps moving during that time.
Bitcoin: negligible risk
The Bitcoin network is so large that a single new batch of units hardly moves the difficulty. The revenue of a SHA-256 miner therefore changes in manageable steps over a few months. Anyone who pre-orders a Bitcoin miner knows the order of magnitude of what the unit will earn on delivery. The price remains open, and it hits in-stock units just the same.
Altcoins: this is where the risk lies
For miners for smaller networks, such as Scrypt, Equihash or X11, this does not apply. Three reasons:
- Small network. A new generation of units can multiply the network's total computing power in a short time. The revenue per unit falls to the same extent.
- The first batch earns the most. The high revenues from the announcement apply to the weeks in which hardly any units are running. Anyone who receives delivery in a later batch no longer gets them.
- Dependence on one coin. A price drop, a change to the algorithm or waning interest hit a unit that can only compute this one algorithm in full.
A revenue calculation from today therefore says little about the revenue on the delivery date for an altcoin miner.
How to decide
- Bitcoin miners: pre-order if the price advantage outweighs the waiting time. In-stock units if cheap electricity is already available and every day without a unit costs money.
- Altcoin miners: in-stock units if there are any. With a pre-order, the batch counts: the earlier it ships, the better. Assume a revenue well below today's, and order only if it still pays off then.
What applies to both
The delivery date of a pre-order is a figure from the manufacturer and can slip. Plan the electrical connection and the installation space so that a few weeks of delay cost nothing.
As of October 2026. This article reflects our assessment from the trade and is not investment advice.