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https://blockchain.info/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU (https://blockchain.info/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU)

China-based Forum Discussion:

http://bbs.btcman.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2207 (http://bbs.btcman.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2207)

Difficulty will be increasing like you don't know.  Hope you understand how this mining will play out.  


Thoughts?
-Dalkore

what the hell?

this thread had 4 pages?!

its self moderated, so the OP is deleting peoples posts?

I'm no expert.  But I highly doubt that everyone that's ordering these chips will already have a production line with PCB in place.  This is also assuming that their hardware will be able to push the full 282Mh/s for each chip.  I agree that there will be a HUGE spike, but I think everyone is assuming everything will go right.

From my experience, things that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Nope, this is a different thread, being that it is in a different sub-category.

Might sound crazy... maybe BFL is ordering a bunch of Avalon chips.  ::)

this is the Mining Speculation section after all... 

What is the impact of this onslaught of chips?  We know the difficulty is rising, up to a billion (http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/).  Is there any device out that that actually pays for itself now?  As best I can tell any ASIC solution fails to generate any profit, right?  How can anyone make money mining now?  Even if BTC hits $1000 per coin I have a hard time understanding why anyone would mine any coin.




Hey all you board designers who are thinking about building with these chips come talk to me:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187408

I think people saying we are approaching a difficulty of 1 billion in the near future are a bit lost.

Since BFL is just a figment of everyone's imagination for now until they actually ship mass products, let's focus on Avalon these Avalon chips at the moment.

So let's look at some theoretical numbers for a moment...

For a difficulty of 1 billion that would mean the network hashrate would be at 7,158.39 TH/s.  That is confirmed, as it's a simple mathematical calculation.

Now if you assume that the network hashrate and difficulty would get even close to that, that means EVERYONE is mining with ASIC as anything else wouldn't make any sense.  Let's assume all these chips come from Avalon since they're the only ones that are ACTUALLY shipping and seem legit.

We know that these Avalon chips produce 282MH/s each. 

You would need in excess of 25 Million Avalon chips to create that kind of hashrate.  Although this is theoretically possible, I don't think it's plausible. 

Anyone else want to weigh in on this?

Good!  FINALLY a speculation thread about this...

MY PREDICTION:

Chips are produced but SHIP 2 MONTHS LATE...  So OCTOBER maybe?    ;)

If Avalon is reading this:

Please consider your previous customers, Batch #2 guys are still waiting!

People are confused by the title.  Maybe call this one:
What happens now that 1/2 million Avalon chips are shipping?

Having previously worked in electronics manufacturing I think that saying a spike is coming in August is premature to say the least.  The chips might ship later in the year than expected and once they do ship they can't go into play for at least another month and that's if a custom board can be fabricated in that amount of time.  This doesn't include development time or testing for those boards, though samples may be sent out in advance.  Once the chips have arrived they have to be machine placed on the boards and then they're either packaged for sale or relocated to a permanent facility with appropriate power and cooling.

All of this is neglecting the fact that the chips won't ship all at once or to the same person.  It might take another year for all the chips to get powered up if some are being sold retail.  The ASIC push will eventually cool down.

This makes sense but it seems you're only taking into account Avalon chips. There's still Avalon batch 2, 3, BFL, and there's asicminer yet to come. So there most definitely will be a spike around the month of August.

You are correct, that is a spike.  I was only talking about a spike due to chip sales.  The device manufacturers won't ship all at ones either.  It might be more like a big hill than a spike.  The hash rate is going to go up faster than it has before, but it will probably eventually cool down after this big push.  A year from now things will be quite different.

Avalon has said that reference designs and chip samples would be provided in May. While shipping a few weeks after the chips arrive is very unlikely, by the time bulk chips arrive the really serious customers should have boards designed, built and tested by then. There's still going to be huge teething issues related to mass production, but I would be shocked if the serious players ordering 200k chips would not have vetted systems and are having to start custom PCBs mid-summer.

So some of those chips might actually be available for resale by the end of august.

Chip resale is unlikely. The only sellers would be scammers, people with bad/harmed chips, small fry who didn't realize it's hard to DIY, or those who bought before bitcoin crashed/surged in difficulty (meaning no incentive to buy).

There might be a few who bought specifically to resell, but that would be at a premium, compared to today's prices, which might or might not be worthwhile. I wouldn't expect reselling to be a big thing.

So in August we will have many of those:
http://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/k9l5-1y-14bf.jpg

Yeah, August 2014...

Address is up to BTC49,000.

At the rate things are moving it will likely be at least 6 months before ASIC has a significant impact on difficulty.  Probably 2014 before GPUs are completely useless.

Also related

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192916.msg1999706#msg1999706


Thats 452 orders of 10k sets of chips.  That's 4,520,000 Avalon chips ordered.

1274.64 Terahash/second.  

Difficulty of god knows

That can't possibly be right.

When did Avalon start selling their chips?

That is not right. A lot of order numbers are just people clicking "buy" without paying.
https://blockchain.info/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU shows 66 batches bought so far. That's all.

The chips will arrive before batch III it would seem.    If they can make 20 avalons at day and start in 2 weeks from now, that means batch II won't complete until 3rd week of june putting batch III at shipping complete end of july.   When is everyone supposed to get their chips?

in my opinion?: the chips are going to be delayed too, and probably delayed more.





i see, that makes more sense.  based on the BTC going to that address, we will see, assuming NO MORE orders (unlikely), 186.38 Thash/sec come online (network is currently ~75 THash/sec)


I suppose Avalon has never said anything about how long they will keep taking orders and shit have they?

I seem to recall them saying (in a newsletter?) they would be selling chips until the end of the year.

The market already seems extremely saturated already, I think future miners are in for a shock. This is becoming serious business with relatively unknown ROI. The only hope is BTCs price increases dramatically, which may be a function of now very expensive equipment. By the time everyone gets theirs the ROI be the same or less than today's rigs....though if BTC is worth $2k a coin someday even mining a little slice would still give a nice return even if you had to drop $1500 on a miner to do it. We will see what happens now

don't think 100% of the chips are going to be soldered to a working PCB with everything required for them to run ...
I say 60% MAX if we DO have skilled people. But there IS going to be some failure.

Sorry to necro this thread, but I though I would ask what folks are thinking.

Currently the amount of BTC at:
http://blockexplorer.com/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU

Is around 75 Batches of 10,000 chips (~210TH) - with the first order starting on 4/16/2013 and the most recent 5/26/2013 (date of posting).

I assume TSMC doesn't accept BTC, so as some point this 50K+ BTC will need to be fiat converted, and I would assume that the better part of 1/2 the total will need to be used... lets say 25000.

1) Do you think the 9-10 weeks 'til delivery start with the movement of that BTC?
2) Do you think a dark pool will be utilized for this fiat transaction?

25K+ BTC is close to the full daily volume, and if people don't see it coming, it could provide some jitters.

What sayeth the 'net?

I doubt it's anywhere near 1/2 of the money needed to be paid to TSMC. One order of 10k chips is probably around 3 wafers, so you're probably looking at ~225 wafers. Someone posted US$4k before for the Avalon wafers, though that seems a little high for a processed 110nm wafer. Even then, that's less than $1M, or 7500BTC at current prices.

I don't think businessman will send stuff at the price that they buy in.
And for the record, 75 batches have been sold, which will contribute 225TH in the future if everything goes right.

Ok. that makes me feel a lot better. I bought some of those asic chips in the group buys and I was calculating with 300 batches bought (10 times difficulty increase with only avalon chips) I would probably never make it back. I can probably break even if the difficulty increases less than 5 times the current amount and all the boards I get aren't broken. (With my luck, I'm sure BFL will suddenly catch up on their shipping estimates and the klondike design will be shown to have a tendency to explode after being used for more than 10 minutes. Oh well)

BTW:
My calculations.
75 orders x .282 Gh/s per chip x 10,000 chips per order= 211.500 Terahashes / s
Current Hash rate = 75 Terahashes / s

That means difficulty will be about 4 times higher so 40 million difficulty just from Avalons.

(NVM, with bfl and avalon batch 2 and 3 shipments I'm still screwed. Oh well. There are my calculations for you anyways)

My estimate:
Whenever avalon ships. Difficulty >= 40,000,000 

You were right.  Difficulty above 40,000,000 today.