Bitcoin Forum

We've written a response to many of the questions presented to us regarding the BitForce SC product line.  I trust it will at least clarify what can be expected from our company as regards to overall policy that might affect the hashing community.

http://www.butterflylabs.com/bitforce-sc-release-notes/

Regards,
BFL

Thanks for clarifying!

Thank you so much.    :)

Thanks for the clarification.

BFL:
What if a customer places an order for a MiniRig, and cannot come up with the extra 15K to upgrade to an SC?  So is he screwed with older hardware and increasing difficulty?

wow, looks like BFL plans to flood the network with asic gear by year's end

You left out the most important question needing to be answered how will the hashing power be deployed? As if the th/s boxes go out the door first in quantity then there is absolutely no sense in buying any of your other products.

He sells his MR for ~15k to someone else who CAN use it as a trade in, and then he spends that money to buy 12 SC Singles (for 480GH/s).

I'm guessing the majority of their orders will be jalapenos or singles, so these will be the ones shipped first.

I think this is very telling...

"How long will you continue to accept trade ins?  Our trade in offer expires January 1, 2013."

i would like to preorder few coffee warmers. thx

That's the only part that I'm concerned about. That's an awfully short time for trade ins...

Fair enough, we'll extend that to March 1st.

Thanks for your feedback.

:D

Guessing is no good and if you guess wrong your fucked. There would be you would think at least as many th/s boxes going out the door as mini-rigs at the least, so people need to know how the deployment is going to go so they can at least try to be making their money back.

When are the confirmations for orders placed a month ago going out?  I would trying emailing, but you don't return them.

When are the orders placed a month ago going to be shipped?  You say you can rapidly catch up, but Oct isn't that far away and each week you don't ship only costs me more money.

Thanks for the clarification. I think some of us who have lost faith along the way now understand a bit more about your process.

So how do I get my order in as early as possible now?  :P

It's about time, if I don't do it somebody else will.

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/181/813/1726009-shut_up_and_take_my_money_super.jpg

This shocked me too as I have a Mini-Rig on order, but March is OK.

Does this mean we can reserve the credit up to March 1st, and then ship to you once the SC is ready, or the old product has to reach your office by March 1st ?

BFL.

A huge thanks from one of your critics.

From this I have a few comments and questions I hope you will consider answering.

1) Does the trade-in offer still apply to product ordered after the
announcement?

If so, is it a concern that customers may flood you with orders now only to send them back a few months later?
From a business perspective, it only makes sense to phase out the old product starting now and when it's gone it's gone. Are you willing to confirm?

2) Will your entire SC product line be available roughly at the same time? Or will it be staggered?

3) If you are scheduling shipment for October, when will you start taking orders?

4) Every greedy bastard here including myself wants the advantage over the next guy in receiving the product first.
    Can you address this? Is it first order first serve policy as usual? Will you give an advanced notice before taking orders?
    This sure puts you in an interesting predicament.

Suggestion: If you drafted a policy now that allowed everyone to benefit somewhat simultaneously, it would sure win over more support in the community.
                 We are a little fractured in community due to you guys. I hope you step up as a leader and do what you can so it is positive for all.




 

Their faq says you don't have to send it in until your sc is ready to ship.

Trying hard not to troll because I like your trade-in program and I believe cheap ASIC diversification will boost the strength of the network, but seriously.

When will preorders start, and which product lines are expected to ship first?

If the 3.5 Ghash unit warms coffee, could the SC Single make Belgian waffles?

I think it's a great trade-in policy.  Not many places would give you 100% on an item that's been used 24/7 for over eight months.

+1

Let's say I place an order for some ASIC singles when you start taking pre-orders.

When they are ready to ship can I drive my FPGA singles up there and get the ASIC's?

I plan on using a 1000W inverter in my truck and my verizon wireless internet connection with a hp thin client to start mining in the fucking parking lot.

I will mine all the way home to Dallas.

I have made it from Dallas to KC in under 5 hours averaging 115mph on the Turnpike.

I will drive slower on the way home since I will already be mining.  :D

Which means you want to overnight your return to them so they get it ASAP so you can get yours shipped to you. 

I'v got 20k$, when and where I can order??

Lol awesome, but I doubt the cell connection would remain connected at that speed. ;D

Or you could just pay the $1300 now and ship immediately, and have them credit your CC when they receive back in their hands.

I know you said we can't turn in two items to get a "free" single back. But if we want to upgrade to even something higher, can we turn in singles to get the 50% credit of that purchase price?

That's what it sounds like. My best guess is that they are priced 51% above cost. All the profit come from new customers without trades.

We've been working with Bit-Pay for a BTC exclusive order form.  This is meant to both promote the good services of Bit-Pay and give dedicated miners a bit of an advantage in getting in position.  We'll have that posted later tonight.  Alternate payment methods of Dwolla and BankWire will come shortly thereafter.

Please help...   We're respectful of the significance of order position, but we can't think of any good way to organize it other than opening it up to orders and letting it go as it may.

Another alternative is to go odd / even.   Odd being consecutive down the priority list and even being a random selection from orders that month.  

Any thoughts on this?

No plans for PP or CC?

PP will come later.  We don't process CC's.

If you or anyone else actually believes that I have bridge in Brooklyn going real cheap..

That's fine, PP will do the CC processing for me. How much later do you expect PP to be added?

When can I start ordering? Or at least, join some sort of queue. I am going to be down for a bunch (five, maybe eight) of those Jalapenos, or maybe just one Single SC. But like the other guy said, we're greedy and want to get in line ASAP. When can we start doing this?

A lottery of the pre-orders is the only fair way to do it and you still have not said how the hashing power is to be deployed so you don't end up screwing everyone over with a massive diff rise(s).

@BFL, thank you for your clarification!

orders should go as Odd being the order as they come...

you will have a handful of random ppl doing trade-ins and full orders... so it's only right...


one thing would be nice to Limit the amount per order, per month.

so... if your pre-ordering, or trade-in...

10-20 jalapenos limit for first order for that month
5-10 SC single limit for first order for that month
1 rig limit for first order for that month...


that way it provides a balance of orders that go out to a variety more of consumers, rather then if someone has 20-30 singles ordered... well there's a problem...

just like most retailers, manufacturers, etc... would do for something in demand... put a limit on it to create some balance of fairness to other consumers down the line...

BFL, I appreciate the sensitivity to the issue of order position.

Right off the bat I will assume that the logistics of storing inventory to be released in few, but large quantities will be difficult.

What I, and many worry about, is either the slow, steady flow or the incremental, but frequent flow approaches.  To what degree those on the end of the trade-in list get burned is, I suppose, based on your output velocity.

First come first serve is how it's always done .. why change it ?

Why should someone who paid 2 months ago receive later than someone who paid last week ?

Lets not turn business into gameshow.

This will only work if you have no friends, I have friends all around England and France, I can get them to order on my behalf and pay them.

This just will not work.

BFL:  Will you allow customer pickup's for the ASIC's?  I will seriously drive up there to pick them up.  It will save you shipping and I will get to mine a few days earlier.

true indeed.

but you included the word Friends... which im betting theres about a 90% chance it will work then. lol

Let's say they get a queue of 2000 thousand orders in one hour. Extreme probably, but who knows.
and then let's say they can only deliver 200 a week for the next 10 weeks.

See the problem now?

One idea I had was for each jalepeno that comes off the assembly line. goes directly to a mining pool ( I know you don't mine, but maybe you could team up with somebody who does). Each preorder would have a share into that pool. Once there's enough hardware to satisfy all the orders....boom! you ship 'em all out.

As far as I know they queue them up based on date and not hours, so the 2000 order that comes on day 1 will be shipped randomly, once they are all shipped, orders from day 2 will take over.

Does this mean you will start the pre-orders tonight?

Bad idea.. I wouldn't want BFL distracted with powering and housing a farm of boxes. Receive parts, assemble, burn test for a day or two, ship. Their performance with the Single and their horrific PR hopefully are due to being overloaded so don't even consider pulling more time off to manage some sort of group hardware sharing thing.

I think first come, first serve should be the method of madness.  However, anyone who currently has a prior-gen single on order and wants to upgrade the order to SC should be shipped to first.  Seems only fair, since they put down the money earlier.

Put on your reading glasses and stop misquoting me. I said that was my best guess, not that I believed any such thing. Since you seem to have inside information, would you care to share any more with us? Preferably in sentences that could be read easily, utilizing useful things such as punctuation.

How much power do these SC devices use?

That would be an interesting idea.  Would mess with their single projections.

I don't think there is any info about that yet, just that the Jalapeno is powered via USB so that's like 5V ?

Quoting from Wikipedia in regards to USB power limits:

So 2.5w for 3.5gh/s maximum if usb 2.0 device, if usb 3.0 device then 4.5w maximum.

Why wouldn't you allow your current customers first rights to trading in their orders? They are the ones that have believed in your product and have already worked with you with possible long wait times for the product. I think this is a great way to show your appreciation to your current customer database and a big thank you for believing in your product.

I thought it was a great idea.
wasn't' their a trusted member from the community that visited BFL from time to time that could manage the pool.

The idea was they had someone else run the pool so no interruption.

The current customers enjoy mining on current equipment, while a new customer gives money upfront and gets nothing for the wait.
It should just be first come first serve, otherwise it will turn into a Soap Opera.

That would be farce it has long since been at the soap opera stage. And lottery is the idea it prevents time zone discrimination among other things..

I thought it was already a Soap Opera

Good response. Two more quickies if you don't mind to answer:

1. Will there be a product that is most readily deliverable or with more focus? [i.e. Will a SC-rig take particularily longer than a new Jalapeno Single, and/or will the Jalapeno be deliverable faster or slower than a coffee warmer?]

2. Are you guys stocking ASIC product already, or will you begin to build them as the orders are received? ..or.. What will be the expected delivery times?

||bit

Wow this answers a lot of our questions! Thanks!

Ok BFL i just have one question! What can be done to future costumers in Europe? I really dont want to pay one third of the price in taxes. Please do something about this!

Lobby your government to not levvy such a steep tax. Anything BFL can do to prevent a lawfully enforced tax would probably be considered fraud in your country of origin. :P

Move to a non-socialist country.

One thought. It's kinda cool that you asked for such feedback.

To address the issue:
# Since BFL will allow trade-ins to remain in miners possession (for mining) upto the time the ASIC products are ready to ship, there shouldn't be any complaints. There's no reason to penalize the people that did not buy BFL stuff simply because they were reasonably skeptical of this new company. And it's not like the ASIC hardware will saturate the network by the end of the year.
# Randomizing deliveries per month doesn't seem the right path. People like orderliness more than randomness when they have to wait. What would you prefer, knowing for sure your plane will be late or knowing it has a 50/50 chance of being late?

My opinion is it is simple & reasonable to do first-come first-serve on the orders. No drama should neccessarily develop - imo.

||bit

The difference between receiving a few SC Singles a week before everyone else could equate to thousands of dollars.  The difference in receiving a 1TH/s machine, tens of thousands.  And the network will be saturated very quickly, considering it would only take 12 of the 1TH/s minirigs to double the difficulty.

That's why people are clamoring to be the first in line.  I am too.  ;)  If they open pre-orders, they should do so at a set date and time.  I don't want to miss out just because I'm sleeping in my timezone while other people are awake.

I agree with this. Just opening them with no prior notice makes it a game of chance. On that note, make sure to shore up your web infrastructure; the load could be an issue.

Put me down for 6 SC singles please :)

I think the initial deliveries of SC will be quite profitable for awhile, if for no other reason than BFL's ability to deliver them. Even if the singles do 40GH/s, it would take ~425 of them to double the network. Let's say the ship 425 at the end of October in the first batch and that at that point the difficulty is about the same as it is now, as is the price. Within a couple days, difficulty doubles. If no other singles ship out for two weeks, even with double difficulty that single would pay for itself in 2 1/2 weeks. Now imagine they ship 425 more in November and 425 more in late December. The block reward halves, and difficulty is now 6.8M. Difficulty would probably be lower as GPUs shut off due to being unprofitable, but let's run with it. Each single is still earning almost 3BTC a day, and the November ones are also paid off.

Given BFL's previous supply issues, does anyone think they'll be able to put out more than almost 1300 singles in a 3 month period? I think the initial runs of singles will be massively profitable for the early adopters.

Not knowing the current sales numbers, it's hard to say. However, if I made a guess that the ones actually posting on the forum that they have gotten a device represents one fourth of customers (number pulled out of my ass), then I would say they might be able to hit that especially since they have an opportunity now to tune the production line.

You neglect the scenario of the th/s boxes shipping first if that happens then your rosy picture here turns to shit and if any amount of them a week ship then your profitable for a week or two at most until you reach the point of never seeing a return at about week three.

Assuming they do the same thing they are with the current minirigs, I don't see it being much different. They're still going to have 25 singles cards in a minirig, and while they may not be ASIC constrained, they probably will be constrained by building and testing the units.

rjk, I wouldn't be surprised if they hit those numbers too, or even exceeded them by a margin. I don't think they will, but it's certainly possible. I would be absolutely shocked if the doomsday scenarios here play out where people are jockeying for a few extra days of hashing before the network explodes and difficulty goes up tenfold.

Wouldn't it be better for almost everyone involved if they just release the Jalapenos in October, then come Jan 1 start to sell/deliver the singles with the SC-rigs coming for sale in March or April. This way everyone can ease into the higher difficulties without too much grief and fear.

I think this way everyone gets a piece of the pie in a less chaotic way and on BFLs end I don't think they will have any competition in this space in that timeframe. Win/Win :)

What might be a good idea for BFL would be to only allow a certain number of units to be ordered by each customer per month.  This would spread out their order to delivery channel better and allow most people to at least get something quickly.

They could even reward existing customers by increasing the number of units you can order based on the trade ins.  If you have more to trade, you can order more.

This would stabilize the flow of new ASICS into the wild which would not produce a "shock to the system" with all the new horsepower coming online all at once.

My solution:

Open up a pre–order list from Monday till mid–july, then close it.

This will give everyone ample time to order

Make an inventory of what has been ordered and start producing exactly that amount

When all the pre–Orders have been produced, pack them and ship them off at the same day in october, be it jalapenos, singles or rigs.

That way everone will receive their products around the same time

You may be right on how quickly it affects the network. And on getting upfront, I'm with ya!   About the order, to be fair, I don't think I or anyone else deserves to be first in line b/c we own BFL equipment. We won't be at a disadvanatge for having it if we are not first in line. Just think of it as cash you can spend, but that cash can mine in the mean time.  :P

||bit

I bet the PCB's will be significantly less complex. So, they may be able to manufacture faster and have their QA ninja do what QA ninja's do faster.

BTW: You forgot to account for BTC going to $100/BTC...so, there's that. 8)

||bit

Let's say they are shipping ~200 Singles per week now. Do the math, I did the guessing.  ;D

If the BFL person answers my prior comment to him/her, then we'll know what may more likely transpire. I suspect, assuming they are reasonable, that they will focus on the coffeee warmers and jalapenos. Otherwise, it will not go over well with the customers they want to keep.

||bit

Seems fair to me. I'm not sure BFL is really terribly worried about fairness, but it is what it is.

I think it's nice that they even consider our input.  Honestly, they are the only game in town, and could tell us to all kick rocks.  Anyone who wanted the hashpower only they can provide would still have to deal with them, regardless.

Bet it does you probably live in the US therefore guaranteed to get your order days/weeks before everyone else.

I don't. Would you expect them to estimate the average delivery time and stagger the shipments based on that?

Will the bit-pay order form be able to accommodate the trade credit for users that have pending orders?  Will we be able to just pay the difference in bitcoin?

Quite frankly I think it should be lottery everybody gets a number for each unit ordered then you take your chances but above all BFL should announce a clear plan of how they plan to ship these boxes. For example do the th/s boxes ship first or if not when do they ship the smaller stuff going first will not have that big an impact on the overall hash rate to screw everyone over but the big boxes well different story there they have the potential to fuck everyone except the lucky few who get them in the first week or two of shipping if they go first depending on how many/fast they go out the door.

Edit: And I would add some people don't seem to get the idea that once these things ship that th/s is going to be the new gh/s so it is going to be $30k to get involved in BTC to be a puny player if you have 5-10gh/s farm now well do the math on that to get a couple of btc a day in return for your investment once these things are well on their way out the door.

Since BitForce is a hardware company in their own words, they should help software developers like myself get access to the hardware and specs early or there will be a flurry of rushed code to try and support them as is happening right now with the minirigs. I'm guessing they will meter out their hardware from smallest/slowest to fastest as others have predicted, so it's not like they need to provide access to $30k / 1TH of hashing power to the devs while it's still a significant chunk of the network speed.

Beat the rush, start selling your video cards now. Then maybe buy bitocins with said funds. Wait for October, and use them to make SC purchases.

More like save the BTC until next year to get the cheap ASICs that will be available once the early adopters get royally screwed again all depending on how the hash power these things have is deployed. That is why it is super critical to know how it it going to happen so people can plan accordingly. Now if small stuff goes first then the large box last four or five months later once the hash rate has built up then that can work and be manageable. The reverse large goes first no sense at all in buying any of the small stuff and if your in the third or fourth week of shipping probably the same for the large no sense buying as you will never see return matching your outlay.

All three products are set with their own production line and will begin shipments at roughly the same time.

BFL, approximately how many SC 1TH units do you expect or will be ready to sell in october? will it be worth getting coffee warmers at all?

The relative cost per mh/s isn't too far off from the Jalapeno to the Mini Rig SC.  This being the case, it's not really any particular threat if someone has a 1 TH/s mini rig vs a shopping bag of of Jalapeno's.  The Jalapeno's will still be relevant as compared to their purchase price.

Purchase price comparability is jack shit compared to their comparable percentage of the hashing power you will put online with them th/s boxes, those are the main driver of the massive hash rate potential increase. If you put 100 th/s boxes online and 1000 jalapeno's (your shopping bag full analogy, BTW must be big shopping bag you need ~300 of them for it to work) then the th/s boxes are a ~28:1 advantage over the jalapeno or in other words the comparably priced mh/s jalapeno is now worth 1/28 the mh/s hashing power of a th/s box on the network. For it to be equal you would need 100 th/s boxes and ~30,000 jalapeno boxes to go online at the same time for you to imply only price matters in this post is just flat out wrong it is totally dependent on how many of each box you plan to ship in a given time frame.

You really expect 100 1th/s rigs to be ordered ($3 mln worth) ?

Were there 200 minirigs ordered when they first were announced ?

Pethaps with some glbse pooling of money people other than Giga will buy 1 or 2 of those puppies

I would be surprised to see more than 15 - 20 rigs be pre–ordered, but def 200 - 500 of the singles and many more jalapenos

I concur with a lot of the posts here, please open pre-orders at a set time, for a set period, and make sure that everybody who orders in that period has their products shipped simultaneously.

Ideally, limit the value of those orders per customer to ensure that you do the best you can not to be a part of a 51% attack.

My coffee is getting cold.

There are so many unknowns in this, that for the protection of both sides, you need to clarify what the cancellation terms are going to be.

Especially if you are still considering any kind of lottery style random prioritisation of orders - whereby people may place extra orders with the intention of cancelling the lottery losers.

Assuming the product development is successful and you actually reach the shipping stage, the rate at which you ship is going to change the payback time, and (the more sane) people will redo their sums and reconsider their orders.

It looks like mini-rig purchasers are still screwed the most, unless they get priority for upgrading.  Based on the the order list thread some people are scheduled to receive their mini-rig in August.  2 months later a handful of jalapenos will equal the hashing power and then the mini-rig owner will be forced to upgrade (shelling out another $15k) or lose out entirely.  If they do decide to upgrade and end up in some order lottery it's really gonna hurt.  Seems like punishment for early customers who put their faith/$ in BFL.

Add to that non refundable 20% import tax that first needs to be repaid, then another 20% import tax when the SC Rig arrives.

This is the most fair proposal I've heard.

+1.  Announcing a preorder a day before you do it and not even posting the announcement on your website is a little.. weird.

+2. Fair for everyone.

+3 this is a fair solution.

-4 It's not fair because international orders take much longer to deliver.

Still, it's by far the most fair distribution based solely on their output - not delivery networks.  Send out international orders shortly prior to the remainder.

Well then not only do people in Europe miss atleast 10 first golden days of hashing compared to American customers, but are also hit by 18%-25% of import tax depending on Country.

+1000

+4 BFL please read this and change your plans.

+5 Sounds good to me.

What is BFL supposed to do about the import tax for non-Americans?

Kindly asking BFL to postpone (1+ week) to allow time to put move more $$ to BTC

++

Especially since the mtgox trade engine is down.

My idea on the orderiing is this: randomize the order book by the day. This means everyone who orders June 24th will get theirs before June 25th, but it makes it less of a quick click scramble to get your order in. This is fair because there is little difference in loss between someone who had their money tied up for 120 days versus someone who had it tied up for 120 days and 23 hours.

Concur with this. Would like BFL to announce a pre-order date at least 72 hours in advance to give people time to move funds to BTC.

I think this is a good idea but it runs the risk of a massive epic hashrate dump on the network within a couple of days that may mean that even the first buyers don't make money on the ASIC. Difficulty may suddenly blow up so fast that nobody makes any money. There's going to be an 8 TH dump by gigavps already right at the beginning of the ASIC penetration.

+7
Aaannd.... Thread.

+8. ITS A + PYRAMID!

i'm agreeing - ship em out all at once. everybody profits equally, or no one does.

waiting for PP.  any idea on when i should check back?

Pictures of any ASIC device would be nice.
Any time soon BFL?

there has to be a "prototype" picture at the least for a company to accept Pre-Order Full Down Payments 3 months in advance...


screen shots of Said Numbers...


i mean, we are going off a few super late fpga singles & rigs shipped out only recently... so... where's said product?


even prototypes typically have blueprints, sketches, photoshops, eh... yeah.

Why bother with facts when you can make something up? People are throwing their bitcoins at them anyway!

Yep just throw your money at them ...;)

I wonder if they'll use the same style cases as they're currently using.

I hope they'll use quiet/silent fans this time on the ASIC versions.

At this point I just hope the product actually exists in a usable state. They type of fan doesn't even come into my train of thought yet. I'll complain about the fan AFTER its making too much noise sitting in my office churning away.

+ 9

I will put in an order if you do this.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89523.msg985255#msg985255

They kinda did.

+10

+ ... ship non-North-American orders 2 days earlier.

I like you magical number : 2

Its my fav number in cards game as well

For my existing BFL Singles, it took an extra 2-3 weeks to arrive overseas.  So I'll likely lose out on the initial advantage, even if my order gets shipped in the first batch.  That's just the way it is, though.

Hey BFL guys, can you give us an idea of how the jalapeno miners will look like? Fire up mspaint or gimp :)

Regarding PayPal, it will come shortly. Please be patient.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

+11 ...... because I like the pyramid

+12

Protecting your (their) interests?  Their business practices are breaking FTC regulation.  They have legal duties and obligations that they are ignoring.  If someone with the money gets pissed off enough, it's going to be trouble alley for BFL.

Could you / someone explain your calculation of 3BTC a day for each Single ‘SC?
When I calculate for 24h day with a 40960 MH/s (=40 GH/s ) with Deepbit it displays 21.17 BTC/24h:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1380448/Reward.png

He means the older singles I think.

Okay... thanks... It still sounds so unbelievable to me that you can earn that amount a day with an investment of $1300.... ! Even with half that amount you don't have to work anymore for income.....

It won't last for very long...

Well,
Maybe the quote ( http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/ (http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/) ) of BTC rises. This quote is not depended of the difficulty...
EDIT:
When this quote doubles, then the problem of devaluation  does not exists  :D..
Right?

I don't understand what you are saying.

What I am talking about is how the difficulty will rise tenfold (at least) when people receive these ASIC's, so each one will make 1/10th of what it is currently projected to make.

At this moment you get $6.70 for each BTC. So when this quotes doubles, and your mining income halves, then the result revenue is still the same....

If you go back and read the post, he's not talking about the older singles. He's talking about what the SC singles would make at 40 Gh/s when difficulty is 6.8M and the block reward is 25. Here's the passage in full:

"I think the initial deliveries of SC will be quite profitable for awhile, if for no other reason than BFL's ability to deliver them. Even if the singles do 40GH/s, it would take ~425 of them to double the network. Let's say the ship 425 at the end of October in the first batch and that at that point the difficulty is about the same as it is now, as is the price. Within a couple days, difficulty doubles. If no other singles ship out for two weeks, even with double difficulty that single would pay for itself in 2 1/2 weeks. Now imagine they ship 425 more in November and 425 more in late December. The block reward halves, and difficulty is now 6.8M. Difficulty would probably be lower as GPUs shut off due to being unprofitable, but let's run with it. Each single is still earning almost 3BTC a day, and the November ones are also paid off."

Do you really think that difficulty rise 10fold? I thought it doubled....

I basically agree. Difficulty will probably go up 5-10x with the first shipment alone.

It would only take 12 minirigs to double the current difficulty.  It'll rise 10 fold very quickly, just based on the fact that there's 800+ orders.

It would take 120 minirigs to 10x the current difficulty. How long do you think it will take BFL to ship 120 minirigs (or 50 MRs and 1750 singles)? Alternately, 120 minirigs is $3.6M at current prices. Do you think BFL has almost four million worth of preorders?

Let's check in on the data we have so far:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89538.0

^ at least 168 Gh/order.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89685.0

^ 215 Gh/order. At least 1152 orders by last reported.

1152 orders x 215 Gh/order = 248 Th ordered so far.

1152 orders x 168 Gh/order = 194 Th ordered so far.

And going with the claim made that BFL suggested the first shipment was getting filled around 500 orders or so:

500 orders x 215 Gh/order = 108 Th in the first shipment.

500 orders x 168 Gh/order = 84 Th in the first shipment.  

I'm hoping both these estimates come out too high, but regardless it's clear that difficulty is going to ramp up at an insane pace.

The problem in this whole thread is that no one knows what the hell will happen because of the company everyone is dealing with. THAT is the truth whether people want to hear it or not.

200 emails are too much to deal with based on hundreds of thousands of dollars in orders?

I'd love that f'in problem in my business. Hi, yes temp agency, please send me ten people at $20 per hour for a few weeks please.

I answer, in detail, at least 20-30 emails per day myself in my company, plus another 20-30 personal emails. This doesn't take me more than a couple hours AT MOST.

Jesus, when are people going to at least DEMAND the customer service they deserve? Has there ever been anything like this where people are willing to throw thousands at an unproven company with a terrible track record just to make a few bucks?

I think that's called gambling, which of course is what everyone is and has been doing with BFL.

Look at the current mini rig trap for example. 15K product which will be obsoleted by the same company you purchased it from in 3 months and you STILL don't even have the damn thing yet.

They have already had your 15k for how long? 3 months at least? You don't think you funded their ASIC, which is in turn going to bite you in the ass unless you give them another 15K to hold onto for three months?

WOW, no wonder people called me crazy in my thread about how ASIC is not the same as previous gen mining technologies. Yet I am now seeing the same arguments I made being used by MANY BFL customers in this and other ASIC related threads.

Free Market, yep, that's the answer, even without nearly ANY information to make an informed purchase...Brilliant.

I sincerely hope this all works out for some of you, best case, many of you. Unfortunately, if you look at this objectively, a train wreck is on the horizon.

I don't care about mining anymore, I've made that personal choice, but I DO care about the future of bitcoin and would LOVE to see a petahash network we can all work off to increase adoption.

Mining is just the birthing phase for now folks, but if the baby is born with two heads...

Your numbers make no sense, and you're basing them on a huge number of assumptions, not the least of which is that because the first SC order is X and the last is Y, there have been X-Y SC orders. How many of these do you think are interspersed in their order book from the mad rush at the start?

Put it another way, 108TH with a 3/30/67 Jalapeno/Single/MR spread would be $3.4M. Ask any small business owner how easy and quick the transition from being a $500k/year volume to several million, and then reevaluate how likely it is that BFL will be able to push out $3-4M in product in the span of a few months.

I should start another bets of bitcoin on whether the network hashrate will be over 100TH/s two months after BFL releases their ASICs. It would be interesting to see how many bets and how large are placed on each side.

Lol, JJ, continuing on your ranting as always.  If you don't like the company, don't buy from them.  Why do you have to crap on every BFL thread you find?

Hmm I guess two things that no one seems to factor in is that there is a limit to how much BTC is generated per month that gets given out to everyone on the planet - and also how much of that can be cashed in without killing the price ...
Though, BFL themselves seem to factor that into how they are doing this :)

Can someone please check can i order butterfly labs products from Croatia?
i see this in FAQ : "Our export control restriction prohibits the export of our products to AT designated countries as specified by the US Department of Commerce."

how can i know if i can order something? would be stupid to order and pay and not to recieve..

can i get some assist please?

thanks

There are no restrictions regarding shipment to croatia.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

AFAIK, there are restrictions shipping to Cuba, North Korea, Iran and maybe one or two others.

Several days ago the USB Promoter Group announced availabity of the new standard - USB Power Delivery:
http://www.usb.org/press/USB_Power_Delivery_Spec_Completion_FINAL.pdf

100 W over USB...
Now we know what BFL had to wait for.  ;)
100 W rated Jalapeno could be quite a powerful coffee warmer... Boiler?
And one could say the requirements of 1143 W for Single SC and 28.5 kW for Mini Rig SC are far more realistic than before...  ;)

RHA: or BFL will perhaps use a "Y" USB cable to draw twice the power, like some USB optical disk drive do: http://www.cyberdata.net/products/cables/specialty/images/usb-b_2y_usb-a.gif This would allow 5W for a Jalapeno, or 700 Mhash/Joule...

On a typical motherboard, a USB port is fused with a 1.5 Amp fuse.
Plenty of headroom.

Are the thin little circuit traces on the motherboard also capable of delivery that 1.5 amps though?  You could burn out a trace going that far beyond spec if the manufacturer didn't account for it.

Motherboard designers are not dumb. If it's fused with a 1.5 Amp fuse, the fuse will blow before the trace burns through or the motherboard incinerates. That's precisely why the fuse is there in the first place.

Else it's pretty fucking useless fuse!

 ::)

True, I was just thinking of the el cheapo motherboards where they might put a 1.5 amp fuse on it to look good on the outside, but it won't actually run that much.  At least, I've seen similar things happen on other cheap electronics.

Is a fuse for a USB port typically only for one port or two?