I had a feeling that keyloggers will be the next biggest threat for BTC security

And on the other hand, the password management could really become a pain, sooner or later someone lost many of his coin permanantly because he just forgot one of his brainwallet password 

I have to admire them for making such a complex machine and even made it working    Their flexibility is very high, after seeing BFL design plan, I never expect that they will take this route and win the race through another way

I remember Inaba has guessed that they will use more than 64 chips to reach the 60G hash specification, but they managed to put 320 chips in  each unit at maximum

A registered business can not disappear so easily, but a customer could do a charge back and disappear quickly and business owner just have no extra resource to find him

It is indeed difficult for business owners to collect payment in BTC's form, unless it is a small amount or through third party escrow service. Due to BTCs are difficult to get, this will get more difficult each day, finally anyone can afford to pay BTC are miners

I would say, if a customer would like to pay BTC, he's a gold customer. He deserved to have a top credit rating

The fastest shipping should happen in china in the first place, since they do not need to clear custom, and the express delivery in land took maximum 3 working days to deliver an unit. But so far no one in china has provided any good evidence that they received an unit, only one advertisement-like claim but no enough details

It seems they do not communicate with their customers frankly, this could bring some problem for them later

This is one of the main properties of BTC, you never have the possibility to do a charge back. This greatly benefit business owners but not consumers

It means, as a consumer, you should always consider the risk involved when you pay BTC, but since business owners are all registered entities, this should get solved eventually. Wish you good luck then

You should contact them, I never communicated with anyone from bASIC, but I heard that Dave is more willing to help

I did receive the CC refund from bASIC, so their business ethics are not totally negative (maybe partly due to the protection from the CC system). Paying in BTC is risky for consumer, you should be aware of this when you consider a risky investment

Have you requested a USD refund at purchasing price instead?

I'm very suprised by the number of chips on each avalon module: 80 chips !

240 chips per unit, this means they will have to buy a lot of wafers to produce enough chips to be put in the first batch avalon: 240x300= 72000 chips /4000 chips/wafer, 18 wafers at least! I guess 20 in total

And another big cost is R&D, maybe even higher than material, so I guess they are running out of money right now and need some liquidity injecton, otherwise they will not be able to deliver the first batch, not even mention the second batch

But they are not open with their situation, so no one could give them a hand

About banking, check this post:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=129423.0



For each 16 dollar central bank created, only 9 loaned out eventually

I think there will be no bank, but many services like online wallet to simplify average people's usage
https://blockchain.info/wallet/

For a standard person he might be concerned about keeping too much assets at home for whatever reason and he want a couple of third party online wallet provider to diversify the risk

Even a small country's stock market could be controlled by a group of investment banks, BTC surely can be manipulated by them, and they have been doing this for many years in every possible market - future, commodity, mbs... But currently BTC is still too risky for them, I'm sure when BTC becomes mature enough, wallstreet boys will come one by one

The next major evolution is a nuclear power plant together with ASIC farms, and by that time most of the users will be closed from mining

After 4 years, 1800 BTC per day, if each of them worth $1000, then altogether they worth $1.8 million, suppose half of that is the electricity cost, so $1 million paid in electricity per day, almost 10 million kwh, that is 416Mw power, and most of the new nuclear plants are between 1000 and 1700 Mw electric

Future ASIC mining rigs

But I think people will use that loan to buy a powerplant to power more ASICS 

I currently have stock backed loans with a relatively low interest rate (2%), and the loans only issued for those big companies which have large capital base.

So to reach this state, BTC must be traded on major stock exchanges and regarded as more secure than those large capital companies. Actually mtgox can even develop such a service now to be the first, it is not the dividend but the price increase of BTC pay off the loan interest

This is actually a test for the manufacturer's value. I think one year ago they would never expect the price of BTC has risen to a level that it even becomes attractive for them to mine the coin by themselves. Then the manufacturer who do not mine by themselves and distribute the machine evenly will gain the most orders

It's a bit pitty that bASIC quit the game, otherwise the playing field will be more even to ensure the competition, but I heard that ASICminer is going to deploy 800 unit this month, so the difficulty will rise quickly anyway no matter those manufacturer mine or not, their future order purely depend on the quality of their current delivery

Business owners like it, since no chargebacks and no trace of income, means no fees and no tax, but average consumers do not like it for the same reason

BTC have already too much competiton from other fiat currencies and it has not gained enough ground yet

Of course they could do this, then they will risk of disappearing from the business, when the competitors who do not mine by themselves showed up

Imagine that after one month, people discovered that Avalon was mining with those machines themselves, then who is going to take a future order from them again?

Their batch 2 order only get 45 unit sold, could be partly due to this doubt from batch 1 customers, seems no one except the first 2 people have received an unit from them

You set up a big ASIC factory, paid those money to buy houses, machines, hand out salaries and then get BTC back