Bitcoin Forum

Have sent them 4 e-mails to office@butterflylabs.com without any replies.

Did try the link https://products.butterflylabs.com/sales/guest/form/ but you can only view your order and submit another one but not to cancel your order with refund.

CALL US: 913-271-6744

I do not speak english very good.

I canceled my order without any issues. It took a few days and emails, but they refunded the full amount to my paypal acct.

what order you want to cancel? what  rigs? and how many?? and your order number?
Maybe you can sell it..

it's one 60 Gh/s miner. order date early september.

I have a feeling this was a attempted scam

A scam for what?

I don't know

I wonder if BFL would let someone else refund folks like the OP (if it was a legit order and request for refund).

Shucks, I would broker such deals, as well as refund some folks, too.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?
I run a Consulting Business, so far I have assisted with some patent work, as well as cost-savings and business expansions.

order date: 9 september
order number: #6944

How's that for a scam.

Was it over 45 days when you requested the refund?

Hi nagnagnag2, if you still have your order, I wouldn't mind taking it off your hands... Perhaps we could come to some sort of arrangement?

i was thinking about that same helix  ::)

Might be of interest to some

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-x-60-GH-s-Bitcoin-Miner-BitForce-Single-SC-ASIC-Butterfly-Labs-Avalon-/230949834281?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_2&hash=item35c5aece29

Probably a scam, there's no way he can guarantee BFL will ship in 30 days, they are masters of delay!

WHAT ? i can't cancel my mini-rig payed 5000BTC @ 6$ ?

Value : $350.000 today !

Whorst, no1 no one can show a picture of it functional

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibq7QFqok5A (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibq7QFqok5A)

Why is it essential to get one in the first shipment? Will the early adopters mine all the coins?

Because as more ASICs come online, the difficulty will rise, making it more difficult for people getting on the boat late to make their investment back.

Seems like some people are going to get very rich. Not cool that the BitCoins will be distributed so unevenly

And addition to what was mentioned above; the difficulty rises, and will rise exponentially.  But, even at a difficultly several times higher than it is now, asics will still be profitable.  Just not as at such a high degree (or % profit margin)  as today.  Albeit BTC value is going up and will continue to rise; that margin may remain close (so % profit margin may remain true).  I'm betting on the BTC value rising.

So how big is the window of opportunity after ASICs ship? Let's say you bought an ASIC a year after the first ones shipped could you still make a few yarrips? I'm not talking mega bucks. Or is it a case that they will have a very short shelf life because they've mined all the coins so fast that only the very difficult ones are left and they have to mine in pools again? I guess what I'm saying is how long is it going to take these bad boys to mine the easier coins before they hit the real hard stuff? Days, weeks??

That's the whole point of this exercise.

How do you mean? Personally you're in it to get rich or that Bitcoin is some kind of Pyramid scheme?

Bitcoin is an experiment in unrestrained ultra-capitalism.

I guess it is. Good luck to anyone who went for it early. Seems like they took a chance and it's just about to pay off big time for them. If I had a few grand I'd be tempted to buy bitcoins right now.

I would do some studying on what exactly is this difficulty level.  Basically it is designed to increase to ensure that a block of bitcoins is only discovered every 8-10 minutes.  When the network expands in strength, the difficulty rises up to keep the block discovery at this 8-10 minute window (albeit I've seen it drop into the 7 minute range and a bit lower, but the network soon levels off).  Right now we are mining 25 coin blocks.  That will diminish in half in a while.  As far as asic's being cost prohibitive or not in the near future; it really is a guessing game.  the key is educate yourself on the in's and out's.  this would be a good start to help make future projections.  There are a set number of bitcoins and it will take years to discover all of them.  Many theories, much math is involved as well.

Cheers man. That makes sense. I need to crack the maths behind this to better understand it.

+1

It is a guessing game.

lets say the difficulty quadruples to 20.000.000 until July 1st. And lets say that's the date one gets his Single SC, mining 60 GH/s. You'd make ฿45.87 per month or $3.200 at an exchange rate of $70.

so the players in the game basically are

- difficulty
- exchange rate
- your fraction of the total hashpower of the network

It's not rocket science, still you have do do some estimations and some math.
the big question is what will the difficulty be in n months - if you consider all of the 900 avalons and all of bfls 60.000 chips mining. I did this calculation but the only result I remember was "I'm okay with that". Maybe someone else has the numbers.

Well, I'm disagree with you on some points:

1) For the ones who bought in BTC, it's more important to b/e in BTC, so the exchange rate is secondary. Imagine how angry are those who bought in BTC when the exchange rate was 10 times lower ($6 in July 2012). They will NEVER b/e in USD, and keeping those BTC was the right choice to make.

2) You can quite safely estimate that difficulty in July will not be over X (I say not over 60.000.000), and therefore you can calculate the amount of BTC your machine will generate in worst case scenario. The big question is not what will the difficulty be in n months, but WHEN are you going to get your BFL machine.

It's possible that the answer to the big question is NEVER. So the real gamble is: when I will get my machine?

Well, how is the exchange rate secondary? For the people you mentioned it would have been smarter to keep those bitcoins - because of the exchange rate. Also non of them will cancel their order - also because of the current exchange rate. They'd have no loss in $, but a huge loss in btc.


With n months I meant the point when one gets his machine. No one knows when this will be due to the amazing information politics of BFL.

Hail Zerlan.

Well, the harsh truth is that early buyers in BTC will never b/e. I mean... In July a 60GHs BFL unit costed +200btc. To b/e TODAY they would need 40 days. But when the difficulty will spike x10, it's more than a year... While difficulty keeps climbing.


Well, I think BFL information politics is pretty good. They are stating pretty clearly that they are in very deep shit, and that they won't be able to ship a reasonably good, well-tested product for MONTHS. I mean, you can safely bet that you won't receive your unit until the summer or later... And probably you will never receive it.

They did? Would you like to provide a link to those "clear statements"? The last update was basically jabbering something about problems with the board and fondling with the firmware. They've never had clear statements. Maybe "BFL Information Minister" might give us some more insightful information about the situation at the front ;)

Well, I read that jabbering as a clear statement on their inability to produce a working, well tested product in a reasonable time frame. That is 100% clear from my point of view.

You've got a point there.

Still they managed their FPGA production and distribution. They seem to have made a chain of pretty poor decisions towards choosing reliable partners etc. But I agree that there's not much to justify optimism here besides the fact that pre-oderers seem to develop an analogy of the stockholm syndrome...

For me it's quite the opposite. I preordered, but I got over it and I accepted I was scammed. Maybe they had no intention to scam their customers at the beginning, but I'm quite sure they are now saying "what the fuck, let's take the most out of it and fuck them all".

I've read EVERY DAY on this forums about newbies doing new preorders. Hell, BFL have got almost 30.000 preorders right now, and they are spending A LOT of money advertising they still non-existing units for preorder.

This, in my opinion, is another clear red flag. They are more worried in investing in huge advertising than in solving their problems.

If they were legit, they would just STOP taking preorders until they start shipping. I mean... What kind of return can make somebody that orders a SC Single today and receives his unit when Avalon has deployed at least another 3 batches, plus tons of THs deployed by ASICminer, plus the thousands (if not millions) of THs deployed by the units in the 30.000 orders before yours?

BFL knows that, and STILL is accepting preorders and investing a lot in advertising. They are SCAM, full point.

Did you cancel your order or did you pay in bitcoin?

You think those order numbers are correct? If so, they'd have to produce 4 units per hour 27/4 from now on to deliver actual orders within this year.

Well in this case their only option would be to run off to some 3rd world country or else spend a long time in prison.

I understand that a lot of people are angry because BFL has continually missed their deadlines, but I think this is more caused by incompetence rather than actual malice. Their project management skills are lackluster at best, but I'm not ready to call it a scam yet.

That's what they want you to believe and at one time I would've agreed with you. If however, you look back at past announcements it becomes very clear over time that they were nowhere near shipping at any point last year, yet they repeatedly led investors to believe shipments were imminent. It's a fraud and they're very plainly in violation of FTC prompt delivery regulations and have been for months.

Well, the last order nº I saw was in the range of the 25.000, so I'm quite sure they reached 30.000. Maybe that's not the actual number, but even if it's half of it is still A LOT of orders...

And what about one order of 10 units? You don't get only one number per unit, right? So I'm quite sure they have dozens of thousands of preordered machines in the backlog. That's pretty scammy, and these guys are still saying newbies that they will get their unit ordered today "sometime in June, sooner if possible"

;)

Probably June 2014 if ever.

This makes me glad that I never went through with ordering from Butterfly Labs a few months ago.

Same for me.
Is the first time i'm happy not to be a early adopter...
Because obv i would have fallen into the trap and lose 5000btc to this bunch of scammers

I think I get it now. The bit I was missing is that the network adjust difficulty to only allow a finite number of coins to be mined in a given time period. When the network grows and or hardware improves there is a risk that more coins will be mined that should be mined for that period of time. Therefore the difficulty is adjusted to ensure that the coins aren't found quicker than they should be thus making it very difficult for lesser hardware to solve the calculations. Every 4 years the amount of bitcoins you get for successfully completing a problem is halved so that it becomes even more difficult to mine them. Very clever and indeed the mining analogy is very apt.

Thanks Guys for helping clear it up for me. In a nutshell, once these ASICS ship my mining days are done.

I shall however keep battering my trusted HD5850 for a very meager return, in the vain hope that these things will one day be worth a few thousand and can pay for my kids college fees haha. Some people say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

BitCoin rocks when you grasp it but 2 things bother me

1) The electricity companies win big but the rewards wont result in lower fuel bills for people. Also bad for the environment
2) The government(s) will declare it illegal tender because they cant tax it. This will mean that it will never become mainstream. You'll be very restricted to where you can spend your coins.

I could see the whole thing dying a death to be honest. If an online pool provider or wallet provider rips everyone off it would knock confidence. Also a major computer crash could result in many coins being lost. Not to mention hackers emptying peoples wallets. If you cant spend proper coins down at "The Nags Head" there's no legs in it long term.

The only people who cash in are the early adopters just like in a Pyramid scheme

I did in fact cancel my order of a single and got an instant refund. Will probably try the Jalapeno if it ever comes out, just for fun.

Literally every day I see more and more BFL Asic units for sale on eBay. I just hope the [likely] scam won't be so big as to cause a strong negative reaction within the BTC community as a whole.

+1 on this.  Curious to see how it all plays out this year though.

$10.000 o_O... for a Single SC ???? Wow, this sure beats Avalon's pricing...

i hope they ship my 60ghs soon

Man i wish i would have snap shot it but yesterday day AVALON had a page right when you clicked the available /not available button that said a bug or a bitcoin bug could render the miner USELESS and to buy at your own risk!!!

 Now imagine all these people who are at riot level receiving boxes with bad chips or bad firmware or BOTH!!! Its one thing to have taken youre $ and SCREWED YOU! But its another if they took your money screwed you with a obnoxious delay that greatly reduced the value of your ordered product only to delivery a buggy device that doesnt work well ... carrys a WARRANTY that if you USE??? YOU GO BACK TO THE END OF THE QUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I send you a bad device and if you want to return it there is 9 MONTH WAITING PERIOD!! Omg... im soooooo in the wrong business!! 

This is almost better than imaginary toll booths!!!

That message was there prior to batch 2 opening as well and has been addressed by Yifu.