Bitcoin Forum

If you are considering spending 88BTC on a batch #3 Avalon miner, don't forget that Avalon will probably not quit producing and selling their miners after batch #3. By then, they will have upped their production capacity. They will also be able to sell their miners at a considerably lower price. In fact, they will probably have to lower the price quite a lot in order to sell any large numbers, since mining profitability will drop considerably when all of batch #1 and #2, and most of #3, along with the competing ASIC miners, has been installed.

My guess is that batch #4 will be sold with something like a 50% markup over production costs, which means a couple of hundred dollars. The volume will also be larger, maybe 2500 units?

I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, but it makes complete sense for Avalon to get what they can out of the market and keep lowering the price of their products in order to do so.

all that is probably true, but by the time batch #4 will be out, difficulty will be sky high. People want avalons NOW to make all that uber mega fancy profit, get rich, retire early and drive bugatti  ;D

You think that after BFL launch his 65nm chip someone buy Avalon with 110nm tecnology?

+1 this^

Since the launch of their site there have been three batches listed. Maybe no more batches are made?

Regarding aTg's question: I for one will NEVER buy a BFL unit, I don't care if it's one angstrom technology and mines 120 bazillion petahashes per microsecond while drawing 0.1watt from my cell phone charger, and spits teddy bears out its ass while it's doing it, for the low low price of US$1.99.  Not gonna happen.  The way they've constantly pushed back their ship dates, on a series of products, is totally unacceptable to me and I just can't see myself supporting them no matter how great their product may turn out to be.

Having said all that, there's not a really huge difference between 65nm and 110nm chips.  Really it boils down to power consumption (about double) and die size (about quadruple the area).  Power consumption does matter, but in the near term at least the power draw will be more or less insignificant compared to the mining profits to be had.  Chip die size matters not one iota, since the package has to be a certain minimum size anyways: does it really matter if the die inside that 10mm square plastic chip is 5mm square or 3?

I'm lumping all my available cash into my bitcoin wallet, primed and ready to pull the trigger the moment I get that magic email from Avalon.

How is 620w vs 60w just double?  Last I checked, 620w was more than 10x 60w.

I agree that power draw isn't a hugely significant factor right now though.

Likely they will be moving to the new chip in Batch #4 or 5 I would assume.  This will give us our power efficiency.

You're right. When BFL launches in 4-6 months, Avalon will have a hard time selling 110nm technology. I suspect the price of batch #3 is going to give Avalon the funds they need to improve their process node.

This is a very special occasion caused by BFL's delay, almost like a lottery. Those who missed the BFL annoncement in June/July and managed to grab some Avalon in October unexpectedly becomes the most benefited :D

On the other hand, those mining professionals who closely followed every step of BFL's ASIC offering from the very first day has yet to see some concret test results, big test for tolerance  ;D

And yet batch one is still not finished, and batch two is taking a "break". Batch 3 purchases are foolish.

Yes, and that's my point. It won't work, because difficulty will get even higher than the sky, before they have even broken even with their BTC88 investment.


Do you believe that? Why?

In the latest newsletter they said they will be no batch #4 scheduled.

most likely after batch 3 they will built their own mining farm , not selling batch 4.

I guess this could be the future of bitcoin, there will be many companies competing for the mining operation with petahash installations, and they seldom sell to public, only investors

Of course to reach that stage, bitcoin price will need to break $10K, at least a couple of years down the road

And, if the price of bitcoin crashed due to some software problem, then all these companies will go bust holding lots of cheap coins, so they might still consider sell part of their hardware in exchange of fiat currency

They'll offer chips and diagram to the market after this batch, it was planned for after batch#1 but competition didn't show up.

And it seems that in Russia we have first confirmed chip buyers. They want to build small 2.8-3.0Gh device at price $200-$220..

Where do you get this information?

Link to Russian thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=157937.0

Hardly surprising given the recent additions to Avalon's website:

From what it sounds like on Avalon's front page, on their FAQ, they're using this capital to fund the next generation of ASICs.  Next year perhaps?  I think we've now entered the arms race of ASICs.

Yes and it's China vs China(Avalon vs ASICMiner) with both US companies being scams. Makes me embarrassed to admit I'm American. :-[

This just scratches the surface of what makes me embarrassed to be American.  Well I guess most of what makes me embarrassed has to do with a scam in one way or another lol.  Predator loans that got us into the mess we're in now for example.  But hey, at least we've got each other  :D

Avalon, could you please roughly estimate the price on bulk for 10k chips?

At this point, I believe they will not being selling any more retail orders on this platform.  Who knows if they release a small chip later on.   I am just happy I could participate.   

Haven't they been "launching" those for quite a while now? Buying an existing product makes somewhat more sense than just continous promises of a fairytale.

Dude,
they were scammed also. Guess buy who? One of the company admitted it already the other one is still trying to get out clean of it. I mean they really try it but sometimes it is just not enough. No irony here.
But their customers get scammed from the companies to whom they paid for and they do not care abut their subcontractors known also as "engineering team" or bumping heat radiators or  whatever.
All of us are about to pay the price i am not talking about ASICS but in general. Doing a business with 0 ability to engineer even to produce anything worked for last years (money moving) all around the world but these times are about to end. There are a lot of money moved in one direction only if you follow me. None from US and Eu wanted to do dirty job to invent any thing and to produce it with small exceptions of course. And the price for big business profits accumulated over the years has to be paid. And who pays the bill? We of course ...That sucks man
besides it is a piece of cake to take millions from here move hundreds (thousands in worst case) to there with fancy management only and collect - this shit is not working anymore

Uh huh. Both companies had/have a bottomless pit of pre-order funds. Why? Why keep collecting funds without shipping anything? Those orders are a liability if you're not using pre-order funds for production, which both companies said they did not do. Avalon has limited batch orders and does not have ads plastered everywhere and they've managed to produce and in less time than their remaining competitor. Coincidence? ASICMiner? Are they still selling shares? Nope.

The ASICs is hard excuse is worn really really thin. It wasn't Tom's fault that he couldn't produce, because ASICs is hard and it's not Josh's fault, because the bad nasty ______ company didn't do what they were supposed to do...oh and ASICs is hard. ::)

There will always be a better, faster, cheaper ASIC for at least the next 2-5 years...

I'll buy one every 6 months and keep the old one, mining until it falls apart...

As far as I know and if I understood correctly there will not be Batch 4. Of course hoping that they will release lower priced batch after 3, but... The next from Avalon will be probably next gen miner. Let´s see.