Aside from all the bridge burning Josh did, there is also the NRE to be considered for BFL, that would probably keep them from just packaging up Avalon chips into a nice little release for us. A shame, as this would really have worked out nicely for everyone.

Not really sure what you're asking. You can mine at any speed, the more important factor is the efficiency. Say I created a pinwheel that somehow performed a hash every time it spun fully around, I found it on the ground, and all it has to do is sit wherever it is. The hash rate will be almost uncountably low, but since it costs nothing (time, energy, material) it's technically "worth it" in that sense.

I would say don't invest money into something like a GPU to hash, regardless of the quantity of hashrate you will get out of it, as it will likely not repay itself with the hardware gearing up to be unleashed. ASICMINER, Avalon. Cairnsmore, etc. unless you get some crazy pinwheel type deal.

As for the hassle involved, if you factor that in, simply figure out what your time is worth to you. If I profit 1 cent a day and it took me 10 hours to set up, it's not worth it to me, but that's a personal thing (hey I'd make my money back in 3 years after all!).

Given the new state of bitcoin value, difficulty will likely shoot to astronomical levels, but not for a while, hardware is a huge bottleneck right now. End of year maybe 500THash? Really depends on how the manufacturers gear themselves up to deliver. Avalon is being iffy about their production capabilities (probably due to Chinese Govt stuff being scary), but on the flip side there are plans to sell ASIC chips directly to consumers to produce in whatever manner they see fit. BFL claims that they want to roll out an unlimited TH stream, but their production is still questionable.

Why this became a thread about date ordering I wouldn't know. Date is particularly arbitrary, "smallest" to "largest" doesn't even make sense and is a particularly stupid argument, especially if someone is in the UK which uses the same measuring system as the US (imperial rather than metric).

I would put forth that for most uses Year/Month/Day would be most "logical", if used in a "left to right" reading context. For every day use the order is particularly unimportant, except in consistency; if you enjoy OCD things like "smallest to largest" it fits, and in an organizational manner it is the simplest (say if you are organizing something chronologically, year first separates years, then years into months, then months into days).

So everyone has it wrong, happy now?

I like the order page

Secure Checkout
Order information
Order number: 36
Send 300 bitcoins to:

1Lx2vadg7EemzLpxqQLQLQpXkwbWjafGn2


It's secure on a non-https non-verified system 

Let me just send over some bitcoin!

My guess is BFL wants to actively discourage new orders due to their supply problems and chip issues. By raising the price and lowering performance, some people will still be interested and place orders bringing in much needed revenue, but they can avoid a huge flood of orders once they start shipping (that they probably can't fill in a timely manner)

Charity is the stripper name of the girls at the CO's favorite strip club. Probably almost at 1000btc already.

If it netted me $10k a day I'd dynamite my stove out of the way for access to that circuit

Poorly written question.

ASIC makers took preorder money to fund their products. One folded completely, one had massive repeated delays, the other two are rolling out their products as expected. Asicminer has 6 - 12 Th out there? And Avalon has shipped their first 20 Th with it arriving seemingly at random, but coming up steadily. The price of bitcoin almost certainly bringing the existing 25 Th up a bit, the existing 50 - 60 Th is more or less accounted for thusly.

Does anyone remember what the amount of btc BFL promised to give away if they missed their power target was ?

with the current price of btc those guys are probably sweating hard over that right about now haha

I'd believe a kill a  watts more than software numbers, but they're probably reasonably close. Maybe add some overhead for other unreported components of the card other the core, and PSU efficiency in delivering power, and you're running about standard for a 7950. Nice efficient little card.

Interesting to me how many people keep rehashing the (important) points above, but it has mostly been said so i wont add on, howevere no one has touched on the question of payment processing.

Avalon set up with a payment processor, I imagine because they were woefully unprepared and unable to properly handle massive order processing (resulting in "shipping" delays). However they are dissatisfied with whatever hassles usd brings to a Chinese business (and the fact they probably missed out on 1M+ dollars they would have accrued from rising btc value ), and pricing in btc. This means they are skipping a payment processor it seems? On a new batch that is equal in size to both previous batches combined, and with a price point virtually guaranteeing no large single orders, without having even started pushing out the second batch (and maybe not even batch 1? Most still haven't received anything).

To say that things poor would be an understatement. Perhaps they will use some of that capital to hire staff? That would be interesting. Hopefully they will touch on that before the presage goes up.

The analogy is awful on every level. No payment until product ships, product isn't even scheduled to ship until May (2+ months into the future), and it only costs $80, half the least costly option BFL offers (1/5th the next step up, less 1/10th the most common option, etc.)

That said, I don't really have much to weigh in on the latest development. I'm not a customer, and I'm fairly glad I'm not, but I don't harbor any ill-will towards BFL, mostly just disappointment. ASICs were exciting and hopeful items to me, and now it all seems like so much scorched earth. I do hope that things turn around, and am excited for the time when everyone focuses on how awesome ASIC mining is. I hope BFL gets its' act together.

Not sure where you get your numbers from. Taking a quick look at historic charts, difficulty was 1 until about January '10 (1st year), it climbed to about 20 by July '10, which I believe is when GPU mining was introduced (someone correct me if I'm wrong), when it promptly skyrocketed. Reached 50,000 only in about Feb '11, when GPU mining had been around for ~6months, and was beginning to become more widely popularized on the internet.

So all in all, ~3mil / 20 = 150,000x increase. But I agree, the analogy between CPU and GPU fails, for different reasons. CPU -> GPU mining coincided also with an increase in bitcoin popularity unrelated to the technology (people had CPUs and GPUs, either would have worked for technophiles). Although there was an increase in efficiency (Hash/W) there was also a raw power factor that was introduced with GPUs as well, the opposite of which is happening with ASICs. Proven, readily available tech vs. bleeding edge DIY (kinda) startup tech, etc.

However you look at it though, in my opinion, the time to 1PH will be determined by 2 factors
1) How fast ASIC mfgs can actually get the damn things out the door.
2) Price per coin.

There was a huge huge huge goldrush to bitcoin when it was being first discovered, at low diff low value, without exchanges, or bitcoin economy. To think that people will sat back on their haunches with money to be made now is only wishful thinking to me.
The bitcoin economy is roughly estimated at 300M USD today, 1PH requires an investment of approx 21M USD. If manufacturers could supply it, and no one else did it, I would myself

Assuming all those conditions, the same statement is true for any number of ASICs, with the given specs, or combination thereof, up until you control 500TH/s,

The problem is that
1) Network hashrate will not stay under 500TH/sec, if ASICs do ship, guaranteed.
2) Bitcoin price will likely not remain stable.

Otherwise, yeah, I guess it's a magical money machine.

Be wise in your decision to buy ASICMINER shares. Someone in another thread posted the ill-thought pricing on many of the shares, and the decision to buy them may cost you more than you recoup if you do not get a good rate.

I was around for the great crash of 2011, and I pin no such hopes on an ever increasing valuation of btc, at least not in such a short term.

There are no good HW investments right now.

The best place to put 1usd is in your wallet. If you think btc will rise in value then buy bitcoins, but that is far from guaranteed. When the ASIC world settles a little you will be in a position to buy pretty much the same as now, without the risk of preorders being bs and blowing up in your face.

Good old Verizon, at the Florida airport

Though the comparison to the previous record of 32 makes me greatly uneasy (as that was generally accepted to be a pump and dump), in general conditions are currently much more favorable than they once were.

More to do with bitcoin, broader economy base, larger exposure, less of a spiking frenzy, and so on.

I do find it interesting however how much of bitcoins continued success relies on what amounts essentially to "good will". There are a number of "bitcoin millionaires" from the old CPU days still lying about with tens or hundreds of thousands of bitcoins that could potentially rock the boat whenever suits their fancy. ASICs are still a pie in the sky dream for the most part, however at any moment with the demonstrated existence of them, someone could rock/fork the network, before/if the first units arrive in anyone elses hands. Same thing historically could have happened with whomever it was who produced the software to mine on GPUs.

That aside, I would tend to distrust these sudden price surges myself. And I'm not just bitter because I literally had myself priced to buy riiiight before it surged

You in N. Cali or S. Cali? Could get a little deal going if you're local enough to not have to deal with shipping.