Bitcoin Foundation will have no excuse for not ripping their unit apart, so hopefully those pics and videos will soon be forthcoming.  Jeff's blog makes clear that he wasn't supposed to receive his unit yesterday - it sounds like there's something planned PR-wise for today and the delay on Batch 2 orders also suggests that Avalon's waiting for something specific to occur.

Is he in on the "BFL scam" too.  Jeff posted that he ordered from each of the vendors.  Does that mean we can't trust his BFL review when he posts that?

Bitcoin Foundation should absolutely pull their unit apart, post pics and videos, issue reviews by several different people, tweak the hardware, etc.  Expecting users who've paid for their unit (even if they've received a discount) to do that when they could be mining is not reasonable.

Except that video games are mass produced, whereas Avalons are not.  There's no real advantage to Avalon taking thousands of orders at a time because they have a limited capacity to speed up their production.  Avalon doesn't need their Batch 2 to "sell out faster".  It's going to sell out fast anyway.  Increasing the size of the batch to thousands would just create more headaches for them for no real gain.  

Avalon has previously stated that they wouldn't be shipping during CNY so unless something has changed, not everyone from Batch 1 will receive their units in February.  It's just not possible to guess how much Avalon power will hit the network before BFL delivers their first units.  Avalon has now delayed Batch 2 orders - which were due for delivery in early March - so it's quite possible that BFL will deliver a significant amount of units before Avalon delivers batch 2 - although less BFL units are going to be delivered in their first batch than originally expected.

The number of Avalons in the wild before BFL delivers their first units will have some impact on profitability for all miners, but so will BFL's first batch of deliveries.  BFL's first round of deliveries may well have a greater impact on the profitability for all later customers than Avalon's will.  Let's face it - every delivered ASIC essentially increases the ROI period for all ASICs which are subsequently delivered.  High Bitcoin prices or reduced hardware prices may be able to mitigate that somewhat and keep the ROI period at an acceptable period.

Given how many miners proudly display their rigs housed in milk crates, I'd say plenty value performance more than packaging.

It's in the OP of the Batch #2 thread.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=139704.0

You can convert to your local time and UTC here.

timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Orders will open in just over 8 hours.  There will be 600 units available in batch 2.

BFL units are being assembled in and shipped from the US.

Perhaps.  Or perhaps some people will order them for resale and accept other payment methods.  Avalon's indicated that there's a market for resellers.

Speaking of which, surely someone's collecting on a bet related to Avalon's delivery of ASICs right now.

Avalon's aren't intended to be "ASICs for dummies".  They're a niche product for techie people who don't need their hands held.  Jeff had no problems getting it up and running without instructions. 

Those are all possibilities you were aware of when you started this thread.

My concern is that many Bitcoin enterprises are already ridiculously opaque.  I believe that when they fail, the identities and the actions of those involved with the business should no longer be protected - they should be subject to public scrutiny just as they are in the real world. 

Without such scrutiny, people have no idea whether the same people who were associated with one failed enterprise are operating a new one and they have little information on which to judge whether the failure was due to incompetence, malice, or factors which were truly beyond the control of the operators. 

I don't believe it is reasonable to expect the community to accept at face value the unexamined claims by service operators of why their business failed.

And what legal actions would they be?  If Dave stops processing CC refunds, people will do just do chargebacks.  It's not like hundreds of people are going to file small claims actions against the company in New York, and even if they did, so what?  A judgement is only as valuable as the ability to enforce it.  It's not going to be quicker or cheaper for people to obtain a judgement against BTCFPGA LLC and to enforce that judgement than it is to do a chargeback.

At one point they were talking about getting a company in HK to handle the customs issues.  They need the export paperwork for China to be in order as well as the import paperwork for the destination countries.  It's possible that the units are with a customs broker at the moment and not with DHL, in which case they would have a reference number but not a number which is useful for tracking.  

Avalon only started posting about customs issues relatively recently which suggests that they haven't had a broker working on export licence issues all along (which is understandable given that they're a tiny outfit shipping small quantities).  China could chuck a hissy fit and decide that they won't allow the technology to be exported.  Customs processing will likely start slowing down around about now too.

It's definitely reasonable to expect an update from Avalon this weekend, even if that's only scanning in a redacted copy of the paperwork they have for the shipments.

If it's a "grass roots organisation" then liability for the actions of BTCFPGA may well extend to the other members of that organisation.  For something "grass roots" it's extremely opaque.

It's got nothing to do with being nice, it's about legal realities.  You can make a report to the computer crime unit of your state police - they'll then forward it to their counterparts in New York.  Nobody from NSW Police is going to hop on a plane to investigate or try to extradite Tom to Australia. Because the AFP has limited resources, they have very strict guidelines about what they investigate and the amount Australians have lost is likely to fall well below their threshold.  If grounds for fraud prosecution did exist - and failure to pay refunds alone does not prove fraud - then the best case could be made in Tom's own jurisdiction based on complaints made by customers in the US.

Yeah, if it can be proved that the chips were never ordered, that a deposit was never paid for the chips and that Tom has been spending pre-order money on hookers and blow then you have a shot at establishing fraud - but business failure due to incompetence, unforeseen circumstance, under-capitalisation, etc isn't fraud.  90% of new businesses fail.  That's something people need to remember every single time they hand over their BTC to a Bitcoin enterprise and don't immediately get something in return.  Your Bitcoins are safest when they are under your direct control.

Not to mention the problem of getting both a cause of action and a class certified.  Class actions are pointless unless you have a plaintiff with deep pockets and there's a good chance of a substantial award of punitive damages.  They suck as a means of debt collection and were never intended to be used for that purpose.  

I can't even recall whether there was an LLC formed for the bASIC project.  It would be kind of interesting to know its legal structure and whether Tom is actually the only one with legal liability in respect of the project.

Edit.  Looks like they are, indeed, an LLC.

Fucked if I know why he's telling people to call the police.  Here in Australia it's a breach of contract issue rather than a criminal matter.  It's typically not worth the cost of taking civil action internationally for small claims.

Pretty sure that Josh said they can't let people do it with credit card because refunding from the CC merchant account could cause them problems.

And yeah, people need to insure the package and make sure that the customs information is accurate.  No doubt we'll soon have a "where the fuck did my FPGA go" thread as the delivery of some of the returned units to BFL doesn't happen in the expected time.

Ironically, it annoys the shit out of many Aussies - myself included - when people refer to Australia as "Oz".  Until relatively recently, it was rare for Australians to do so - it was mostly Americans who did it.  "Ozzie" is also something you won't see used by Australians - it's "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie" all the way.

"Oz" does get used to refer to an ounce of drugs here, though, even by people who've grown up with the metric system.