Bitcoin Forum

Avalon or BFL? Which one i can rely on?

They've both delivered ASIC products, so neither one is a scam. You really outta decide that for yourself.

Which companies time tables do you believe the most? Where is there the most active development for a board to use those chips? Which product will give you the best product at the best cost? Pros and Cons galore!

Thank you :):)

I would go with a AVALON group buy with escrow option, if I were you.

That way you are covered in case AVALON doesn't deliver.

No you arent covered from avalon's non-delivery.

The escrow group buys typically covers you from.
1. Group operator not placing order with avalon and running away with the funds.
2. Group operator not shipping you the stuff once avalon sends it. For this, the only collateral placed in escrow is the operators identity.. Then you must find your own ways to get your coin back.


Escrow only collects the coins for the buy, and sends it to avalon...

There are bitfury chips from bitfurystrikesback.com, but it looks like for a july delivery you need 240,000 Euros and you get 3000 of them ($80/chip).

If you were buying today... and you wanted raw chips.  That would probably be your most likely path to having them in hand from a distributor this month.

I understand what you are trying to say, but I would consider it as risk free as possible.
You can often read in the group buy threads something along the lines of: "In case of non-delivery, we will work as hard as we can to refund your money".


If you buy something from BFL, you can't be sure you will even be able to request a refund.

How does Avalon's no-refund-for-any-reason make them better than BFLs no-refund policy?

Exactly. If manufacturer defaults... in a group the only thing you have is the false assurance that "its not just me"...

Because you don't buy directly from Avalon. You are more protected as a consumer in a group buy thats all I'm saying.
(if you select a sane/trusted member to make the group buy)

Well if you're going to be comparing group buys to buying direct from the manufacturer, why did you single BFL out? There are BFL group buys as well.

I wasn't aware there was any BFL group buys, if there is then thats great!
I still won't hop on the BFL train.

In my opinion Avalon delivers faster than BFL. There many more open source projects based on Avalon chip design etc..
I just consider Avalon the better alternative of the two.

Would you really buy BFL over Avalon?

I'm not going to say one way or the other. I've mentioned before, both of them have their pros and cons. Avalon has many things going for it, including the very active development of DIY boards. OTOH, BFL chips are cheaper per GH/s, and consume less power per GH/s, neither of which are trivial.

Well BFL is 65nm while Avalon is 110nm so it would make sense to order BFL but it also depends on price per chip and lead time.