Why do you say that? Never been to Silk Road in my life.

Any excuse will do.

Not gonna happen.

Exactly. If you run the number on what a gen-2 device would have to be, it has to come in at 2 terahashes at half a watt per gigahas and sell for under $3,000, to roughly break even in March 2014 the way the difficult is going.

The problem is breaking even on any device at that point. If you don't have your device pay for itself by the end of this year it probably never will. Gen-2 next year is going to have to be absolutely cutting edge just to be worth making, 28nm and full custom ASIC and even then the profit margin is going to be way down compared to this year. Three times the effort, three times less reward.

It's hard to imagine many companies being open to doing that, and the risk for buyers will only be magnified. Uncertainty is getting worse, not better.

Alright, my guess?

Bitsyncom is exiting the ASIC business. There will be no Gen-2 device.

People who have been waiting on trade-ins and the like, late devices, full refunds and an apology.

People waiting on chips: 50% refund and a release date, maybe even full refunds.

Yifu exits the business gracefully as possible, trying to make everyone happy if not giddy, and be done with it.

No. I looked at the article showing the Gridchip photos, etc., and wondered openly if this company got preferential shipping over everyone else (ie: casting aspersions).

What if he just got back from Vegas: big announcement, he's now a married man

Not a word about chips. People would have his head

Yeah, pretty sure that was me casting aspersions, lol.

Yeah this is undoubtedly where the pictures I saw came from, thanks for the link, I'll go check it out in a sec.

Yeah :\ clusterfuck for all involved.

I really don't know why people went so crazy for Avalon chips in the first place, but I guess people were really optimistic. 2 million Avalon chips? Crazytalk.

5% interest for such a risky loan? Generous. Even being one day... I suppose the collateral is enough tho.

Someone have a thread reference for this, I seem to have missed it.

It's nearly too late for any new 28 nm entry at this point; the field is crowded.

Let's say you ship in March 2014, like KNC wants to do with their Gen-2 product.

Firstly it's got to be a full custom ASIC. Nothing but a pure drive for efficiency will pass muster. Secondly it's probably going to sell for ~$3k, so fat profits are officially gone for hardware makers, and it should push about 2-terahash at less than half a watt per gigahash, or less--hopefully much less. And it likely should be a multi-core design, ala KNC, and then you've got to put everything together with no mistakes or delays.

And the days of pre-order are over. You'll have to up-front NRE and hope the difficulty doesn't murder your offering by the time it's ready for shipping, the way Batch-3 got murdered.

Gawd, just ran the numbers for that on a common calculator, even 2terrahash and $3k barely breaks even in June '14 >_> Guess the price of bitcoin better go up or something, gonna be lean times for miners for awhile <_<

Do you think that makes good news or bad news more likely. It's a bit like the forum-equivalent of 'you might want to sit down for this..."

Ask for a refund and ye shall receive, up until they time they are shipping. One person has already asked for an received a full refund that we know of already.

Also, refund will be priced according to dollars, not BTC (ie, you receive refund say $6,000 in BTC or cash, w/e, not the original amount of BTC you put in, because they've already sold that original btc for cash to pay for the NRE and devices.)

Do they? Why would they? B3 people paid for devices before chips were even mentioned publicly, much less paid for.

Anyway, yay for news at last, if only to put the rumors to bed.

Damn, so they gave these guys 375,000 chips???

...Wait, 135 boxes?!?!?!? They shipped these guys 2 million chips!

That's incredibly unethical unless they ordered the whole run first, but then who is there to check on them. But why this company? Why do it? Why piss off everyone else with chip orders by delaying everyone else's chips into a 2nd production run? Which is apparently what's happened.

Maybe this company told Yifu they'd buy 2 million chips if they got first shipment? Backroom deal.

Backroom deal, where Bitsyncom took a bribe in order to give priority shipping to these guys? Low, very low.

At least these are relatively crap technology compared to what's coming online. If Avalon had been selling KNC  or Bitfury chips, the industry would be virtually ruined.

Btw, $14.7 million in Avalon chips, that's worth like ~1.47% of the value of all bitcoin.

Reply on Reddit:

Haha, probably not the bitcointalk Inaba, naturally, but damn, quite the parody

Yeah... if you think the refund situation is bad look at people hurting for chips. People are getting really angry about that. Hard to blame them because people've spent $14 million on Ava chips and in 30 days it's not likely those devices will make ROI. Entire businesses and livelihoods are going down the drain with each day of delay, nothing but a sea of red ink across the bitcoin world :\ And Bitsyncom will have profited on it all.

What's more, no one's heard from Yifu for a month. Speculation that something internal may have occurred. A company split. Family situation. Internal strife.

Mystery of mysteries.

Whatever the case, Avalon has burned just about all of its credibility at this point.

Yeah, it could still be a long-con where you scam the first customer and disappear, even with John K. involved and escrow. Escrow scams exist too after all.

If you've paid NRE then you'd don't really need outside customers to buy the hardware, should you? And yet you're charging quite low compared to competitors. Similarly, how would you know how much to order without up-front customers. The point 'Orama made about your financial backer taking incredible risk is partly what bothers me.

You're saying all the right things but something is still nagging at me, so, I'm sitting this one out. Best of luck to the buyers and to you if you're on the up and up.

Okay, let's caaaaalm down, people.

Who, by worrying, can extend their life even a day, or make an ASIC ship any faster. You've chosen to trust KNC with your money, sit back and let them work.

Did you read the OP; he's not transferring an invoice.

This still smells fishy to me. Guess we'll see soon enough.