Bitcoin Forum

Folks and miners,

with my Avalon ASIC chip distribution for DIYers (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=177827.0) slowly ramping down, it is time to move on.

Two months ago I ordered BitFury chips for October delivery, which I am herein offering to DIY folks in lots of 300 chips (1/10 of a reel).

Pricing
The price is fixed at 108 81 BTC for 300 chips. At a nominal 2.7GHps per chip, this is 0.1BTC / GHps.

Currency Denomination
Since the offered chips are build to generate BTC, this offer is denominated in BTC. Existing sources for BitFury chips sell for fiat, so depending on the BTC/fiat exchange rate you might find my offer better or worse one day or another. Clearly, this is for those of you who got used to think in BTC and do not care much about exchange rate fluctuations on a daily basis.

Shipping
I will receive chips in W40 (first October week), you should have yours in hand no later than October 15th.

Priority shipping is included. Urgent / express is available on request for an additional 1 BTC.

How to order
Since the number of potential buyers is limited, the orders will be processed manually as follows:
1) Place your buy order via email (zeta.bitcoin.enterprises+BitFury-ASIC@gmail.com)
2) If not sold out, I'll provide you with a payment address
3) You pay 20% down-payment, which is only refundable if I fail to deliver in time (see below)
4) You pay the remainder right before chips are shipped

Guaranteed Lead Time
In the event that chips are not shipped in time (deadline: October 12th), the final price will be reduced proportionally to the increase in difficulty. That is: for any difficulty increase by X% that happens between the deadline and the shipment date, the price will be reduced by X%. If the total reduction exceeds 60%, buyer is given the right to cancel order and get his down-payment refunded.

Edit: Clarification example: if your chips get delivered late, your price will be:
   initial price * min(1, (difficulty@deadline / difficulty@shipping_date))
That min function ensures that you do not pay more than initial price in the event that difficulty declines - which formally has a non-zero probability (alas, we all know it practically is zero ;)).

Availability
I have 30 lots available (3 reels). Chips are distributed in the order down-payment is paid.
Edit: Availability ends on September 19th.


Cheers,
zefir

Interesting offer ...

at the moment the €/BTC is playing a little bit against it, but who knows.

400 GH from EU BitFury delivred in end of october for 6500 €

challenged with your chips ... in mid oct. running OC > 2.5 gh ... with the new cscape SHash board ...

a close call ...

Very interested. Email sent.

sounds interesting, but too much to invest on my own, maybe someone makes a quick GP for chips?

darkfriend you are interested too?

Foofighter

EDIT: But with that price, a full miner would be very expensive...

One question, where to get the boards? No one is selling...

Yes ... .-) skype .. later ... when back from buisness.

Anybody know approximate price for c-shape board ?

Lots of 300 is quite the investment for DIY folks...are we gonna have to open a sub group buy for those who want like 10 or 20?

lets put together a group buy, I'd love to get some chips as well, but I don't have 108 BTC

lets start a list of who's in for X # of chips

Zefir - thanks for all your efforts so far!!!!

Anyone know if bitfurystrikesback or megabigpower will have bare chips available in October? These prices make the H-Cards look attractive unless BTC/USD collapses  ;D

I will start a GB ... prob. but need to do some calculations first ... also it seems Bitfury anonced new prices for chips this weekend ...

Punin said that new price for bare chips will be announced this weekend. Old price was 20$ (3000 pcs) so new one propably will be lower. But it maybe for larger quantities.

I might also organise/help distribute if needed.

Update: Offer halted for Clarification

Thanks for your interest and orders placed so far. Due to the unclear current and future pricing of the tier-1 BitFury distributors, I decided to halt the offer until those are sorted out.

I set the price based on what I paid myself for the chips and on informal discussions on the future price structure for chip distributors. It is also based on the current pricing of 80€ per chip at BFSB (http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com/product/bitfury-55nm-asic-chip-2/), which I expect to be cut by 50% as soon as October chips will be available. This obviously does not match with the price for the 400GH full kit of 6500€ (http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com/product/400gh-miner-october-2013/), which prices ready-to-mine rig at today's rate with 0.25BTC / chip. It either means that kits are not really available at the given price, or they are and buying bare chips does not make sense at all. I am in contact with BitFury and team to clarify and will update as soon as I know more. As far as I can tell, there will be a price adjustment - but prices for in-stock items might not necessarily be dramatically lower than for pre-ordered ones.


Meanwhile, my offer is halted. That is, you are welcome to place orders, but I will accept them only after I know the future pricing policy and only if my order is not worse than what you can get from dave or punin directly.

As for quantities and group-buys: yes, the unit size is 300 chips. That is the only way to limit accounting overhead and provide shipping and handling at no additional costs. Users sticking together and forming a group-buy to reach the unit size are gladly welcome.

As for what to do with the chips: there are several developers already who announced designing of BitFury based mining boards (e.g. burnin or bitmine). If requested, I can send chips ordered (only full lots of 300) to the developer of your choice for board manufacturing.


Cheers

Good to know. I emailed you right before you made the change, hope that means im in the Q to speak :). Thanks for offering this to the community, and in reading your returns/cancels I want to say PROPS to you for having a positive business stance towards your customers. I just want to throw money at you!

We're selling boards.  ;D

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=266235.0

 :D  I was gettin ready to ask you  :D

Too funny  :D

If all goes well, I should have boards available in a week.

I was just about to order, but yesterday Punin answered in BFSB thread.
We are going to offer new C-scape Shash board.
I've got some sample chips from Punin and I'll have working prototype next week.
All the pricing is ready expect the chip price.
Thank you for the efforts Zefir

Update: Offer re-opened, unclear Pricing Policy

Discussed with BitFury team about pricing without satisfactory results. The whole sale and retail prices for chips will be fixed end of September, which makes in advance group-buys difficult or impossible.

Keeping the offer halted until those numbers are settled is one way to go, but this would leave interested buyers in uncertainty if and when you get your chips delivered. With what we learned from the Avalon DIY scene, this would not motivate many to jump in.

The other option is to offer a cut-off price clause as part of the contract like this:
If at shipping time the retail price for in-stock chips is significantly lower (that is: 20%+) than this offer, buyer can cancel the deal and get down-payment refunded in full.

The proposed 20% margin is to compensate for the lead time guarantee, i.e. I earn if I deliver first half of October and loose otherwise.


Those of you considering this offer: does this sound fair?

can you link the post from punin ... in BFSB thread ...

If I may ask, who's gonna offer new C-Scape S-Hash board? You or punin?

Would you say that your previous price for them would be a relative max? Like you dont see them being sold for more than that? If so you have me still as a buyer.

Me

Yes, as the updated thread title indicates: 0.36 BTC per chip is the maximum price for delivery in week 41.

That's based on the anticipated competition with a price range of $10/GHps for November delivery. Consequently, $30 is what most potential buyers expect to see as new price. Alas, this will only be the case if at least one of the 28nm competitors has chips or rig to offer in volumes for immediate delivery. BitFury created a masterpiece 10x more energy efficient than anything else available and still as energy efficient as next-gen chips currently in design pipeline. Therefore, the price will be set to what chips are worth and not less - which is not set in stone to be as low as expected.

That's how my initial price point was set: $30 per chip at $100/BTC, plus 20% risk margin for late delivery.

In essence, the initial offer with the proposed addendum provides

• hedge against fiat/BTC fluctuations for those operating in BTC domain
• hedge against higher chip prices (if competition fails)
• hedge against lower chip prices (you bail out at no loss if you can get chips significantly cheaper elsewhere)

I personally think that this is the best offer you can get (I'm obviously biased ;)) - if you want to go with BitFury.

BTW: including you, so far I have 9 interested users for the total of 30 lots I have to offer.


Cheers

Wish you and those who buy the best Zefir.

Question:

Are you going to using Burnin's reworked bitburner as your board or going with other available boards for yourself?

Count me in for at least 50GH-500GH in chips,I have a few folks dying to get something going ASAP  ;)

This is if this happens before my guys find someone else to by miners from  ::)

Personally,I'm looking at Drillbit for boards,with any luck  8)

I have a few miners coming from them,just seeing if there are any delays................I hope its not another BFL/Avalon saga  :D

I am not offering boards, only distributing chips, which also includes sending them to the manufacturer of your choice.

Those I keep for myself I will build into those boards that I'll find economically most viable. I have bitmine.ch right around the corner and might go with them. burnin is also an option. Furthermore, BitFury told me that a design optimized for higher performance per chip compared to c-scape's will be open sourced soon. So quite some options to chose from.



Since 300 chips are somewhere between 800 and 900 GHps, you will need to stick with someone else to reach the lot size.

Ok,I'll go with whatever you allow as a max per order.......I personally would prefer Drillbits or the like over KNC or Megabigpower systems,due to financial reasons........for all we know KNC or some others may actually show proof soon & may even deliver on time...I'm not holding my breath though  :D

As soon as you make up your mind, please order following the process given in OP.

Hm, $300 for a 8-chip board is really a good offer - if it ships in October. KnC's Jupiters ordered today will cost even less ($12.5/GHps), but will ship in November. If today's difficulty increase rate remains, chips / rig loose 30% per two weeks, Drillbits boards delivered and operating end of October are a better deal than Jupiters operating mid November. If OTOH your rig is held back at customs for only 5 days, everything looks different - what a crazy business  :o

I emailed ya  8)

I personally don't like the 3 board design (chip board,backplane & raspi) its too complex,too many fail points & I'm sure it adds to the cost......or a case......keep it simple,a USB cable & an old fashioned ATX PSU & BFG or CGminer for me  :D

So in accordance with the OP, if the difficulty increases by 100% after the shipping deadline, the chips will be free?

Um, no. By 'proportionally' I understand X% as being a factor, i.e. if difficulty increases by 100%, you get the chips for 50% of their price; if it increases by 30%, you get them for 1/1.3 of that.

But now that you are bringing the issue up, I am not sure if the proportional price reduction is the correct formula either. What I want to offer is a fair compensation for the missed lower-difficulty cycle, i.e. for missed income due to late delivery. Now this number is not only depending on the difficulty cycles you miss, but obviously on later difficulty updates, which at any time are speculative. If you assume a constant difficulty increase of 25%, during the first difficulty cycle you make 1/4th of the chip / rig's lifetime mining income, so a 25% price reduction for missing the first difficulty cycle would in fact be a fair compensation. Alas, with continuous 50% difficulty increases, the number is 2/5 or 40%.

You know, all these factors that make mining profitability difficult to predict :)

But thanks for the input, I sure need to reword / clarify the clause.

Yea, I expected that's what you meant - just wanted clarification :)

Update: Chip Prices for October Delivery set

Bulk prices for October chips has been set to 67'500€ / reel of 3000 chips (http://www.bitfurystrikesback.com/product/bitfury-reel-fifo/). With that, I adapted my price to 0.27BTC / chip, which at a nominal 2.7GHps / chips matches 0.1BTC/GHps.

The OP has been updated accordingly, including a clarification on the lead time guarantee and availability.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.msg3135476#msg3135476

Hm, I don't quite understand where you want to point me to. If it is the September / October chips declaration, pricing and dates are unfortunately not as congruent and predictable as I'd like to have it to offer some reliable delivery.

Fact is, I am talking exactly about those chips being shipped last week of September. In my hands W40, in buyers' hands W41.


Or do I miss something else?

Yes, you do miss something. Punin gets reels faster. At 20th Semptember. He decide to sell those reels ASAP charging 22k euros EXTRA. If those reels will get bought the October customers may wait longer for another batch of chips. I must say that I'm dissapointed about punin and his greed....
I have a proto board for bitfury chips but when I saw how things are done, I decided not to do any bussiness with them. Competition don't sleep and if they acting like that they will loose further clients even when chips will cost 2$.

EDIT:
Short story version:
We will have chips earlier but we will not send them to you becuse we are waiting for sucker that want to pay more...

Of course I have nothing to you zefir. You are just try to satisfy customer, but looking at current sitiuation you just my be burnt. Watch out.

This is not faster. If he gets them September 20th (end of W38), he can start distributing them W39. Where is he delaying here? It is nowhere written that October and September batches are delivered at the same time. Are you implying this?

As for the price: BitFury team has a very clear price policy: chips are sold for what they are worth. And they are worth what they could mine with them. So they are in a very comfortable position to set the price they see fit, and if nobody buys, just self-mine with them. That's what every other chip manufacturer does, no? If you developed your chip, already made back all your NRE, produce chips for $0.5 each, expect to mine $30 with each over the next 6 months - would you sell them for a profit of 400% or for 4000%? The answer is obvious. It also implies that buying chips from BitFury can only be profitable if their profitability calculations (they based the price point on) were too pessimistic.

While these are pure market forces, they leave almost no air to breath to the DIY scene. DIY can only compete by building cheaper boards than what is already available, which (as already pointed at in this thread) is really tough: bare chips at 22.5€/chip at one hand and a starter board with 16 chips for 390€ leaves a delta between chips and rig of 30€, which is hard to beat.


I never said this is a great offer or promoted this being better or worse than anything out there. I am only aware that most DIY folks won't be able to buy a whole reel and forwarding what is offered out there.

I know your disappointment is not directed at me but at BitFury directly, I just wanted to underline that I am neutral here and am in no way advocating anyone to buy unless he is well aware of the profitability aspects.


Thanks for the feedback.

+ 1 ... nice summary of the actual bitfury chip situation ...

With actual price and end September deliver plus time for  put all parts together, Bitfury chips can't make any significant income. I best scenario only return itself. I do not count all the 28nm competitors that make this scenario even worse.

16 chips board from BitFury store only run at 25GHz though, while 16 chips board from burnin run at 40+ GHz at least.

With some experience and solder skill you can tune up "reference design" from shop up to 2.7Gh/s per chip. Or more using extra cooling and mod DC converter.

with just a pencil those 2 reference boards  (with 2 dead chips and one half dead) that where hashing at under 20 GH each ... went to around 58 GH ...

and remeber the price for one h-board was at 350 € for the early october delivery ^^

Zefir - where are you shipping the chips from? (which continent/country/province)

I'm trying to estimate the shipping costs and possible customs headaches, taxes, etc.

@Zefir - Do you have any plans to do any smaller group buys at a bigger markup to cover your hassle?

If someone is interested in a group buy for chips let me know and I could either 1) organize it or 2) be a part of it. I would be able to purchase ~60 chips myself.

I have a GB going for these Chips right now in the GB section

Shipping from Switzerland. As written in the OP, standard shipping is included, urgent will be charged 1 extra coin.

As for VAT: if you are within EU and do not need a commercial invoice, I can ship from Germany, which will be charged effective expenses for driving there (like 1.5 BTC today).


No, you need to organize GB yourselves, since maintaining this lot size is the only way to make it handleable.

Update: Order Processing & Order Deadline

With the updated prices and shipping dates confirmed, I started sending out order processing details to those interested so far. Orders become binding by paying the down-payment of 16 BTC per lot ordered.

With the estimated shipping date given by punin, this offer is available until September 19th.

Booked my lot ,

PS : Anyone know if burning is willing to make assembly for thos?

This is what burnin has said about his boards:


I've asked him about assembly, but haven't received an answer yet.

Try asking cryptx too or marto74.

Burnin explicitly said he would not deal with customers directly ever again. His official distributor is asic-hardware.com which should be working soon. Even refunds of his Avalon orders must go through asic-hardware.com and not his site.

Nothing from you yet, via either PM or email.

Really? I answered to anyone who sent an order to the email address given in the OP. Please double check that it was correctly sent and you received an auto-response confirming your request.

If you still have problems, please let me know over board PM.

I even quoted yourself in the PM. The email was from a while back, and I got what I assume was the automated message stating my inquiry was received.

Shouldn't this be in group buy subforum?   ??? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=137.0 ...

This isn't a group buy.

Update: Offer closed

Time window for this offer closed, offer is not available any more.

My chips are on their way, to be delivered early next week, so I'll be able to re-ship ordered chips two weeks earlier than promised (W39).

Those who paid the down-payment before the deadline expired, please send the remainder to your personal address till Monday, September 23rd.

All other who missed the deadline: please do not send funds any more. Coins received late will be returned back to sending address.


Thanks for your interest and Good Luck.

+1

these boards are actually quite interesting/strange to work with. I had a poor performance chip recently start working almost like new (went tfrom effective 0.4GH to 1.7GH). These boards can be modified for 40% gains with good airflow and some small heatsinks (~35Ghash) and annecdotal reports indicate that the chips can handle some heat and the converter presumably has even more headroom.

i would not be surprised if october h-boards were manufactured to run at 30GHash by default