Avalon just filled 500K worth of chip orders.
ASICMiner is flooding the market with USB miners.
BFL is taking pre-orders. They do not have the stock to ship you product. You have to wait 3 months (according to them) or more if history proves any guide.

You could do research to see if what they say is true. That is a lot of work, and most people don't do it. BFL are also random people on the internet by the way. Try looking up what they have done before BFL. They don't even give last names to their employees.


You haven't read the relevant BFL material. You showed up in April 2013 with the "new adoptor wave" of bitcoin hitting $200. Go back to Oct 2012 at least and witness BFL's treatment of their investors. Subject yourself to insults from BFL's employees for a few months. I gave BFL almost 6 months of benefit of the doubt before Inaba's insults convinced me BFL had more to hide than to show.

And if you think people on these forums hate BFL, you should have been here for Pirate@40 or mybitcoin.com.

Try reading posts instead of just "lurking". Or better yet, try asking Inaba a serious question about BFL and attempt to get a real answer out of him instead of standard evasive PR. After Inaba heaps the insults on you, accuses you of lying and trolling, and still doesn't answer your question, then you might start to understand why some people harbor anti-BFL sentiment. Or you could just read Inaba's post history and imagine if that hate was directed at you. Inaba has been alienating the Bitcoin community one forum user at a time for the last year. People who haven't been around since June 2012 missed a ton of misrepresentations, hate, and WTFs from BFL.

Other ASIC/FPGA companies have been subjected to the same scrutiny as BFL and have supplied answers. Better yet, those companies have supplied product.

Since Avalon and ASICMiner together account for over 50% of the network, I doubt this is true.
But BFL never let math stand in their way before...

I doubt that is the die size on the package diagram. For comparison, the Tahiti version of the AMD GPUs which was one of the largest ever chips ever had 4.31 billion transistors. Tahiti was only 398mm2 in size. If you are saying the package has 4 x 441 mm2 dies on it, then it would have a heat density higher than a nuclear reactor.

I doubt such a thing could be engineered, but if it was, it would have a hash rate far in excess of KNC's claims.

No, you only need one exchange rate. The one at the time of purchase. If you paid in BTC for your gear, you don't even need that.
At every point in time, having 65 BTC is better than having 60 BTC. If the exchange rate goes up and you choose to have 60 BTC, you are worse off than if you had chosen to have 65 BTC.

If you bought 10 BTC over the counter for $10,000 when MtGox was trading BTC at $100 each. then held the BTC until they were each worth $1001, then sold them, did you win? Should you be happy with that investment? Would you repeat it in the future?

^^This

If that were true, BFL would be done with their back log weeks ago. Unless they can't afford the parts...

That has the package size, not the die size. Or if it does, I did not see it.

There have been several "difficulty rise projection" spread sheets posted on these forums.
According to mine, if you got your Jalapeno today, it would earn it's money back in just under 6 weeks. But you won't get your Jalapeno today, I don't know when in calendar days but I do know you won't get it until BFL has cleared their back orders. That implies a minimum rise in difficulty. Also, Avalon has delivered on their chip orders. Bitfury & KNCMiner are looking like they might deliver on theirs. So you will be seeing double digit difficulty growth for the next 4-6 months as those 3 vendors bring new product to market and BFL & ASICMiner add as well.

Projecting over the next 12 months using my spreadsheet (projection ends July 20th 2014):
Assuming a lazy 6.5% growth average, if get your Jalapeno 3 months from now, it would take you until June 2014 to break even.

Assuming a moderate 8% growth average, if get your Jalapeno 3 months from now, you would not break even in a year (and doubtfully at all). You would have to get your Jalapeno by Sept 1st to break even in a year.

Assuming a torrid 10% growth average, if get your Jalapeno 3 months from now, you wouldn't get half your money back in a year. You would have to get your Jalapeno by mid August to break even. Your upside would be 2 bitcoins. At the end of the projection period, the Japaleno is earning 0.0032 BTC per day.

Does that fill in the blank?

May difficulty stay low and/or the force be with you!

Just have one of the Asian kids hashing in your basement translate it for you! 

People who can read Chinese know.

They are shipping. However, they are still on the first day of singles and the sun continues to rise and set, thus they are falling further behind in terms of time and more importantly mining difficulty.

Actually, people would be able to verify that their order was in the ledger. Then they would know when to expect their unit and roughly how much hash rate is between them and receipt of their merchandise. They can watch as BFL makes progress through it and make an informed decision as to whether to ask for a refund or not.


Actually, the math says that the people who "placed a timely order" would have benefited far more by just holding onto their BTC or buying it from an exchange, rather than buying BFL mining equipment to get BTC. So it is not with jealousy but with relief that I look on those who received Singles for 200BTC and I thank my lucky stars that I am not one of them.

Unfortunately, some folks still think they got a good deal.

Edit: Ah. Now it becomes clear.
Name:   dominicus
Date Registered:   July 01, 2013, 12:30:49 PM

I'd ask you to read the thread history of BFL (wholly owned subsidiary of Two More Weeks Inc.) to understand the animosity towards Inaba and his band of merry sockpuppets, but I know you won't. 

Too bad nobody on this planet speaks Chinese. 

Oh wait...nevermind. 

Door 1: 20 boxes with fans
Door 2: 2.1 million chips

I'll take door number 2!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252233.msg2694806#msg2694806

It is more than tens of thousands.

Edit: feh, beaten to it.

They have, the response from the community was "build something first". I don't think many folks want to take another ride on the BFL delivery van.

^Absolutely.
You made a trading decision based on flawed data (the estimated difficulty level at the time BFL ships your unit). Only hindsight would reveal the extent of BFL's delays. I was not expecting you to divine this back in June 2012. 

Got it.
My position has been if customers paid with X BTC, they should be refunded with X BTC. BFL said they were putting the funds in a separate escrow and not using them for operating costs. There should have been no reason to convert the BTC to another currency under those circumstances. On one hand, BFL would have been taking a currency risk at that point because their liabilities are in USD. On the other hand, they demanded a 100% deposit instead of a more sensible 10% deposit to reserve a unit. It always baffled me why they took the pre-order funds if they were not using them for operating costs. It also makes no sense allowing someone to pay in BTC but have to give bank information (or PayPal) to get a refund.

Having said that, BFL would have probably refunded in BTC if they stood to make USD from it. If I paid a Peruvian company $100 for an Alpaca rug, I would expect $100 back upon a refund regardless of how the currencies have moved in the intervening time.


How you paid is not exactly relevant. What is relevant is how many BTC could you have bought off MtGox instead of BFL at the time you placed your order. Compare that with how many BTC you have earned to date. That is the measure of whether a mine is profitable. Can I make the commodity for less than I can buy it off the market?

I am not sure I understand the question. Regarding what exactly?

If the price of BTC fell by half from the price @ June 2012? That would put it at a price of about $4 per BTC. That might flatten the difficulty curve in the future (after all the pre-ordered ASICs are delivered to sad pandas). This would give BFL customers a better shot at breaking even in BTC terms.

The price fall would be a great opportunity to acquire BTC from exchanges, for the people who have capital available.

I am not sure how that would make BFL work bugs out faster or build units faster. Unless they have been holding units back and mining with them, which I think unlikely but possible.