I guess you just want free money thrown at you then?
Don't be ridiculous. No one said anything about free money. The OP was trying to say that ASICs will further exclude "any schmuck" from being able to afford the initial investment to earn money. leading to centralization of financial power into the hands of fewer entities. This is certainly true and the progression is already well underway. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. I know my place in the pyramid though and it's no where near the top  I'm not bitter. I got a free lunch from bitcoin for a very very long time. If/when that comes to an end, I'm well fed and happy to have been able to have been able to participate in it. Being a socialist, It will be sad to see the any schmuck aspect of bitcoin come to an end. But I love a good drama, and the bitcoin drama level is especially high. I expect interesting drama to unfold in the final months of 2012 and into 2013. My point is, $150 invested into ASIC is going to be just as "worthless" to plug in as $150 invested into FPGA's, or $150 invested into GPU's. So I don't understand why ASIC's are going to make the average schmuck any less able to mine. I just think it's hilarious that FLHippy and Benator are going on and on about how ASICs are ruining the world and de-equalizing the mining playing field when that simply isn't true at all. Anyone could invest in ASICs, just the same as anyone could invest in FPGA's or GPU's. And just like FPGA's and GPU's, the higher the investment, the higher the revenue (duh!). Anyone who expects the world to work any differently than that under any circumstances is deluding themselves. And where/how does "greed" and "elitism" come into play? Just because people are trying to generate extra income doesn't mean they are greedy or elitist. Oh, and the kicker: FLHippy mentions PPCoin, which just so happens to have the focus and hope of turning towards proof of stake in the future. If there's any system that works to make the rich richer, proof of stake is IT! And somehow, FLHippy is SUPPORTING it!  |
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ASIC's are just going to speed up the process of centralizing the money, and making the poor poorer and the rich richer to an even greater extent than things are already.
I agree with this. Technology speeds everything up, even the stages of greed and elitism. Bitcoin has very much gone from a moral ground of "any schmuck can earn!" to "You need a week's salary of an investment to earn." to "Only those with the ability to take a large financial risk can earn" That said, morality goes out the window when there is money involved. It will be interesting to see if there is a morality shift to alternate currencies and equally interesting to try to determine if it's a morality shift or a financial shift. There is a lot of money invested in hardware which WILL work with those alternate currencies. For the past couple of days, PPCOIN is running around 175% more profitable to mine than BTC so perhaps it has already begun. So $150 is a large financial risk?  I don't see the step towards ASICs as being morally questionable, myself. It's still "any schmuck can earn" in my book when there's $150 ASICs available. $150? Who has $150 ASICs? You must mean in some not-so-distant future. I don't believe that a $150 ASIC device would be worth plugging in. Assuming we're in that future and the difficulty has risen... and assuming you don't have free electricity.... If the current $600 FPGA devices are $150, would they be worth plugging in? There is no $150 GPU device which is worth plugging in now, never mind the future. There is no $150 CPU which is worth plugging in. I guess you just want free money thrown at you then? |
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Conservatively? 12 months.
Same all models, since they have -about- the same $-per-Ghash rate, approximately.
Delivery ETA is mid-to-end of November for Round 1, and guessing Mid-to-end of December for Round 2.
Conservative indeed: I think early ASIC adopters have a good chance at a much shorter RoI than that. If you're more interested in holding than selling mined coin (which I am), then this period is of less significance, of course. Thing is, who knows what a BTC will be worth in fiat terms six, twelve or howevermany months down the line? That might be even tougher to estimate than the difficulty level. Assuming ASICs are real, yeah, ROI will be pretty short for those receiving batch #1. Mining coins at insane speeds before a change in difficulty occurs, mad profitable. Estimating value vs fiat is tricky. Most people want to be optimistic and make the assumption that with steep rise in difficulty, and the block reward being halved, BTC value will also go up. Realistically, all I can see happening is market flooding with freshly minted coin as ASICs will be pooping them out as if they had Taco Bell the evening prior. I'm not sure how the block reward being halved will affect the market. For miners there will be a drastic activity change in how one determines to shut off hardware or not. Sadly the major players in the market aren't miners, they're just buyers/sellers/traders and for all intensive purposes may not even be aware of the upcoming change to the block reward. If I had to guess, I'd say with regret, that BTC value will likely go down instead of up as a result of ASICs hitting the market. It's not going to be a huge increase in the normally minted number of coins. I'd say 5000 BTC will be mined faster than normal because of ASIC release and lag before increases in difficulty, but that's not a huge amount, and certainly not large enough to devalue BTC overall (especially considering the vast majority of miners simply hold their coins). |
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ASIC's are just going to speed up the process of centralizing the money, and making the poor poorer and the rich richer to an even greater extent than things are already.
I agree with this. Technology speeds everything up, even the stages of greed and elitism. Bitcoin has very much gone from a moral ground of "any schmuck can earn!" to "You need a week's salary of an investment to earn." to "Only those with the ability to take a large financial risk can earn" That said, morality goes out the window when there is money involved. It will be interesting to see if there is a morality shift to alternate currencies and equally interesting to try to determine if it's a morality shift or a financial shift. There is a lot of money invested in hardware which WILL work with those alternate currencies. For the past couple of days, PPCOIN is running around 175% more profitable to mine than BTC so perhaps it has already begun. So $150 is a large financial risk? I don't see the step towards ASICs as being morally questionable, myself. It's still "any schmuck can earn" in my book when there's $150 ASICs available. |
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You get your LTC within minutes and your Bitcoins within hours?
Try LTC in 3 minutes and Bitcoin in 10...
LTC hasn't proven it is scalable either. I heard there was already problems with blocks not being propagated quickly enough, causing forks in the chain that take a good deal of time to resolve.
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@MysteryMiner, you call BFL a scam, where is the proof that BFL has scammed anyone? Can you name a single person that has bought a product from BFL that they didn't receive or didn't receive a requested refund that is not in accordance with published policies?
It appears to me that you don't understand the manufacturing process of an ASCI product so let me give you a short description of the process. First you have the prototyping stage. This is often done with an FPGA as an FPGA is easily reprogrammed to optimize a product. Once the program is finalized for the FPGA you then give that to the ASIC foundry. Weeks or months later you have your ASICs.
BFL is the only Bitcoin ASIC product producer that has shown pictures of their product offerings. MysteryMiner why aren't you calling other Bitcion ASIC producers scammers? Have you seen any pictures from them, aren't they also taking pre-orders? BFL has been shipping FPGA miners for months, get the hint?
MysteryMiner, I wonder if you will have the honor to retract your false statements about BFL and apologize once BFL's ASIC products begin shipping. It's one thing to say 'I think their scammers' or 'it sounds like a scam to me' but it's another thing entirely to call a company a scam. I wont mention that your statements appear to be libelous. If your in the US, BFL could take legal action against you. If your in the UK libelous laws are much tougher. I am not suggesting they would but I do expect from you a 'bring it on bitch' reply. But it does no good to sue someone that doesn't have the assets to recover in a victorious law suit.
MysteryMiner I know what your going to say an employee/founder/investor has a criminal history. If you think that someone is willing to risk 10-30 years in prison for a second conviction maybe that says more about how you would act, your thinking and how you value money. Let us not forget that it was you MysteryMiner that said "And I would be able to synchronize my computer when I come out of jail if something bad happens." That is a prophetic statement of how you live your life. And when you use terms like 'faggotry' intending it to be an insult it makes you look like your sexually insecure. MysteryMiner are you insecure with your sexuality?
I lol'd. |
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Here is a quick little representation of the mining income upon ASIC release. The only assumptions are 2 BFL SC singles and a linear rate of difficulty adjustment per day. Not completely realistic but close.  This is an interesting chart... if this holds true, I stand to only make back 1/3 of my investment (relative to BTC, not USD) in this timeframe. |
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Thats why I have my order delivered to my office, to eliminate as many possible screw ups as I can.
If I were spending 30k on a rig the size of a trashcan, I wouldn't be trusting delivery anywhere. I'd buy a $150 ticket to BFL and fly it back home personally. And buy a plane ticket for the rig to sit in too? Or do you really expect baggage personnel to handle it any more carefully than UPS or FedEx would? |
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How else could Maria prove that this is really the wallet being offered here if the payment was not sent to it? I can gin together a bunch of letters and digits and call it an address for payment, but that would have nothing to do with selling me an actual wallet that works, and has the history that Maria references.
Besides, I was just poking sticks through the bars of the cage to get a reaction. Even if Maria has the oldest known wallet (which s/he doesn't because that would be the genesis block) there is nothing to be gained by owning it, other than the useless claim that it is the oldest. So what? It's not worth anything.
Pretty easy. Either she can sign a message from one of the private keys of the wallet, or she can send a payment from one of the addresses of the wallet. Or, she could just not bother to prove it at all, and let the auction winner tell everyone whether it was legitimate or not. Perhaps, perhaps not. I happen to think that in 20 or 30 years, having access to these old private keys might be worth something to the same sort of people who collect antiques, or to a museum. To you, they may be worth nothing. To others, they may be worth something. It's like saying a rare baseball card is worthless. Well, on the face, yes it is. But because other people are willing to pay for it, it is valuable. And the potential gain in owning it is that someone else might come along who would be willing to pay more for it than you paid. |
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Yet Nasser states above, in bold, that the equipment is in place and they are VERY ready for it. He doesn't say the equipment is in place. He says "we've got" which I take to mean "we have got" the equipment. It could mean "we have procured", or "we have contracted". It doesn't directly state that the equipment is in place and ready to go. I could say that I have gotten a laptop. I did, in fact, buy one a few days ago. I have not yet received it, but I have indeed "gotten a laptop". So, I read Nasser's statement as "We've used the experience in mass producing singles to better plan for our SC production, and have purchased equipment to produce the SC boards in-house." |
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This conference is a huge success. I can't count how many VC company execs and decision makers at various payment companies I spoke with today. I set up more blockchain.info mobile wallets than I can count, and gave each person 0.01 BTC to get them started seeing how easy it was to use. Everyone was super interested and were brainstorming ideas on how they can use Bitcoin in their current business model. I am sure lots of new products will come into existence thanks to this conference. Does that sign say Bain Capital? Like Mitt Romney's company? Yup, they actually took us to breakfast yesterday morning. The president of Bain Capital Ventures has the blockchain app and loves Bitcoin! Odds are, between this and the extortion letter, Romney knows something about Bitcoin. During the first debate (sorry don't want to search out the timestamps): Regulation is essential. You can’t have a free market work if you don’t have regulation. As a businessperson, I had to have — I need to know the regulations. I needed them there. You couldn’t have people opening up banks in their — in their garage and making loans. I mean, you have to have regulations so that you can have an economy work. Every free economy has good regulation. At the same time, regulation can become excessive.
-Mitt Romney It made me think he was anti-bitcoin But think about it. Why does he say that? Bitcoin is a perfect example. What has happened to many of the unregulated banks and trusts and investment opportunities here? They've turned out to be scams, or at the very least, not very honest about their money management. Lots of people have lost a lot of money investing in these "banks", and a variety of other "business opportunities". I don't like the idea of regulation, and I don't like the idea of protecting people from themselves. I think part of intelligence and learning is being able to decipher the good from the bad, and that includes learning what investments are good and what investments are bad. Heck, I've made a couple of bad choices with Bitcoin that have lost me significant portions of funds, but I have learned from that, and am now smarter because of it. I won't make the same mistake twice. One could argue that regulation would allow for users to not have to even think about their investments, and I think that's the goal entirely, but for me personally, I would rather have the option to research and make prudent investments wherever I see fit, not just where the government thinks is a safe place. All of that said, I agree with Mitt that at least some level of regulation is necessary to prevent people from getting scammed left and right, because some people just don't learn. And I don't see any reason why Bitcoin can't work with regulation, either. |
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That is absolutely a valid point. Mine is that corruption is also possible and I find it likely to happen when large additional profits can be made and chances to get caught are almost zero.
You have to be joking... If they mine enough to matter, someone will notice. Both the risk of getting caught and the consequences of doing so are more significant than you seem to realize. Fine, let's game this out: They are making millions of dollars worth of mining equipment, so to match risking that they would need a hefty profit, at least in the $100k range. So they get a couple MiniRig-SC units assembled, and decide to run them for a couple weeks to make an extra $173k (based on current info, no hardware cost) and then ship them out for an additional $30k each for a total of $233k from 2 rigs. The problem is that the 2 minirigs just generated 3TH/s for 2 weeks, impacting the difficulty by 10%. This means that the (say) 20 minirigs that ship out are only making 90% of what they should have if you had not stolen from your customers. Unless you think that Josh can keep his mouth shut forever, eventually someone would leak, or the 4x size of EMC would show and folks would cry foul. Every customer then joins a class action lawsuit and sues you into oblivion, or you get to live the live of a fugitive with $170k. If you make the reward bigger, the detectability goes up, and if you lower it to a couple singles it's an inconsequential amount of money. In any case it is not worth the prison time. Why risk millions (and a long term opportunity) for thousands (and a lack of long term options?) You keep asking for reasons why not and I keep giving them. Maybe you should refocus on the why would they part of the equation more. When dealing with a guy running a financial trading house from his basement, the risk of vanishing deposits is high, when you have a known brick and mortar business the risk is a lot lower and you generally have more ways to get relief or detect problems. +1... the people thinking that BFL will try to mine and not get caught are not fully thinking through the situation and consequences. |
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First batch will be produced outhouse by the same company that made their fpga and mini-rig boards. And I hope not by hand  Perhaps "by hand" isn't the right wording, but yes, using the same process that they did for their FPGA's. I thought those were all built in-house though. They had a different company assembling them? Who? |
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So uh, what is the OP's proposal? ASIC's can't be prevented from being made. Even Litecoin ASICs will come into being quite quickly if the Litecoin market cap and mining proceeds make it reasonable to create them.
Basically, whether you believe ASICs are good for any of these crypto-currencies or not doesn't matter. They are coming either way, and there's no way to stop them.
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At the time of this post, I think they had only just won the e-bay auction for it, and it was still in shipping. Judging by the recent photos of the ASIC boards, it looks like their pick-and-place machine and over are operational. At least enough to create aesthetically correct looking boards. Just have to wait and see if you can run current through them with any sort of desired results.
The recent photos are prototypes, and Josh already said that the first "batch" of units will be handmade, not created with the machinery they recently purchased. |
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This conference is a huge success. I can't count how many VC company execs and decision makers at various payment companies I spoke with today. I set up more blockchain.info mobile wallets than I can count, and gave each person 0.01 BTC to get them started seeing how easy it was to use. Everyone was super interested and were brainstorming ideas on how they can use Bitcoin in their current business model. I am sure lots of new products will come into existence thanks to this conference. Does that sign say Bain Capital? Like Mitt Romney's company? Yup, they actually took us to breakfast yesterday morning. The president of Bain Capital Ventures has the blockchain app and loves Bitcoin! Odds are, between this and the extortion letter, Romney knows something about Bitcoin. |
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The plans Obama has put in place during his term have a) helped get me healthcare, and b) helped lower my student loan payments by consolidating with the department of Ed. And now his JOBS Act will help to jump start my company.
Yes, and where do you think the money for a), b), and c) come from? From future taxes that will hinder our economy. You may enjoy the benefits today, but you and I and everyone else will be paying for it down the road in the form of higher taxes and devaluation of our money through increased inflation. The working class generally votes republican, because they understand personal responsibility and sustainability. The welfare-recipients (of which I'll include you in, since you are reaping benefits at the expense of taxpayers as mentioned above) generally vote democrat, because they want "more free stuff". Or at the very least, they don't want their free stuff taken away. Similarly, this is why you see college campuses filled with liberal-minded people - they aren't working for a living yet, and don't understand how their utopian dreams have real-world consequences. It's why those same people eventually turn conservative when they get out in "the real world" and begin to tire of seeing people gaming the system, stealing their tax dollars to sit on the couch and watch TV while they work hard to provide for themselves. It's sad, really. More and more of the US populace is dependent on government aid, and that's only our own doing, electing people who give out money like it has no consequence. The easier it is to acquire free aid from the government (and it seems to be getting easier every day), the more people we will find who choose to not work a day in their lives, the less productive our country will be, and the more difficult it will be to balance the governmental budget without increasing taxes heavily. Think about more than just the benefits you are receiving today. Think about how those benefits will affect your tomorrow. |
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Dear ShadowOfHarbringer,
Usually I don't respond to unfriendly posts, but maybe this one needs a bit of addressing. We've had the honor of having Sonny in our corporation
for the past year. He is a bright and honorable person who had come face to face with strong forces behind the scenes without knowing. Many movies
have been made to try and demonstrate how governments and lobbying powers operate. They can kill, sabotage, prosecute or pretty much do anything
they desire without consequences as they have the power, money and weapons to make their point.
The United States Government does not recognize international bounderies when it comes to its interests and demands. The attack on the PirateBay
servers in Sweden is a good instance. Should the owners of PirateBay been Americans, I'm sure they'd already been serving for life in some prison in USA,
under charges of money-laundry, tax evasion (ads on the site), child pornography and so on and so forth. It's easy to hurt people who are powerless.
Even in France this may happen, eventhough on a much smaller scale ( I can't recall any at this point ).
Regarding whether we are a scam or not, the several thousand shipped units can speak for itself. We've used the experience gained in mass production
of our singles in our SC production cycle (we've got a MyData Pick-And-Place and an Oven for high-speed and high-volume inhouse assembly). Someone
mentioned the backlog is already 5,000. On a production speed of 500 units a day for instance, 5,000 will only take 10 days. We've already prepared the
infratructue for very high volume production, since the great portion of the orders will come in after the SC is released to the public. 5,000 units is not much
compared to orders we expect to receive after SC release, so we're very ready for it.
I hope this message has addressed some of your questions.
Regards,
Nasser
+1 Hopefully this post gives others who don't want to read this entire thread some useful information about BFL. I only have a question about the oven. Didn't BFL just purchase their first oven? ~Bruno K~ Maybe they already received it? |
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Confused... isn't this a free game?
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Just saw this thread was still active. Bitcoins have been paid as of a couple of days ago!
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