Avalon is selling chips in bulk at much cheaper prices.
It seems the only benefit of FPGA, for now, is that it can be re-used for other applications, and thus have resale value (whereas ASIC's will be trash if faced with some kind of catastrophic failure of bitcoin). Also, FPGA's delivery time might be better - shouldn't be too difficult to beat any of the ASIC developers at this time.
I can most likely have 1000 pcs of artix on my doorstep tomorrow morning. The same is not true for Avalon— AFAIK they've not given much in the way of dates, but it looks like their pipeline is a couple months long (though hopefully shortening). Re-usability is a benefit. It's not the only one. What I think will be great is if chip makers were to make FPGA's super cheap. Perhaps, there are some technologies on the horizon that will enable them to do that. I'd love to see a paradigm shift back to FPGA. Paradigm shifts are entertaining to watch unfold. |
|
|
|
I'm happy I didn't buy....
Congrats. Seems to me the biggest winners are those that simply just turned their computer off last year, and simply held onto their bitcoins. LOL! Talk about unnecessary customer frustration. |
|
|
|
The Spartan's typically used were $150 each. Even if bought for $100, that's only maybe ~270MH/$100. I'm not knowledgeable on all the pricing (bulk or otherwise), but wouldn't an Artix be proportionately as costly - if not more?
I would expect them to be substantially _less_ costly per MH. E.g. fitting potentially 400-900MH/s in an $100 part. Beyond the basic process improvements the Artix/Kintex parts have a substantially improved architecture. Of course, the S6LX150 designs have had a lot of effort applied to optimizing them. That would be a five times improvement. Sounds much better so far. To be on par with the Avalon, it's going to need another four times improvement. If I'm not mistaken, an Avalon is about ~280MH/BTC.08 (today's rate that equates to ~280MH/$5.50). So, unless you can purchase an FPGA with a performance/cost that beats that, then I don't know how this can work. Perhaps, this is just an academic pursuit for you.
A batch 3 Avalon cost 75 BTC and delivers 68GH/s. At the current market price that is $75/GHs. So maybe a 28nm FPGA ends up being twice the price per MH initially. But: It would have a smaller basic unit size (probably a 2 or 4 chip board) which would create a larger customer base and it could potentially have better supply. What does it matter that _in theory_ an Avalon is $75/GHs now when you can't actually buy one?? Plus, once there is a ASIC miner on a better process in widespread use the avalons will either need to head to the landfill— or at least Alaska for use as heating units, while a 28nm FPGA may have better reusablity. I imagine that if someone had a board like the x6500 based on artix _right now_ they would be selling out. In a month? who knows. So I don't think this is interesting just as a novelty project... though if it's just an "okay idea that won't make much money" vs an amazing one depends a lot on how the asic miner supply plays out, how the bitcoin market price plays out, etc. One of my assumptions is that the supporting PCB & electronics components will be roughly similar. So, the comparison I'm doing is the cost for the chips alone. Avalon is selling chips in bulk at much cheaper prices. It seems the only benefit of FPGA, for now, is that it can be re-used for other applications, and thus have resale value (whereas ASIC's will be trash if faced with some kind of catastrophic failure of bitcoin). Also, FPGA's delivery time might be better - shouldn't be too difficult to beat any of the ASIC developers at this time. |
|
|
|
Hey man, very interested in this! Post more info when you have it! I hope you guys can make them very price-competitive.  That's what I'm going for.  thanks for the interest I'll disregard power efficiency, since that may not matter to some. However, aren't these models of FPGA's just too expensive to compete with ASIC chips? The Spartan's typically used were $150 each. Even if bought for $100, that's only maybe ~270MH/$100. I'm not knowledgeable on all the pricing (bulk or otherwise), but wouldn't an Artix be proportionately as costly - if not more? If I'm not mistaken, an Avalon is about ~280MH/ BTC.08 (today's rate that equates to ~280MH/$5.50). So, unless you can purchase an FPGA with a performance/cost that beats that, then I don't know how this can work. Perhaps, this is just an academic pursuit for you. |
|
|
|
Zefir. Just to be clear. Are you reselling chips at the same cost you purchased them? Ifso, what is your motivation to buy 10,000 chips and distribute them at the same price (no profit)?
You think I should have asked for more than 9.9% as risk-compensation? I wish I did, but I offered to support the upcoming open source projects with what I have and that is it. Also please note that on top of this surplus buyers will be charged the effective fiat expenses for taxes, shipping and handling. Thanks for clearing that up for me. I wasn't certain on interpreting surplus as the mark-up. Sorry, not a business major But to answer your question, I think that is a reasonable mark-up and to charge for shipping etc... |
|
|
|
|
Zefir. Just to be clear. Are you reselling chips at the same cost you purchased them? Ifso, what is your motivation to buy 10,000 chips and distribute them at the same price (no profit)?
|
|
|
|
Despite the crash in 2011 (which caused me to leave the forums with despondency) each year BTC has grown 1000% roughly. The recent run up was not healthy. Anybody who bought last year in the $2 to $6 range is doing well.
I had a fairly decent trailing stop strategy, but failed to monitor it when it crashed. Probably would have got out at just below $240. It would be nice if the exchanges offered dynamic stops - especially stops based on user defined algorithms. Would be even better if a company like Trade Station opened up a bitcoin trading platform and exchange. http://www.tradestation.com/ |
|
|
|
Should've bought Avalon.
Almost 1 year from the date of initial preorder and all they can ship in "2 weeks" is a 4.5GH/s unit that would eat 20-30W? Would have been better buying a 7850 last year and mining with that for the last 10 months... So glad I ordered a Batch 3 and got my refund from BFL. Yeah, tell me about it. Or even better, just buying bitcoins. I wonder if buying and holding have worked from the very beginning, because the return on investment time is nearly a year on most stuff. Except for Avalon, anyone with them in hand has probably blown past their ROI's in the first month. |
|
|
|
1.You're not shipping yet. 2.You've missed your power mark of 1w/GH 3.You don't have a time frame for the new boards. 4.You can;t fit 1.5 TH into your cases you amassed. 5.You have interesting solutions (i.e. increase size of case?) 6.The "delay is strictly due to having to re-engineer the power system on the boards". You mean the delay since... October 2012? November 2012? December 2012? January 2013? February 2013? March 2013? Wow that wasn't much of an update at all. I think everyone here could have guessed all of those points Josh. LOL so fucking fail.  Since Jalapenos seem to be the only product shipping this week - who knows how long until any Singles or other products - I wonder what this might do to the shipping strategy. 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 etc.. |
|
|
|
Current mining:
Difficulty: 7,672,999
62,172.58 GH/s
969.89 megawatt hours
$145,483.85 / day
3600 bitcoins created / day
$145,483 / 3600 = $40.41
If you want fundamentals. You cannot charge less for a product than it takes to produce.
But for every product you buy you have to consider:
cost of production + cost of distribution + cost of retail + cost of marketing at the very least.
Price rarely dips below difficulty for this reason.
Doesn't this presume that only miners are selling bitcoins? 11 million coins out there. Miners find 3.6 thousand per day - i.e. miners find a minor (pun intended) .032%/day of what already exists. In a month, they still only find a mere ~1% of what already exists. There seem then plenty of bitcoins subject to selling pressure by those not incurring the expenses of mining. So, I'd think that it could drop below $40.41 I will assume forex follows most of the price patterns of stock trading. What did Jesse Livermore - trader extraordinaire - say about how low something can go? "Remember that stocks are never too high for you to begin buying or too low to begin selling." |
|
|
|
How many institutional investors do you know (or heard of) that are invested in bitcoin ?
There was $10,000,0000 to $20,000,0000 of trading daily for a month. That probably isn't the average neighbor that heard about bitcoin. Also, there were many narrow times (i.e. 5 to 15 minutes windows) where a $1 million trade would occur in the positive direction. Bitcoin Magazine (excerpt):
And how about the recent frontpage article in the Financial Times? The relevant passage: ”Some finance industry entrepreneurs have leapt at the opportunity. Exante, a Malta-based asset manager, set up a Bitcoin fund last year that was largely intended as a fun punt. Wealthy investors each put in $1,000 when Bitcoins were trading at $13 on the understanding they could lose the original investment. Exante predicted that public and media interest would take off when Bitcoins were trading at $100. Managing partner Gatis Eglitis claims they are now getting 20 calls a day from large asset managers looking to invest up to $100m.- source: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/trace-mayer-on-fox-business-why-bitcoin-is-just-getting-started/
....and consider the Winklevoss twins (FaceBook money) prior/continued involvement: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/as-big-investors-emerge-bitcoin-gets-ready-for-its-close-up/ |
|
|
|
in 2 days the btc value rapidly down to $70 from $266? is this a strategy for the upcoming shipments of BFL massive T-hash mining rigs?
Perhaps, the subject heading is backwards, and should read: "Re: from $10 to $266? what happened?" If it had only went from the ~$12 baseline to $25 only, everyone would have been satisfied. The run up to $266 may have spoiled the appreciation for such a more (relatively) modest move - actually not too modest since it would have been double the baseline. A guess is that what we might see is 2011 all over again. Give it a year or so, and we might base out at $100, and another bull run, maybe!. Perhaps, a run to $2000, with a subsequent crash down to $500, and eventual base at $1000. But who knows. That could easily all be very wrong - afterall, it's the speculation section of the forum. |
|
|
|
Honestly, I keep looking at the crazed traders who are running around and screaming about the end of Bitcoin and one thing I've noticed is, even with the small amount, my Bitcoin is still in my wallet, I can still trade goods for it and I can still make transactions far easier than a bank. Maybe we need to stop looking at Bitcoin as a 'store' of value, like a commodity and look at it as an actual currency, this is another situation where I'm really grateful that Bitcoin is completely unregulated.
Shouldn't we be looking at for example how to price goods based on the gains made by miners or some other method? Or are we really going to be relying on this hyper-inflated piece of shit paper for the rest of our lives? I'm beginning to wonder if I should be using the USD or GBP at all to price my goods and just go with what people are willing to pay.
Let's measure it's value in popcorn then at BTC.01/kernel? In fact. I'll organize a promo for this great idea.... and make a.... ***Special offer (today only)*** I'll send you a one cob for BTC1. But if you act now and buy two for BTC2, I'll send you a third cob for free. |
|
|
|
|
It's not rocket science, a lot of people were right.
Sell now and start slowly scaling back in if/when it hits $50.
|
|
|
|
Oh you wanted a serious answer, well the fact is any asset that has touched US soil become taxable, even if you are not a US citizen. We as US citizens have to pay taxes on all assets, foreign and domestic. If your coin is tied to your identity and you want to keep good relations with the US it is advised you pay taxes, otherwise its up to you.
The Mt.Gox exchange is in Japan. Nothing happens in the USA as far as I can see. |
|
|
|
Okay, does the IRS allow you to write off losses on Bitcoin as well?
Good question. But I don't know. And I'm assuming you mean if you buy btc at price 'X', then the price drops and you sell out for a loss. ...hmmmm... You can with stocks and forex trading. But let's a assume worse case that this is not like either of those. Seems almost as if you don't have at least claim a home business you are operating under, it might be difficult to categorize the loss. But I'm not sure. .............. Here's a scenario: Assume the following under two circumstances: either a home business model and as just individual speculation. 1. You mine bitcoins. 2. You sell them on an exchange. (effective gain) 3. You keep the money in the exchange, and buy bitcoins again to trade. 4. You sell those at a lower price. (effective loss) Can you deduct (4) from (2) under either circumstance? Ifso, which one and how? If not, then in what other circumstance could it be deducted? |
|
|
|
"flash" crash.. haha.. sounds like denial of a very real crash. Time will tell. How about this kinda crash?:  |
|
|
|
The 1mil-ish buy wall at 213ish has vanished. To where doth it gone?
My guess is that it's getting out to wait for a narrow trading range, then either creep in (if it's even possible to hide such an elephant) or jump out and cause the run up like a pretty lady in a surprise birthday cake. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
