Does anyone foresee any options, besides selling, for US investors in IceDrill through the BitFunder platform?  What happens if a US investor holds their IceDrill shares in BitFunder beyond the Nov. 1 deadline?

So when can we expect more info on this front?  Hopefully before November?

    The MPP isn't based on your actual ROI It's based on the ROI you should be able to achieve taking into account the network difficulty and nominal performance so if you did something stupid and killed your chip that's not covered so I don't see why the warranty length being less than the ROI time frame is inconsistent.

I ordered and paid 9 days ago and haven't received a confirmation yet.  5 days in I emailed to ask and they said they received payment and would send order confirmation in a "few" days.

I've got a real question; as far as the MPP goes is ROI going to be calculated in BTC or USD.  I think a lot of people expect that since payment is being made in BTC that ROI will be calculated in BTC but it is ambiguous in your original announcement of the program.  Clearly there are different risks/benefits for both you and the customer depending on which you choose.  Which is it and can we expect a more concrete documentation of the exact terms of the MPP at some point?  I'm trying to decide if I want to hold my BTC or invest in more mining hardware and this would be one consideration in my thinking.

Can you do future Q&As in another venue that doesn't devolve into people posting pictures of dirty carpet and droning on endlessly about PayPal, CC's and the evis of bitcoin only pre-orders?

    This is the thread discussing the MPP; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=272906.0

    The official announcement from Simon says, "ROI calculated from the daily difficulty level, block arrival rate, and hash rate of equipment delivered.". No mention to USD<> BTC exchange rate coming into the equation.  Further down someone asks if ROI will be calculated in BTC or USD and I think the general concensus is it should be in BTC to be meaningful, but it doesn't look like there was ever an official answer just that annoying guy saying for the 500th time how he wouldn't do a pre order w/o paypal or CC's.

    I agree, though I think the more problematic issue at this point is the unspecific terms of their MPP.  Are they going to calculate ROI in BTC or USD?  Because they are taking payments in BTC so if they are banking on the price of BTC going up to claim ROI in USD terms that is lame.  There haven't been enough specifics to know what their thinking is on this.  My Expectations is that ROI will be in BTC terms since I paid in BTC.

    I don't think anyone is worried about being able to acquire a generic case or water cooler off amazon.  What I do think is a concern is getting a PCB made and populated.  Without knowing any details about the board this chip will have be go on it's impossible to know if it could be made DIY style and since many components today are surface mound and very fine pitch I'm guessing it is going to take more than a soldering iron to put one of these together.

    Here are a couple questions I'd like answered...

 1. For those that placed orders via phone and have paid when can we expect confirmation emails and details about how to track our position in line?

 2. What kind of chip package do they anticipate the ASIC being, BGA? some kind of standard socket?

 3. How exactly will they calculate 'ROI' for the MPP and is that ROI in USD or BTC because they are accepting payment in BTC so my expectation is that ROI will be calculated in BTC but that isn't clear.  They should post the exact methodology they are going to use because there is a reasonable chance the MPP comes into play the way difficulty is going.

 4. When will specs or details about the board needed to run these chips be released?

 5. Can we get answers to at least the MPP calculation question in writing from a company rep because not that I don't trust you cypherdoc but pre-order customers are essentially taking an early investor level risk w/o any written documentation thus far.

    I'm a gambler so I'm in for two but if we had more concrete answers to the above questions posted on the company website or at least by a company rep in this forum I'd be inclined to go for more.

I believe that the less people there are who believe there will be a positive ROI the more likely there is to be one.  I think there is some chance of coming close to breaking even in 90 days and if not there is the Miner Protection Plan.  At this point in the game no company will ever sell an ASIC miner with a slam dunk ROI because everyone would buy one at which point no one would make an ROI.

@cypherdoc, what makes you think the hardware 'specs' will be open sourced?

I was going to buy a BFL product last fall (Nov 2012) before it became apparent that they were full of crap.  I had made up my mind to do it any everything except that for what ever reason their payment form was broken.  After a couple tries I just gave up, in hind sight it was a sign and saved me a load cash.  I wonder if hashfast's site being broken now is a similar sign.  It's a shame it seems the people involved have a lot of street cred.

The hashfast shopping cart appears to be broken...

I think the new design lacks polish.
-1 The page content doesn't layout well in narrower browsers for no apparent good reason.
-1 the icons aren't aligned well with the text in the left hand navigation which is esp apparent when you mouse over them
+1 the landing page is nicer

So this is supposed to be a gambling site or what?  I'm not clicking that like w/o a better description of what the heck this thing is.

Thanks, I'll give that a try.  the this is the thread if anyone else is interested...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15911.0

Apparently the normal way to get out of newbie status is to make 5 posts and be online for at least 4 hours. 

If you don't already have bitcoin to bid with best of luck it was a slow and painful process to get setup on Mt.Gox for me, not sure if any of the other exchanges are better.  You might be able to get some in under 24 hours using bit instant w/ mtgox but you are going to pay some hefty transaction fees.  Dwolla seems to be the best way as you can move $5k at a time into or out of Mt.Gox for only 25 cents.  The down side is you need to send a photo copy of your drivers license and a copy of a current utility bill to Mt.Gox in order to verify your identity.  That process takes 10 to 20 days and then it takes another 3-4 days to make the actual transfer.

I've been following bitcoin for a while, have used Mt.Gox and written my own library to use the MtGox trading API.  I'm interested in bidding on the ASICMiner auction thread that is going on now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=189248.0

I agree, looks like a scam.  Another mark against it is it is posted in the "newbies" section.

Is it possible to bid in that thread even though I have "newbie" status on this forum?  I'm new to the forum but not new to BitCoin in general.