Bitcoin Forum

Back in November 2013 Bitcoin was trading at 1200$. A couple of months ago Butterfly Labs started giving out refunds for pre-orders older than 6 months. What would be more profitable -- taking the refund now and doubling your bitcoin holdings or waiting and wishing for the Monarch to be delivered? I faced such a dilemma and finally decided to take the refund because BFL kept deleting my whiny posts in their forums which angered me. Also, even if they delivered I would have had to pay ~700 EUR for import taxes just to receive my equipment.

I was secretly wishing for the next bubble not to start until I get my refund and today I got the refund, effectively turning the initial 3.4 bitcoins into 5.8. I learned it the hard way that mining is pointless because my 60 GH/s miner costed me 140 bitcoins and it only mined 10 :D, thus I'm pretty happy about cancelling my 2nd generation ASIC pre-order. I don't believe it would have made any profits bitcoin-wise.

Having said that, my gut feeling tells me that the next rally can start now. To make this post more interesting, I predict that we will exceed 1000$ by the end of August.

But I want 1000$ at the end of July... Can you please wish for that?

Voila!!! Logic ensues in the bitcoin world at last!!!

BTW have you noticed that difficulty has stopped jumping as much as in the past?

Congrats OP for being a little less dumb about your finances.

You are not new, why did you "preorder" at BFL?

:D you mean the first order or the second? I ordered the first time just for the lulz as I just got a fat pay cheque, I converted it fast into bitcoins and ordered the ASIC in 2012. I received that ASIC in October 2013 and in the first month it mined 6 bitcoins. I was able to order the 2nd generation ASIC for the profits of the 1st generation ASIC so it felt like a good bet. I admit, I don't care much about profits and money and that's the reason why I dared to buy shit load of bitcoins when they traded at 4.5$ each. So, it's difficult to say if I'm dumb, wise or just lucky.

I'd say it's a mixture of luck and ignorance. You are among friends.

I knew that mining wasn't profitable since months but I didn't ever imagine that
a 140 btc machine would have mined only less than 10% of its initial cost.

Speaking of friends and stuff... When and where should the first meeting of the Bitcoin Speculation Subforums take place? Once we're all filthy rich it could sound like a plan, don't you think? :P

I was posting metaphorically, and you probably should ask Risto.
Did you know he managed to preemptively ban me on goats forum?

As bitcoin grew to this level, so did the mining industry, pushing the small man aside and making mining somewhat a industry business.
I understand that ASIC-s reduced power consumption per GH , but they also kicked out the average Joe.. I liked bitcoin much better when there were only GPU-s..

there's 1k party scheduled some time sooooooon ) or what's your cutoff price for filthy rich?

I've subscribed to $4k+ prices. 5 digit prices would make a lot of people filthy rich IMHO.

Thanks for the heads up. We were all waiting for you :)

Glad you got your refund man, i hope all the people who ordered get theirs soon, now we can have a chiken raise.

Also think of it like that: When people ordered from BFL and paid with BTC, the latter was converted to USD (BTC got aggressively sold). Now, when BFL refunds they might convert USD to BTC thus aggressively buying BTC. Thus, BFL refunding to their customers might actually rise the price :D

But then again, I suspect BFL is refunding to their customers with the bitcoins they themselves mined secretly with the hardware they were supposed to send to their customers.

Could you try tracing your payment back?

BFL have still not shipped their Monarch cards? WTF.... let me guess another 2 weeks?

This is the address from where the refund originated:
https://blockchain.info/address/182xSUmHbVQQyULxBuc89kRmwvsBWN9yym

I'm not that good at tracing its coins back to the miners and determining if they're refunding with bitcoins they mined themselves so maybe someone else can do some analysis on that matter.

Thanks! I'm no blockchain analysis expert either though :P I checked whether they were dumb enough to use freshly mined coins in a few hops but they didn't.

Someone else wants to have a go?

*shrugs*

I'm waiting for a Monarch and I knew exactly what I was getting into pre-ordering, having ordered a Single SC, and an FPGA Single before that.

But if you refuse to mine, you can't cry about mining having become too centralised.

You don't mine because mining is free money (it hasn't been for years).  You mine because mining is good for Bitcoin.  It effectively a donation to securing decentralisation of the network.  (And, selfishly, what's good for Bitcoin is also good for my and your investment in Bitcoin).

And also, you mine, because it's cool to have cool miners :-)

Just my two bitcents.

roy

EDIT: I have no problem with the sentiment of this thread - I'm not going to complain if there's a major rally :)

Congrats on the refund, I know how frustrating it can be having money out there that is owed to you for a long period of time.

If you got the miner as soon as you bought the miner for 140BTC you probably would have made more than 10BTC; however, you must keep in mind that the reason you got such a low return was because of the shift in exchange rate from roughly 20$ to like 300$ by the time it got delivered.

I'm more than willing to bet that you at least broke even, or were close to it, at least based on the rough estimate of when you purchased and when you mined 10*15 = 150 -- close to 140.

Mining BTC is essential to our infrastructure -- it's just not economically viable, which is a damned shame.

Dollar-wise I made shit load of profits despite the fact I got the equipment a year after making the pre-order. The original SC costed me ~1400$ and it earned me ~6000$ in current prices (I haven't cashed out a cent though, so the profits may increase even more :D).

I'm supporting the Bitcoin network with my miner and it mines on a P2Pool to support decentralized mining and reduce the 51% attack risk. Also, the miner got me famous in my home country :D I got into TV for doing some weird stuff with computers, it was pretty fun but the fame aspect gets a bit annoying now that so many people recognize my face and start asking about Bitcoin mining, lol :P

Speaking of mining, I also mine PeerCoins with the Proof of Stake aspect. It's much cooler than Bitcoin mining because it doesn't require a noisy ASIC and does not consume electricity at all.

I can understand why you would want to get into mining, but I don't understand why you would choose BFL as the company to buy your miner from. That's like throwing your money away.

Because BFL wasn't always like that. In the beginning they had no bad record and they were pretty much the only company to develop ASICs. They fucked up with their 60nm product like, a lot. Ordering from them the second time was mostly due to their marketing trick and I figured that maybe they learned their lesson and now they will actually deliver in time. Also, if you have shit load of new wealth due to ongoing outrageous Bitcoin rally, you most likely act irrationally with it anyway. Emotions, you know :D

In the beginning the had no rep, now they have a bad rep.

Refund is the best bet, you will have to wait for years for anything from them...

Well, every BFL product line has been severely delayed.  The FPGAs were very late, the 60nm ASICs were very late, and now the 28nm ASICs are very late.  But at least they had a track record of shipping a product - eventually.  And a product that worked, and broadly speaking, that worked reliably.

So the choice was, gamble on BFL being quicker in their product development than last time, or gamble on an unknown quantity.  Sure, with hindsight, picking KNC would have served me better.  OTOH, if I'd picked Hashfast I'd very possibly have lost my money.  It's a gamble - no one knew which horses would come in, but there really weren't any clear winners back when we were all preordering.  So you take a guess and spend a few coins.

(I did also subsequently preorder a Coindesk Bitmine Coincraft Desk device, BTW.  That's been happily hashing away for a few months.)

roy

They had no bad record because they had no record at all. They likely had a shorter "testing" phase then they do now but still had longer delays then necessary.

Getting a refund is by far the better choice for the OP. With today's difficulty being where it is, the OP had more or less zero chance of ever earning any where near 3 BTC, let alone 5 BTC