I would imagine that he is using 80 days to combine orders, which would potentially get him a better price from the foundry and also just simplify ordering, packaging and the like.  He probably also wanted to give themselves a buffer between all the orders they are currently shipping out, and when the chips arrive for shipping. 

I don't think they have an immediate money crunch where they would need to spend incoming money on funding their current orders because they continue to get preorders for units.  I imagine just putting the smaller Minirig up for sale got them a million dollars from anxious buyers.  If I've learned one thing from these forums, it's that people will throw money at miners with only the slightest hope that they'll ever even receive them.

So it's more likely just a management thing.  Put all the orders together, get a better deal, package them at the same time, ship them at the same time.  Just makes sense.

Apparently the CE is just a declaration that any manufacturer can print themselves through self certification.  So not sure where the "faking" idea is coming from.  My guess is, even if this were some compliance problem that reached some level of penalty, it would be monetary and not a ban on imports.  The EU would rather make money on people's mistakes than spend money trying to enforce an embargo.

Everybody invested and converted fiat to btc in order to buy a lot of Bitcoin chips, miners, etc.  Now everyone is either waiting for their miners/chips or they have them.  And those that have them are probably cashing out the coins they have to pay off any loans they made in order to afford the miner in the first place.

I suspect this causality will continue until the coin is around $30-$40.  At which point speculators will move in and buy up coins because they realize this is a temporary deflation. 

When the difficulty rises to where ASICs are like GPU's today, more people will invest directly in the coin and less on the mining hardware because they won't get a decent ROI.  At which point, I suspect we'll see the value take-off again.  The smart miner won't cash out right away, but there are not a lot of smart miners.

It has a flat heatsink connected to it already.  Some people have fans that blow on theirs.  I don't, and they work fine.  They DO get really hot, but it doesn't impact their function.  I imagine Asicminer would have put a better heatsink on them if they thought they would just burn out if people didn't put fans on them.

I've been running them for a couple weeks or more now, 24 hours a day without any issues.  But getting a small fan to blow air on them isn't a bad idea.  It's all you really need.

You're not reinvesting additional hash power monthly to all contracts though.  That seems to be spelled out pretty clearly on your website.  So someone who purchases 10gh (Really 9gh since you're taking 10%) for a September launch does not stand to make their money back.

http://www.coinish.com/calc/#

The numbers don't work if you start mining in September, assume whatever difficulty you think it would increase by, subtract the 10% from the hash rate.   I get negative $300 to negative $450 on a Platinum investment.  That might change if you were to increase the hashrate to match the rising difficulty, but otherwise it's a loser investment.

I think the bigger problem is that the value of Bitcoin will certainly go down within the next year.  Many people have spent a lot of money investing in ASICs and will be looking to cash out to pay off loans, investors, and capital purchases.  This run on the market will drain the value of Bitcoin until the market is stable.  Having sites like Satoshidice locking off U.S. users is also closing the market doors on people who spend the coins.  And that's really what you need.

I expect Bitcoin to drop to around $40 in the coming months.  Anything lower will cause speculators to invest for the eventual market turn-around.  Anything higher will cause Asic miners to cash out.  

Value of the coin is what matters.  You need more money in the market.  That translates to more people owning bitcoin and not cashing it out.  I think many miners, at first, will cash out as they will need to pay off their investment.  After that point, it's a good bet a lot of them will hang onto coins in order to use them for next generation asic purchases.  (The smart play)  But I expect the market to crash in the short term.  Long term it will stabalize and start growing again as people hang onto coins.

More investment in hardware style wallets is probably a good idea.  Even more the retailers/vendors need some kind of terminal to accept bitcoin and cash out like credit card machines are today.  (Entire services exist doing this making people millions of dollars.  Why not do it for bitcoin?)   If people walk around with a few bitcoins in a digital wallet, that is coins not cashed out in the market, helping boost the market value.

And then, more people have to believe in the currency and invest in it because they know it will grow in value.   Not to mention volatility in fiat markets that cause people to flee to currencies like Bitcoin so they can move money easily.

BFL, Avalon, AsicMiner both hardware and as an investment.  Will certainly entertain purchases from other companies when they actually start shipping product.  Bitcoin difficulty is spiking so any sort of investment today that gets delayed can run the risk of being a loss if not careful.  Also, competition should force manufacturers to lower prices.

That said, it may be easier to stop mining and sell products for Bitcoin or possibly other cryptocurrencies.  Selling a service or product could reward with more bitcoins/cash than mining with much less risk.  It all depends on the value and difficulty of bitcoin going forward.  With the value going down and the difficulty going up, mining is looking less attractive every day.

So you're just designing it, but you're not the manufacturer?  Is the manufacturer Cedartec?

Some bitter people in this forum. 

BFL got their long boards in and are going to be working around the clock 24-7 to ship everything out now.  Josh says that everything that has been preordered up to now will ship before 100 days, when the first set of chips would be released.

Considering they are shipping Jalapeno's, the chips themselves are fine.  I tend to believe his timeline of 100 days because that process is largely outside of BFL's hands anyway so there is little for them to screw up. 

It all comes down to whether you believe BFL and Josh (I do) or you don't, like most people posting in this thread (Who will undoubtedly point out for the ten thousandth time their reasoning.) 

They have over ten grand of my money, and I'm completely confident in eventually receiving what I paid for.  That said, I won't be buying chips because I do not have the expertise to build them into viable miners.  I would rather purchase a finished solution.

That's cool.  If this drags on longer I will order more so maybe just refund whatever at the end, if that's cool?

Ordered another one...

tempestb; 1; 2.2148

Transaction id: e6c5d790cadd08e65c78ecac9f0a549c243b6de1f225bf5cdc6413512aeee0a3
Sender id:  15V96ct1qcy8sVE9GxEpWzwDVwdKf6JnDU

So then how is this going to be better than what Asicminer offers now?  If you have a similar 10gh board.  You'll need, what, ten thousand boards to reach 100th?  You're really going to build that many?  

Ok fair enough, my mistake.  I just don't understand why they would go with 130 considering power would play such an important role in their ROI.  That just lead me to believe they are using the same fab and the chips are easier to acquire.  I mean, if you're going to make your own, why 130?  Cheap? 

I think everyone is using the same chips from the same supplier in China.  They all appear to have like performance and the same 130nm architecture.  That can't be coincidence.  100t is a lot of boards and a LOT of power to get up and running.

That said, my biggest problem with operations like this and Asicminer is that there is no escrow in the event their operation shuts down.  Your stock purchase instantly becomes worthless.  If they have a fire, theft, disaster, vandalism, hostile takeover, political motivation, whatever, the whole thing ends instantly.

So the ROI has to be worth it.  Buying a share to maybe see it pay for itself in a year's time isn't worth the risk of the company just vanishing before that happens.

I may throw in for more.  Now that the hash rate is up and they look spiffy.

Who is this Butterfly Labs you speak of?  Why has nobody mentioned them before? 

(Sarcasm implied)

Well, you might not have to worry about competing on price or power performance if it's close.  What is really needed is an ASIC company with good customer service that can ship units at the time of order.  I think people are tired of waiting in queues to get stuff.  They want to place an order and get their item. 

And there is no guarantee that five months from now the situation will be any better with the current three companies selling hardware.

I would buy many of these, so long as they are a stand alone product and I don't have to source parts and have you build it. 

They probably marked the wrong one, since he has a Jalapeno right below it.