Bitcoin has zero counterparty risk?  Not true.  To cash out and use the money for buying a car, house, taxes, food, schooling, etc, the bitcoin holder must have someone to sell to.  If no one turns up to buy those bitcoins then the holder just has a bit of worthless data.  That's a counterparty risk, although of a slightly different nature to say, a bank going bankrupt and taking all the money.

Bitcoin has another counterparty risk coming up in the next few years.  If bitcoin becomes popular enough for even a tiny percentage of the world's population to use it daily, the blockchain will become enormous.  There will be few people willing to store terabytes of data on their computer just to send and receive bitcoins.  The data and wallets will be kept in the hands of relatively few companies.  Better hope they're good and honest.

Dollars spent versus dollars returned, I don't see a problem.  Yes, if I had bought more BTC more than a year ago than BFL I would be better off overall now.  Who wouldn't be?  With hindsight like that we should all be millionaires as it was obvious that bitcoins would be trading for US$900+ right now    These forums are full of people lamenting over their lost Ferraris and yachts.  'If only I had bought more BTC than spent on X!'  It's a depressing way to live.

According to BFL some of the first batch should have already shipped, or will be shipping in the next few weeks.  I would expect these forums to be lighting up with delighted BFL customers showing off their new Monarchs.  So far we haven't seen any.  One month down, one to go.

ROI achieved using the payment method used.  Payment in September 2012 with delivery in July the following year.  Yes, we can do the BTC vs other currency dance and people would be right that if I bought BTC instead of BFL I would be ahead overall.  For those people I would like to see their posts from mid 2012 stating bitcoin would be worth 10 to 20 times more in USD terms when BFL actually started to ship versus the order date.  Hindsight is 20/20.

The before Christmas shipping date is for Monarchs, not the old 65nm product lines.  It's on BFL's Monarch web site:

http://www.butterflylabs.com/monarch/

Tape out August 2013
November / December    Initial Shipping   (Sold out)
January / February    Bulk Shipping

I would do a screen shot for when BFL change the above info but people can grab their own.  BFL are promising a Christmas miracle to their customers.

25% discount.  Hefty.  I've purchased from BFL before and did eventually get ROI on my order so I can't really complain about them (apart from the many months of anguish at delay after delay).

What concerns me now is BFL is still claiming initial orders shipping in November/December.  Seeing as there are only 4 days left of November, can BFL provide a count of how many cards they've shipped?  I suggest the number is zero as no reviews have been posted online.  December is cut short by Christmas with many businesses shutting down for a while, and January has the Chinese New Year (expect that one to pop up when BFL are late to ship in January too).

Ordering now is likely to see the card ship in mid 2014 as far as I can see.  It would be great if one could trust BFL's shipping estimates, but seeing as every single one has been broken I fail to see how that can be achieved.

It's quite possible for a bitcoin to be worth US$1 million without 21 million * US$1 million having being spent on buying them, or even that much fiat existing in the world.  Price is based solely on the last price bitcoin was traded for.  Maybe we will see a speculative bubble of 'investors' swapping bitcoins between themselves until the price really skyrockets.  The real test is whether even a small proportion of them can cash out without crashing the price.

Epic bubble is epic.  This one is fun to watch.  It's a huge guessing game as to when it will pop.  All history suggests it's when and not if.

I feel happy and satisfied with my holdings.  Sad that I once sold bitcoins at $7.  Wary of buying any now despite the wishful thinking that we could be at $1k within this year and much more next year.  Afraid of an epic bubble building and being burnt.

Over all, I'm confused  

Bitcoin's price has gone parabolic.  We only need to look back to April this year to see what happened last time a large group of speculators thought 'this is probably as good as it gets' and starts to dump.  75% fall within weeks.  The price of course rose again and smashed the previous record, but beware of hubris in regards to bitcoin's price.  It has a tendency to bite people in the ass really hard.

Both bitcoins and silver have been volatile over the past few years, but only bitcoin could drop 90% within months (June to December 2011).  Silver won't do that, but then again it's hard to imagine silver returning 10x your investment from here.  Bitcoin may.  I would have some money in bitcoins and keep the rest in silver.  If bitcoin goes up from here you can sell some to buy more silver.  Win.

Everyone has a price.  Everyone.  Mine is US$10k.  If bitcoins hit US$10k each I'll sell all of mine to all comers.  Until then I'll hoard and not spend a satoshi.

We need a lot less of these stories.  Anything with a return in the thousands of percent per year sounds like a scam.  If it's too good to true... and all that.  People need to use bitcoin because it's useful and fills a niche in the financial system.  I would rather not have them enter the system because they think they'll be millionaires in a couple of years time for pocket change today.

I don't know... looks good to me and a sign of real progress, even if BFL are sure to miss their November 2013 date for shipping the first Monarch to end customers.  BFL have shagged their customers again and again but they can deliver product (albeit at glacial speed) and will deliver Monarchs some time in early 2014.

Hopefully one day we'll see Bitconity display...

2001: A Space Odyssey

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

Million Dollar Baby

They'll be available in 2 weeks.

Whoah, so many Jalapenos now on eBay.  I remember when I received mine (since ROI+200%) there were only a couple with some jokers trying to sell them for US$4k minimum bid   

BFL's hosting plan is still a great unknown.  There are going to be maintenance costs eating into your profit and the contracts are for 12 months.  Presumably you need to pay again after that.  Then there's the risk of BFL launching their hosting product late.  It's already November and in theory BFL should be shipping Monarchs this month or they'll miss their promised launch date.

The one factor working to your advantage in keeping the Jalapeno orders is you know you will be getting them soon.  ROI may be a very long way away (the assumption is difficulty will not keep rising 30% every 10 days into infinity, it has to stop somewhere).

You can buy 'cloud' mining already at places like cex.io.  It is double the price of BFL's offering, but cex.io works immediately.

Hmm, I have played a bit with cex.io, mined a bit and traded out with a profit (mining and trading).  It seems very tempting to buy mining power seemingly very cheaply (no need to gather together several thousand dollars and wait weeks/months for an order), but shouldn't the price per Ghash keep falling?  Anyone who buys needs to be aware their purchase produces around 30% less bitcoins every 10 days or so. 

Seems like an interesting race to the bottom as everyone tries to mine as much as possible with an eye to sell before difficulty rises again.

How a Ponzi scheme usually dies:

1.  Outflows of money begin to exceed inflows.  This is inevitable, it's just a question of when.
2.  Ponzi operator starts delaying payouts.
3.  People involved in the scheme, especially newer entrants, begin to panic and withdraw their money.
4.  Ponzi operator shuts down and flees with the remaining funds.  Usually blames the victims saying if it wasn't for them panicking and demanding their money back the Ponzi would have continued for a while longer.

Rinse.  Repeat.  There's always a new supply of doe eyed hopefuls believing in extremely high returns.