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This is coming from a guy that thinks ASIC is coming fairly confidently.  This is coming from a guy that really doesn't favor any company at the moment though from some reading some are making themselves out to be hard to find the confidence to place an order with.  But most of all, this is coming from a potential customer.  I really like BTC and I really would like to see it succeed.  I will be buying an ASIC, and I would eventually like to find other ways to help push the BTC economy forward.  That said - here is my question.

Why can not one single company give us something real and concrete to work with?  If a company could do that, they will for sure have my order.  I'm looking for which ever device ends up in the 60-80 gh/s range.  Possibly two of them - we shall see.

I'm not talking about talk.  I'm not saying just showing me a pretty picture.  Provide me, provide all of us (who have ordered, or have not yet quite ordered) a reason to trust that your going to deliver on our money.

Trust is earned.  Right now every single company who is producing an ASIC device is asking for our trust.  I dont give trust out - you earn it.  Fairly sure I speak for most people with that.

Dont get me wrong - I want to believe.  But when your talking about $1-3,000 USD - I need a little more then anyone is currently providing.  Which is virtually nothing, unless I'm really missing something.

Provide it - and they will come.  (Customers, followed with orders)

Wait 6 months (mid-2013), and you will have a lot of proof before commencing with your purchase :)

There should be no reason to have to wait that long! :)  Though your right - that would definitely be the safest route.

But in 6 months the diff will probably be like 45m lol

You don't need to wait 6 months (unless you think there will be no shipment for the next 5-6months), if they ship anything, as soon as people get their machines there will be a flood of pictures and info and showing off. A week at most to ensure no one is horridly burned to death or hit by shrapnel, and you can place orders fairly happily. You've already missed the early adopter boat anyway (pre-orders filled).

While I think you're a blatent sock puppet, I'll answer your question anyways.

All 3 of the main competitors (BFL, bASIC, and Avalon) fit your criteria. They all have devices in the 60-80GH/s range (60, 72, 66). You want to talk about trust and proving themselves? All 3 have been very prominent in the BTC world already thru the selling of FPGA miners. All 3 have earned that trust with previous orders over the past six months to a year. All 3 have released claimed specs, some even released pictures, but no solid, 100% undeniable proof has been revealed yet. I suspect that that won't come until about 3-4 weeks AFTER the first one start shipping, based on the level of skepticism swarming these forums.

If you wait any longer, you may as well not order at all because all of the big profits are going to pass you by...

So you want more pictures?

Sure... a picture of one hashing.  I should have figured rather then bringing in people who want to see the same, it would bring on the trolls!

What has been provided thus far sucks.  What has been provided thus far is really nothing more then "we're working on it."

I've never seen so much cloudiness surrounding business as I have in this scenario.

Early adopter spots pop up for sale several times a day on the forums. :P

A variation of this question is asked, on average, every few hours.

I want to know exactly how fast the new CPU's from Intel and AMD are that come out in a few months. Where can I find those numbers?

Cute and all, but apples to oranges.  Intel/AMD don't ask you to pre-order and pay for your CPU 6 months before its available and benchmarked.  Intel and AMD do send samples to review sites (Tom's hardware comes to mind) BEFORE general availability.

Really.. Good try though..

Oranges to Pears.  BFL/Avalon/BitcoinASIC don't stick a gun to your head and force you to send them money for a pre-order and Intel/AMD don't even have a pre-order system in place, you wait until they're out and you buy.  Those Intel/AMD review samples almost always come with an NDA that require the sites don't say a word until general release.  Just like what you have to do for CPU's you can just as easily wait till ASIC's are released to order, noone is forcing you to pre-order.

Really.. Good try though..

Pears to Bananas - Comparing the ASIC outfits to AMD and Intel is a fool's game.  I asked BFL for pictures of boxes filled with parts and before they provided them (sort of) I was chastised with this logic.  "Why don't you ask Intel for proof of their materials?"

Maybe because there's a difference between a multi-billion dollar, multi-national, publicly traded, 44 year old corporation with a long history of delivering products on time as predicted ... and Butterfly Labs.

I agree wholeheartedly, but once again, there's a simple solution.  If you're not willing to take the risk of pre-ordering without that information/photos/data ahead of time, then simply don't pre-order.  People seem to want to be on the cutting edge of Bitcoin mining but want exact specifics and guarantees.  Sorry, but the two don't mix.  Bitcoin is a risky endeavor all around, if you want guarantees buy more video cards or wait till ASIC's are actually in production before buying one.  Complaining that you should have the benefit of being on the cutting edge and front of the line to get your hands on a new mining technology, but shouldn't have to take any risk whatsoever is ridiculous. 

This is like poetry.

You sir, are freaking awesome (your avatar picture not withstanding). Most intelligent thing said all month.

I don't understand why people want to be mouthpieces for other companies, rather than other consumers, but I guess it is what it is.

I will start by saying that I probably would have been an early "no info" adopter, had I been around at the time, and now I'm fine with being a post first-batch adopter if they ever show up. C'est la vie.

But to chastise investors (more akin to what pre-orders are than customers), for asking a company for easily obtainable evidence that they haven't just pulled a heist is clearly reasonable (albeit a bit annoying).
The fact that I wasn't told my mother was going to be raped if I didn't buy a mining rig has nothing to do with anything. Investors in all fields, especially in new and risky enterprises need constant mollification that they aren't just pouring their money down a drain. This is common business practice.

That you think these companies deserve some special level of trust because bitcoin requires people just hope for the best in all things is more ridiculous in my opinion. Possibly why we see constant scams in bitcoin, that people just throw up Caveat emptor, and call it a day.

And remember, I have no special vested interest in having information in hand today.

What makes you think they have what you want?

It seems you want peer reviewed benchmarked specs (hashrate, state rates, power consumption, temp, etc).   Nobody has a functional product yet.  How exactly would they provide something which doesn't exist?

As others have said wait until launch and you will see.   To the more general questions ... That info is unecessary at this point.  The pre-order buyers have already taken a risk.  Getting proof after committing to a sale is kinda foolish.   ANyone who doesn't have a pre-order is better off waiting.  Why?  Pre-ordering now is the worst of risk vs reward.  You get the lowest reward (it may be months before your order ships and difficulty will be >200M by then) and are taking the most risk.   At this point, waiting until they ship doesn't significantly reduce ones reward but significantly reduces the risk.

But the risk you're talking about it is the risk that BFL is lying to get a bunch of pre-orders and they'll run away with the money, or the more likely scenario of them simply stringing everyone along with a series of missed deadlines.  They claimed that such things would not happen, so you're incorrect in saying that that was the risk I'm taking.  When I put in my order, it was on various promises they made.  It seems a little illogical to say when they fail to make good on those promises, "Well... that's the risk you took..."  No, it wasn't.  I ordered a product.  If you're going to lump in that the ordered product won't be there in time to be useful, then that's a risk with anything you buy on eBay, Amazon, etc...  Like the possibility that the burger flipping will hock on my meal, it is a risk in the academic sense of the word, but not in the sense that it is a risk I willingly took on.

It seems the only people who are enjoying this ride BFL is taking us on are the people who ordered, believing that BFL would not be able to timely deliver the product.  What's worse is that the enjoyment manifests itself in these strange posts like yours.  "Don't like being jerked around?  Why did you order from BFL?  Haha... Loser... Ordered on the information given and actually believed it!"

It isn't like I'm hugely invested or anything, but the attitude seems to be... "I'm sure everything is moving as fast as it can....  stop worrying about it and enjoy the ride."  I want off.

Love this this is the "poetry" of the topic thus far.

I dont even understand why we can't see old revisions.  Hey... this is the 6 core hashing at 60 gh/s... just wait till we show you the 8 core!   (In roll the orders...)

One huge thing that is often overlooked is the fact that if Bitcoin tanks, so does everything associated with Bitcoin. Im willing to take the risk because I believe, and not because there is a single person on this earth who can assure me that Bitcoin will succeed.

No, this isn't overlooked. This was addressed hundreds of times when ASICs were first released. There's a reason the mods had to make an entire Mining Speculation subforum.

I'm not knocking anyone's opinions, and it's nice to actually see some civil discourse on the subject for once. :)  I can certainly understand that frustrations are running high, especially if you pre-ordered early in the summer with the expectation of an October ASIC release, but if you are truly no longer happy with the 'ride' you are being taken on by any of the vendors, then by all means, ask for a refund right now.  In all the bile and vitriol spewed on these forums in the past few months over ASIC's, I've not heard a single person say they have not received a refund from any of the vendors when asked for it.

There's nothing wrong with investors asking the ASIC vendor's what's going on, but the problem is that every single one of them has responded multiple times with the same basic thing, "They'll be done, when they're done."  Yet we see more posts every day of people asking the same thing, when will they be done, why aren't they done already, they must be scammers because they didn't hit their date, etc., etc.  Believe me, I want my ASIC's too right now too.  I'm tired of dealing with the noise/heat of GPU mining, but there's not a thing I can do about it, and if I was truly concerned, I'd ask for a refund.

True, it is addressed many times over in those forums. Its seems that thought disappears as soon as someone starts complaining about the profits these companies have supposedly robbed them of. Meatball is right about the fact that all of the companies "selling" asics have honored pretty much all refunds, so why try and harass the "distributors" and cause such a scene when if they really wanted to they could just walk away from it all. If someone plans to mine for coins for years and years then why would it matter if we wait 1 week or 1 month? Everyone else that bought asics are still waiting, no big deal.

If a hashing chip hashes at 60Ghash/s with a clock of 100MHz, there are 60G / 100M = 600 unrolled cores or 600 * 125 = 75000 rolled cores or 300 unrolled cores @ 200 MHz or or or... the total speed, energy consumption and price are all what matters.

Took your advice and just sent the e-mail asking for a refund for one of my orders.  I have to leave one open because someone already bought it from me... so for his sake, I hope it arrives soon so I can give it to him.

This forum needs to adopt a strict policy of closing these threads as duplicates, I'm quite tired of re-reading this same BS every day from a new person (or, more likely, the sockpuppet of one of the previous people).

You're not having an original thought, no one needs to have this discussion again, there is no new information to add to the conversation. Search before you post.

But there is: BFL has no chips, they don't know when they'll arrive, maybe however within the next two weeks. Big maybe.

Re-spin will take ~5 weeks if there's no queue at the fab

To paraphrase Meatball, no one put a gun to your head and made you read this thread. The title was pretty clear in what the content would be, you could simply have chosen not to open it. If a thread is unwanted, no one responds, and it quickly falls off the page.


I would say that the problem isn't that people keep asking and getting the same response, it's that the response is unhelpful. Saying "it will happen when it happens" is basically not a response at all (this applies to all MFGs). The latest incident with BFL is perfect example of why people are repeatedly asking for transparency. They are told "Everything is DONE! Chips are coming in on XX date, and then your stuff is going out!" until they are told "well something or other happened so it'll actually be a lot longer then we said."

If there were a clearer picture into the design window, reasonable estimates of failure, where companies were at in the process, people might not feel so in the dark, and feel so "betrayed" by missed deadlines and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, I always expect the masses to get all bothered by not getting their candy right when they want it, but it'd be a lot less dramatic. If you don't like a billion threads about the same thing, I would certainly see you being in favor of that.

AMD and Intel don't take your money while they're working on the chips. Any established company that takes preorders sets a date and you get what you paid for that day.

a respectable company would not take your money and continue to push back the delivery date.