Nonsense. The community has been a terrific sucker to the ASIC manufacturers. Large companies worth billions of dollars do not take in money for delayed products, completely unrelated.

What's his face up there is trying to bring up the idea that there are reasonable production delays, and there are scammy BS nonsense excuses, and people need to be more discerning as to which is which.

The rest is a thinly veiled attack on BFL and the broader user base, and those affected can respond as they see fit. 

I personally would like to see less greed and blind belief in the bitcoin community, but that's my naïveté I guess.

I'm not sure I understand this thread, is this hypothetical, wouldn't it be neat if it were true kinda stuff, or is this suggesting AMD might actually be considering this? Because they're not. Just like everyone shaking in their boots that "AMD makes AMD cards, so they could take over the bitcoin network!" were wrong, and the people who suggested that "AMD make a bitcoin based GPU" were silly, they're not going to make a bitcoin ASIC.

All the old usual reasons apply, the market is pathetic, volatile, uncertain as to longevity, and in general a horrible risk for any company of semi-reasonable size. While $5million probably seems like a lot to us chump-change miners, it's more like what AMD spends on toilet paper. I see that AMD put in a mention of mining, right alongside folding, in their GPU highlights. Meaning they equate the two hobbyist projects the same, though I see no evidence that they actually did anything mining or folding specific, just that bigger faster cards do both better.

If this is just a exercise the imagination thread though, I apologize, and it would be neat.

Will there be fewer miners? Maybe. Is there a risk in potential centralization? Sure.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't though. If ASICMiner turns out to be real (the closest one to being real ATM), they could easily overwhelm the network with a fairly low-tech low-cost project. I believe they stated specs along the lines of $200k for their development and creation of ASICs. If you can realistically and demonstrably overwhelm the entire network for a quarter of a Mil, I'd say that certainly presents a graver danger than the potential for fewer hands in the cookie jar.

The first law of asics is that an asic may not harm a human, or through inaction allow harm to befall a human.

Good idea? A good idea is typically defined by the results, which cannot be foreseen ahead of time. As in "is it a good idea to go swimming with leadweights tied around your feet? Not if you drown, but if you become a world champion olympic swimmer because you got so strong at swimming it is.

That not being a terribly helpful answer, I'll say that no one really knows when and where bitcoin investment is good, it's all very volatile, and therefore very risky. For example, many people, last summer invested thousands or tens of thousands of dollars into ASIC pre-orders. for mining. Since then, pretty much every company stalled out on their promises of delivery, and bitcoin more than doubled in value. By next summer, things might shift that radically again.

What I can tell you is that you will almost certainly not be in the top 20th percentile, nor will it really make sense to run your own pool, on a $6000 investment, barring some very large happening between now and then. As said by another poster, much will be different, so just keep checking in to see where things are by then, and make a decision based on the facts at the time.

Humans are interesting. If I dress up like a valet, and you hand me your keys, and I drive off with your really nice car, I go to State "rape-city" prison for up to three years. But if I tell a bunch of people that they are "investing" in some magic beans, and then abscond with all their money, it often results in... nothing?

It's like Eddie Izzard said


Moral of the story, if you're gonna steal from people, steal from A LOT of people.

I think I kind of know what if feels like to be a battered woman now. I hate all this ASIC drama-balls, but I actively seek it out on the forums, and I'll kind of miss it when it's all done.

I'm sure a scammer would give out a 'burner' phone number. Although a legit number can be changed pretty easily too.

They are not shipping in 3 batches that way. Their first production run will be split among 3 types of per pre-order groups, then they plan a continuous production/shipping schedule.

Yowza. That's not what anyone wanted to hear.

On a somewhat off-topic bent, I wonder if on a small scale, the ASIC world portends the general trend of the future. bASIC and BFL being two US based companies, Avalon and ASICMiner being two asia based companies; we see ASICMiner with chips in hand, Avalon with a supremely confident air as to delivering mid-January. For contrast we see BFL with continual delays and apologies, and bASIC basically folding up shop completely (in favor of selling to an Asian company).

EDIT: Ok, well, bASIC just got sold, so... yeah, I could definitely see 30TH = TH now lol.
BFL has cancellations as well, why only bASIC = order cancellations? I suppose the latest bASIC announcement + BFL actually shipping end of Jan would be a big blow to bASIC, but for now no one knows how many THash anyone is going to put out, just going by the self-reports.

BFL estimated that 150TH would be more than all their pre-orders as of November 2012, +- orders/cancellations, for their first/continuous shipping.
Avalon has 20TH/sec slated for their first batch, and I doubt they have many/any cancellations. A second batch is in the works, not filled yet.
bASIC has some amount I can't recall, 30TH sounds reasonable, for their first batch, and a 2nd batch in the wings (I imagine cancellations from batch 1 free space for batch 2 to move up), reportedly "half full".
ASICMiner is a slow and steady process with no shipping initially (or ever?), simply a steady stream of added power under their own control, starting with their current chips, up to 6TH, to 12TH for their "first batch", after which point they will change gears for "mass production".

These are all to be taken with a huge grain of salt, as they are simply self-reported numbers from people who have nothing to show to substantiate them, with the possible exception of ASICMiner, being the first to show a chip that could potentially be an ASIC.

On another note, could we get a mod to sticky this thread? Seems to be kept up to date, and with all the crazy constant drama, it's really nice to have a centralized source to check (and when there's no news it gets lost).

Back in the day I ran my farm of 5xxx series cards, purchased used at 90c for many moons. When the whole thing went offline due to closing up shop, the only glitch that had developed was one fan started rattling/grinding, possibly due to needing relubricating after running 70 - 100% always. Most of these bad boys survive quite happily for long periods though iexpect if you were to switch to heavy long-term 3d gaming that glitches would occur. Or not, luck of the quanta.

I suspect most people bought in for get-rich-quick. Why else would you scramble to get first-in-line on an expensive piece of hardware, months and months and months before they even promised delivery (aside from the fact that promised date was clearly completely unrealistic), with no assurance that such a thing would ever materialize?

Not that I am scoffing, simply saying that is really how it is, human nature and all. Myself, I will get in, or not get in, depending on whether or not it looks like a feasible investment, as I both enjoyed mining (back in the day), and would like to make something from it for myself. However if it looks to be unprofitable, I will probably pass. The network will attend to itself without any hassle from me. I of course will not invest more than my life can handle as suggested above, in case my judgement is incorrect either way.

For the few hobbyists, which I suspect are in the minority, they will be mostly a blip on the radar and that's fine, they will enjoy themselves, and be doing a little bit for the cause.

Look at the purple line, no 8-10TH/sec swings there. If I took the granularity down further, to say 4hours, or 2 hours, you would see even larger swings, reducing time frames until you get to ridiculous levels of 0TH < Network < Inf TH.

I think it is fairly interesting how little change there has been in network hashrate, after the halving, though.

To be fair, I thought that was funny myself.

Finally an interesting post in this thread. Are they really horny, or do they just think you'll "tip" better (pun intended)?

How would a floating heatsink be able to placed in a different orientation than horizontal? Seems like any other orientation would decrease its efficiency or cause it to simply break down altogether.

namecoin isn't dead, but it fell out of favor when merged mining hit, and the bitcoin hashpower overwhelmed dedicated namecoin mining.

I think my issues turned out to be SD Card related (picked up a cheap pos, that seems to have been bugging a bit) in addition to any firmware problems. Worked out the contact a little better, and updated firmware, and so far so good, though I'm afraid to push my pi too hard again.

For now though 24h+ uptimes with no glitches

I am always wary of these share/bond based projects, where the operator holds all the cards, and the 'shareholder' has no real legal claim should the operator suddenly vanish in a poof of smoke. I've yet to see any enterprise in bitcoinlandia where this has not happened in one form or another. ASICMiner is the closest, as GBLSE wasn't really their fault, but it was still a part of the set-up.

If there were some legally certified, punishment-enabled consequence-dealing body backing the deal I would be interested, as the opportunity to reap coins without having to secure the overhead on myself sounds attractive.

That said, we would of course need to have some written terms as to $/Hash, operating costs, and what cut would be taken for "admin" and what have you, as well as what future dilution might mean.

Too many people happy to go on a wing and a prayer, and the inevitable result is never good.

I wish a statistician would rack his brains to figure out the probability, given all the different design elements, various world locations, outsourcing, and what haveyou, that all 3 major ASIC manufacturers would end up releasing their product, roughly at the same time (currently all set for Middle January). Smacks of oddity.