It's not necessarily a bad thing.  The average Chinese speculator chases bubble like everyone else, but with special zeal and gusto.  If they don't get rich quick on bitcoins they'll find something else to inflate.

Example.  The garlic bubble of 2010:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/30/garlic-chinese-commodity-bubble

There were media reports from the time of speculators buying truckloads of garlic and hoarding them, hoping to get rich quick.  The whole bubble popped of course and the speculators rightfully got burned.

I am as annoyed with BFL as anyone, but to give them the benefit of the doubt...

- We don't know how many times they're visited by irate customers wondering where their order is.  Maybe BFL is well and truly sick of it (a situation they created...)

- Not giving any shipping dates at all is understandable.  BFL has failed to fulfill every shipping date they have posted in regards to ASICs, so I'm not surprised they refuse to give any more out.

- Turning up unannounced and expecting someone to drop everything and have a meeting is likely to get a frosty reception.  I'm not sure what "I told her that I did not (have an appointment) but was probably expected" is meant to mean.  A person is expected for a meeting or not.

Just checked my Jalapeno order from September 2012.  No change, still processing.  I really doubt orders from late 2012 are being shipped.

I would tip a database error on BFL's part or perhaps some people trolling on forums hoping to upset people with June 2012 orders.  Without a shipping tracking number any status change is a bit worthless.

EDIT: Maybe BFL are implementing their originally very ambitious 1/3 shipping plan and scattering around their shipping to make it appear they're up to shipping orders from late 2012.  If so, it would be very strange behaviour on their part.

Whenever I see someone shouting that they can't get in fast enough to buy the tasty tasty bitcoins on offer, I immediately think the OP has purchased bitcoins at a much higher price and wants to help pump it back up again.

If you think the current prices are very low and you're excited by the buying opportunity, why would you tell anyone else about it?  Keeping quiet is a much better option as you're not tipping others off to the excellent opportunity.  They are likely to buy the bitcoins before you have a chance to.

While it's pleasing to see bitcoins return to a more sensible valulation, the rapid pace of swings is most concerning for those who want to use bitcoins for serious purposes.  It's down almost 50% in a week.  What kind of business can tolerate their currency swinging wildly like that when ordering stock and setting prices weeks or months in advance?

Anyone know which order number BFL is up to in terms of shipping?  I recall reading that the earliest order numbers from June 2012 are somewhere in the 2000 range.  I can understand BFL being cagey about not telling how many they've shipped (for fear of tipping off the competition as to their production capacity and competency), but I would expect end customers to spill the beans once they've got theirs.

All graphs predicting the future are drawn with the author's bias in mind.  Where the period of comparison starts and stops is purely up to the individual.  I bet someone will soon post a graph showing that we're still in a massive once-in-a-lifetime bull market by simply starting the graph a little earlier.

Every time the price goes up there's a 'how does it feel to sell at $80 when the price is $120' thread popping up.  Every time it goes down there's the same thread, but written with the numbers reversed and gloating on the other side.  It's rather boring.

A gum or candy machine can't be used for money laundering, or sending the proceeds of crime to your buddies in another country.  If the Bitcoin ATM eats someone's cash without paying up there needs to be someone to chase with enough funds.  That's where the bond comes in.

Not everything is a conspiracy.  Many things are just plain common sense.

I checked my order email from last year:

"Shipping (International Priority ($38))"

Just checked my order on BFL's website (after confirming I still want it):

"Standard Shipping - Only"


Shipping and handling upgrade is quoted as $400 (wtf!), but then the extra amount I would actually have to pay is quoted as only $26.

It seems to me like BFL's system doesn't take into account the previous lower cost of Jalapeno (err), I mean, 5Gh products.  Also does "international priority" mean "standard shipping" in BFL speak?

It is possible for everyone to benefit when a productive economy is built based on bitcoins.  It's also possible for everyone to benefit if they feel (but not actually are) wealthier.  A person with 1000 bitcoins today may feel flush with cash and spend more in their local economy.  Of course if everyone rushes for the exits at the same time then most people lose in the rush to find the Greater Fool.

And always remember, the house always wins.  In this case it's MtGox.  In the case of shares or forex it's your broker and local exchange.  In the case of poker it's the casino.  There are perpetual winners in all cases, just the number of losers varies.

Most people who ordered in June 2012 have not received their orders yet, so there are ten months of orders to work through before BFL gets to processing yours.  BFL have not stated how long that may take.  Best guesstimates by forum users are at least two or three months.

One of the very often quoted advantages of bitcoins is no charge backs, no reversal of transactions.  If BitPay is just a glorified PayPal that can freeze a merchant's account at any time then there's no advantage.

In the real world, having just had a house built I know how this works.  The builder has compulsory insurance should they default before the house is finished.  The insurance company would pay and I would have an angry bank chasing the builder (the bank paid the money, not me).  In the real world we all know if BFL goes belly up before a customer's order is shipped there's basically nothing that can be done.  A BFL asset sale would maybe return 5c in every dollar.

I also had a due date for the house and it was finished two months ahead of schedule.  BFL has missed promised shipping dates since October 2012.

All my mining activity is solar powered, even at night.  I have a 5kw grid connected system that exports a significant excess of power to the grid (that I get paid for).  Any mining at night is more than offset by the power my panels generate during the day.  This power is used by someone else to offset their usage, so overall my mining activity does not use any fossil fuels.

The most important thing however is to consider the cost.  500 euros buys a LOT of kWh.  My system generates a minimum of 7500 kWh per year at 35 degrees.   200w of panels would generate about 300 kWh here.  How much does 300 kWh cost where you live?  I bet it's no where near 500 euros.  You would be looking at a payback period of many years.

To all those people complaining about paying in bitcoins and seeing the dollar value of those bitcoins skyrocket in the meantime:

You can't have it both ways.

Real world expenses for goods and services are still in dollars.  Bitcoin is just a proxy for the US dollar.  I bet the foundry was paid in dollars, as was the company that made the boxes.  Those bitcoins would have been converted into US dollars long ago.  It's not like BFL was sitting on a pile of bitcoins waiting for a speculative bubble to arrive.

It all depends on how fast BFL can ship units.  If they're going to ship a dozen a day then yes, you're probably screwed.  We don't even know how many units BFL is waiting to ship, as people are speculating in terms of order numbers.  One order number can contain 1 Jalapeno, or 100.  There's also been talk of order numbers being generated even if the order was not paid for, thus there may be less real orders than we think.

There was probably a rush of orders in June and July 2012, and (conjecture) maybe in October and November 2012 when BFL promised they were just a week or two away from shipping products to end customers.  As BFL has started to ship a small handful of units in April 2013, you can appreciate you may be in for a very long wait.  The good news is it's in BFL's strong interests to ship ASAP so new orders don't dry up.

I have an order from September 2012 that has been in the 'processing' stage every time I've looked over the past few weeks.

It's early days so far in the manufacturing process and I trust BFL will be able to scale production up.  They had better too, as right now no one should be ordering a Jalapeno if it takes the whole company a few hours to manufacture one.  Imagine ordering today and receiving your order sometime in 2014.

Hopefully BFL will ship as many Jalapenos as possible using their existing stock of chips rather than sitting and waiting for new SC/Mini boards to be redesigned, built and tested.  That would take at least another few weeks.

I bought a house, off the plan, when it was still a vacant block of land.  It was built and completed 2 months ahead of schedule.

Your friend who bought an apartment off the plan reminds me of my friend who signed up years ago to build a block of apartments through a spruiking/high pressure sales company.  They were offering to pay my friend 20% interest on money they borrowed from him and to give him a discount on an apartment.  I asked 'why doesn't the builder just go to a bank and get money much cheaper?'  *crickets*  My friend has remained very silent about the deal ever since.  I suspect the whole project fell over and my friend lost all his money. 

That's the risk one takes when preordering a product that doesn't exist yet.  Heck, if BFL fell over before my order was shipped there is nothing I can do about it.  PayPal doesn't care, BFL is in a different country and just filing papers in US courts would cost more than my order ever did.