Bitcoin Forum

Given that it is now the second half of May and they haven't even finished development of 3 of the 4 of their products how could they have legitimately believed they were going to ship within a month at the time? Even if they had a working prototype they couldn't have done it. They didn't even have a working ASIC!

It should be quite obvious to anyone that that claim at the time (last fall) was nothing more than pure fraud intended to boost their pre-orders and scare off competitors.

Why are they not being investigated by state attorney generals or why is there no class action lawsuit being organized against them?

There is no way they can claim that they actually believed they would be able to ship a product at that time. No one is going to believe that a company was that completely ignorant as to the sechedule it takes to develop, test, produce, and ship an ASIC.

I'd like to see their e-mails and records subpoenaed so we can really see what was going on in the company at that time.

Now that Avalon Batch 2 is shipping, with batch 3 and the discrete chips not far behind, BFL hardware with be worthless when it finally does arrive. And a honest, fair estimate is about 3-4 months for just the first 10,000 units. Let's look at the schedule:

2-4 weeks for BFL to figure out the kinks in their single SC board.
2 weeks to order chips, assemble a couple of single SC machines, and ship them out to reviewers
2 weeks to receive enough chips and get the new PCBs made in large enough quantity
2 weeks to ramp up assembly
2 weeks to package and ship
10 weeks of production to make 10,000 units assuming they can make 1000 a week (it's ambitious).
Add in another 4 weeks for potential delays, of which there is always something

That's about 3-4 months just to get started making a dent in the backlog of pre-orders they have. By then we might even be seeing home-made Avalon ASIC machines out there mining.

If you don't believe it will take this long, look how long it's been since they got the first Jalapeno working and how many people have them? It takes a while to go from "prototype" to ramping up production to significant volume. And they don't even have a working prototype for the single SC/minirig right now.

Just a quick correction. They haven't finished development on 4 of their 4 products. They are still messing with the chip design.

I just released... that if difficulty goes up high enough such that no one who has a pre-order would have a hope of making their money back and BFL still hasn't shipped, then people will begin to ask for their money back from their pre-orders.

If BFL refuses, people will request refunds from paypal or their credit card (unless they paid with bitcoins). Paypal will close BFL's account and they won't be able to accept new orders. Everyone else will sue BFL to get a refund if BFL refuses. The legal costs and refunds will quickly cause them to go out of business.

This could all happen very suddenly once we cross that difficulty threshold. It's probably in the couple hundred million range, maybe 3 to 500 million?

We could easily see that difficulty hit by the end of the year if Avalon and ASICMiner continue on schedule.

No charge backs.  People will quickly realise this often quoted advantage of bitcoin over other electronic forms of payment is only an advantage for the merchant, and never for the customer if BFL should go bust.  What's more, as bitcoins sit squarely outside the traditional banking system it's going to be difficult and costly trying to get any back through the court system. 

I honestly have no idea if I'll ever get my mid 2012 order shipped.  At the moment I'd put the odds at 50/50 at best, with a daily decline.  BFL has to be burning through large chunks of money to keep employees on site and pay the rent.  Every time they ask for a PCB revision or another batch of test chips I shudder at the thought of how much all of this is costing.

I agree 50/50 at best... I guess I'm waiting until the bitter end on this one. If BFL doesn't ship, I guess no more mining for me.

... in other news, my asicminer shares are paying nice dividends ;D

I've already given up,not refunding though..............They will never catch up this year.

Looking into spending my BTC & cash on the "home-made Avalon ASIC" devices  :D  Or someone elses devices,have to wait & see who comes up with what.

& I agree they lied about most everything since the beginning  >:(

How much are you earning with ASICMiner?

A round estimate?

Believe it or not, you giving up saddens me a bit.

I used to remember how you were right up there with Lab Rat in supporting BFL. I recall even Lab Rat had some doubts a few months ago. I see they made him a moderator on BFL forums.

Edit: ASIC J is also starting to fall by the way side. When even hardcore supporters start to fall away....it's more troubling than even the hardest troll turning into a total shill.

Not everyone paid with bitcoin though. I think it was bitcoin-only for the very early orders, but certainly by Sept or Oct, credit cards through paypal were an option. And I don't see anyone would pay by bitcoin if paypal/credit card was an option.

Yeah,that was then...this is now  ::)  I'm just VERY tired of the excuses.I gave them the benefit of the doubt,my bad  :(  

If my order was any later than say August,I'd would refund ASAP.But being first inline,I MAY have a chance to get my one unit.I did pay in BTC too,so it would a total wash of my 100 BTC I got in this  :(

Looks like I'm gonna keep my FPGA too,since the tradein expires on June 1st & I won't have the diff in BTC or cash to do it.Was hoping to earn the BTC by mining with my 30GH & do the tradein,but alas,it wasn't meant to be   :'(

I really doubt BFL will finish shipping all preorders this year,hell maybe not even by next summer......so my "new order" wouldn't get to me till then,WAY TOO LATE ::)

I won't bash em though.............yet  ;) I'm just a "disatisfied whiner" to them  ::)

My prediction is that they will go out of business before they can fill even half of the pre-orders they have now.

I say they can't even finish 1/3rd of their orders before going out of business.

The only place to assemble electronics on a large scale and make a profit is China. The fact that BFL is trying to do it in the US is a major alarm bell. There is absolutely no way they will have the capability to meet their current orders. The cost is far too great. They will have to hire facilities and people in China to get the work done. That will take several months to organize.

Yes. I actually assumed they were assembling in China until relatively recently when I was reading their announcements and realized they were trying to do it in the US. There is no way they will hit production of 400 units/day assembling in the US. At least not for a reasonable price.

Sorry for your frustration and what has happened since you ordered. It is unfortunate that BFL is not delivering any working products to you the customers waiting in queue. I hope people who might thinking of ordering take this as a warning and do not order and that most of those who pre-ordered will never order from BFL again. The best thing would be for people to either get a refund, or hopefully get some sort of unit soon before the spike in difficulty that is coming. As consumers we should all warn people off BFL and further to this do not order from them in future. This company does not deserve the support of the bitcoin community and we should vote with our wallets and ultimately they will close up shop thus ending this terrible chapter in Bitcoin history.

What did you expect from a bunch (ex) conmen with no, or little real-life work experience?

Because people still hold the irrational belief that BFL might ship their money printing machine "any day now".

Of course, the longer people hold off on trying to get their money back, the smaller the chance to actually get refunded.

"But but... they will surely ship my order tomorrow!"

Will be funny to watch the eventual backlash. Popcorn anyone?

You won't get any BTC back if it comes to that. The wonders of anonymous currency :)

I never thought about it... but i wonder how much pay each employee is getting.   Seems like at this point their employee pay would be well over what expected when planning all these projects.

There won't be enough money to refund everybody. They had running expenses, labor costs, rent, research and development expenses, Josh & Sonny surely got a big piece of the cake too.

If panic, panic first. This is the wholesome lesson a lot of us learnt after the Dotcom crash in 2000, when everybody wanted to get out at the same time.

This is why I am especially concerned!

- They kill their reputation step by step, with every new lie from Josh, with every new delay. They might announce one day a v2.0 ASIC, but no one will ever order from them again.
- They already have our money (we all paid 100% upfront).

-> So what's their incentive to keep the company alive and finally ship their products - and not just take the money and run?

Sorry but that is simply not true..

First of all we are not talking about large scale. The maybe 10.000 Boards or whatever will be the output of a small plant in a day. (To get it through the whole plant will take 3-5 days..)
And i worked in one and knew another within 50km from my place in middle europe. Where everything is much more expensive than in most parts of the US.

Its simple: high tech with small work force..

And its much more irrelevant if its a product like a miner where you have 50000%  of profit after producing the chips.. 2$ more per board does not count when you make 2k$ profit per board...

First, you need to get the boards/finished products out the door...

Not really true. Even the big names like Intel and AMD are manufacturing in countries like Germany. They sold their chip factory in Dresden and it is named Global Foundries by now.

If I had the money, I had probably asked Global Foundries to design my ASIC Chips. They'd get it done in under a month, roll it out with ease  and at the same time do not even do anything above 110nm anymore. They just go crush it with up 14nm. 28nm designing and manufacturing is their little pet right now and in due time, they will allow 14nm right here in Europe.


Probably GF? :D

(Don't answer that. Internet and so on.)



As for BFL: I am flabbergasted at their performance. The problem with Bitcoin Mining is this: It would be way more profitable to NOT con people.

I have talked with some people about setting up an ASICs company and funding it. We then realized that we can only make money if we use at least 65nm or 40nm wafers in the process, or, at best, buy existing chips from a manufacturer at a higher price.

I have talked to some developing companies who then quoted some estimations between 1-2 million and 5.5 million initial investment cost. Here is the kicker: Almost every company said "We can get the design and initial chips done within a month or so, then after testing, we will be able to manufacture within 10 weeks."

So, where does stuff go wrong? Good question, but the main problem is designing cases and designs before prototyping. There can be significant fluctuation between specs. As someone told me, the main issue in chip design for high end chips is basically getting power consumption down while cranking as much power on the chip (How many cores or gates at what frequency).

The cost of a P&P machine for the chips on the PCB? Is not even that big either. The reason big companies manufacture in China is also the size of their operation. Think about it: Let us say you are a company and produce 10000 chips for 10$  per piece. Now think about a company that produces 1.000.000 for 9.20. It wouldnt mean shit for my first assembly, somewhere around 8000$. If I sell that thing for 40$ anyway, who gives a shit about the 0.80 if you are faster. But if we are talking one million chips and your shareholders asking for their money back, hooyah, you are in China in no time, getting your 800.000 Dollar difference.


I don't really get where the problem is. With the money they have, they should just get it done and already be working on the product REPLACING the one getting out of the door now. That should be simple, actually. Best would be announcing the Gen 2 the day they ship Gen 1.

http://i44.tinypic.com/2wcio9j.png

I think it is safe to say that BFL's chips never got above 300mhz.....

Actually, if the 2 chip Jally's performance is any indication, they probably never got beyond 160mhz at any reasonable power spec. My chart shows what BFL said would be their power draw per Gh/w.

Though we all know now the overall system is several multiples of 1watt per Gh/s

This last edition I made based on BFL Customer Service replies also went down the drain...

http://i43.tinypic.com/5ev5mw.png

I wouldn't even know what to estimate in terms of delivery times. Has anyone heard any new estimates from customer service these days?

I would argue they should not have focused on Power too much. Making it strong first, then making it long term  profitable, would have been smarter. Advertising power consumption is something GPU manufacturers have rarely done, since they usually focus on performance first, then hope that someone is going to build a way to get another 75 watts into their cards.

ASIC manufacturers should basically follow this tradition at first. If you have 50gh at 400w, you can still get it down to 50w or less, but first build 50gh/s.

Hey, I have a crazy question.

If BFL said that they got to 500mhz to 1.1Ghz which was roughly...16Gh/s~ per chip when they were still using plastic packaging....

How exactly would the chips have survived if they hadn't switched over to the new packaging?

"Me thinks" they knew their chips were probably going to be very very hot....then again, I have no proof of that.

----------------------

If the old test batch had a power efficiency of 1 watt per Gh/s...
If run at high clock at 1.1Gh's it would have consumed about 120watts per chip at the old spec.

The current chips would have anywhere from (x1.76 watts) to (x6.00watts) per Gh/s.

The first shipped out Jalapenos I have heard already killed one or two ventilation fans inside...

I think the Jalapeno casing is inadequately ventilated. Then again, I am no expert on fans or thermal designs. The same issues with overheating happened with FPGA's if I recall correctly.

There won't be enough money to refund everybody. They had running expenses, labor costs, rent, research and development expenses, Josh & Sonny surely got a big piece of the cake too.

If panic, panic first. This is the wholesome lesson a lot of us learnt after the Dotcom crash in 2000, when everybody wanted to get out at the same time.


[/quote]

And get a Dr evil wallet haha lol gl to bfl'ers may as well settle
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=186007.60;topicseen

<edit: snipped line not needed, for I misquoted the above>

BFL is on record in stating that all the pre-order money has not been touched and could easily refund every single person if that were to be the case. Besides, it is highly illegal for them to touch any money with the except of those who paid and received product. Seeing that a high percentage of rigs went to non-paying customers, their bank account is still flush. If it is not, then somebody is going back to jail.


With all the brain power BFL has at their disposal, it's safe to assume that they know this, for that's indicative of any product building entity. If they deny knowing this, then they truly are asea.

So why a warehouse full of product they no longer need and shouldn't have ordered in the first place? For the yochdog and My Little Pony show. And why the ovens from eBay showcased near the lobby oppose to being next to the assembling room so that IF they were ever to be fired up, they wouldn't be carting parts from the front of the building to the rear? Answer: same dog and pony show. And why bring a box of fans to CES? You guessed it! The exact same dog and pony show.

(They did have a choice as to where to put the oven room, for remember that they leased this facility with a built-to-suit clause (and a permit was never filed--this is a true fact), and it suited them just fine to put one assembly room at the entrance of the building less than 10 feet from their fancy signage, and the other assembly room toward the read, near the warehouse. Guess which room will never be used for what it looks like its meant to be used for. Also guess where the most logically placement of said room should be.)

Amazingly, with each passing day, BFL makes CedarTec look legitimate.

Investor: I would like to request a refund.
BFL: You know that you would be giving up your queue position don't you?
Inv: I'll take that chance.
BFL: Fine! It's your lost, cocksucker! Your refund queue position number is...

<Two months later.>

Recording: El número que ha marcado no está en servicio. Pulse uno de ...

I just thought of something else, though probably not important: Everyone of those assemblers probably had to sign a release prior to the filming of BFL's promotional video. I'm pretty sure they were farmed out from some temp service for only one day, otherwise them doing a whole lotta nada if they've been on the payroll since that shoot.

If Sonny is not the CEO as stated on the Wyoming SoS site which names a Chris Vleisides, claiming to be his step dad, then how the hell did a career photographer team up with an engineer in Paris decided to get into the Bitcoin mining business?

I know the answer, but will say it for later.

i already called it....

once they were willing to let a community member from the forums visit their site it screamed DOG AND PONY SHOW.

Sure enough that is what it was.

All visits have really produced nothing at the customer end nor did it prove that BFL actually have what they say they have, beside all the stupid cases for mini rigs that they dont need anymore.

Sorry PG I just had to get credit lol you know me.  :P

I think we need a Phinnaeus Gage appreciation thread, if one doesn't already exist  :P

They do need those cases. Where else would they have put all the trade in FPGAs?

Can somebody dig up the picture with the Anti-BFL clowns?

Who's laughing now? :-)

Totally agree .... especially with technology startups it very very easy to say oh well it did not work ..thats business.. It Is almost impossible to prove illegal activity/imbesselement or fraud due to this

Meanwhile Sonny,Josh have been sitting on 400k salary packages ...is a very old story this one..sometimes there is an incentive for failure so that after a company has been closed the IRS/ATO can find it very difficult to go back over the books due to the fact that the entity no longer exists i.e the person that is BFL is dead

Anyway having been working for a few startups in my time & witnessing these type of shenanygins first hand I understand the mentality...once there are skeletons in the cupboards its time to kill that story off fast !!

I'm not sure if Smoothie also mention this, but...

It is illegal to spend customer's pre-sale money until product has been shipped!

I know it is against tax laws in the US to book a customer's pre-sale as revenue until it has shipped. I don't know of any law regarding how pre-order funds/deposits etc can be spent.
Could you provide a citation for this?

Yep as theres a difference between preorders and investors - investors money can be spent and pissed down the drain, but Sonny isn't allowed to solicit investors. See where this is going?

remember when BFL announced their fpga single 1.05 GH/s @ 20W shipping in 14? days...
Their poor track record, has begun with the first product.
Liars from the beginning

Oh look another bfl fucked us over again thread!

This is why Josh is so busy demonizing his detractors and throwing up an amazing smoke screen to confuse the issue. If anybody really looks at the indisputable facts surrounding the delays there are really only 2 conclusions to come to. Either A) BFL is extremely incompetent or B) BFL is blatantly lying. There is no third option where they are the innocent victim of unfortunate circumstances.

Just Over Shipping Hasn't / Josh .. Probably he likes to delay the shipping because he hasn't make the Best Product yet liked Roll Royce or Lamborghini but the Toyota and Honda is just as good getting you from point A to point B.

I think a lot of the issue concerning manufacturers stems from recourse down the line, especially BFL's 'lifetime guarantee'.

They can't release working products into the wild unless thu know they are safe and failsafe, otherwise the costs could become astronomical to repair all units prone to failure.

Heating and power being the issue it is, fire safety is a huge issue.

I don't think the DIYers care so much about this, that said I fear the bulk PCB and Avalon chip collaborators haven't thought this issue through greatly either.

EU manufacturers and importers legally have to take into account the WEEE directive, which is a requirement for manufacturing or importing any electrical goods into any EU country.

What about unfinished components?

Q. Are component parts of electrical equipment considered to be EEE?

A. Components cover the range of discrete items that form part of a finished product and thus enable it to work properly, for example transistors, capacitors, diodes or internal wiring. Sub-assemblies are packages of components assembled into discrete units, such as display panels or populated circuit boards. Components and sub-assemblies supplied for further manufacture or assembly are not finished products and are therefore not considered to be EEE in their own right.

So actually you may be ok...certainly the chips, and say Burnin's empty pcb boards, but not 100% on if Burnin's assembled boards with cooling are. I guess though without a power supply they come under 'populated sub-assembly's' and may be ok...?

Ya it's weird. It's almost like BFL is a scam or something.

I dunno what to say, maybe I lost two bitcoins or two shares, if I did, uh well, it will the first. Back then bitcoin I think was around 10-14 a piece or 3-7 a piece. I guess my shares are worth one bitcoin :/ cyrptostocks says, 1 btc= atm 118USD, Lost in btc, gained in USD, literally, I'm basically am empty handed over this because no unit has been received.