People are naturally excited when their Jalapeno ships and can't wait to burst onto Bitcointalk and say it.  After almost a year of waiting and many months where some customers have lost all hope of receiving what they paid for it's okay for them to be jumping with joy.  Now, hopefully we'll have one thread for each device category and people can post their shipping and receiving dates there, with links back to http://bfl.ptz.ro/

This is interesting.  Chips delivered en mass in around 100 days?  Is that BFL suggesting they will get most or all of their preorders done within the next 100 days and then concentrate on the chip business?  To me it seems pretty unlikely, as the PCBs instead of the chips seem to be the hold up right now.  BFL could well be shipping chips while product preorders are still outstanding.  It will take a while for third parties to develop, test and ship their own boards so BFL probably have 200 days from now before rival products appear based on BFL chips.

First two days of Jalapeno orders filled.  Almost a year to go.

Judging by the unofficial BFL twitter feed they're getting thousands of chips per week and hundreds of boards... very soon.  Not sure if they're just stringing us along by (again and again) promising the world and then delivering almost nothing, or whether things will really be different this time.  If BFL will finally do what they've been promising since October 2012 and ship en mass to customers then it may be a good idea to sell a Jalapeno to those desperate to get their hands on one.  If BFL keeps going like they have been and delivering a few units per week then keeping your Jalapeno and continuing to mine is a wise move.

The 2Ghash per Jalapeno upgrade offer for $100 each is back online.  Looking at my order,  I paid $33 per Ghash.  The upgrade is priced at $50 per Ghash.  BFL will have to offer keener pricing.

I used LR a couple of years ago to transfer money between MtGox and another account.  The site always seemed a little dodgy in that no customer information was required.  Glad I pulled everything out years ago.


What kind of warning should be given?  'Guys, we're going to shut you down next week, but we don't expect any criminals and regular customers to clean out their accounts in the meantime.  Shady Operator, you have a few days to flee before we look for you'

BFL is a private company.  While there was a general feeling of excitement about ASICs in mid 2012 and the promise of delivery in October or November 2012, that feeling has well and truly worn off.  Even your best friend can become really annoying if they keep making and breaking promise after promise.  I don't know the ins and outs of the problems BFL encountered, but when you say you're weeks away from shipping in October 2012 and begin to trickle out a few units 6 months later there's something seriously wrong.

I don't think the 'angry Walmart customer seeking a refund on a ten year old toaster' analogy works on any level.  The vast majority of BFL customers have yet to receive anything from the company.  I know I could have asked for a refund from BFL a long time ago.  We all do.  We also know that if enough people ask for one it will collapse the company simply because BFL must have used a large chunk of the preorder money for product development, making boxes, wafers, PCBs, employee time, etc.

It's quite likely that by the time BFL ship orders dating from 2012 other ASIC companies will be releasing products based on Avalon's chips and greatly diminishing the profitability of BFL products.  It's getting to the stage now where I think anyone ordering a BFL product today has to ask themselves whether they will get it shipped before 2014.  BFL's track record in shipping products hasn't been great.  Since beginning shipment of products to end customers in early April 2013 this forum has been surprisingly quiet about customers receiving and reviewing the product.  Apart from a few dev units and units for the media, it seems BFL customers have got nothing or are eerily silent.

Wrong MOSFETs installed (whose fault?), so the boards are being returned.  Great.  200 Jalapenos probably not shipping this week.  Maybe next week.  BFL always seem to give extremely optimistic time lines, such as the most recent one where PCBs were to be received Friday and sent out the same day and next.  They were assuming the boards would be be bug free, there would be no problems installing chips and they could package and send 200 over a weekend.  BFL always seems to give timelines that require perfection, from the supplier, to the shipping company, to BFL itself.  The real world doesn't work that way.  It's time BFL found out.

Here's a hint BFL: ship the Jalapenos, and then offer upgraded firmware for a nominal payment.  Asking for more money up front with hundreds of customers waiting is just plain rude.

BFL was supposed to ship 200 units on Friday and Saturday.  How many did they actually ship?

BFL: "With that in mind, we should be getting about 200 5 GH/s boards on Friday, and we'll be shipping those out on Friday and Saturday."

I wonder if people who pay the extra money get their orders shipped first.  They better not be.

I have Jalapenos on order and will not be shipping more money off to BFL.  I would like them to ship what I ordered in mid 2012 ASAP, no upgrade offers, speed increases, new firmware.  Just ship what I paid for.  Simple.

50 donations * 2 btc each = 100 btc.  That's about US$12,500 at the moment, for 150 boards.  US$12k isn't really that much to raise on your own.  Heck, many people could fund it with cash advances on their credit cards if you can't get a bank loan.  Those boards together constitute a minimum 1 to 2% of the total hashing capability of the entire bitcoin network.  

3,600 bitcoins are being generated ever day.  If you grab just 1% of that it's $4,500 per day.  In 3 days you have the loan paid off.

I'm curious as to why you need investors in your boards, and don't just keep the lucrative money making machines for yourself.

EDIT: Just read that the 2 btc is an initial donation, and that the donators will be obliged to pay the balance to receive the boards.  What's not mentioned is the cost.  A slightly important detail 

If someone incredibly wealthy decided "I want all (or most) of this new digital commodity", three things would happen:

- The price would rocket up in a massive bubble. 

- I would sell all of my bitcoins for evil nasty fiat currency and pay off my house, set up my family for life.  No need to work again.  Travel the world.

- No one would want to buy the hoarded bitcoins, because the greatest fool had just bought all of them.  It's trivial to set up another bitcoin chain for those that want to transfer value outside of the banking system, and the billionaire would find no one to buy bitcoins from him or her.

I have an order with BFL from mid last year and it's in my interests to see more people buying BFL units so that the company doesn't fall over from lack of funds before my units ship.  But honestly, I would wait and see.  BFL has yet to demonstrate they can ship any ASIC units in quantity.  Trickling out a dozen a week doesn't constitute "mass production" for me.  I would love to be proven wrong and read that BFL shipped 400 units by this time next week.  If people are waiting 11 months for their orders it has to make you stop and wonder.

I think that's the BFL dilema in a nutshell.  

- If I cancel now I may get my money back, but if I cancel and they ship then I've given them an interest free loan.

- If I cancel now, get my money back, and BFL goes under I'll feel like the king of the world.

- BFL may well ship, but your order may arrive in several months time when Avalon will make any profit months if not years away.  Remember, BFL still has not begun mass production so we don't know what problems they're yet to encounter.  Stated mass production is 400 units per day.  In two weeks BFL (by all accounts) has not shipped 400 units total.

Fortunately BFL have been smart, and as part of the 'yeah, I still want my order' confirmation they made everyone go through they offered a refund.  Didn't take it?  Too late to ask for your money back later on.

The one thing none of us know is how fast BFL is burning money with their chip prototypes, wafer sacrifices (to save a few days out of many months), board revisions and new cases.  

No charge backs.  People will quickly realise this often quoted advantage of bitcoin over other electronic forms of payment is only an advantage for the merchant, and never for the customer if BFL should go bust.  What's more, as bitcoins sit squarely outside the traditional banking system it's going to be difficult and costly trying to get any back through the court system. 

I honestly have no idea if I'll ever get my mid 2012 order shipped.  At the moment I'd put the odds at 50/50 at best, with a daily decline.  BFL has to be burning through large chunks of money to keep employees on site and pay the rent.  Every time they ask for a PCB revision or another batch of test chips I shudder at the thought of how much all of this is costing.

I can't say I'm surprised by DHS's move.  We all know the Achilles Heel of Bitcoin are the exchanges.  Target them, or their funding sources, and you effectively cripple bitcoin.  Sure, a bitcoin is still worth a bitcoin and no one loses (unless the exchange goes down and takes your cash with it), but without a fast, cheap and convenient way to convert to other currencies the usefulness of bitcoin is greatly diminished.

According to the latest official BFL update more chips will be packaged in the week beginning 20 May, which means BFL should get them during the last week of May and probably start working through June 2012 orders late this month or in June.  The few hundred chips they have this week will only last for a handful of units.  The timeline seems to be timed to perfection (the chips work as expected with new revision boards, etc).  As we've seen in the past this is often not the case.

I've, err, seen the whole series.  Did I just admit that?