Bitcoin Forum

Hello everybody!

We will be manufacturing Avalon clones. These are exact Avalon machines manufactured from ngzhang's manufacturing files.

It looks that we will source the Avalon chips early to mid July and should be able to ship Avalon units 7 days after we have received the ASICs. We would like to make an auction for 40 to 120 Avalon machines (65Gigahashes each).

Update 15/06/2013: After this backlash we decided to mine ourselves. Happy mining everybody!

Please bid: the amount of USD you want to pay for a 65Ghash Avalon delivered within 1 month (20-31 July 2013)

Update: Due to everybody's demand we've removed the bid limit of 99 Bitcoins. However we cannot sell under 7600USD.

Question: Who are you?
Answer: We are Black Arrow Shenzhen Information Technology, a software and hardware developing company from Shenzhen, China. For those who do not know us, we are manufacturing and have delivered several batches of Lancelot devices for Bitcoin community: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187549.0.

Question: Is there any chance to loose my money and not get the Avalon machine?
Answer: No. Worst case scenario, you'll get your moeny back.

Questions: What if your supplier fails to give you the Avalon ASICs?
Answer: We will only spend your money if we get the chips in hand. If our supplier fails to deliver, we will return your money minus transfer fees.

Questions: What if I change my mind after you've purchased the Avalon ASICs?
Answer: We will try to sell your Avalon to other person. If we succeed, we'll return your money. If we fail, you'll have to accept your Avalon delivery as a refund will not be available.

Question: I have my own Avalon chips? Can you manufacture the Avalon for me?
Answer: Yes but we cannot give you an exact assembly price at the moment.

Question: Do you have fixed price Avalons?
Answer: We currently take pre-orders for delivery in September. The price is 7600 USD / 65Ghash Avalon. If we manage to gather orders for 40 Avalons, we'll place order for 10000 ASICs to Avalon. If we fail, we'll return your money. Once the order for ASICs is placed, you cannot cancel your order.

Not interested at that price; not really even close to a break-even situation.  Diff will be 40MM at delivery, and thats if you actually hit your timeline.  You need to consider margins far lower than the 100% your trying to get, especially on a preorder.

Anyway; good luck, others might be interested.

You realize that by September people will have other options.

Your BTC80 sounds like a good deal if you ship next week not in September.

You should produce them, then auction them; like ASICMiner did with their blades few months ago.

At 99 bitcoins these will never pay for themselves.  Good luck also.  

blackarrow is great company with fast and smart support..otherwise, the price is insane and non-competitive with other asic manufacturers/market. why you want to buy chips for double price and not ordered batch just for you? I don't expect, that delivery of chips from your supplier will be much sooner then zefirs first batch..

I'd rather spend the 99 coins "pre-ordering" 300GH/s from BFL, or 350+ GH/s from KNC.  or who knows how much power from anyone of the other open source designs.

I'm confused; Why do you post if you're not interested?

KNC is a scam and we all know it.

Update: We are sorry for the above statement. We know nothing about KNC.

Probably to point out to you that the price is insane.

Very well could be, but that doesn't change that you are way overpriced. 

Do you know anyone with ASICs in hand willing to sell them?

LOOOL? could you please somehow prove this shitty statement?

Thank you very much for that.

Because they haven't released a single product and they're making promises that they cannot keep. Anyway, let's keep this thread on topic, please.

KNC is a scam because they will take the money and run off with it or they will use up all the invested funds and fail at producing an ASIC miner, or pull another BFL (semi scam)? Can you point to any red flags that led you to form that opinion of them?
Honest question.

Thanks

Exactly how many products have you released? Will you be accepting PayPal which has buyer protection? KNC does.

You can try and read the WHOLE "Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com" thread. Start at the beginning. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170332.0

Yes do you accept Paypal, and an open day for the members to visit you and ask a million questions?

They've been making and selling FPGA's for a while (check the Lancelot threads).

www.blackarrowsoftware.com

Can you proof that they are what you say?

Can we please keep this thread on topic?

What do you consider a fair price for Avalon delivered in July?

they are delivered their boards without any problems. I was also their customer..

otherwise, I can't believe, that one of manufacturer marked other one as scam. Blackarrow, you are not standard member or customer on this board - you are doing business here, so please think 3x times before you anything post and try to behave little bit as professional.

recommend you to check this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=209750.0 for compare with other competitors and set reasonable price.

the timings are off and the difficulty estimates too low. needs fixing first.

I agree with you and I'm sorry for that. We would like to take it back;

The only reason why I said that is that we just can't believe that they'll achieve the claimed performance. Our ASIC design house claims that this kind of chip is impossible.

The lowest we can do in the current market conditions is $7600. We've already updated the first post.

Build. Then sell.

We tried this with Lancelot. It doesn't work. Now we have a lot of money invested in Spartan 6 FPGAs which we need to sell somewhere else.

I will bid BTC76 - IF you accept this as a bid, I will start a group buy asap and order the unit as soon as within 24 hours. This price is built and shipped to the US correct? With unit delivered within 1 month (20-31 July 2013).

If this is all correct and you accept the bid, please PM me.

Why is an Asicminer Blade with 13Ghash worth 50BTC and Avalon 65Ghash doesn't worth 99BTC?

IIRC, the ASICMiner blades were already built and ready to ship. If BlackArrow slips by a month (due to supplier delays beyond their control for instance), it could severely compromise the profitability of the transaction. It is an additional element of risk that cannot be easily quantified.

Yep, that's the gamble.

Sorry, we cannot accept group buy as we have a bad experience discussing shipping cost and shipping insurance with group buy.

Your bid has been noted and we will request payment once we've secured orders for 40 devices.

Unfortunately for you, you were late to the game. Playing catch up is not profitable in this market. If I were you I would contact the potential ASIC chip suppliers directly and try to work out a deal for recurring business.

If there's any chance the delivery date to slip, we will let everybody know and decide if we should cancel all batch and return the payments. We have always been very accurate with our delivery dates and a 2nd BFL won't happen.

I applaud you for working on building units like this, so I don't want to get too into bashing pricing..  people will pay it if it is worth it, point taken.

However,  my guess is that noone in their right mind will pay 50btc for a 13GH unit anymore.. that was last month; when they release the next design, the price will be far down from there, on a btc/GH ratio.  

But.. I thought they have sold for more than they were worth on two seperate occasions (In april at 75BTC and in May at 50BTC,) so take what I say with a grain of salt.  I expected that neither would ever break even, and the jury is still out on whether they will.

What I do know with near absolute certainty is they won't break even if sold today at 50BTC, and that Avalons won't break even with end of July delivery at 99BTC.  Of these two things I am as certain as I can be.

Good Luck, though..  I don't have any problem with you trying to get the price you need to make it worthwhile for you to undertake the project.

Is my understanding of your offer correct?

You are asking for bids for fully functional 65 GH/s Avalon clone with PSU ready to mine delivered by July 31 or we get our full BTC back. Is that correct? i.e. you guarantee the date?

Whatever is the case, i would wait until friedcat reveals whats under his sleeve before forming an opinion about this.

No offense BlackArrow but your FPGAs, ASICMINER Blades, ASICMINER USBs, and now.. your price for an Avalon clone are way too expensive for most experienced bitcoin mining investors that do their research on the Bitcoin network projections and profitability. The way difficulty is going up so high fast, a lot of these overpriced options have a possibility that they will never break even. Most of the people that are buying the overpriced mining equipment are going to get burned IMO. I've seen most of them using the logic like "well.. if Bitcoin value goes up, then it's a good investment anyways," but in reality they would just be better off buying Bitcoins in that scenario.

KNCMiner set an attractive price, and scam or no scam there are going to be a lot of people that throw money at them blindly... millions of dollars easy. Do you want to be an overpriced Avalon reseller and sell thousands of dollars of equipment, or do you want to be a big boy in the ASIC arena and sell millions of dollars worth of equipment with attractive pricing? The day is going to come very soon when ASIC manufacturers have to come down on their current pricing. You could be one of the first and capture a large market share.

Nevertheless, the more ASIC options the better, so I wish you luck in your venture.

I understand, however if I were you. I would remove the bidding component and just price then unit @ a flat USD rate. This would absolutely expedite your time to fill the 40 orders. And I would order one within 24 hours and make payment in BTC @ GOX trading average per 24h.

Just a suggestion. Far too many people will be worried about cost fluctuation in an auction and the process will take a very long time.

If you set an attractive fixed USD price (say $7000 including shipping) I can almost guarantee that you would sell out In a few days.

seems overpriced!  :)

Yes, 65GH/s with or without PSU, as you wish.

If we cannot deliver by 31st of July, we'll know earlier and return the money as soon as we know. At the moment we have a firm promise that we'll get the ASICs in hand at the beginning of July. Worst case scenario would be 15th of July.

Will you be accepting paypal?

No. We have had bad experience with PayPal few years ago and we promised ourselves not to use them anymore.

We accept bank transfer though. It's more reliable and cheaper.

But no recourse for refunds.

Please sell at fixed price in USD without/with power supply. I would order ASAP if this was the deal. Auction format only works for in-hand units. Also why can't you sell under $7600? The chips @ BTC0.80 is only $2400, + maybe $500 for boards and misc hardware that gives you 70% profit margin at $7500-ish.

Drop it to $5k firm in USD and you would fill every order you can sell in a day! I guarantee it.

Surprising that somebody planning to manufacture ASIC miners does not know the answer to this. Hint: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

I bid 77BTC

Anything above 20BTC is way overpriced.

Considering the difficulty crunch that is about to rear it's head on people. There won't be a reason to imitate Avalon previous price points for 65Gh/s.

If they can't sell it at well below 20 BTC then they are certain to be a future defunct company. Period.

KNC/BFL or whoever, it applies.

As difficulty increases companies WILL lower their prices or people (except the most foolhardy) simply won't pay it. There is no incentive to throw away money on an ASIC that will just barely eek out it's own cost.

I think there will be a round of fools who will get fleeced. After that, prices will return to earth.

Blades are sold out.  You can't have one in 3 days anymore, unless you buy it secondhand from someone.  And then you are in no better a position than buying a used Avalon.

agreed...

Just spreading the gospel of good sense.

common sense prevail, but some wants to make a big profit, they are selling the shovels and they couldn't be bother about difficulty and what not .. really smart

Agree with this  :)

wow bitcointalk took a shit on this thread,

blackarrow is just setting a price, get over it, if you dont like it move on

Since this is a forum for commenting on things.

+1

I for one am not happy to have to overpay for ASIC hardware. The manufacturers are taking large markups making it to where all the hardware might not even break even. I say the same thing on ASICMINER threads, yet they do what they please. At least they know my opinion and why I'm not doing business with them. It is good as a retailer to know your market and what your potential customer base wants.

I was offering constructive criticism.

EDIT: .. and it seems he took it to heart and did lower his prices. Kudos to him, I may order one.

This is what an Avalon makes today. This is what it will make over the next year. Assuming you lose 15% of your profits every week.

Keep in mind, the next difficulty adjustment is A) Shorter than 1 week and B) is about 24%, not 15%.

So this is a rather rosy picture.

http://s16.postimg.org/gm8xoa0ph/Asics_are_way_overpriced_1.png

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ASIC companies, you either lower your absurd prices...or your customers will start initiating refunds after they see these charts.

Avalon/BFL/ASICMiner/KNC etc.

Nice, I think you created the longest post in history.  It is good that you post this to open some peoples eyes to what they are spending for asics. 

wow
the profit decreases so fast  :)

Yes it looks like the blackarrow device will only generate about 30BTC it's first 3 months if delivered 7/31/13.

I'd almost bet that if this were in the proper (for sale) forum, there'd be a lot less critical discussion.

http://speedy.sh/R2gXU/ASICs-are-way-overpriced-v1.xlsx

Here is the spreadsheet.

This is pure speculation. Please move here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=81.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=81.0)

Not speculation whatsoever. Difficulty is a proven mechanism in BitCoins algorithms. Look at the past and see if Avalon owners agree that this is in the right neighborhood of profitability of the past. Look at the date. I put the date I received mine as the starting point. Up until now the difficulty has adjusted roughly every 2 weeks. In the near future (Probably tommorrow) it is less than a week between adjustments. When the other ASIC companies ship it is absolutely guaranteed to adjust even quicker than once a week.

Making the forecast even grimmer.

http://s7.postimg.org/6ydeqlufv/Avalon_70_Gh_Past_Earnings.png

Ask Avalon owners from Batch 1 if this is close to accurate for them. It is for me. If so, then the other estimates won't be far off. Sorry, I prefer to tell people that they are about to be milked dry.

This isn't only an Avalon issue, it is an issue for all ASICs regardless of who makes it. The current prices will ensure customers won't ever see profitability. Your charging "Batch 3" prices when these machines could be made for heck of alot less. You don't even have NRE costs or fab costs to worry about. You are just a clone manufacturer who taking blueprints already made and sending them to someone to put it together at a significant cost savings.

It is extremely relevant....it is based on basic math.

Sorry to say, your selling lemons. Exceedingly over priced lemons. Everything I have posted has been in line with your thread.

And be assured it will be made available to anyone looking to understand the risks and rewards of their purchase. Obviously, the numbers tell me that your clone is over priced.

If I tap into the spreadsheet tomorrows difficulty level....(as I should)....people will never make 99 BTC back in one entire year from a 65Gh/s Avalon clone.

There is only two options. Lower your profits and raise ours, or offer a device with alot more Gh/s capacity. (4 or 6 modules for example) at the same exact price point. Otherwise each of your customers will be regretting it by years end. (If not much sooner than that.)

A Batch #1 Avalon, delivered 2nd week of March has generate up to today BTC 390. That is less than the BTC 400 in your list, even with the extra week of mining (with a high profit during those early weeks).

Mainly pool downtime, network issues and variance will make your estimates be the maximum to be expected, and in many cases it will not be reached.

https://i.imgur.com/OhhUV7R.png


Let's not complain too much about inflated prices, at least it makes a great barrier to keep out new players of entering the market.

If the market would be flooded with cheap ASICs, difficulty would skyrocket even more ;-)

These guys are legit. I don't know about the price though.

The price is too high for a late July ETA.

Thanks to everybody for the feedback on the price. We will build them and mine for ourselves.
2.6Thash should be enough for the moment.

If thats the case, you don't need a pre-order system....

Facts, killed the opportunity...?

No, we don't take any preorders on avalon as we're not selling them anymore.

Well, not at that price point....

I am going to go create a thread where folks can explore the profitability of an ASIC in a more realistic way.

If Clone Manufacturers and original manufacturers won't change their prices then no one will likely buy. (unless they are supremely retarded)

It's up to the sellers to be reasonable. (or go out of business)

May I ask what is your current hash power?

71GH/s Avalon v1.3
Batch #1

I understand why you are complaining.

I don't. He made a fortune with his Avalon already.

He's pissed because he's not making a fortune anymore.

Many will feel this way in the near future. That much is certain :D

His Avalon is still cranking out $5K a month.  That is not too shabby.
It just won't do that for very long. Certainly not long enough to spend $25,000 on buying another one.

Did you just post the primary reason why people should not shell out over BTC 100 for a 70 GHs ASIC to be delivered in September?

Great advice!

Ka-CHING! We have a winner!

Quoting for posterity too. See, blackarrow, you just outed yourself there ;)

Pissed? Is that it?

It wouldn't be because you are trying to make a fortune by selling avalon clones which may not even cost you 1,300USD to produce as a clone manufacturer?

42 clones right? @ 7600 USD = 319,200 dollars...for 42 clones.

At todays rate it would be about 3192 BTC.

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

All this sold to your potential "customers" as a profitable upgrades....except it isn't.

Do I have a reason to be as upset as you who...rather than lower your prices...end up apparently throwing your toys out of the pram and shut down your venture? Did you even try to negotiate?

Reading the OP, it looks like you weren't satisfied with 7600 as it was your absolute baseline price. Instead, you were fishing for an even higher price...what the market will bear (in apparent ignorance).

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

What I would love to hear from you is a straightforward statement that you were absolutely shocked...even surprised...to learn that the unit you were selling @ the price point above were going to be absolutely unprofitable. Surely you didn't know this...until just now....

So far one clone manufacturer (HashTech) has (extremely recently) changed their pre-order policy for their clones. 1 BTC as a down payment and lowered their 12.99 BTC price per module to 8.99 BTC. Just a little over a 30% reduction. That includes the PDU and a control unit.

That means HashTech (as one example) will (if the community likes it) receive customers if the price is viable to miners. While you (Black Arrow) apparently won't be offering clones to the community at a "useful price point".

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228492.msg2483687#msg2483687

Well said Puerto.

Too many custom hardware manufacturers are squeezing all the profit out of mining. They need to leave some meat on the bone for customers, otherwise they won't be in business much longer. Only idiots are overpaying for hardware right now, the idiots will run out sooner or later.

But then again, you are preaching to Blackarrow whom has been selling FPGAs for months now that will most likely never break even as well, so I suppose he really just doesn't care that he is screwing his customers. As long as he makes money, then all is good I suppose... too many people thinking like that nowadays... share the wealth IMO. These manufacturers can still sell at attractive prices and still make a boatload of money, the problem is they want a boatload and a half.

That sounds very socialist. I don't see anything wrong in selling products at prices customers are willing to pay... Perfectly good business. Nobody is putting a gun to anyones head and forcing them to buy at ridiculous prices.

Whats really wrong is lying about shipping dates(BFL style) or product specifications.

Whats borderline wrong is lying about ROI. Anyone with half a brain can do their own calculations and decide if they want it or not.

My problem is they are making money off of stupid people (or inexperienced people) that don't do profit calculations and network speed projections. They are screwing their customers to make a boatload of money, under the pretense that the customer is going to make all this money from their magic money printing machines.

They know damn well what they're doing and that these devices will most likely never break even, but they just don't care. You think that is ethical?

It's akin to a scammer selling an investment to a senile old person that they know will not be profitable venture, but they try to sell it to the old person anyways because the old person is more likely to buy it than a rational human being. Meanwhile they make a lot of money, but their investors are screwed from the get-go. Again, you think this is ethical?

This is exactly what I've been saying about Asicminer. Well put though, same thing applies here.

Mis-representing ROI is unethical.

Assume "magic miner" does 65 GH/s.

"Buy our magic miner @100 BTC. You can pay your mortgage and buy a yatch. Buy buy!" - Scammer tag
"Buy our magic miner @100 BTC. You can make 127.6 BTC in 2 months. Buy buy!" - Evil
"Buy our magic miner @100 BTC. You can make 127.6 BTC in 2 months at current difficulty. Buy buy!" - Borderline evil. Buyer now has a hint to study about difficulty. If someone is buying something for investment purpose, its their responsibility to study these things.
"Buy our magic miner @100 BTC. It does 65 GH/s for sha256 based coins. Buy buy!" - Perfectly good business.
"Buy our magic miner @100 BTC. It does 65 GH/s for sha256 based coins. It will make ROI in x months based on <insert long math formula, etc> difficulty calculation by <insert name of someone well respected in community>" - Perfectly good business.

Are we on same page?

Turtle83:

Our definition of ethical is different I suppose, I'll just leave it at that..

Looks like you're both saying the same thing in different words...

No,

Good [and ethical] business is where you sell a product that you can profit from [AND] profits society in some way.

Be it a 40 ton earthmover or a bucket that moves water like it is supposed to.

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

Making a profit by selling a product that won't do what the customer originally intends to do with it is at worst a scam. At best, a bad business practice and a bad buy.

This.

 
 ;D

I am pointing out that the days when bitcoins were pouring from mining into peoples pockets are over. Everyone should just adjust to this.

You are obviously not in hardware business and you are obviously unaware of the prices involved in running one. Also you are unaware of the cost of manufacturing an Avalon.
FYI we did not threw our toys nor shut down our venture we just came to the conclusion that it is more profitable to mine with the Avalon clones ourselves than making a profit by selling them to customers.

Simple as this.

This is what you have with ASIC.

You either mine yourself, or you sell the hardware at more than you will get by mining. Doing otherwise has no sense from a business perspective.

The only way for customers to be offered competitively priced units that allow ROI is to be "investors" when the manufacturer hasnt got the funds and needs to gather money through preorders. If the vendor has the money to develop the units by himself, he would either mine or sell them for more than those machine will mine. It's pure logic.

Guys, ASIC mining is a very special beast by itself. The company that offers to their customers immediately available money printing machines that guarantee ROI does not exist, and will never exist.

Thats probably the dumbest thing I have seen today.

If your clone won't produce a profit at your particular price point, then you are the one who has to adjust your prices. Period.

one of the best statements, that I ever read on this forum. (ironically)

It is pretty much normal that a business not turn a profit for the first couple of years isn't it?

So even if your mining gear won't pay for itself for a couple of years that is still maybe a reasonable deal from a normal business viewpoint?

If your equipment has paid for itself a couple of years down the road but still works, isn't that actually pretty darn good?

-MarkM-

If what you said was true (in any shape, form or way) then Avalon units are no longer sellable. Avalon was able to build the prototypes and units with less than 1/6 of what you are charging.

So either your sourcing for parts is absurdly high (and therefore you shouldn't be in business) or you are making it seem as if you can't lower your prices. Since I didn't fall off the turnip truck and have an Avalon that was produced with less than a 6th of what your offering costs....with all sorts of real development costs added...that means you are giving out a lie.

I just found out you are still selling FPGA's to folks. Man, not even BFL sells FPGA's anymore.

Fallacy.

Just because you can run a profitable venture with 60 gold mining pick axes does not mean you "automatically will" as a company. You might wish to sell it to others who will put it to that end use.

A real world example is ASICMiner. When their blades were profitable they seemingly couldn't house all of the blades they produced at their farm. They sold units and/or ran them until they could grow and expand their mining farm. They turned to selling them to fund their operations.

======================

Either way, the Logic (if you want to call it that) that BlackArrow uses is broken in such an obvious way...it's not even funny.

You can't sell mining equipment above what it actually produces in a reasonable period of time. It would entirely defeat the purpose of mining.

Is there something in the drinking water these days or is it me?

A argument that does not apply.

BlackArrow is not developing anything. They are simply cloning hardware where all the work has been done. Their expended effort is minimal compared to what the Avalon Team had to put into it. They literally have it put in front of them on a silver platter.

That is some very concerning bullshit you are posting there.

I made plenty profit. Again, is there something in the drinking water that I should know about?

Do you people even think before you type? Sorry, but seriously.

Your arguments are usually right on the spot, but this is not the case.

ASIC miner hardware is hugely overpriced and doesn't allow any kind of ROI, so you are actually confirming what I'm saying with your example.

You probably have made plenty of profit with an Avalon batch 1, as you were an investor: Avalon needed your money to develop and manufacture its units, there were no guarantees no prototypes whatsoever, the delivery was expected +3 months after payment, and for all these reasons batch 1 customers/investors were offered such a good deal.

Again, you are confirming my point with your example. Nobody is going to sell you immediately available money minting machines for less money they will likely mint, unless you have a rare case where a company's production capabilities are vastly superior to their deployment capabilities. Even in that case, as per ASIC miner, they will try to price the units so selling them will be at least as profitable as mining with them (as ASIC miner did), making ROI unlikely for the customer.

That's what we are going to get with ASIC, we better get used to it.

I think you've pretty much nailed it there (and the math appears to support it lol)!

This is why I mentioned in my post it was "Past Tense".

This is true. But there are/were contradictory statements from Team Avalon. (depending on how you read into it)

On the one hand, they said:

--If they failed to produce, then they would refund everyone.

Though how do you do that if you don't dip into pre-order funds? How do you refund someone if you consume the cash? (Business insurance of some type?)

--At Bitcoin 2013 Yifu (from Team Avalon) made mention that they used crowd sourcing. Though he wasn't specific on what he meant by that. (infer as needed)

A properly funded company doesn't need "crowd sourcing". Usually they will go to 1 or more investor(s), pitch the idea, and if the the VC thinks it is viable they take most of the risk to get a product to market.

When the product is fully developed, then they put it on sale. (of course most bitcoin companies are shady at best...keep that in mind!)

So the exception (the bitcoin community) is not actually the rule.

The current crop of companies are all (one might say BFL isn't but I am extremely skeptical) based on crowd sourcing. So they push the risk unto their buyers.

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

To get to the heart of your argument, I think a company can sell shovels to miners without charging the weight of the shovel in gold.

Or

They can charge the shovels weight in gold and thereby burn all the potential customers that are stupid enough to buy the shovels at that price. (bad business model!)

We don't have to get used to it. We can change it.

If you point it out to the dummies of the world that they don't have to be financially raped at the online counter, then people will wise up. Companies like BlackArrow who want to sell a Shovel Clone® will be annoyed by people like me warning people about the financial rape.

People like BlackArrow will either stop the financial rape at the counter, or close their doors down. So far, it looks like they chose to close their doors. In another thread, a member by the name of Yantis wanted to sell 3 or 4 of his 17 or 18 Avalons.

Now everyone knew the price was absurd (250 BTC per Avalon), but did they know by how much? Well a graphic or two later and all illusions were wiped clean. The seller wasn't comfortable in selling his Avalons for far less, so he seemingly called it quits. He himself did not honestly seem to know how much or how little his own Avalon were projected to make in the near future.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=234614.0

He asked for the template so he could evaluate his own circumstance.

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

ASICs can be sold at sane prices. There is nothing stopping it from happening. It is entirely beneficial for Mining hardware companies to sell their hardware at profitable (to the buyer) rates.

Doubly so, if they are merely a straightforward clone maker.

Once a specific mining platform is no longer profitable to produce or sell (by either buyer or seller) there needs to be a model to replace it. Not keep selling it at a price point that benefits the seller and dooms the buyer.

We don't mine BitCoins so we can pass our wealth on to the clone manufacturer.  :P :D ;)

The dealings thrive if they win the two sides only.