I was following Megabigpower's bitfury units for most of the time they were getting ramped up, and a lot of people's units were shipped before they received any tracking info, as the team was busy shipping. Granted, it's a smaller outfit, but not by that much. I could see much the same happening here. They get it all out the door and THEN update.

Breathe, people. I think it fairly obvious now that they aren't going to screw you. They are only a couple of days behind the bitbet, which ain't bad. They did say they hoped to ship before the end of september, but the only "writ in stone' date they've published, that I am aware of, was Oct 15th.

BTW, even though I've been something of a cheerleader here myself, if I'd had coin to gamble I would have bet "no" in the bet. I would have been happy to lose, but I try to gamble realistically, and they did one hell of a job just coming close!

Agreed. You are one of three companies I want to do business with. CC is very important to me for consumer protection, but your rep is good enough that I am willing to go another route. Others might not be. Rather short notice for a chargeback!

Dave, I'd challenge this if it's real and not just trolling.

Ok, I know I said I'd shut up, but...

This. It's actually correct. and -ROI for negative ROI.

Y'know, I'll revisit this in a few days when I have more time and write up an article about it. The usage matters, it's not merely semantic. But I've been up for a long LONG time right now, and I'm not sure it wouldn't come out in Klingon or something

I just got home from a job interview and I'm too frazzled to find the wiki link, but their article goes pretty in depth. However, your first example their would be actually 100 percent positive ROI, given no other costs. Breakeven is actually when the cost of the equipment and any associated operating costs are completely recovered. If you spent 100 and got back 25 in a given time frame, your ROI would be -75. ROI doesn't equal profit, though profit can be part of your ROI.

It can get pretty complex. It seems that almost everyone here uses it in place of breakeven. I admit, it's grammar policing, but it gets to me. I am not an accountant by trade, but as a restaurant manager I had to learn the trade pretty severely. I couldn't test out as a CPA, but I could probably challenge over 80 percent of the curriculum between my work experience and my deep and abiding interest in the dismal science

And I'll shut up about it for now in this thread. Didn't mean to hijack it. My congrats to the TAV team, and the best of success to your future endeavors. This now makes three asic vendors I'm willing to do business with when I have the ability to do so.

Should try to turn him on to the idea of his bank setting up accounts in btc! Or perhaps an intermediary card like a visa debit that links to a btc wallet?

Why you?

I probably was about fifty percent in agreement with you on the thread, but I never thought you posted anything particularly outrageous or "ignore" worthy.

Then again I got a pretty thick skin I only ignored one person, because they never had anything to contribute. Even if your argument is valid, typing the same two sentences ad infinitum gets old.

Woops, before I get called on it, only ignored one user on that thread. Total of two, and second admitted they were just trolling.

Noted. And were this a common usage, I might even agree. But ROI is a very specific term from accounting, not a general usage term. Having now been on this forum for some time, I do understand what people mean. When I first came here, seeing this made my mind twitch. Took me a while to understand that people were not ACTUALLY referring to ROI, but to breakeven.

Not that it really improved matters, because they were getting their panties in a bunch over not meeting breakeven in a two to three week period. (that wasn't aimed at you, Puppet, you've been pretty reasonable even when you were clearly raving mad ).

My guess would be they are debugging it. They should be just getting opened up about now.

LOL! I finally made somebody's summary!

(that person is still the only one on my ignore list...)

Not going to comment in great detail on this. Solex largely got it right, but left out a lot of detail.

However, a "shut down" such as they are doing right now is a political stunt. They'll send a few people on vacation (paid) and put on a dog and pony show until a "compromise" is reached. They've done this, about this time of year, for at least a decade.

How this will impact bitcoin is of course somewhat unpredictable, but I would think it would have little effect.

However, a true default, i.e. repudiation of the debt, would probably strengthen bitcoin for a bit, but not because people were buying it with suddenly defunct greenbacks. Rather, it would strengthen it because it would likely become much higher in demand BY MERCHANTS due to lack of faith in the dollar.

In the long run, a true default is the only thing that might save the dollar. It would KILL the current US government, and I can see very little negative about that, but the dollar, if reestablished, would have to be based on something tangible or at least much more sound than the current policies. I would hope that in such an event, the people at large and the states would demand that the Fed obey the alleged source of their authority, the US constitution, and accept and issue monies only in silver and gold.

Now, if a government were to ADOPT bitcoin as it's national currency, then that would boost the hell out of it!

I have to know. Is there ANYTHING you don't consider to be a scam?

Edit: Not saying one way or another on the OP. I'm watching. Just that bbxx cries scam when somebody announces that the earth will spin on it's axis tomorrow. Or so it seems.

In his defense, he did say so in the OP

As per my post before, I think he has a valid point, trolling or not. I disagree, but it's not an unreasonable position.

I'm on your side on this, but since you are correcting technical errors, I am too.

To put this in some perspective, the study of economics is my hobby. Particularly the Austrian school, but in this case we're talking general accounting. I've made this point several times, and been called a troll for it. I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely irritated by the misuse of a well understood accounting term.

There are three ways that a hypothetical buyer would not make ROI on this.

1. The unit is DOA (which you have contingencies in place for.)
2. The buyer puts it in their trophy collection and never mines with it.
3. The buyer doesn't use it, gets a refund, and goes on their merry way.

ROI stands for Return ON Investment. Not Return OF Investment. If it mines at all, you make a ROI. This is not an ambiguity or a hedge, this is what the term means. ROI is a moving target. Now if you, or the hypothetical buyer, says "it will not make ROI in X timeframe, they MIGHT have an argument, based solely on the above three conditions. What the majority of the people on this forum MEAN, seems to be breakeven, which is an entirely different subject. This isn't picking nits, this is what the term means.

ROI can be positive, negative, or breakeven, but if it makes you one satoshi, you have achieved ROI.

I find this misuse egregious for the same reason I find the religious argument "it's just a theory" to be egregious. At least in that case, there are two different meanings to the term. In the case of ROI, there is not.

It doesn't have to be per chip. The prices will come down. At first, there are two major price factors driving the consumer price on a new silicon device. The first, lower one, is NRE. The second is demand, and that can be (currently is) the main driving factor. If you are a device vendor, and you can sell it at 1000x cost, you'd be a fool not to. Once the competition starts either outperforming or outpricing you, you need to reevaluate your pricing. So, if you're smart, you lower your prices in increments on the chip that has already been masked out, engineered and produced. The per wafer cost after NRE isn't that much. They can squeese a lot of life out of that by simply offering cheaper prices and/or more chips in the devices. Yeah, there gets to be power issues after a while, but they buy time that way. This also gives them more time to optimise the next gen design, which will probably be more power efficient, less redundant, and a higher hashrate. Given the humongous physical size of KnC's chip, for example, I would guess that they went for at least 10x redundancy in their design just to make sure they made their deadlines. Shouldn't be too hard for them, now that they can concentrate more on engineering precision and less on setting records, to optimize that design rather severely.

Also, as you mentioned, there are smaller processes. Some online, some just starting. In the "race for the bottom" we haven't yet hit the bottom of photolithography, though it's getting close. Plus, most if not all of the necessary conditions to develop nanomachines now exist, so it's quite likely that by the time photolithography hits it's theoretical limits, there will be a better, cheaper alternative. The 'state of the art' is always a moving target in electronics.

If you had told me in 1981 that just 3 decades later I would be typing on an obsolete computer that is more powerful than the supercomputers of the early 80's, I would have laughed in your face and called you an idiot. I would have been wrong.

Sure, the current ASIC designs coming to market are at a very small feature size, but they are still first gen devices. They are not as optimal as they can be. Right now, getting to market is more important to the manufacturers than getting a truly optimal design. I think that you will see a lot of scales of efficiency within the 28nm market long before it goes to a smaller die size. Actual timeline is another matter. But I am standing by a year to two years IF bitcoin starts going seriously mainstream before the big boys care to touch it. I think companies like Cointerra and KnC think so too, and they are positioning themselves to be partners rather than roadblocks when that day comes.

I don't think BFL's people are smart enough for that, and I suspect they will fall into the "also ran" category in the fairly short term.

I invest in things based on as many factors as I can put in, for the express purpose of making a profit. That's like saying that a stock dividend in Euros is invalid because it's not in dollars. Money is what again?

A medium of exchange.

His math was fine. It was his axiom I was questioning.

While I understand your objection, I think I have to disagree.

First off, we don't know that it's their only unit. They could be using the rest of their test units on a test net and applying the tweaks to the one that's showing, to see how it works in the real world. This is what I would do.

Second, this shows everyone who can follow the blockchain that yes, they do indeed have a working product. It's ONE machine out of many. Sure, technically, right now it's 100 percent of KnC's hash power, but in the very short long run, it's a demo.

I for one am glad to see it working in realtime, verifiably. I think that is worth more than the negligible impact it has on difficulty.

Oh, Horseshit. Exchange rates are the HEART of currency trading, and this has been true pretty much since the dawn of time.

Great question!

In my case, I had no skin in the early game, because I had no way of doing it. Come about two months from now, that may no longer be true, in which case I will be in the race.

My reasons are more long term than breakeven profit, and somewhat complex. But as briefly as possible, I'll illustrate why I think 6 month positive ROI is not a big factor if you are doing this for something more than just getting more bitcoins in your wallet. (Not that that is an unworthy goal).

First off, there is the issue of making the network more secure. I won't use the phrase "securing the network" because that is impossible. Making it very difficult to take it over is important, though. The national fiat currencies, whatever your political beliefs, have from a technical standpoint been compromised beyond repair.

Which brings me to a lot of why I'm interested in this race, and where I think the ultimate value of mining lies. I want to see bitcoin become a mainstream currency. It's on the brink right now. With proper promotion, or sufficient improper promotion, it will happen soon, or this will have been an interesting and expensive experiment.

I think that most miners don't look at the actual value of transaction fees. That little fraction of a bitcoin that accompanies every transaction, should it go mainstream, will be A LOT of money in a short time. Banks, when they aren't buying governments, run very small margins on most of their transactions. Yet they have always profited handsomely. Prior to massive regulation, the most honest profited very handsomely. Fractional reserve and central regulation destroyed that model (see Greshams law), but the historical fact of it remains.

Bitcoin, by contrast to standard fiat, has no central issuing authority. This is, in my arrogant opinion, it's biggest strength. The bigger the network, the more this becomes a strength. Thus the long term money is in microtransactions AND general acceptance of bitcoin.

Further, if I am generating enough bitcoins with my machines to fund other ventures not related to mining, I can leverage that over a long period to gain financially and on other, perhaps non economic goals. If it cost me more than I make (excluding ROI on equipment, I'm talking operating costs) then it's a losing proposition, but that is an unlikely scenario for a long period of time.

As a general strategy, it is my thought that one could leverage the mining to buy newer, cheaper, and more efficient equipment, first, and then to start building off grid power systems to offset the eventuality of electricity costs overriding profit to much. As part of this strategy, I would be promoting bitcoin as a transactional instrument for practically everything. There are some hurdles to overcome with that, but the biggest one is simply popularity. Use your coins to purchase goods and services, and particularly, advertising. Promote the fuck out of the concept, make it so people at large cannot escape noticing bitcoin, and in the long term mining of coins will become almost irrelevant and definitely secondary to transactional fees and general commerce.

So I think the race is worth it in the short term to be prepared for the longterm. As mining profits decrease, it does not stop the machines from functioning, and those fees transfer in every block. There will come a time, if the concept that Satoshi set out in his paper comes to pass, when the measly block reward simply will be a bonus. For me, the short term race is interesting, exciting, and risky. But the real rewards, for all concerned, are in the long term.

No he's not. His defense is valid. Maybe incorrect, but we don't know that.

He ain't holding a gun to any of the people bidding. They are or are not doing their own due diligence. Clearly, they believe it worth the price, or they wouldn't bid on it.

LOL. Well played sir! .01 BTC headed to your tip jar as of two minutes ago.