Bitcoin Forum

So due to recent videos of one user's demo/pre-release video of a single...who here are starting to change their mind about ordering from BFL?

Only time will tell...

Not really, because delays to BFL mean that the opportunity cost of having my fiat tied up with them for so long would have made it a less-than-profitable venture. If getting the growing pains over in the first wave means that the second batch of BFL rigs come much more smoothly then I might just give it a look.

I'm more interested in the cost per bitcoin provided by the BFL unit.

I figure that value is a "floor" value for bitcoins since prospective miners are willing to pay that much for a bitcoin.  A prospective miner would presumably buy bitcoins instead of running his mining rig if coin value drops below the cost of running the rig.

So, what is the cost of running a mining rig in BTC/$?

This would also allow me to make an intelligent decision regarding turning the garage into a bitcoin mine...

By that line of reasoning the floor value of bitcoin is only ever going to rise.

you looking to get out of your investment?

Exactly.  As long as there are people willing and able to run mining rigs, the minimum cost of a BTC should be greater than the cost of running a mining rig.  So, what is the magic number?

I only really got into BTC not that long ago, but I would of happily placed a order sooner. But I am moving soon so I would of been without a connection and been busy so maybe when I am settled I can look into it.

You may as well as 'how long is a piece of string?'. It depends on what kind of rig you're using, the general price of electricity in the country you're living in, the specific utility provider you use, on/off-peak rates etc.

When I ordered a jalapeno a couple months ago.. they were only $149.. It was worth the risk at that time.

Show me a picture of 100s of people with working shipped units.

To find the minimum value, you can assume the "best" rig available (this Jalapeno thing?), you can pretend the waste heat is useful (live in 365 day frozen tundra) with electricity being "free" (generated by fully depreciated wind + solar installation).

From there, we have a minimum value for the new miner today.  Any idea what that would be?

If the $149 / Jalapeno price is the bench mark, how many coins does that unit make per unit time right now?

whats a bfl unit?

I think break-even with the Jalapeno at $149 would be about 10 days if you started today... actually maybe 5-7

Ok..from my calculations.. You would easily get at least 0.25BTC a day with that unit right now at current difficulty.  BUT.. by the time I get it.. it will probably be half that.

Thought about buying one of their units, but after doing some basic research, I'm 99.9999999% sure they're scamers.

By the time I was interested in getting one, the backlog was already ridiculous.

Video can be fake. I actually concern about real BFL unit shipped to real miner

I do, I'll admit it.  I first read about them about a year ago when I got interested in this and really considered going for it.  I ended up mining up a bunch of litecoins over a period of a week or 2, sort of got bored with it, and now I'm interested again.  The litecoins seem to be worth something now so I've put that money down on a few 5 GH/s BFL singles for the heck of it.  Seeing the recent videos has convinced me that at least it's a real product and maybe they'll actually start shipping out soon, although I do realize I'm basically at the end of the line at this point.  On a related note I'd like to get in on that ASIC chip group buy as well (hence registering and posting), seems like a fun project.

Butterfly Labs, who, from what I gather, are either visionaries who are having technical problems or vapourware/snakeoil merchants selling pre-orders of ASIC equipment that doesn't actually exist.

A better question would be , "Do you regret not purchasing an Avalon instead of dealing with BFL".  I could answer that one in a heartbeat!

I think it's a taken that we all wished we've ordered an avalon lol.

i got a BFL refund 3 weeks ago and feel like I dodged a major bullet

How would you have gotten an Avalon? They pretty much sold out instantly...

Still thinking about risking ~3BTC on a Jalapeno. Talk me out of it.

i do regret...esp since the price raised for the jalapenos from 149 :(( ... and given that I was thinking about ordering when BTC was huge value...was a time when you could buy a jalapeno with 1 btc ffs ....(peak value of btc before bubble)

will def buy 2 jalas ASAP when I see the first ones in peoples hands...people from this forum for ex ...im sure even with diff raise and everything that paying 250$ and just plugging it into usb will get you a lot more money back in just a couple of months ...even if we order late ...

matty : imo if you have btc in wallet etc...buy one ... worst case scenario you loose btc .... normal scenario ... you get it when diff goes up and you get back your 3btc in 3 months than you mine forever for free.   ...best case scenario ... bfl stars shipping quickly you get it soon ...and boom ...millionaire ;) jk but you get the point


The price of the jala IS SO LOW ...that given ANY diff increase it will still make its money back ASAP and after its yours to keep forever....if it becomes too low of a profit...resell it to someone less experienced or in a bigger hurry ;)

I actually ordered from BTC Asic and BFL at same time. Got my refund from BTCFPGA no problems, disappointed they weren't able to ship units.

All the time wish I had ordered a BFL single (I think that is the 25Gh unit?) instead of the Jalepeno. May still order one before any proof of ship exists.

I echo what was said by a previous poster, your $$$$ have and continue to be tied up with BFL - which could of been invested in BTC directly.
BFL seem to treat their customers as investors, whilst units have been shipped to "reviewers"... it appears to me that BFL may not be a scam but a company in a large hole trying to scramble out of it.
So by releasing a few to people who will post reviews and videos demo'ing that the product "exists" and meets "promises" this is a marketing ploy to draw more people to invest their cash into BFL so they can carry on with their testing or buy a 3rd island in the middle of the Pacific. Who knows!


Pretty much sums it up.

when/if they ship...then ill regret it....and try fast to get one
until then, no

This video looks real to me...here's hoping anyway..I ordered one just the other day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6mmTRheUzg

I shant regret what I shant not done.

@OP - I regret not buying more of them.  :)

Want to bet on that?  1 BTC of mine against 10 BTC of yours?  You should be more than willing to take such a bet if you are 99.9999999% sure.

I initially thought it was a massive scam, considering their FPGA were re-branded and not their own? And their lack of news on progress. 

But after hearing about Avalon releasing their ASIC chips for sale, scammers or not, I'm gonna assume they will now be able to deliver using Avalon chips to keep up their good name/scam.

payed for a BFL jally last year around christmas, but im skeptic, they just keep pushing the months. Jally wasn't awfully expensive so there's that atleast.

I was looking at shipping costs and it's around 200 USD just to ship to the UK, not sure if I want to order or not.  :(

Considering your fiat profits from mining is tied to exchange rates, and the definite rise in difficulty (some projecting it to be 90 million+ by end of year) then it's probably better off buying some coins instead of putting that fiat money in limbo and hoping BFL delivers. Just my opinion though.

Possibly there's a warehouse full of BFL miners making someone lots of money right now;
if the price of bitcoins plummets watch how many ASIC miners are suddenly available
on the market.

I agree, might as well play the market and make something than hope they actually deliver.

This.  Got my BFL refund long time ago and made back the loss by trading.  I hate trading but I would hate waiting for "soon" even more.

IMO BFL are the only ones benefiting from these units. As each unit comes onling the difficulties obviously going to get higher. People speculate the BTC/day for these units but I think everyone who purchased one is going to be very upset after day one.

if you don't have one these running in the next few months, to me there is no point of having one. The difficulty will be too high and the profi margin back to pre-acis levels.

This. The first people to receive ASICs are going to be the ones that truly make a large profit. People with the first batch of Avalon ASICs would be very happy with their purchase right now, as the difficulty is still low enough for them to make a good profit. As BFL starts to ship through all of their pre-orders, the difficulty will rise and it will be a lot like GPU/FPGA mining is now.

I did the same thing.  Got my refund on my single last week.  May regret it, but feeling better about it every day.

 Actually, looking at it now, I ordered 9k worth of BFL gear, and my CC# was rejected. I then proceeded to use my bank account through paypal as I thought maybe my CC was rejecting order due to the size of purchase, but this was not the case. Paypal said no. Mind you, both accounts were well able of said purchase. There is more to it than we can see. I said to heck with my order, and building GPU's as we speak.

I waited until they began shipping to order my Jalapeño. Should arrive in July.

lol@ "Who here regrets not ordering a BFL unit?"

Who here regrets NOT..

• dealing with abuse everytime they try to figure out what's happening with their order?
• being lied to on a regular basis?
• waiting 7+ months (and still waiting) for anything to actually be shipped?
• watching their opportunity costs rise and their bitcoins quadruple in value while they sit on their hands?

Even if BFL delivered TODAY, on spec even, it has already become a horrible, horrible investment in comparison to Avalon.

Not me! Check out this super-mature response to a couple of customer questions that they posted on their forum: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/124-why-did-you-raise-your-prices.html (https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/124-why-did-you-raise-your-prices.html)

Word on the street is they're unable to stay within their thermal envelope, to the extent that their Mini Rig SC is now NLA...sorry, "out of stock"...due to an inability to vent all the heat generated inside the case. It seems that they over-promised, and instead of under-delivering have chosen not to deliver at all in favor of trying to work out the bugs. At this rate, by the time they do ship, difficulty may be so high (due to other manufacturers actually shipping ASIC miners en masse) that nobody will ever be able to achieve ROI...particularly since they just doubled their prices!

They evidently do have a prototype ASIC, however, so it's not total vaporware. bitcointalk.org user 'grnberg' got a review unit of the Jalapeno and popped it open: of the two chips installed, one was a dud, and the other was overclocked to compensate. It's a start. I'll spend my money elsewhere.

Hey - I ordered a Jalapeno shortly before price increase.  $150 is a gamble, and if difficulty is less than 100M when I finally get it (IF I ever get it) it might actually earn its keep.  We'll see.

If the cake is always getting bigger (total mhashes), your piece will at first become bigger, but then it will get smaller and smaller.
Don't think I will buy any ASIC-miners yet ;-)

Well, by they time they ship, difficulty will be through the roof.

I'm sure everyone who pre-ordered with BFL (or bASIC for that matter) would love to have known the future and have ordered a first batch Avalon instead.  But hindsight is 20/20.  I wish I knew Wednesday's lottery draw numbers on Monday, and I wish I knew the price of BTC would rise from $2 up to $266.

So yes, of course a first-batch or second-batch Avalon would have been a much better investment, but that doesn't make a BFL order horrible.  At least, I still have no regrets about mine...

I ordered one fairly early and I have no regrets.  We'll see how it goes.

Free market dictates a new asic will come out cheaper within the year

I would have regretted not ordering one - but I did. I regret not ordering more than one!

The way it seems to work is you could have gotten in early and taken a risk, and gotten a short, good return on investment, or gotten in later with less risk, but a longer return on investment. I personally will order one once they start shipping and as long as I make my money back and cover the 720w/day in electricity (like $0.25/day where I am), then I'll be fine. I'm guessing I should be able to do that pretty easily because right now I'm getting ~$0.15/day with my Alienware laptop at 20mH so if I increase to 5gH, even if the difficultly increases 10 fold, I should still be making $4.50/day.

i ordered a Little Single SC (25 GH/s, https://products.butterflylabs.com/25-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html) in january and i just gave up on BFL, but now that more and more videos and articles are popping up everywhere i'm hoping again..

the good thing is i only payed around 650€ for it at the time. and i split that with my roommate ;)

so if the units would be here today i could make around 1.2 BTC/day making my ROI in 5 days..
but since i ordered so late i guess i'll have to wait at least 3-4 months, if not until the end of the year.. by then it may take months to get a ROI.