Are you guys sure this black spec is on the chip itself? Looks to me like something on the ceiling reflected on the chip....
Good eye. I think you might be right. |
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Shipment would be from Arizona, USA. Escrow with John K. for a fee of 0.1 BTC / board. Shipping is extra, 0.2 BTC in the US for up to 6 boards. International shipping at my cost. Typical board performance is >800 MH/s, but I will only guarantee minimum of 760 MH/s. Boards can be shipped as singles with top mounted fans or stacked with pairs in Master/slave configuration so only 1 USB is requird for each pair of boards. A 12V power supply is needed, and not provided. The boards have PCI-E, Molex, and barrel connectors for power input. If you purchase 6 or more, I will discount the price to 5.75 BTC. Note that these boards have 2x the hashpower of the X6500 units currently being offered for 5.2 BTC each. Sales in BTC only with escrow! If you are bargain hunting, I have an auction for some less than stellar boards here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159052.0 |
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Cost aside, wouldn't that cause further delay? They could inspect them during the built process. If a unit requires 8 chips, plug in 7 that look okay and 1 (?). This way two issues could be solved with one (insert noun, but not stone).
It's a reliability problem. Thermal cycling of the chips will cause the underfill to delaminate at the void sites and break solder joints. So you put it all together and everything looks sweet, then a month or 2 down the road the chip goes completely flakely on you and eventually fails completely. The only way to know what is going on is to inspect some of the die using CSAM. It's a non-destructive process and can be done with a sample of packages so it's not the end of the world. Unless they are all full of voids... I really don't think Josh is as aware of these types of situations as you are. Why don't you shoot them a quick message so he gets the idea. It would be fun to see him screaming at the packagers.  Josh has a long history of not speaking to me in a civil manner. And my company pays me ~$1000/day to work on these kinds of problems. Why would I consult for free for a company I consider to behave in a completely unethical manner? For the record, here is what I said about BFL 10 months ago:
I do have one question... What is exactly the point you are trying to make?
Regards,
BF Labs Inc.
Thanks for asking. I have a few simple points. About BFL1. You are pre-announcing this product before delivering your previously pre-announced product 2. This is your second claim of delivering a product with ASIC hashing. Your first was debunked as an FPGA as soon as product shipped. 3. You seem to be using customer funds for purchases of product for development and general expenses. If I am wrong about that please post a notarized statement from your escrow agent and I will apologize. About business in general1. Paying in advance for development is an investment. It is generally compensated with intellectual property, equity or loan interest. 2. Honest, viable businesses become insolvent all the time for lack of cashflow. It is the reason for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy procedures. 3. Payments in advance for products become unsecured debts in a bankruptcy proceeding. Unsecured debtors are among the lowest priority for recovery in these procedures and generally get nothing. Even if the material is sitting in the shipping bay with a label on it, it isn't yours under bankruptcy. 4. For reason #3 above it is unethical, and a violation of consumer protection laws in many places to sell product in advance of availability. For the same reason, Visa and Mastercard require shipment before a sale can be charged. 5. Companies at risk of insolvency often make very generous guarantee offers. A guarantee has no revenue cost in the present, and has no value in bankruptcy either. I can't see ever being a customer of yours given your business practices. And your question has given me the opportunity to nicely summarize why people should use caution. So I will leave your thread to your fans and investors. |
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Cost aside, wouldn't that cause further delay? They could inspect them during the built process. If a unit requires 8 chips, plug in 7 that look okay and 1 (?). This way two issues could be solved with one (insert noun, but not stone).
It's a reliability problem. Thermal cycling of the chips will cause the underfill to delaminate at the void sites and break solder joints. So you put it all together and everything looks sweet, then a month or 2 down the road the chip goes completely flakely on you and eventually fails completely. The only way to know what is going on is to inspect some of the die using CSAM. It's a non-destructive process and can be done with a sample of packages so it's not the end of the world. Unless they are all full of voids... |
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Zoom up on the full sized image and look at the edge of each die. That is the ugliest underfill job I have ever seen on chips. They are going to have nasty voiding on the C4 bumps and rel problems out the wazoo. Can you really tell that from a straight up shot of a blurry pic, or are you just trolling? I would also like to know this. Yes, I can really tell. A properly underfilled chip will have a smooth line where it was dispensed on one side, and an equally smooth line on the other side where the epoxy flowed through. The clumping and discontinuities in the images make it likely there are voids. To be certain you would have to inspect the die with CSAM. The epoxy should develop a clean curve up the sidewall of the die as well - this shows good adhesion to the silicon, and ensures that the epoxy doesn't interfere with the heat sink mounting. It's really ugly. If I was in Josh's shoes I'd be screaming mad, checking every chip to make sure the underfill isn't higher than the die back side, and demanding CSAM inspections from the assembly house to prove the packages are free of voids. |
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Zoom up on the full sized image and look at the edge of each die. That is the ugliest underfill job I have ever seen on chips. They are going to have nasty voiding on the C4 bumps and rel problems out the wazoo. |
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If BFL actually shipped 400 60 GH/s units per day, they would be adding 24TH/s to the network each day. In 3 months, the network hashpower would be 2200 TH/s (plus all the other ASIC supplier shipments).
Your super SC would be generating less than 0.1 BTC per day. And you can expect that ASIC suppliers would be dropping their prices so they could continue to sell hardware, further eroding your income over time.
You're taking some very fancy sounding numbers, and making assumptions, but you're not looking at the whole context before you're jumping to conclusions. 400 SC Singles a day for the next 3 months means about 36,500 SC Singles. At $1300 a pop, you're really telling me that you expect BFL to take $47 Million USD in preorders, AND ship all of those units in the next 3 months? Ya, I don't think so, for either of those 2 accounts. Kano reported seeing 90 Minirig cases ready to go. That is $2.7M in orders by itself. There are at least 50x (probably 100x) as many single orders out there, which brings us to about $10M in pre-orders. Someone was on here reporting that he wanted to buy $300k in rigs as a new order last week. Avalon did $1M in sales in 1 day. $47 M isn't a very large number. Good luck with your investment. |
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I can't reveal my sources, and it's been difficult to get confirmation of parts of this story, but this is what I've heard. - The mage that is building the SC masks was riding his unicorn to work last week when he was jacked up by a band of renegade Keebler elves.
- The unicorn fell on him so he couldn't use any spells and the elves messed him up pretty bad. (He builds optical masks so his specialty is Illusion - do I have to explain everything?) He finally managed to use his ring to summon an earth elemental and drive the little cookie making demons off. But they captured his unicorn.
- So now he has to use spellpower to get to work. Bottom line, things will be delayed 3 months or so.
- There is some good news though! A random comment by the cleric that was healing his wounds led him to realize how he could couple the hashing algorithm with one of the frozen planes of hell to reverse the computational thermodynamics of the process. This means that every time you find a share, you will also generate a few joules of electricity. With an SC mini-rig in the backseat you should be able to drive your Prius from San Francisco to New York without ever stopping for gas!
I know; some parts of this are hard to believe. But my source has been reliable in the past. And, if you knew anything about semiconductor design and manufacturing, it's far more plausible than BFL's story.As I feared, this is yet another BFL thread that has degenerated (nice story, though). They all seem to be destined for this fate. Maybe I should just give up and order some more BFLs already ...  Well my story was the only way they ever would have delivered on schedule. How's that strategy of ordering more gear from BFL working out for you? |
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If there was active communication from shtylman, I would consider trading on bitfloor again. It would be nice to know that an effort is being made to repay more funds. I'm not saying there isn't an effort being made, but no correspondence from the founder in over a month is discouraging.
Exactly. And this is why I will conduct no transactions at Bitfloor until there is resolution of the held coins issue. I like the platform and the service, but at this point it seems he is using the 'held' coins as a fiction to allow his operation to continue. At the current rate of return it will take 30 years to see the stolen coins returned. And that return is decreasing. Now if Roman were to offer transaction fees to be billed against the held coins, plus release of an equal amount of coins into the active pool, I would have a reason to do business at bitfloor again. |
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The date? In the same place where one can tell about former Army Ranger friends coming with him: in the e-mail.
Correct on both counts. :-) For the record I am sure this is a scam. In fact I would speculate that the mini crash in the exchange rate we experienced yesterday was the result of the scammer dumping every bitcoin paid to him as fast as he can so he can get out of dodge with the money. If anyone is willing to fess up with a transaction ID, it would be fascinating to trace the coins. |
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Also, keep in mind that BFL has touted the ability to produce 400 devices a day in the very near future. At that rate you could probably order a device and receive it within a few days. What that also means is a serious dillution of existing and future rig profitability, and in my opinion, huge price drops. Avalon and ASICMiner may not be able to compete in a price war with BFL, but BFL may end up having one with themselves if sales start to slow.
If BFL actually shipped 400 60 GH/s units per day, they would be adding 24TH/s to the network each day. In 3 months, the network hashpower would be 2200 PH/s (plus all the other ASIC supplier shipments). Your super SC would be generating less than 0.1 BTC per day. And you can expect that ASIC suppliers would be dropping their prices so they could continue to sell hardware, further eroding your income over time. Of course, BFL's track history makes it much more likely that they will struggle to ship 10 units / day. In terms of placing a new order, that means you can expect delivery sometime after the next block reward halving. |
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I ordered 20 for local pickup and requested pickup for this Tuesday. I told them that I and 2 former Army Ranger friends would arrive Sunday. But we needed Monday to get a cellular modem for the laptop I would use for testing, and my Ranger buddies wanted to pick up some 'hardware' they though might come in handy for the exchange. 36 hours since that message with no replies. I guess they are really busy assembling my units. |
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I trade BTC/USD at both BitFloor and MtGox but I prefer to trade at BitFloor. Why? 1) It's a lot cheaper. BitFloor takes 0.3% of each trade as a fee. Mt Gox takes between 0.5% and 1.2% of each trade. That's a big difference. Depending on your style of trading the difference can be even more. For example, if you are a liquidity provider Mt Gox charges you between 0.25% and 0.6% see https://mtgox.com/fee-schedulecompared to BitFloor who PAYS YOU 0.1% see https://bitfloor.com/docs/This is a huge. 2) It's faster and cheaper to deposit and withdraw USD at BitFloor. I use Capital One 360 P2P to deposit USD to BitFloor. P2P is free and faster than Dwolla which Mt Gox uses. For USD withdrawals BitFloor offers free withdrawals to my checking account via ACH. Again faster and cheaper than Dwolla. Join me at BitFloor and let's keep more of our BTC and USD instead of giving it to Mt Gox. I am amazed Bitfloor operates at all when they owe their users 25000 BTC. Are you an owner or investor in Bitfloor? I see you posting topics like this every week or so. |
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Sorry but when I See the price of BTC rise from around $10 to $50 in a short period of time, accombied by the panic buying we've been seeing for a few weeks I get nervous, there has to be a pullback... This is sheer madness, I've practically cashed out completely.
BTC could end up $100 in a few days and I would have 'lost' a lot of money but I feel safe where I'm standing right now. Made a real nice profit either way.
Now, imagine if the Silk Road went down or was offline for a few months... What do you think would happen to the price of BTC?
Silk Road was down for almost a month late last year. The effect on Bitcoin was non-existent |
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Bitfloor is remarkably invisible on these forums.
It has been many months since his pitifully small return of coins to his victims. I say his victims because the loss of coins was 100% Roman's fault, but it is the customers with coins on account who actually took the loss.
I challenge Roman to come here and define a schedule of releases for held coins, and to create a market for exchange of those coins.
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Haven't read much of the thread. . . Has the grown man who is a fan of children's TV shows and who rates every scam AAA+++ wound down his own investment program scam yet?
Give Patrick some credit. Representing himself as SpongeBob's idiot friend shows a remarkable level of self awareness and honesty. |
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And Roman's silence on either intent or the means to repay the BTC holders is deafening.
I realize that everyone wants answers today and expect a resolution to happen immediately. Unfortunately, give the current situation it will take some time to come to a resolution and have a clear path forward. Updates will be provided as relevant and meaningful information is available. I would also like to remind everyone that accounts cannot be transfered and when dealing with an account I will only be able to deal with the original account holder. If you accept another user's obligation you are doing so on your own and we will not facilitate such transfers nor will we be able to allow you to take over their account. Thanks for stopping by. But your refusal to facilitate any transfers seems like a breach of faith to me. There is no justification for refusing to allow such exchanges if you ever imagine to continue business. Please post case numbers and the lead investigator names for the theft reports. |
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I think Bitfloor could be more popular immediately upon reopening than it was a week ago if (1) it could immediately make all deposited BTC available for withdrawal and (2) it demonstrated a new security approach that is perceived as innovative and robust. This is possible. There are a lot of people who have had great experience with Roman and Bitfloor and are willing to back him as an investor. I am willing to consider doing so myself. A relevant fact is that Bitfloor doubled its volume between June and August, showing they were really doing something right.
If they could demonstrate that they could keep obligations to customers even in the event of a security breach and also show that another security breach is extremely unlikely, then this would mean Bitfloor is the safest exchange to use.
Also, no publicity is bad publicity as they say. It has attracted a lot of attention these last few days.
I agree with what you say here. But your if is an enormous one. And Roman's silence on either intent or the means to repay the BTC holders is deafening. Every day that situation continues adds to the people that will never return to his business. My motivation for offering his debt for sale here was largely curiousity on the concensus opinion of the likelyhood he will ever repay. There was a lot of people eager to invest in Bitfloor right after his announcement. Stranglely, none of them are stepping up with bids. |
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Bitfloors losses amount to 8 years of revenue.
He has made the decision to preferentially reimburse creditors by releasing US dollar funds.
In addition, the market is giving a clear signal; I have recieved only one vaguely serious off at less than 25% of the debt. People have less faith in Roman than they had in Pirate 2 weeks ago.
Unless Roman makes substantial moves in the next week or so, I will take action to protect my interests as best as I can. Largely for the laughs though. The concesus clearly expect absolutely no recovery of bitcoin losses.
Given the prevalent viewpoint on the board. Exactly how much trading do you think a restarted Bitfloor will do? Keep in mind that whether you happened to hold US$ or BTC at the time of the hack was largely a random function. All my Bitcoin were out on an ask very nearly the prevailing price. There is someone pulling his US$ out this week who is pleased with their good luck in choosing to not hit my ask. Given the completely random method of choosing what obligations he will satisfy, Roman is out of the BTC handling game forever.
Roman, feel free to prove me wrong. At present you have communicated less about your intent to fufill your obligations than Trendon Shavers has done.
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Not even close. Bitfloor in liquidation is worth at least 40% of the reported losses. Plus gross negligence on Roman's part should make it straightforward to get a judgement against his personal assets. Bitfloor in liquidation (with no outside capitalization) is worth $105,000+? Essentially the only assets are the code and brand. While the fair mark value might be a hundred grand generally in liquidation assets go for $0.20 on the dollar or less. Soft assets (like code, databases, customers lists, etc) go for even less. So that would put the fair market value on Bitfloor software and brand at roughly $500K to $1M. Pretty high valuation. Also you have no chance of piercing the corporate veil unless you can prove criminal negligence occurred. Also how are you going to get this judgement? By hiring legal counsel, proving your deposit exists, proving that Bitcoins are worth damages in legal tender that the court can award, and proving criminal negligence to pierce the corporate veil? The value of your claim is ~$1000 gross once you subtract legal fees out you will have roughly nothing even if you could accomplish all that. 25% is likely overvalued at this point.Bitfloor's revenue was over 30k / year with a very high growth rate. I don't see 3x revenue as a very high valuation. There need be no legal fees. The bar in small claims cout is very low. Roman posted here using his personal account for all bitfloor business. And criminal negligence is not the bar in cases where there is a fiduciary duty. Pirate debt is still trading at 15%. Surely Roman's obligation and a viable, operating enterprise is worth substantially more. |
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